In the last 2 decades, who has saved more lives in home 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: Since adult fire safety education was failing miserably, and home fire-related deaths were increasing year after year, the council decided to introduce fire safety to children, hoping that children they will 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 clothes catch 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 every municipality, state, and federal government tells people they need to 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 outlined? 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 food. 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 have moved away from even having food for a week in the house. As such, few people are able to provide for themselves in times of disaster.

Rinse, lather and repeat – a new workout for a new era
With educating adults about disaster planning proving to be as successful as the old fire safety messages aimed at adults, it’s time to shift our educational dollars to the youngest of Americans: kindergarteners. That’s where Rinse, Lather, and Repeat comes 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 appropriate self-decontamination procedure either at home in a domestic shower or in a hospital or other community facility

One of the main hands-on activities that children will engage in during the Rinse, Lather, and Repeat program is putting together a three-day travel package. This kit, which children will assemble, includes:

*Three days of clothing including underwear

* The days of energy bars or shelf-stable packaged foods chosen by the child

* Three days of water

* Toiletries for a week, 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

* A roll of quarters (for pay phones, 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 family, friends, or relatives with addresses and phone numbers

* Backpack to place all items inside.

In addition to putting together the backpack, children will check 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 relatives with their associated telephone numbers, as well as practice the use of the different information channels they have.

Homework assignments involving parents will include locating 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 established by the local government or health department. Children will also learn from a map the appropriate evacuation route for their community.

Ultimately, kids will learn the crux of the Rinse, Lather, and Repeat program, which is how to decontaminate yourself. Pollution can occur for a number of reasons, including raw sewage if the dam breaks and floods your city, household chemicals like bleach or cleaning products can be splashed into the home, there may be an industrial accident in your community , or even a biological or chemical weapons fear.

Unfortunately, health care workers still struggle to know how to decontaminate a child. After all, we teach kids never to get naked in public, so you can’t expect them to get naked 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.

So the steps and logic behind Rinse, Lather and Repeat are as follows:

1. Undress, thus removing 87% of all contaminants.

2. Rinse the body well, rubbing all parts of the body with the hands to remove any contamination (now reducing contamination by 97 to 99 percent)

3. Lather well, using soap, shampoo, or other decontamination supplies, to wash every inch of your body. This means washing your entire body and thoroughly rubbing every aspect of your body with your hands.

4. Repeat the rinse, 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 classroom fully clothed. In addition to providing the skills necessary to take care of themselves in the event of a chemical accident, children will also learn how to maintain good hygiene by learning a skill that their parents rarely teach them: how to take an effective shower. This skill will also help future healthcare by providing basic decontamination skills to children and ultimately the adults they will become.

Rinse, Lather, Repeat week will culminate with kids taking home their new three-day travel packs to proudly place in a closet or 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 must 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 a 20-year period, we will return America to the same level of resilience that we saw during World War II, during the Korean War, and during 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 almost effortlessly.

So the next time your child comes home with a stop, drop, and roll assignment from school, ask the teacher when the next rinse, lather, and repeat schedule will take place. After all, Rinse, Lather, and Repeat is our best opportunity to increase the level of national disaster preparedness by increasing the self-sufficiency and individual resilience of every American citizen.