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'BookMoves' -- the first things you do in any emergency... automatically!

At the highest levels of chess play, chess-masters have developed various series of standard opening-moves 'by the book', ie bookmoves... which they execute automatically from rote memory BEFORE THEY EVEN HAVE TO THINK ABOUT WHAT'S NEXT. 

So let us offer the following emergency 'bookmoves' for your consideration.  Discuss these with your ReadyChristian 'buddy' and your ReadyChurch or ReadyCity teammates, and develop your own standard set of emergency moves.  And also know your buddy's & teammates' bookmoves so that you can count on them during an emergency situation.  Ok, here's a short list of Bookmoves to consider.  Then see their explanations that follow:

• Escape* with your loved-ones to your GoKit, and Pray.  Ask someone ELSE to call 911.
  
• Consider your family's well-being.
• Text your buddy, pray for/with him/her, and determine your team/role (Activating?).
  
• Text/Tweet/Post your status online, and your team/role.  Solicit an 'Virtual Buddy'.
  
• Check-in with your team, and start executing its EOP including our ROLLCALL/ALERTS process.
  

Explanations:

• Escape* to your Go Kit:   Pray as you escape with your loved ones to your predetermined meeting place (often, out in front of your house).  Also, many of us consider our car to be enormously helpful during a crisis; so we keep our CERT-pack, our GoKit and other helpful items there.  If your car is in the garage, (you'll hope to have time to) grab your keys (phone, whatever) and get your car OUT of the garage, and meet your family at its predetermined emergency-meeting-spot.
• *Optional.  CERT-trained?  If you are in a very localized emergency (eg building on fire) and if the situation allows, you may be able to set the Search & Rescue operation in motion as you head-out to your CERT-pack (medical supplies, tools, etc).  Take charge & grab a buddy.  Assign duties to others.  You've been trained; you know what to do!  (more details later, for CERT-trained ReadyChristians).
• Ask Someone ELSE to call 911:   Otherwise the 911 service will tie-up YOUR phone until first-responders arrive on the scene  As a trained ReadyChristian, you will be needing your phone to accomplish your other bookmoves below that will empower your whole TEAM of people.

• Consider Your Family's Well-Being:   Face it, you're going to be of little value to anyone else until you're confident about your family's well-being.  (You can help ensure that confidence NOW, by helping them PREPARE for emergencies!)  Have you developed a Family Emergency Plan and practiced it?  Does it include everyone having easy-access to an out-of-state contact to serve as a common communication point?  If your family is at a school during the day, you should be able to depend on their well-being -- do NOT try to go there and pick up your child; their school-emergency-plan will prevent that.  Know your school's plan, and adjust your plan accordingly.

• Text or talk with your buddy.  Pray together  Determine which team & role.  Your ReadyChristian 'buddy' can help you think straight during an emergency.  And he/she can help cover some of your tasks.  Importantly, your buddy can help you determine which 'team' and role are most appropriate to the situation:  Neighborhood team near your work?  Neighborhood team where you live?  Church team?  County team?  ReadyIndy Metro Team?  (We realize that we have trained 'ReadyChristians' to be useful and affiliated with ANY of the various emergency/disaster teams.... eg, Salvation Army, BillyGrahamRapidResponse, Red Cross, CERT.  So we do NOT expect that all volunteers should immediately serve with ReadyIndy during an emergency.)

• Text/Tweet/Post Your Status:  Face it, Facebook is now a fact of life, and it's the primary place people go to see how you're doing.  So be sure to post your status there as soon as practical.  
• Example:  "Jan & I are fine. I'm taking her to the nearest church; Iglesia Wesleyana Amistad #Carmel.  She'll contact family.  I'll check in with my @ReadyIndy team and determine next steps.
•  Twitter:  And those of us using Twitter almost always have our Twitter account tied to our Facebook account so that our tweets automatically show up on our Facebook wall.  So for us, we're going to simply TWEET our status, and know that it will also post automatically to Facebook.
• Text it in:  In fact, we don't even have to go to Twitter to tweet.  Chances are, we've got our mobile# entered in our Twitter account settings, and thus we can simply TEXT a tweet re our status... to shortcode 40404... which automatically tweets our text.  Try it! 

• Check-in with your most-appropriate team:  No matter which team you serve on, they will expect you to CHECK-IN.  In the case of ReadyIndy, we ask everyone to  go comment in our Facebook Core Group -- hopefully everyone will stick to just one main post for this incident.  This will be where we'll interact together online and thus creating an incident 'log' as we go about executing our ReadyIndy_EOP, including our ALERTS & ROLLCALL PROCESS.