[EarthQuakes] What to do

Recently, there has been an earthquake off the coast of California… 7.0 scale and quite big…

For those of us on home dialysis you may have had thoughts of what would I do, especially those of us who live on the coast of California…or even those who live around the world where earthquakes are common…

I don’t remember seeing this poll/question when it was posted but I think the correct answer is “clamp, cut, get safe.” My unit provides a small kit on the side of the every chair incenter and to home hemodialyzors, with blue clamps, scissors, tape and gauze and these instructions (copied here verbatim):

HOW TO GET OFF THE MACHINE IN AN EMERGENCY, “CLAMP AND CUT”

If a disaster occurs while you are on treatment, wait for directions. If no staff member is available to help you or give directions, here is what you do. Remember these directions are for emergency evacuation situations only. Your access needles will be left in place until you get to a safe place.[ol]
[li]Locate and open the emergency package, which should contain gauze, 2 clamps, scissors, and tape.[/li]> [li]Place two clamps on blood lines. Apply them far enough apart so that the lines can be cut between them.[/li]> [li]With scissors, cut the blood lines (not the fistula line) between the two clamps.[/li]> [li]Vacate the dialysis center according to instructions.[/li]> [li]If you have an external access, staff will assist you.[/ol][/li]This is the first time I have actually read the instructions but there is also a sketch diagram on the back showing a dialyzor cutting the lines between the two clamps, each clamp, clamping two lines. I’m not sure what the reference is to “(not the fistula line)” unless this whole thing is an artifact from the days of the Scribner shunt.

I remember in-center they would hold drills…they would take place surprisingly when patients didn’t know about it. They would come to you and turn off the machine and quickly expected us to know where the emergency kit was and where to clamp/cut the lines. Finally, had us to turn the machine back on. If we didn’t pass the drill then they would hand us a guide to practice.

Question is, should drills be held at home? Should we practice drills? Or is our centers responsibility to guide/train us for the drills?

Bump …Oh C’mon people…what are your thoughts about earthquakes and home dialysis…simple question is…
[B]
“Should we as home dialysis patients hold our own drills to practice swift evacuation in case of an earthquake or should our clinics be the ones to be sure we know how to do it?”

[/B]

Trying a plan out is always the last step in the planning process but for you and I and others that live along the “ring of fire” earthquake preparedness is more than being able to clamp, cut and dash. As important is making sure large things will not fall on you should there be an earthquake (I come up short in this regard because my heavy TV is on the top shelf of a tenuously placed shelf).

I think units should provide information - things to consider - but putting that information into effect should be left up to the dialyzors. We have the same adult responsibilities as everyone else when it comes to preparedness. For instance in my car I carry emergency supplies in case I have to walk home from somewhere or shelter away from home for a few days. I carry food and water and five days worth of medications.

In an earthquake it is more likely that I will be away from home than on dialysis and an earthquake in the Seattle area could easily prevent car travel so having supplies to walk home makes good sense. Boots, socks, warm clothes will be welcome should I need them.

I don’t live in an earthquake zone, but I do live on the edge of tornado alley (in April of '06, a tornado tore half the roof off while my parents and I were in the house). I try to be prepared in case of an approaching tornado, or any other disaster while I’m on the machine. I have an emergency box that never leaves the top of my machine (except when I’m cleaning the machine), and I keep a pair of small scissors on top of the box. The kit has tape, gauze, bandaids, a couple alcohol wipes, some batadine swabs, and two 10 cc syringes full of saline (to flush the needle lines once I get to safety), which I rotate regularly. We also have a “tornado basket” where we keep emergency storm supplies in the bathroom which is our storm shelter. I have another bag of emergency “clamp, cut, and run” supplies in the tornado basket in case I can’t grab the kit that’s on my machine. Of coarse I hope I never have to actually use any of it.

Adam

That sounds well thought out Adam. That’s a good idea to have supplies in the place you’d run to - for you tornadoes so the bathroom - for me I’m running outside so I should keep some “off” supplies in the car. Good idea - works for fire too.

And like you I hope none of this is ever needed but we have to acknowledge that disasters do happen.

The poll is telling me I have already voted! Very strange?

I honestly haven’t thought about this too much, we do get the odd cyclonic event and very bad storm. Over the past 2 years I have got myself into enough trouble getting off the machine in a hurry without any external emergency events!

Over here, I guess a Tsanami is a possibility. There has been earthquakes but none like you guys experience.We live just behing a sand dune and i don’t imagine we would stand a chance then.

It says I voted too - but only list Adam (and I assume Gus) as voting when you click the number. I would have voted for clamp, cut, run.

