Make a risk map of your community and share it with your family and neighbors

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Disasters happen anytime and anywhere. A winter storm could confine people to their homes. An earthquake, flood, tornado, fire, or any other disaster could cut water, electricity, and telephones-for days. Does your community realize the risk of a disaster that may happen? Are they taking preventative action? Probably not but you can help your community to realize the risk of a disaster that may happen and take preventative action.

One way is to draw up a hazard and risk map of your community.

  1. Find out what disasters have occurred in your community in the past. Go to the library or town hall and check books and archives. Visit the fire station and police station and ask. Consider asking longtime residents for their insight.
  2. What hazards have affected your city or town? Is their a history of floods, earthquakes, storms, landslide, tornados, volcanic eruptions or others? Make a note of all of them.
  3. Contact the mayor’s office, fire station, police department, emergency personnel, doctors, journalists, whoever can give you insight about the disaster plans set in place in your neighborhood. Keep a detailed record of the information they supply. Ask for print outs of evacuation maps, disaster plans, etc. You may even want to carry a tape recorder to have a record of the information you’re given. You can consult this information later when you’re compiling the info.
  4. On a large piece of poster paper, draw the most important buildings; schools, hospitals, fire services, houses, police stations as well as potentially dangerous buildings such as factories, fragile buildings, dams, power plants.
  5. Use a different symbol for each building. Map out roads, rivers, power lines, sewage works and dumps. Use different colors to show these areas.
  6. For each hazard, identify how buildings would be affected (a little, badly, completely destroyed) and use a different symbol for each degree of damage.
  7. Identify where the people are who will need the most help in case of a disaster (such as nursing homes, hospitals, nursery schools).
  8. Discuss possible solutions to reduce the risk.
  9. Share this with your community. Present it at home, in your school, community center and place of worship.

Find more awesome ways to get involved with action guides, volunteer opportunities, and causes at DoSomething.org