In the last 2 decades, who has saved the most lives in house fires?
You may be surprised to learn that more children have saved their parents than parents have saved their children.
Nearly two generations ago, the National Fire Safety Council created the Stop, Drop, and Roll program for kindergartners. The theory was simple: As adult fire safety education was failing miserably, and home fire-related deaths were increasing year by year, the council decided to introduce children to fire safety, hoping that children influence their parents and take fire safety knowledge with them. Throughout their lives.
The plan worked. Today, most adults in their thirties, and even many in their forties, know exactly what to do in the event of a fire: crawl under the smoke; touch the door, not the doorknob, before opening a door during a fire; and, of course, stop, drop, and roll in case your clothing catches fire.
Now that home fire deaths are down, it’s time for everyone to tackle the next big problem: zero resilience.
What is Zero Resilience? It means that most people today rely on the community or the federal government for help in the event of a natural disaster, even though all municipalities, states, and the federal government tell people they must have an evacuation plan. ready and they need to be able to survive for 72 hours on their own before outside help arrives. Billions of dollars have been spent in an attempt to educate people about disaster planning, but few realize it.
Think about it… If a natural disaster were to hit your location right now, at this moment, are you prepared? Do you have your evacuation plan drawn up? Do you have a three-day supply of food and water available for each member of your family? Is your emergency backpack stocked and ready to go? For most people, the answer to each of these questions is “no.”
Unfortunately, having zero resilience is a byproduct of our current economy. Many companies have and promote a “just in time” mentality. Even marketers encourage consumers to take a “just in time” perspective. Few people these days buy a week’s worth of groceries. Instead, they stop by the grocery store every night on their way home from work and buy enough food for dinner and breakfast the next morning. So we’ve moved away from even having a week’s worth of food in the house. As such, few people can provide for themselves in times of disaster.
Rinse, lather and repeat: a new workout for a new era
With educating adults about disaster planning being as successful as the old fire safety messages aimed at adults, it’s time to shift our education dollars to the youngest of Americans: kindergartners. That’s where Rinse, Lather, and Repeat come in.
Rinse, Lather, and Repeat is a new program that seeks to duplicate the successes of the National Fire Safety Council’s Stop, Drop, and Roll program. Like its predecessor, Rinse, Lather, and Repeat is a week-long educational curriculum for kindergarten students that focuses on five main activities:
1. Preparation and maintenance of a three-day travel pack
2. Knowledge of where to get reliable news and evacuation instructions
3. Memorizing local and out-of-state phone numbers for friends, relatives, or relatives.
4. The location of local shelters and local evacuation routes
5. The proper self-decontamination procedure whether at home in a domestic shower or in a hospital or other community facility
One of the main hands-on activities that children will participate in during the Rinse, Lather, and Repeat program is the preparation of a three-day travel package. This kit, which the children will assemble, includes:
*Three days of clothing including underwear
*Days of energy bars or shelf-stable packaged foods chosen by the child
* Three days of water
* One week’s worth of toiletries including toothbrush, hairbrush, toothpaste and toilet paper
* A two-week medication kit (without medication)
* A USB flash drive containing medical records and a document inventory device
* One roll of quarters (for payphones, which are self-powered)
* Photos of each family member
* List of each family member with age and contact telephone numbers (cell phone)
* List of two local and two out-of-state relatives, friends or relatives with addresses and phone numbers
* Backpack to place all items inside.
In addition to assembling the backpack, children will review local information sources, including cable television, weather services, local access cable, local government television and cable sources, local information radio, and print media. local. They will also memorize the four family members with their associated telephone numbers, as well as practice the use of the different information channels they have.
Homework assignments involving parents will include the location of the most appropriate evacuation shelter for the family. In some communities this may be the family basement, while in other communities it may represent a Red Cross shelter or even a special needs shelter set up by the local government or health department. Children will also learn the proper evacuation route for their community on a map.
Finally, children will learn the crux of the Rinse, Lather, and Repeat program, which is how to decontaminate. Pollution can occur for a number of reasons, including raw sewage if the levee breaks and floods your city, household chemicals like bleach or household cleaning products may be splashed, there may be an industrial accident in your community , or even a biological or chemical weapons fear.
Unfortunately, healthcare workers still struggle to know how to decontaminate a child. After all, we teach kids to never undress in public, so you can’t expect them to strip in front of people in biosuits and walk naked through a decontamination unit. However, all children can be taught how to take a simple shower, which is really all decontamination. They just have to learn to rinse well, lather well (not just wander around the tub like so many kids do) and then repeat the process once.
Therefore, the steps and logic behind Rinse, Lather, and Repeat are as follows:
1. Undress, thus removing 87% of all contaminants.
2. Rinse body thoroughly, rubbing all parts of the body with hands to remove any contamination (now reducing contamination by 97 to 99 percent)
3. Lather up thoroughly, using soap, shampoo, or other decontamination supplies, to wash every inch of your body. This means washing your entire body and rubbing every aspect of your body well with your hands.
4. Repeat rinsing, completely removing all soap or other decontamination materials.
The Rinse, Lather, Repeat process can be taught using comics and/or coloring books with children in the fully clothed classroom. In addition to providing the necessary skills to care for themselves in the event of a chemical accident, children will also learn good hygiene by learning a skill rarely taught by their parents: how to take an effective shower. This skill will also aid healthcare in the future by providing basic decontamination skills to children and ultimately the adults they will become.
Rinse, Lather and Repeat week will culminate with kids taking home their new three-day travel packs to proudly place in a closet or in the trunk of mom or dad’s car. Now the child is ready in case he needs to shelter in place or evacuate with the family.
Implement rinse, lather and repeat today
Currently, no schools in the United States implement the Rinse, Lather, and Repeat curriculum. And as we saw with Hurricane Katrina, that needs to change. People need to be prepared for a disaster, and Rinse, Lather, and Repeat is our best defense in driving the message home.
By implementing the Rinse, Lather, and Repeat program, within 20 years, we will return America to the same level of resilience we saw during World War II, the Korean War, and the early days of the Cold War. . War, without hysteria, and without overwhelming our schools. In fact, Rinse, Lather, and Repeat will solve the nation’s Zero Resiliency problem with almost no effort.
So the next time your child comes home with a stop, drop and roll homework assignment from school, ask the teacher when the next rinse, lather and snooze program will take place. After all, Rinse, Lather, and Repeat is our best chance to raise the level of national disaster preparedness by increasing the self-sufficiency and individual resilience of every American citizen.