Recreate Safely! How To Reduce Risk and Improve Readiness
By Josh Asbill and Peter Yang, SORS volunteers
Our volunteers also participate in land search and rescue operations.
“Be prepared” is more than a motto. Planning ahead can save seconds, minutes and lives. And while EMS squads and technical rescue teams (TRT) like ours train to respond, it can take time to reach you. Especially during widespread events, decreased FEMA funding, increased climate-related weather extremes and our growing desire to spend time in nature. Your ability to prevent and/or self-rescue helps plug the gaps.
That’s why we’re sharing some advice to help you avoid problems when you can and respond better when you can’t.
4 keys to emergency preparedness
Preparedness and redundancies are a hedge against the unknown. Things can go very wrong—often due to no fault of your own—and with no warning.
Phone batteries die and service is spotty. Gear and maps get wet. Injuries and illnesses happen quickly. The weather changes. Widespread disasters and poor conditions delay emergency response.Here are four areas to focus on:
Communications
Ensure every member of the party has some means to call for help. Cell phones can contact 911 in most areas, but it’s important to know they can and do fail, especially in extreme cold or heat, where they shut off. Even if your cell phone shows no signal, it will try dialing 911 through any carrier. Additionally, some counties, like Burke, allow you to text 911 for help in case your reception isn’t good enough for clear communication. For some of the more remote wilderness areas where cell signal is spotty, consider carrying a satellite communicator device, like a Garmin InReach, which can also track and report your GPS location at intervals to your loved ones. At home, in your vehicle or RV, a CB or ham radio can be helpful when cellular communication is down.
Hydration, nutrition and health
Inadequate hydration can lead to confusion and acute medical emergencies, like dehydration and heat stroke. For emergency prep at home, you’ll want 3 gallons of water per person per day. When you’re recreating, you’ll want about a half-litre or one pint of water per person for every hour you’re out there. Water alone is sometimes not enough – make sure you also replenish electrolytes as well, especially if you’re recreating over multiple days. Since nobody does well in complex situations when they’re hangry, stock up on nutritious snacks. Cool Ranch Doritos may be your comfort food, but they’re not going to help you much in an emergency. Finally, have sufficient supplies of personal hygiene and first aid items, along with prescription and over-the-counter medication.
Auxiliary power
You might have a generator at home or your campsite, but you need power when you’re on the move, too. Carry power banks or lightweight solar chargers for backup. Keep batteries and other power sources charged, especially if you have medical equipment that requires power.
Updates
Carry a weather radio and sign up for county weather alerts to identify these changes as they occur and give you real-time updates. Sometimes, the few minutes or hours it affords you can be all the difference. Conditions can change with little or no warning, which doesn’t just affect your potential for exposure, but also the terrain and bodies of water around you. When you’re faced with a changing environment, such as slick rock/mud or swelling streams, your chance of injury/accident increases dramatically. Additionally, sudden severe storms can occur with no warning, even if weather forecasts anticipate completely clear days, especially in mountainous areas. Exposure to the elements can cause mild hypothermia even in the summer or heat exhaustion, both of which impair your ability to make sound decisions.
Get our specific advice for staying safe during floods and in high water, hurricanes and winter weather.
SORS EMS volunteers work alongside county and town staff to help people in emergencies.
How to plan for a day trip
Whether you’re heading for the mountains or coast, kayaking on University Lake or hitting the Brumley North trails, do us all a favor and jot down a few notes before you leave.
Creating and communicating your plan for day trips is highly encouraged by numerous outdoor groups. Why? Because it helps friends and family know when they can expect to hear from you and when to start being concerned enough to call 911. Your plan also provides rescuers like us vital information on your whereabouts, including intended recreational and camping locations, routes taken, your experience level and your gear.
The National Parks Service has some great checklists for trip planning.
