Ten Handy Evacuation Safety and Sanity Tips

Actually, God,

Even though I hadn't intended to, I did go to the public meeting of the Windham Regional Commission and I was particularly moved by public concerns about evacuation plans. How will the town of Brattleboro evacuate when a single accident on the highway can tie up traffic thoroughly? Why should the public believe that schools, day care centers, the hospital, and the nursing homes can all be quickly evacuated by school bus when there aren't even enough buses to get kids to and from school except for in shifts? Have arrangements been made to notify people at the Austine School for the Deaf except by audible alarm? And, once they did understand that it was time to flee, how would deaf people understand evacuators' spoken commands?

Then, yesterday's Reformer ran an article about recent changes to the evacuation plan making people nervous, especially given the fact that we neglected to tell people about those changes.

I'm a little unnerved, God, on behalf of the public. And so in a supremely ecstatic 15 minutes of altruistic concern, I have drafted these…

… Ten Handy Evacuation Safety and Sanity Tips

1. To beat the traffic, evacuate the day before an emergency.

2. Radiation exposure is especially harmful to children. Build up your children's immunity by programmaticly giving them x-rays beginning shortly after birth

3. Dress your child in a haz-mat suit for Halloween, just in case that's a bad day for us.

4. Always pack your child's lunch box with holy water.

5. Ask your doctor whether cancer is always as serious as you've been led to believe.

6. Remember that, even if your children are in a school in Guilford, Vernon or Brattleboro, no force in creation can stop a good parent like you from cowboying your way through police lines to get to them once they have been cordoned away from you and proclaimed a public health risk to others.

7. Appreciate the way that evacuation puts your life problems in perspective.

8. Try not to read too much into the little details like how in heaven's name you will ever rebuild your life even if you and everyone you love survive.

9. If you actually work at the Vermont Yankee plant, every day ask yourself, "Hmmm, does this coffee taste a little too potassium iodide-y?" Lousy coffee is a morale buster. During an evacuation, a bright outlook will go a long way.

10. Remember that heart disease is actually our nation's number one killer.

Amen,

Fake-Rob