What do you do when they come

We like to look at our operations and think we have a plan and it will all go along nicely. But what do you do when they come. You know the individuals and groups you wrote into your plan.  Because we all wrote the Israelis into our plans right? Or the biker group that takes over a disaster area and runs it with military efficiency they  are in your plan too, right?

So what do we do? Turn down the help because its different? If you experience a catastrophic disaster, you will need the help.  So the fix is to plan for the unexpected now.

Because the biggest disservice you can do for your community is to not be ready to accept help as in this excerpt (underline is mine) from the article here.
"At the time of the Hanshin earthquake, the concept of “disaster-relief volunteers” was not well known. When we set out to help, I first visited the Nagata Ward office and told an official that I wanted to volunteer. The official there told me to write my name on a sheet. That was it — he couldn’t explain anything about the volunteer situation."

 Make your plan flexible enough that no matter where people come from you can assign them a task to accomplish.


@disaster_dave