We wish you’d follow those lists to the letter, but we know it’s not always easy to go by the book. At the very least, pack what you need to:
Find your way. A traditional compass, plus paper and app-based maps Deal with the weather. Additional sunscreen, hats (for rain, sun, cold), weather and emergency apps, rain gear and other clothing appropriate for the location and season Flashlight or headlamp, a small magnifying device Protect from the elements. An emergency blanket and/or shelter A pocket knife or multitool, a first aid kit (Great Outdoor Provision Company has some specifically made for outdoor recreation) and a small supply of personal items you need, like EPI-PENS or aspirin for heart conditions Water, purification tabs, electrolyte powders, nutrient-dense snacks and a firestarter you know how to useIt only seems like overkill till you wish you had it.
How to respond in an emergency
When you know the hazards in the area you are going to be in and how to mitigate them, you’re more apt to keep a level head. That’s critical because when we panic, we stop thinking clearly.
The first thing is to maintain steady, consistent breathing. One of our core fear-based responses is to hold our breath when faced with high-stress scenarios, which causes our heart rate to go up and can worsen anxiety. The second thing is not making the situation worse. Knowing some basic safety skills can help with that.
In unusual and urgent situations—especially with our loved ones—we desperately want to help and not being able to do so is a deeply frustrating feeling. When you’ve had some training, you feel a little more in control. You can anticipate what can happen, which helps you prevent it in the first place. If something does go wrong, you’re better equipped to identify what happened, understand the severity and decide if and how you can help before help arrives—or even prevent the need to call for help.
Learn how you can use hands-only CPR to help someone in distress.
SORS Technical Rescue Team volunteers are trained to respond to all kinds of situations, including high-angle, large animal and swiftwater rescues like this one.
Classes to boost your emergency readiness and response
Trainings like the ones below provide systematic approaches that give you the means to take back your power in stressful/uncertain situations. Sometimes that’s the most crucial part of preventing the incident from escalating.
SORS offers free CPR/AED, first aid and Stop-the-Bleed courses. The American Canoe Association, S. Coast Guard Auxiliary and Two Sisters Adventure Company provide safety and self-rescue classes for boaters, canoeists, kayakers and paddleboarders. Goldfish Swim School, Chapel Hill Parks & Recreation and the Orange County SportsPlex offer swim lessons, as do most private pools; The Triangle YMCA offers swimming and lifesaving instruction at the Chapel Hill location, among others. Orange County’s free Community Emergency Response Team (CERT) program teaches community members how to care for themselves and others during emergencies. It’s a great way for anyone to get basic training and education on disaster readiness and response. If you spend a lot of time in the wilderness or remote locations, Wilderness and Remote First Aid (WFA) is a fantastic skill to have. Knowledge in these settings, where help is further away, can be the difference in saving someone’s life, including people that you do not know. That’s because taking care of injuries in a remote environment is very different from dealing with it at home or in a more urban setting. Several organizations offer this two-day training, including the National Outdoor Leadership School Wilderness Medical Institute, which administers courses in the Southeast through Landmark Learning and Stonehearth Open Learning Opportunities, Inc. (SOLO). These trainings emphasize hands-on skills, so online WFAs do not match the level of confidence and knowledge you gain from in-person training.If you’ve read this far, you may think we’re overly concerned about preparedness and safety. That certainly comes with the job, but for good reason. We share this information to make sure as few people as possible have to see or experience the worst of what we encounter. And, ironically, that can lead to a misconception that many of these circumstances are rare. They’re actually pretty common. But we can make them as unlikely as you think they are by preparing for the worst with prevention and readiness planning.
Josh Asbill is the assistant chief of SORS’ Technical Rescue Team and Peter Yang is a TRT member. You can support our work at sors.us/donate.
All photos by SORS Chief Matthew Mauzy.
The South Orange Dispatch is a monthly column on Chapelboro by the South Orange Rescue Squad: an all volunteer, 501c3 non-profit providing EMS and technical rescue services in the Carrboro-Chapel Hill area of Orange County since 1971.
The South Orange Dispatch: How To Avoid Needing to Dial 911 Chapelboro.com.
Read More Details
Finally We wish PressBee provided you with enough information of ( The South Orange Dispatch: How To Avoid Needing to Dial 911 )
Also on site :