FAACT's Roundtable

Ep. 218: Emergency Preparedness During Disasters - Learn What Is Important to Keep Your Food Allergy Family Safe!

• Nicole Della Santina • Season 4 • Episode 218

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Natural disasters can strike anywhere, anytime. Finding safe food after or during a disaster can be frightening for those managing food allergies. The good news is that adequate preparation allows you and your family to remain food allergy-safe while navigating a natural disaster. We’re exploring food allergy-focused disaster preparedness with FAACT’s Vice President of Public Health, Nicole Della Santina, MPH, who will ease your mind and nerves by educating us on preparing for disasters and the aftermath.

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Thanks for listening! FAACT invites you to discover more exciting food allergy resources at FoodAllergyAwareness.org!

Caroline: Welcome to FAACT's Roundtable, a podcast dedicated to navigating life with food allergies across the lifespan. Presented in a welcoming format with interviews and open discussions, each episode will explore a specific topic, leaving you with the FAACT's to know or use.

Information presented via this podcast is educational and not intended to provide individual medical advice. Please consult with your personal board certified allergist or healthcare providers for advice specific to your situation.

Hi everyone, I'm Caroline Moassessi and I am your host for the FAACT's Roundtable podcast. I am a food allergy parent advocate and the founder of the Grateful Foodie Blog. And I am FAACT's Vice President of Community Relations.

Before we start today's podcast, we would like to take a moment to thank Genentech for being a kind sponsor of FAACT's Roundtable podcast.

Also, please note that today's guest was not paid by or sponsored by Genentech to participate in this specific podcast.

Natural disasters can strike anywhere, anytime. Finding safe food after or during a disaster can be frightening. For those managing food allergies. The good news is adequate preparation allows you and your family to remain food allergy safe while navigating a natural disaster.

We're exploring food allergy focused disaster preparedness and relief with FAACT's Vice President of Public Health, Nicole Della Santina, who will ease your mind and nerves by educating us on preparing for disaster and the aftermath.

Welcome Nicole to FAACT's Roundtable Podcast. We're absolutely delighted you're here. We have not had you on here before and this is a really important topic that you know inside and out from personal experience and from professional experience.

So I'm very excited for today's podcast.

Nicole: I'm very excited to be here. Thank you for having me today.

Caroline: Great, then let's get started.

Nicole, since this is your first podcast, let's help our listeners get to know you better before we get started. So can you share your food allergy story and then your background?

Nicole: Sure, I'd love to.

Nicole: My story started a little over 20 years ago when my second son Marco was diagnosed with multiple life threatening food allergies.

It was a really rude awakening for us and the process of discovery was truly a bit of a shock. I was traveling for work and had to give him formula for the first time and he had two quick sips from his bottle of milk based formula and he broke out in hives all around his mouth.

And I remember I called my doctor because I was worried and he said don't worry, he's dying and just give him milk before his one year appointment. That just didn't sit right with me.

So I decided to pump and didn't feed him any more formula. And I was really nervous about his one year appointment. But when we got close to that time, I gave him some milk and just to try and hit the right one year milestones.

And literally in the time it took for me to turn around and hang up my phone, I turned around and he was experiencing anaphylaxis. So I completely panicked and drove to the doctor's office with Marco struggling to breathe.

And we were super lucky that he recovered from the incident because I was not prepared. I didn't have Benadryl, I didn't have epinephrine, I had none of the things nor the knowledge that I needed to manage that situation properly.

And that's really when our journey began. We owned a restaurant. Everyone was always like, oh, can't you cheat and feed your family with the food you have? And we found out after going to a board certified allergist that he was allergic to 16 different foods.

And that was going to be a big challenge. So that's really our food allergy journey began. And, you know, I was overwhelmed. I felt really alone. I wasn't sure how I was going to navigate this because the landscape was very different than we didn't have technology, we didn't, you know, have all of these treatment options that are available today.

