Building the commitment – Ideally, a neighborhood resident should take the lead in bringing people together to discuss the threat and what neighbors can do to save themselves, their families and their community if calamity strikes.  Local police agencies with community officers in place can then supply neighborhood leaders with guidance and information on developing the Neighborhood Emergency Response Plan.  Many already have partnerships with the community, ranging from Neighborhood Watch to school liaison programs, that can serve as the foundation for identifying community leaders who care about these issues.

Building the plan – The plan itself will always be a work in progress, so the sooner you get started, the sooner everyone feels safe.  The goal is to build an actual plan that is written down, on paper and in pixels to share electronically.  (Just remember not to rely exclusively on hard drives, CD-ROMs and Web sites that cannot be accessed if the power goes out.)

• Identify key stakeholders – Leave plenty of spaces on your contact list to capture relevant information about each resident.  (Make sure to develop and honor your privacy policies as well.)  The master list should include each person’s assets and vulnerabilities, as well as their contact information and where to find them in emergencies (for example, are they often away on travel and who would know if they are safe?).  Identify leaders with relevant skills who are willing to take the project forward.  In addition to people to organize and facilitate meetings, you will need people to publicize the meetings, keep accurate records and recruit others to help, as well as volunteers with the time to make things happen.
• Prioritize the threats –  Would your apartment complex be quarantined if bird flu becomes a pandemic? Is it realistic to fear a “dirty bomb” attack in your city?  A realistic understanding of the challenges you are most likely to face will keep your response planning on track. There have been earthquakes in the Midwest, but a tornado or ice storm is much more likely. Threat assessment requires balancing both the likelihood of the risk and the potential severity of the situation if the threat becomes reality.  The higher on both scales, the more it should become the primary focus of your response.  

• Map community strengths – As discussed above, this means identifying people with life-saving and practical skills so necessary in emergencies.  It also means identify resources and the people willing to share them – money, time, food, shelter, clothing. In urban areas in particular, make sure to identify local businesses that may be able to contribute both prior to and during a crisis.  In rural areas, the person with the tractor or snowplow should go on the list.  Are there any home-use defibrillators available in the community and how wide an area could they serve?  In addition to making a list of community strengths, considering identifying all or some of them on a physical map of the neighborhood, perhaps using icons for various categories of contributions. 
• Identify residents with special needs – The goal is to identify each and every person with a special need.  Of immediate concern are people with disabilities or medical issues.  However, this can also mean identifying households with young children or elderly members, whose age may make them more vulnerable, depending on the emergency.  A door-to-door outreach is essential in Again, negotiating privacy issues with people about the capturing, storing, and sharing of information is essential.

• Engage young people – Young people should be part of the process, not only because of the contribution that they can make to the plan, but to ensure their special needs are met.  Young people may be ideal candidates to assist with community mapping, because of their energy and eagerness to help.
• Develop and share family plans – Each family should consider developing a family emergency response plan as well.  (Fire departments have been urging families to develop individualized plans for how to respond if a smoke alarm goes off, so they might be a good partner to provide information and assistance to families and the community.) Families may also want to file their plans with the community, so that people would know where to find them, for example, if the family has a plan to meet elsewhere if their home is destroyed.

• Problem solve ways to address barriers and obstacles – As the community meets to discuss the plan, various impediments to its success may well emerge.  For example, a plan to open the local elementary school or church to families as emergency shelter in certain situations may require dealing with liability issues in advance. Or it could require developing a protocol to ensure access if the emergency occurs outside the organization’s normal hours of operation.  Also of concern is how to access supplies of prescription medicines for people if transportation is an issue or if the local pharmacy fails to open.  Remember also that a neighborhood plan means being specific about specific local concerns.   For example, your plan might take into account the street that always floods in a downpour, since it could require devising a way to respond to the people who live nearby.  So your plan would list alternate routes and strategies.
• Outline implementation – If the tornado hits, what happens?  Who checks on whom and how often? In a terrorist attack, where are the potential traffic bottlenecks if people are ordered to flee and how do we avoid them?  In the case of lingering threats, such as bird flu, who brings food and water to the people who need to remain quarantined? Who provides them medical help?  A basic plan with specifics for different kinds of emergencies often makes the best sense.

• Identify training needs and opportunities – Some people will recognize the need to learn CPR and basic first-aid.  Others will want to discuss organizing neighborhood security patrols.  The police can act as the clearinghouse to access existing training opportunities and develop needed new ones.
• Test the plan – Conduct periodic training exercises, even if it only means testing the “telephone tree” to see how long it takes to notify everyone of an emergency.  You cannot anticipate all the obstacles and barriers until you try out your plan under real-world conditions.

• Revise the plan – Again, the plan is always a work in progress.  We live in a transient society, which means the person your plan relies on for medical help could move tomorrow, so always be on the lookout for new backup and new resources.  If testing shows a major flaw, don’t be afraid to rip up that part of the plan and start over.
• File plans with the police department – The police can act as the clearinghouse to gather and coordinate neighborhood plans into a seamless whole.  Neighborhood plans (with names and personal information deleted) can serve as templates for other communities to follow.

• Build consensus, collaboration and trust – Concerns about privacy and liability can derail the best-laid plans.  But the virtue in a neighborhood plan is that the number of people is small enough and dependent enough on each other that such concerns can be overcome through effort and goodwill.

Harness the energy for long-term positive change – The experience of coming together to build a Neighborhood Emergency Response Plan can serve as the foundation for tackling other neighborhood problems,  from crime to blight and disorder to specific concerns such as a lack of activities for youth.  We all hope that the emergency plans never need to be used.  But the effort is worthwhile, not only to maintain preparedness, but to develop the infrastructure that strengthens neighborhoods so that they can deal with any problem that emerges.