Your Survival Blog
Tuesday, November 24, 2009
E.T. Phone Home—If You Can!
A neighbor and I have a friendly argument about phone service. He long ago switched to cell phones as his primary method of voice communication, but since he and his wife have a school-aged son, they keep a house phone for “family” calls. Their house phone, though, is not a hardwired land line (the old-fashioned Ma Bell kind) — it’s a VoIP (voice over Internet Protocol) service. Which lasts only until the power or cable go out, I point out. (While the Internet itself is pretty robust and can route information around major outages, the “last-mile” connections, especially cable service to homes, can be vulnerable to squirrels, heavy rain, and other minor glitches.)
Me, I’ll give up Ma Bell when you rip her out of my cold dead hands. See, I used to live in the town the electric company forgot, and on days the electricity went out to lunch, or a long vacation, the phone was the only thing in the house that worked.
(Note that if you’re a Luddite like me and think land lines are the bee’s knees, you need to make sure that at least one of the handsets in your home is the kind you plug only into the phone jack, and is NOT a cordless or other handset dependent on an AC outlet. Relatives of mine found this out the hard way.)
God bless self-powered phone lines, I tell my neighbor. Will your beloved cell function several days into an ice storm?
“If it’s ‘several days’ into an ice storm,” he fires back, “and I have had zero power, then my house is already unlivable. And I would have moved somewhere else.” (Which, I have to admit because we live in the Northeastern United States, is a point. But admitting that might lose me face.)
At this point in the argument another neighbor generally steps in and offers to go out with an axe, hack through the ice, collect rocks, use the rocks to build a fireplace in his house, make a turbine from old bike parts and install it in the chimney, generate his own electricity, and invite Neighbor Number One over to recharge his cell phone. My neighbors think they’re comedians.
Now I’ll confess that I own (and love) a cell phone; I bought it for use outside my home, but it’s also backup should land-line service go kablooey. I think everyone (especially those responsible for children or other dependents) should consider having at least two methods of communication in an emergency.
Yes, naturally there are ways to recharge cell service if your power is out: if you have a car charger, you can run your car for a bit and recharge from engine power, and if you’re running vital services in your home or office from a generator, you can borrow power from that. But if cell was my primary (or only) phone service, I’d go out and buy a wind-up emergency cell charger, solar charger, or supplemental battery unit. I’ll address some of these options in a future column.
Friends who work in the communications business — and this is by no means a scientific survey — speculate that in the event of a widespread disaster in our area, land lines will be restored first, then cell towers, then (long afterward) last-mile broadband. Your area may have different priorities (and, if they’re wrong, so could mine).
Here’s a rough overview of the pros and cons of each communication method:
land lines (Plain Ol’ Telephone Service)
Pros: Powered by phone company batteries, so they work for a while in a widespread power outage (at least a few hours, maybe even days). Work best with 911 service, as responders can tell exactly where you are.
Cons: Overhead lines susceptible to windstorms, ice storms, and ground movement.
cell phones
Pros: Portable; can be used almost anywhere there’s a signal from a cell tower service (including most of the US and Canada). Many newer cell phones have GPS, allowing you to be pinpointed by emergency responders. SMS text messages (because of the minimal bandwidth they require) may be the only thing that get through in a widespread disaster. Cell towers may survive disasters that take out telephone lines.
Cons: Batteries have short lives; recharging during an outage can be a challenge.
VoIP
Pros: Can be used wherever there’s an Ethernet connection. Often cheaper than the other methods.
Cons: Vulnerable to both power outages and outages of your cable service or Internet service provider. Guests in your home may not understand how to use your service. If you use your VoIP service for mobility, Caller ID may not tell emergency services where you really are.
Worth chewing over, isn’t it, as you prepare for the most likely disasters in your region?
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Tuesday, November 17, 2009
Don’t make me sick!: Talking to your employer about pandemic flu
Over the summer of 2009, absenteeism due to swine flu reached previously unseen levels in Canada, Australia and the UK. The British government responded by expanding workers’ rights to take sick leave without having to visit a doctor, clogging up waiting rooms and possibly infecting other people. But three industrialized countries — Canada, Japan and the United States — have no national law allowing for sick pay during short-term illnesses like influenza. (In Canada, to be fair, most provinces cover this at a provincial level.) In the United States, there is not even protection (except occasionally at the state or local level) from being fired for illness. US sick-leave policies vary drastically from employer to employer; some provide no sick leave, and some threaten to let workers go if they stay home sick, which can be a recipe for disaster in a pandemic.
sick leave policy
If you’re concerned that your employer’s sick-leave policy is inadequate — time allowed for illness is subtracted from vacation, or is minimal compared to other companies in your area — consider joining together with other employees to hold a meeting. Explain that to keep everybody safe, including management, you’d like to be more confident that you can take time off with an infectious illness so as not to spread it to your boss and coworkers.
Almost half of private employers in the US, employing sixty million workers, have no sick leave at all. If you live in the US and your employer does not provide time off for illness, or threatens to fire workers who become ill, consider calling your local legislators; a number of US cities and states have introduced (or passed) legislation requiring such leave, and yours may be next. (Legislation has also been introduced at a federal level, and may gain momentum with official advice from the Centers for Disease Control that everyone with flu symptoms stay at home.)
But it’s best to approach this as a win-win situation for everyone. Your workplace management probably has no more desire to see everyone in the company fall ill in a pandemic than you do.
No matter where you live, however, there are many strategies you can use to work toward better health for you and your colleagues.
minimizing your exposure
The guiding principle here is “social distance” — how close do you have to get to your coworkers and to the general public?
If you’re a long-haul trucker, you’re in a very low-risk group: keep your hands clean (be careful in public restrooms!), don’t let people breathe on you and you’ll be fine. If you’re a pulmonologist who does respiratory procedures, you’re in a very high-risk group, but we presume you already know how to take care of yourself with respirators and other infection-control measures.
If you have a wonky immune system or you’re pregnant, you should definitely consult your doctor about special procedures for keeping yourself safe, and take those concerns to your employer.
The rest of you, however, may be able to control many risks from exposure to those you work with. (Many of these suggestions are taken from advice by the US Occupational Safety and Health Administration.)
Teleconferencing: If you work in a position that includes a lot of travel, can virtual conferences and email replace some of the face-to-face meetings? In the workplace, can you avoid cramming groups into a small conference room with minimal ventilation, and use the phone or text messaging instead?
Telecommuting: If most employees sit at computers all day, are they encouraged to take a laptop and work at home at the first sign of fever or cough?
Flexible shifts: Can management consider staggering work hours so that everyone is not sharing the same location at the same time?
New social norms: Is it okay for everyone to stand six feet apart (about 2m) when illness is spreading? Can you agree not to shake hands, or to wash immediately if you must touch? Is it okay for everybody to have their own tools or equipment and agree not to share? Can you restrict visitors to the workplace (or parts of it, like large cubicle farms) while a pandemic is underway?
maintaining good hygiene
Do your workplace restrooms and kitchen have plenty of soap and warm water? Are facilities cleaned regularly? Are tissues, wastebaskets, hand sanitizer, and disinfectant wipes (for keyboards, telephones and the like) available — including to customers? Can you change trash cans with manual covers to step-on bins? Does everybody in the office aware that high-touch items (doorknobs, shared keyboards, the office coffeepot or water cooler) should be handled only with clean hands, that you should cough or sneeze into a shoulder or elbow if a tissue is not handy, and that you should avoid touching your face without washing afterward?
If you work in a place of high contact with the public (a customer-service window, for example), is there a clear barrier ("sneeze guard") to help prevent people breathing in your face? Is there a way to shift more of your business to a drive-through window, a Web site, or expanded phone hours?
staying healthy
If your workplace promotes good health — has generous health insurance or wellness programs, helps employees quit smoking, provides healthy snacks, encourages you to take an hour for a flu shot — you’re well ahead of the game. If not, fill in wherever you can. Don’t smoke; bring fruits and veggies for your lunch or snack break; get vaccinated after hours if you can.
Take care of your immune system, and it’s possible that you’ll become less ill if you do catch something, and recover faster. Or — knock on wood — not become ill at all. That’s a work goal we can all get behind.
Posted by eks on 11/17 at 10:38 AM(8) Comments • Permalink
Tuesday, November 10, 2009
The Agony of De Feet: How to avoid getting tripped up … and what to do if you are
Let’s talk about feet.
Your feet are your best way out of any situation. Think about it: would you want to try to exit a situation on your knees? hand-over-hand? slithering side to side? Nope. So one of the best things you can do for yourself, before any emergency, is to make sure your feet are in good working condition.
Clear your path
Number one rule: don’t trip. (Don’t ask me how I know this. I have several broken toes, a cracked metatarsal, and innumerable sprained ankles to my, er, credit.) Sprained ankles, broken metatarsals, even stubbed toes or bruised shins can seriously slow you down, or even make your exit impossible. This means that in any situation you have control over, you need to keep all passageways as free of debris as possible.
Do you have kids—and do they regularly leave Legos, jacks, Matchbox cars or jump ropes on the living room floor? Are you in the habit of leaving items on your stairs “just for a little while” until you can take them up or down? Are your pet dishes in the kitchen, between the sink and the stove, because you can’t think of a better place? Do you leave laundry baskets in the hallway till family members claim them? Is your foyer a jumble of shoes, rollerblades, bike helmets, jackets, and that tool chest or vacuum you meant to take out to the car? Always leave yourself an unobstructed way from Point A to Point B. Clear your path.
Take care of ‘em beforehand
Number two rule: take care of any existing foot or leg problems. (Over half the respondents in a recent survey reported “foot pain so severe that it hampered their daily function.”) Do you have corns or bunions from too-tight shoes, plantar fasciitis, or diabetic foot ulcers? Any experience with clots, swelling, varicose veins? Do you have a longstanding weak ankle or knee from previous sprains or athletic injuries? Take care of those problems now, before limping away from an emergency costs you precious time.
Shoes are your friends too
Number three rule: in case you do need to escape, have a good set of shoes available for each family member. Remember the pictures of thousands of commuters walking out of Manhattan after 9/11? Would you want to do that in high heels or your shinest, most pinched Oxfords? No? Then keep some walking shoes in your desk at work, along with a good pair of socks if you’re not wearing them already.)
At home, if you wake up in the dark with the roof shaking, you’ll need something you can put on in a hurry and not hurt yourself in on the way out. (Tie-on sneakers or running shoes, wonderful as they are, have drawbacks.) In many major home emergencies—tornado or windstorm, earthquake, fire—cut glass is a serious hazard. Make sure the soles of your shoes (or slippers, if that’s all you’ll have) are thick and sturdy!
But I’m already not walking!
Well, you say, that’s all very nice if you’re fit, or can cure your foot problems. But I have a permanently arthritic ankle and use a cane. Or I have an artificial leg. Or I use a wheelchair because walking isn’t feasible for me at all. What about me?
If you usually find it easiest to maneuver with a cane or a walker or a pair of crutches, have that near you at all times. Even if you’re having a good foot day, keep one with you if you go down the hall at work. Leave your mobility aid of choice by your bed at night.
If you need a chair some or all of the time, things are trickier. You may need a buddy or buddies in an emergency; if you live or work with others, start talking with them now about your exit plans from home and office. We’ll cover the needs of the disabled in a separate column.
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