So we tried to get Marco into schools. I listed that he had allergies. He got denied. So I finally kept that off of our applications and he started to get in.

And that was my opportunity to really start working with schools, doing some education.

And that was what really ignited my interest in trying to figure out what our rights were. Because this was this invisible handicap. And I needed to understand what my son's rights were and how we were going to educate him and still allow him to be at school safely.

So that's when I found Eleanor Garrow holding. And I always tease her, even today, that I stalked her because I needed to find and understand what we were going to be able to do.

And that was really where I began this foray into understanding our rights.

Nicole: You know, I joined food allergy support groups.

Nicole: I tried to share my information online and found that each person we touched, it became this real special club where we could support each other and share recipes and find specialty foods and bond over our experiences.

And, you know, flash forward Marco was really my inspiration to go back and get my master's in public health. As I was doing these trainings in school settings and hospitals and camps, I really needed that extra credibility.

And after we through the 2017 fires, I realized that disaster management and understanding how to navigate those situations was also very important. So that's why I'm excited to be with Fact now and to be able to work on all sorts of public health initiatives, including disaster management.

Caroline: Thank you for sharing.

And so now turning to our topic at hand, let's explore why being prepared for natural disasters is critical. And then what might happen if a family or person with food allergies is not ready.

Nicole: That's a really good question. I think the biggest challenge is access to safe food, the increased risk of cross contact, and the need for medicine and supplies during and after a disaster.

So if you're not ready, all those things can be a really big challenge and very scary and stressful. And I know we experienced that when we had to evacuate in the fires in 2017.

And I was prepared for earthquakes with this little red backpack, but I actually didn't have proper foods. I had some canned beans and luckily I had just baked a little bit of banana bread that was allergy safe.

But I really didn't have as many resources as I needed and I realized how challenged we were at the time. So we evacuated and really didn't have access to a lot of foods.

It was very limiting.

Caroline: That's really hard because especially if we have families who have very specialized allergies. I don't know if specialized is the right word, but allergies that are not in the top nine, that are really harder to identify, you know, the stress that would take place with trying to find foods, you know, you've, you've had to leave your house rapidly and then trying to find foods or trying to find a prescription and that sort of thing.

I mean, the stress levels just go right through the ceiling.

Nicole: Exactly. And I know I actually had purchased a big load. We had just gone to the grocery store and our power went out and we had to evacuate. So we lost all of that food and can only bring so much of it with us because we weren't quite sure where we were going to land.

Caroline: So I think it's very safe to say that when you're dealing with any kind of a health issue or even not just being prepared is going to reduce stress and it's going to help you when you have that moment of panic.

If I can just interject briefly here. We just recently had a wildfire in my town and I did have that moment of panic when it was like, okay, we need to pack up.

We could possibly be in the evacuation zone. And I did have that moment where I'm standing in the hall going, do I go this way? Do I go that way?

What do I do? What do I grab first? And then I stopped and I paused, took a breath, and then went, okay, we have the go bag. Oddly enough, I grabbed the dog's go bag first.

And I learned that from you, actually, about having the pet to go bag. No. Then I started to go into okay, I have things ready, let's go get those things.

And it really made a difference. What are the first steps one should take to begin the process of preparing for a disaster?

Nicole: Well, that is also a good question.

And something that we've done here is we've created a disaster resource center to address this. But let me give you some of the highlights because there's really three things to consider, being prepared, your response, and then recovery.

So these, those are like the three blanket things. And the resource center is fully equipped with tools, downloadable resources, and links to help you navigate the different challenges that you might encounter depending on the disaster that you are faced with.

And it's really focused obviously on food allergy and what you might have to think about that's a little bit extra than your normal natural disaster or regular family that doesn't have to take some special needs into account.

The first part really is preparation is key. And I think why it can seem super kind of overwhelming if you think about all the things you need to think about beforehand.

Really having all of your essential information in one place can be really effective in an emergency. So taking time to prepare and really think about, I kind of created five areas that might make your family feel a little bit more successful in case a disaster happens.

So the first is creating an emergency contact list.

The second is creating an emergency plan and a kit, then building go bags and stay bags, working with your food allergic child's school and establishing emergency protocols and understanding what they might have in place and then determining where to access safe foods during and after a disaster.

Those are the areas we focus on in the Disaster Relief Center.

Caroline: Can you share with our listeners what is the difference between a go bag and a stay bag?

Nicole: Good question. So a go bag is going to have items that you and your family will need during an emergency or disaster situation that's going to allow you to survive for 72 hours.

It's that bag that you grab and you run.

It can be a backpack or a duffel bag or anything that you can kind of keep enclosed in a zipper type bag. So things don't fall out when you're leaving.

And then a stay bag is something that's going to help have your essentials and help you be prepared to remain safely at home during shelter in place. And it should have supplies for up to two weeks.

So that's the difference. The other piece of this disaster resource center that we looked at also is dividing it into different categories. So you have dry land disaster, which you and I both share here with fires and earthquakes and the few that have volcanoes.

So those are the dry land ones. And then there's the water base that hit more like hurricanes and tornadoes and how to survive through those different circumstances.

Let me dive a little bit deeper here. We talked about sort of the preparation component, and the first part was creating an emergency contact list. And this is one of the most important tools in a disaster situation.

So it should have all your emergency contacts, including your allergists, local hospitals, emergency services in the area. And FACT has created a sample list for you to use that's free and downloadable if you want to use that as your baseline and customize it to fit your family's needs.

Really important part of this, and I think a lot of people forget, is that you might lose your power during a disaster and your phone might die. So if you have this list on your phone and you don't have a hard copy of it, you might be in trouble.

So make sure that you have both a digital and a hard copy of this list, and that'll make accessibility so much easier. And another important part is that once you take the time to complete the list, make sure that you post it somewhere where all of your family can see it.

Whether that's your refrigerator. I know for us we have these cabinets where we've stuck them on the walls or open it, and we've even shown it to people if we have babysitters when that was the case.

If you decide that you want to give copies to parents or close friends or what have you, that's another thing to do. And then you're going to want to maybe discuss a central meeting spot.

I know when. I don't know if you've been in an earthquake before, Caroline, but when we had our earthquake, everybody just ran down the stairs and dispersed. And next thing you know, we've got people wrapped in blankets and everyone standing outside.

But we had to figure out where exactly we were going to meet because everybody ran out a different door. We did that all wrong, too, but that was pretty funny.

Everything was shaking, and next thing you know, the world was quiet. There's also some really great apps if you want to have that so you can be prepared. That's part of the emergency space.

Red Cross has an emergency mobile app so you can also grab that so you can make sure that you have that to help manage all of the differences.

So I think, you know that's a huge part for your contact list. And then actually having a personalized emergency plan for all your food allergic family members is important as well.

And this should have your emergency contacts, a food allergy action plan that you've worked with your board certified allergist to create. And that way it will help you in communicating in an emergency situation with EMTs or anyone else that you might need to if that's in case happens.

And having an emergency health and allergy profile that also talks about medications can be helpful. And there's links as well in the DRC for an action plan and all of these ideas that you can also customize when working with your physician.

Same thing as far as an emergency kit. Examples of ideas for content. So we've got all these things that you could download for free and customize for your needs. But ultimately it's really important to stay informed about the specific needs related to you and your family members food allergies and be prepared to communicate them clearly during and after a disaster.

I'm sure you've had that too.

Caroline: Oh goodness, yes.

Nicole: So I think another thing to think about, we touched on it earlier, was the go bags and the stay bags. Your emergency go bag, like I said earlier, should have everything just for that short period of time that you're just grabbing and going.

It includes, but not necessarily limited to emergency supplies, safe foods, important documents and additional items, maybe like cash, which you always might need good old fashioned cash these days, even though everybody is Apple Pay and everything else.

And a radio. And I know that sounds archaic, but we ended up investing in some solar radios, like the little double AA batteries inside, but a solar radio because we were stuck for a while where we really had no communication from anybody.

And we have a local radio station that was giving us information about where to go and what was happening. So believe it or not, radios still work and are really fundamental.

And an important thing I know that we've actually talked about is make sure that whatever food you're putting in this go bag is food that you are used to, that your child or whoever is allergic is used to eating.

This is not the greatest time to be like, oh, I saw this, we should try something new. Don't try anything New during a disaster.

Caroline: Just don't do it.

Nicole: Maybe later, once you can celebrate the fact that it's all done and you're on the other side. And then I think the hardest part about creating a go bag is getting started because I think a lot of it feels daunting.

But again, we've created a list to give you some ideas to get started. And if you speak other languages or have family members in your household that English might not be their first language, ready.gov

has really great lists in multiple languages and you can always grab those and customize it with your food allergic specifics. So that one was great as well. And then the Stay bag, as we talked about it, kind of is exactly as it sounds.

It needs to have enough supplies for your family for up to two weeks, especially if you need to shelter in place. We have a list for that as well that you can use.

And then for storage, you might want to think about putting them in waterproof or transportable containers. Especially if you end up with a water type disaster. It'll help protect your belongings and allow you to transport them a lot easier.

You just need to customize everything that works for your family and make sure that you take the time to do that. I know we've have some other podcasts that relate to some of these as well.

Fact has a Food Allergy Life Home emergency Preparedness podcast and one about how to pack emergency go bags and stay bags. So there's all sorts of wonderful podcasts to refer to if this is your space that you're thinking about.

And really quickly, there's two other spaces to consider the school emergency plan. So if you have a child who's in K through 12 age brackets, it's really important to work with your school to ensure that you really understand what their protocols are and to make sure that they're going to be safe if they have to shelter in place.

I know in the beginning when Marco started, we worked really closely with the school because their emergency bags had peanut butter crackers in them and granola bars that were dairy based.

And those were two of the bad allergies for my child. And I thought that's all we need, is that he's going to have to shelter in place and everybody's going to open up their peanut butter crackers and they're going to have another emergency on their hands.

So working with your school, understanding what their emergency protocols are, and maybe helping work with them to create safe emergency bags for the students and then finally just finding safe foods.

So if you do have to evacuate. Understanding if you have to go to a shelter where those shelters might be and what types of foods they might have. And maybe this is an opportunity for you to work with your local shelters and help them make sure they have safe food options.

Caroline: I am super, super biased, but I'm so excited about the Disaster Resource center and all of this information. Listeners know right now you're just sitting here going, wow, that's a lot.

And it is, and it's wonderful because think of it as a big menu that you get to go in and start looking to see how you can help your family be prepared for emergencies.

And, you know, I have to tell you again, going back to this local wildfire, that was one of the reasons I knew to have a go bag for my dog.

And I actually had a go bag for my dad, who's 95, who doesn't live here, but I'm going to be responsible for him because of working with fact and getting to see the Disaster Resource Center a little early before it was released, that really helped me.

So once I got over my little panic in the hallway, all I did was grab all these other bags that I had prepared for the different areas and just got it all to the car.

I mean, I literally was ready to rock in about five minutes. That's fantastic. Yeah. I mean, but it's amazing, though, when you have this kind of resource and you're not thinking in the moment, you've already done your thinking ahead of time, now you're just responding.

And so it's so critical. And I will make sure in the show notes too, we have all the links to all this fabulousness that we're so excited to share with everyone.

So now let's pause briefly and just discuss logistics in managing information during a disaster. We kind of already touched on it a little bit about apps and stuff. But, Nicole, what would you suggest to everyone about how do you find information?

I know you said get a radio for one thing, but how does someone go. And then how can someone tell if a new source is credible, too?

Nicole: Good question. And that's really important because bad information can also be a little bit detrimental as well, because then you're feeding the wrong source. So a. I think a lot of it depends on power and accessibility.

