Action Plan in the Event of a Disaster - Civil Defense Basics Course 1: Psychology of Civil Defense

1.06 Plan of Action in the Event of a Disaster:

Spend time in the shelter sleeping, eating and practicing your plan. Practice what the family would do in the event of an escalating crises, or eminent attack. This should be an exercise similar to a ‘fire drill’. Spend a full day and night in the shelter once every month or two.

The following is a duty list that should guide you in the event that you need to go to your shelter in an emergency. Read through this list on a regular basis. Post it inside the shelter. Turn off your power and let the family hear the power-drop alarm, and proceed to the shelter as you would in a real emergency. Use this list as a shelter exercise.

If the EMP alarm has been activated, switch off the alarm.
Check the telephone & radio for an electromagnetic pulse (EMP). If you have seen arcing from your outlets, or if the test of the telephone & radio fails, send everyone to the shelter. Every needful thing should already be in the shelter. Don’t stop to retrieve anything except the flashlights. Everyone should know the location of the flashlights and should have his own flashlight.
The first person to the shelter should shine his flashlight into the entrance. An adult should enter the shelter first, and assists the others down the ladder. An older child or adult should proceed through the horizontal run, enter the shelter, and turn on one battery powered shelter light. One light should always remain on at all times.
Assign a person to assist the younger children through the horizontal tunnel if needed.
An adult should immediately assist all children to a hammock. Everyone should have been pre-warned to stay away from the shelter wall, as a ground shock could cause severe injury through the sides and floor of the shelter. Everyone should remain in the hammock until told by the adult in charge, that it is safe to leave.
The last person entering the shelter should close and lock the shelter from the inside. He should then immediately proceed to his own bunk or hammock and take a ‘ready’ position.
There may be more than one blast. If a blast is heard or felt, continue holding the ready position for at least one hour after hearing or feeling the last blast. If not performing an essential task, everyone should remain in his hammock for 24 hours.
If, after one hour there has been no indication of a blast, someone should be assigned to start monitoring for radiation. After taking an initial reading, he should charge all dosimeters and assign them to people in various areas of the shelter.
If there is no indication of blast or radiation, an assigned person should remove one of the inexpensive battery powered radios from the faraday cage, and listen for activity. Assuming your shelter is connected to the grid, you should receive a signal by holding the transistor radio (AM stations, only) near a power cord. Listen for activity throughout the day. Do not risk using your expensive ham radios during the first two days.
A person should be assigned to record radiation levels, hourly. Place children and small adults in the areas of least exposure. Areas near the shelter entrances will be the most likely place for significant levels of radiation.
In the event of a confirmed EMP, no one should leave the shelter for at least 24 hours. After 24 hours, if there has been no blast and no reading on the radiation meters, one person may wish to venture out to check for activity.
In order to protect the filtration system from smoke, dust and radiation, the ventilation system should remain closed for a six-hour period after a blast. Six hours after the last blast, the hoses should be attached to the gas filter and the assigned person should turn the lever on the hose to the ‘open’ position. Make sure you have carefully studied this action, and that you are placing the hoses in the correct position. Adjust the flow of air via the meter to the war-time gas filtered velocity (red indicator). The meter has been set by the manufacturer to allow for the proper airflow during filtered operation. The proper residence time within the filter for chemical agents must not be exceeded.
In the unlikely event that the blasts continue, you may be forced to ventilate the shelter before the end of the 6-hour period. A volume of 130 cubic feet of free air space per person is required in order to shut down for 6 hours.

Anyone entering the shelter at a later time should be instructed to enter through the air lock and wait for the positive pressure to re-establish. If they have been contaminated with fallout, they should remove their outer clothing in the decontamination area of the air lock and place their clothing into plastic bags. Fresh clothing should be stored in the air lock for those who may have received fallout contamination.