Daylight Savings Time with a dollop of disaster preparedness

Daylight savings time is again upon us. Already? RantWoman greets the occasion with attention to smoke detector batteries and various disaster preparedness themes.

The smoke detectors in RantWoman's apartment get checked without RantWoman having to do anything. RantWoman recently received notice that this periodic check would occur but RantWoman was not home when it did.

However RantWoman has been meditating about disaster preparedness in her faith community. Arguably, RantWoman can be a pain about this sort of thing, but here goes.

Oh, No, Not Nuclear war!

Faith communities have various approaches to this topic. Some of the time RantWoman might refer to her own faith community as Our Lady of Relentless Realism.

RantWoman is NOT nostalgic for the 1980's with the circles on maps of likely blast and destruction zones from use of nuclear weapons. The blast zone circles were supposed to convince the public that nuclear war is a really bad idea and that people should practice living together well in order to avoid same.  RantWoman is deeply NOT charmed by the behavior of more than one nation's leadership in the realm of threatening nuclear war. 

RantWoman's faith community  seems to do pretty well about generic worship but is a little shaky just now about the living together well. RantWoman also had a conversation recently about how if one has to have a nuclear war, being right a ground zero and getting vaporized quickly might have its advantages. Relentless realism, though there is still that mega earthquake to be preparing for.

On a tamer front, New tenants.
RantWoman's faith community has new tenants. RantWoman a time or two in connection with signing contracts for some grant project or other has needed to address some issue like evacuation maps or communication plan. So it would have been RantWoman's instinct to see to some preparedness points in the leasing project. This seems to have happened unevenly.

RantWoman MEANT to ask a question about this an other topics at one meeting where in RantWoman's view it would be entirely reasonable for anyone to ask such questions. RantWoman caused consternation she actually still does not entirely understand, and no one else in the room articulated the questions RantWoman did not get to. Sigh. RantWoman is trying not to correlate this silence with the fact that most of the room was well north of 60 and probably figured they already had as much of a handle on things as they wanted. RantWoman is such a source of cheer.

Oh well?

The universe is bountiful. Whether as a result of RantWoman being a pain about the topic or just organically, RantWoman learned during one activity later that part of the lease signing for overnight usage involved installing furnace dampers to keep the ventilation system from turning into an oxygen source in the event of fire. RantWoman thinks good on the new tenant for demanding that. (and darn the previous organization providing similar service for not even checking about such things.)

At a welcoming event for new tenants, someone did specifically ask about disaster preparedness. New tenant agency said oh, they have their communication plan, but yeah it would be good to share info with new landlord. RantWoman heard a couple other points of mush and decided there are committees supposed to be dealing with such things so RantWoman will at least try to chill.

Adult education hour in RantWoman's faith community is highly variable. Recently there was a whole month on safety and disaster preparedness. One session involved someone who had done disaster preparedness as part of the job he recently retired from. and a series of questions. RantWoman does not remember the questions but is grateful that comments written on a flip chart got typed up and emailed to RantWoman and others interested.

RantWoman found herself wondering whether the questions might have come from some preparing your organization info source. RantWoman also found herself wanting to sort the flip chart notes in terms of the rubric of one of those preparing your organization pages, though the data were uneven. A number of things to purchase. comments about some hazards and current safety practices, but not quit minimal list of storm issues for instance. . RantWoman also read the notes and decided she needed to have a small fit:  "We are a faith community and is there anything specific related to that status that we might want to think about?" (GOOD LORD YES, at least ifyou ask RantWoman.)

But for now, RantWoman will CHILL and see what next makes sense.

And the crowning item, from the job description for a reorganized staff role:
 Working with the committees to develop and implement a disaster preparedness plan.

Yes! Someone is listening, and info is in someone's head besides RantWoman's too.