title: Disasters: where they find us.
abstract: Preparing for a natural disaster starts with a thorough understanding of the geography of your particular location, as well as its weather patterns. Early planning must also look beyond the disaster to examine the possible consequences of such a disaster. While no disaster/emergency preparedness planners like to think of the bleakest outcome (i.e., mass fatalities), building in solutions at the outset of a plan alleviates having to figure them out in the middle of an earthquake, a fire, or a hurricane. January's earthquake in Haiti holds lessons for anyone who is part of a first responder or healthcare profession, and those lessons have been hard ones for the world to learn.
authors.affiliation: Medical Laboratory Observers, Venice, FL, USA. carren@verizon.net
authors.forename: Carren
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Bersch
mesh_terms: D004189:Disaster Planning; D004190:Disasters; D055866:Earthquakes; D004632:Emergency Medical Services / Q000191:economics / Q000379:methods*; D006801:Humans