Prepare Yourself
Do you have a plan for yourself?
- Evacuation Preparedness Guide: This guide focuses on people with disabilities and activity limitations successfully evacuating buildings. Its goal is to help you strengthen your evacuation preparedness.
- Path To Disaster Readiness: Almost everyone makes better plans when they have help. This booklet helps people plan together. You can use it to plan for emergencies to protect yourself, your family and others. This booklet is available in alternate formats and multiple languages including Spanish, Chinese, Korean and Russian.
Do you have a plan for your family?
- Family Readiness Kit: This kit is for parents to use at home to help prepare for most kinds of disasters.
Do you have a plan for your service animal?
- FEMA has information for pet owners! Click here to learn how to plan for pet disaster needs and how to shelter your pet during and after a disaster. Click here to view the Information for Pet Owners.
- Disaster Preparedness for Pets: Take the time to make a plan and assemble an emergency kit for you and your pet. Click here to visit The Humane Society of the United States and learn more about Disaster Preparedness for Pets.
- Maryland Department of Disabilities Emergency Preparedness Brochure:
Is Your Emergency Shelter Accessible?
One of the primary responsibilities of state and local governments is to protect residents and visitors from harm, including assistance in preparing for, responding to, and recovering form emergencies and disasters. State and local governments must comply with Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). The ADA requires people with disabilities to be accommodated in the most integrated setting appropriate to their needs.
To comply with the ADA's integration requirement, emergency managers and shelter operators need to plan to house people with a variety of disabilities in mainstream mass care shelters, including those with disability related needs for some medical care, medication, equipment, and supportive services. Emergency managers and shelter operators must also ensure that eligibility criteria for mass care shelters do not unnecessarily screen out people with disabilities who are not medically fragile based on erroneous assumptions about the care and accommodations they require.
The attached survey was created using information from the US Department of Justice, ADA Checklist for Emergency Shelters (July 26, 2007). While the original checklist was sixty seven pages in length, the attached is as concise and user friendly as possible. Click here to view the ADA Shelter Checklist.
If you have any questions or concerns regarding the accessibility of shelters in your jurisdiction, or need additional information or assistance, please contact the Maryland Department of Disabilities at (410) 767-3660.
