Hi, and welcome to your course on Disaster Preparedness for Individuals with Disabilities. My name is Crystal Goodwin, and I'll be your moderator. A little background about me. My formal education is in Emergency Management and Disaster Preparedness. Over the course of my career, I've been involved in a multitude of projects on disabilities in the disaster cycle, including some research on the State of Texas Emergency Assistance Registry, also known as the STEER database, which we'll cover a little bit later, review and revision on emergency management plans, and increasing supports and services for individuals with disabilities within the disaster cycle. This is Module 1, all about disaster terminology, where we will cover commonly used disaster terms and phrases. When we're talking about disasters, it's important to understand the difference between a disaster, a hazard, and an emergency. A disaster is an event that severely impacts and damages a community. It's a singular event that often has a lot of impact on a lot of different people. However, a hazard is an event that has the potential to harm a community or environment. And we'll get into some examples of those two here in a second. However, an emergency is an unexpected event that requires an immediate response and puts somebody or somebody's property in immediate danger. While disasters can be emergencies, emergencies can also be an event that only impacts one person or their family. Disasters always impact a lot of people in an entire community. When we talk about disaster preparedness, we're really talking about the planning cycle, the preparation that you put in to make sure you're ready for if a disaster happens. This could mean making a family plan on how to evacuate or putting together a go kit. That way you have the supplies you need for a disaster. And finally, you'll hear a lot about the word vulnerability, which just is a condition that increases somebody's ability to be impacted by a hazard or disaster. And this can be done by a lot of different factors, like having a disability. So really, when we're talking about disasters versus hazards, what do we mean? Well, as we just discussed, a disaster causes damage and disruption. It takes everybody out of their normal routines and stops what normally happens within a community. A disaster is the negative impact from a hazard actually happening and significantly harms a community and the people in it. However, a hazard is just a type of storm or an issue. A hazard has the potential to cause harm, but in itself is not harmful. A hazard is simply the threat of an event happening. If you want an example, you can think about hurricanes. A hurricane that makes landfall is a disaster because it has a negative impact and significantly harms the community in which it happens in. However, if a hurricane is out in the middle of the ocean, it's just a hazard. It could cause harm if it came to land, but right now in the middle of the ocean, it is just the threat of something happening. And finally, we can look at disability in disasters, which has its own set of terms and definitions. For example, the definition itself of disability, which according to a bunch of different organizations can have slightly different definitions. However, according to the CDC, a disability is a condition that affects one or more of life's major functions and how an individual interacts with the world. When we talk about the disaster field, you may hear the term special populations or special needs populations. This used to mean an individual who has additional needs before, during, or after an incident. However, this term really is getting moved out of the disaster world and we don't use it very often anymore. A large discussion about disabilities in disasters is around durable medical equipment or DME, which is any form of medical equipment that an individual uses on a daily basis or for a long period of time. DME can include things like power wheelchairs or oxygen machines and are often discussed in disasters because they require specific and special planning to make sure an individual who relies on DME is able to use it throughout the disaster cycle. And finally, you hear a lot about person-first language, which is just a way of speaking or writing that emphasizes a person before their condition. A great example of this is when we discuss a person with a disability. We put the person prior to their condition. But you have to remember, some people and some groups of people prefer identity-first language, where we talk about their condition before we talk about them. One prevalent example is individuals who are autistic typically prefer autistic individual. Just remember, it's always best practice to ask a person how they would like to be referred to. That's it for Module 1. In Module 2, we're going to cover two new terms, where we talk about disability versus the term access and functional needs.

disaster preparedness

disability

hazards

vulnerability

respectful communication