So hopefully you have access to the Internet so you can work with your abs. But the government sites are fantastic. They're credible and they're really key resources for information. You've got the Red Cross, I think I mentioned earlier, the emergency mobile app.

You've got fema.gov, ready.gov and then CDC and then the FDA and USDA are great for food safety. So potentially, if your food is left in a refrigerator or power goes out for certain period of time, they can provide you with some resources as to when is it not safe to eat your food, how long, what must it be refrigerated at all, that kind of information.

So the government sites are really terrific. And then it's important to understand your local area, your city, and understand what those resources are. So I think you mentioned that once the fires got elevated to a specific level, you had a lot of great connection with your local city government and they were giving you some direction.

Caroline: Yes, we started getting information on the county websites and then the different firefighting agencies websites. And so then we were able to go onto those using social media, which I thought was so interesting.

It was like the first time, I think, in my life I've ever heard a government organization saying, please go to social media. They were giving updates by the hour, and it was very important.

Nicole: That's awesome. We had one person here locally who was connected with the city and a lot of the different organizations, and she was posting updates for us. So I know a lot of people are subscribing that way as well.

And so that one community resource became the person that a lot of us connected with as well.

Caroline: And, you know, adding onto that point, if I can share an observation, is I did have a lot of friends who we were on our phones texting information because a lot of people didn't have Facebook.

And these government agencies love Facebook. And so they were struggling and texting me and others saying, I don't have Facebook. Can you send me what they're saying? Can you screenshot it?

So just on that note, if you don't have certain social media accounts, you might want to consider getting it just for an emergency. Or just know in the back of your head that you might need to sign up and use it just temporarily.

Nicole: Well, that's a good point. And maybe just subscribing to your local agencies and the government spaces so that you can keep abreast of the proper information and not get all the other riffraff if you're not interested.

Caroline: All right, so, Nicole, if you could give a family three must do disaster preparedness actions to follow, what would those three be?

Nicole: Create your emergency contact list and emergency plans. Make a go bag and stay back and get to know your local resources.

Caroline: I think that is perfect and succinct, again, being that we just kind of went down that road.

I agree wholeheartedly and fully support that. And again, I'm so happy that we now have this disaster resource center available for our food allergy families that have that focus on the way we would need to prepare and respond.

So exciting.

Well, this has gone very, very fast. Our time together is coming to an end. So before we wrap up today, is there anything else you would like our listeners to hear from you?

Nicole: Just that I know we've discussed a lot of information and it can be overwhelming, but if you take the time to get prepared now and do it just in baby steps, it will make you feel so much better in the long run and just make your life so much easier.

And just remember to think about that there's recovery after disaster.

And so it's good to know how, like I mentioned before, how to keep your home safe, how to make sure your food is also still fresh or able to be eaten.

And think about the behavioral mental health component of disaster.

And just know that FACT also has resources for that, for support following a disaster.

Caroline: Nicole, thank you so much again for your time. We really appreciate you being here. And listeners, I do hope and invite you to go take a look at that disaster resource center and hopefully no one will ever really have to use the things that are in there.

But when you're prepared, and especially for communities like us that deal with food allergies, it makes all the difference in the world knowing you have your epinephrine, you have your food, you have your phone number, you know how to contact other food allergy families in the area to either offer help or get help.

It's just so nice to have that there. So again, Nicole, thank you so much for your time.

Nicole: Thank you for having me.

Caroline: Before we say goodbye today, I just want to take one more moment to say thank you to Genentech for their kind sponsorship of FAACT's roundtable podcast. Also, I want to note that today's guest was not paid by or sponsored by Genentech to participate in this specific podcast.

Thank you for listening to FAACT's roundtable podcast. Stay tuned for future episodes coming soon. Please subscribe, leave a review and listen to our podcast on Pandora, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, iHeartRadio and Stitcher.

Have a great day and always, always be kind to one another.