[quote=beachy;14278]The poll is telling me I have already voted! Very strange?

Did you vote really? Hmmm… or did you try to vote and it said you already voted?

I honestly haven’t thought about this too much, we do get the odd cyclonic event and very bad storm. Over the past 2 years I have got myself into enough trouble getting off the machine in a hurry without any external emergency events!

Over here, I guess a Tsanami is a possibility. There has been earthquakes but none like you guys experience.We live just behing a sand dune and i don’t imagine we would stand a chance then.

Now that really scares the heck out of me! Why not move to the mainland?

[/quote]

Bill, but you didn’t vote right? I mean you didn’t select an option or you did but it said you already voted?

Yeah Beachy move off that island … sure it’s a continent … Looks like an island on my map.
LOL

I didn’t (because I wanted a different choice then what was originally listed) and now it wont let me vote saying I already voted but I didn’t.

Hi Gus
No, it says there are 2 voters and it is telling me I have already voted but I definitely haven’t.
Cheers

[QUOTE=Bill Peckham;14282]Yeah Beachy move off that island … sure it’s a continent … Looks like an island on my map.
LOL
[/QUOTE]

What and leave the best place in the world!

[quote=beachy;14285]Hi Gus
No, it says there are 2 voters and it is telling me I have already voted but I definitely haven’t.
Cheers[/quote]

Maybe the poll is all bugged…but am not sure why Adam was able to vote with no problem… hmm

Hey all,

I updated the message boards to the latest version of vBulletin yesterday. I’m willing to bet that somewhere along the line this poll got corrupted. I think the best bet is to delete this poll and try again. I apologize for that, as I follow all the instructions when I update, but sometimes things get messy. Let me try some admin things to see if I can rectify it – but if you still can’t vote, repost the poll. Let me know if you have any questions!!

Update: I rebuilt some tables in the database and tried voting and this time it worked for me… Please try again and let me know the results!! Thanks, everyone!

No go here. It still says I have already voted.

Please also empty your browser cache and see if that helps! I’m thinking the only other way is to re-post the poll…

Ok, I’ve figured out the problem with the poll voting. It’s kind of weird, but it’s the behavior that applies, and I can’t really change it.

Apparently, if you want to vote on a poll, you must do so the first time you post to the thread containing the poll. If you post and leave without voting, your user id registers a null vote in the database, and you can’t vote again. I compared this poll with others, and it shows people who’ve posted to threads with polls as voters with null votes, and those who’ve actually answered the polls with the various ids for their votes.

For this particular poll, I’ve deleted all users with null votes from the poll table in the database so those of you who want to vote can do so.

This is a bug I think, and I’ll be sure to mention it to the vBulletin team.

Thanks for pointing this out, everyone!

[quote=Brian Frick;14320]Ok, I’ve figured out the problem with the poll voting. It’s kind of weird, but it’s the behavior that applies, and I can’t really change it.

Apparently, if you want to vote on a poll, you must do so the first time you post to the thread containing the poll. If you post and leave without voting, your user id registers a null vote in the database, and you can’t vote again. I compared this poll with others, and it shows people who’ve posted to threads with polls as voters with null votes, and those who’ve actually answered the polls with the various ids for their votes.

For this particular poll, I’ve deleted all users with null votes from the poll table in the database so those of you who want to vote can do so.

This is a bug I think, and I’ll be sure to mention it to the vBulletin team.

Thanks for pointing this out, everyone![/quote]

[B]That was swift! Thanks alot for fixing this, greatly appreciate this…
About a week ago there was reports of hackers trying to knock the networks off and wondered whether HDC was affected? I did notice the site down for a few days…

[/B]

[QUOTE=Gus;14328]That was swift! Thanks alot for fixing this, greatly appreciate this…
About a week ago there was reports of hackers trying to knock the networks off and wondered whether HDC was affected? I did notice the site down for a few days…
[/QUOTE]

I’m glad that worked. Not sure what the deal is with the way the code works yet, but I intend on figuring it out.

As for HDC being down, yes, it was – but there were a couple reasons!! First, I took the site offline for a few hours while I moved over some new code. The site is now running on the CakePHP engine, and we had some database work done to fix and add new features to the find-a-center database. Second, Dreamhost (the company hosting our sites) had some DNS issues caused by a hacker and a corrupt DNS database on one of their servers (one resulted from the other) and that caused the URLs to be mis-routed and the sites to be unavailable. It took two days and a lot of my swearing to get that rectified. My apologies for all of that nonsense!! I’m hopeful it won’t happen again any time soon…

Glad the poll is working again, though!! :smiley: