Why 72 hours

Here are some suggestions:. Diapers, bottled milk, formula and food, toys, crayons and paper. Other family members. Include copies of prescriptions for your medicine and glasses. Include a three-day supply of pet food and water. Food and water kit. Have at least a three-day supply of food and water on hand. Canned food, such as soups, stews, baked beans, pasta, meat, poultry, fish, vegetables, fruits.

This will help to mitigate any potential confusion with other response leads and national and district stakeholders about their roles, and help to avoid any duplication of efforts that could lead to confusing and uncoordinated messages to the public. Ethnicity, class, gender and other demographic characteristics of audiences must be adapted if risk communication messages are to be effective. Prepare people to accept that facts will change — because facts alone do not overcome fear. Inform the public through press briefings and call centers.

Ensure call centers have approved messages to provide to the public early on, and are staffed appropriately. It will also be important to develop press releases and hold media briefings, and update websites with accurate information and clear messages. Consider that the same risk perception factors that trigger fear in those who consume the news are of interest to the people who report it. It is highly recommended that countries have an Emergency Response Plan for the first 72 hours in place for emergency preparedness see Worksheet 1.

Countries can develop this plan through a participatory process with key partners and emergency response stakeholders, and then test the plan with exercises that test different scenarios to see what works and what needs to be modified.

Emergency Response Plan for the First 72 Hours. Unit 1: Coordination and Mapping. Be flexible. Keep a positive attitude but prepare for the worst. Find out as much as you can ahead of time if you are not familiar with the context. In the first hours of a response, OCHA needs to identify and work with partners, including the Government and all members of the Humanitarian Country Team, to assess the impact of the disaster. In these exercises, we build a shared picture of where the most severe impacts are, how many people are likely to be affected and how many are in critical need.

Once we have the basics, we can develop a more detailed picture of sector-by-sector needs and priorities using a variety of tools, such as household surveys, focus groups and social media. This is also the right time to implement two-way communication systems with affected people through call-back centres or message boards, for example, so that we can monitor how well we are serving them. We aim to be as local as possible and as international as necessary.

This means we respond only if our presence results in a faster, bigger and better-quality response. Getting this right involves understanding the existing response capacity in the country and region. OCHA focuses on finding out the response capacity of Governments and partners. Where are the available stockpiles in the country, the region and internationally? What are the major supply routes and pipelines for aid?

Are markets functioning and will a cash-based response work? What is the digital connectivity of the affected people? What supplies can we source in-country and in-region, and what do we need to get from the outside? Is there a functioning port? What barriers or bottlenecks will we face?