Unexpected Evacuation Drill

Everything is fine.

I recently had a surprising morning, and a chance to practice my emergency preparedness. I want to share what happened and what I did in case it is useful to someone else.

I have a special interest in emergency planning, especially for disabled folks. I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about it, researching, and planning.  I know that one recommendation is for people to practice with drills. But that would also be dangerous for my health and raise my heart rate too high, so I’ve decided against it. I’ve spent time thinking through some scenarios and imagining what might happen. And I’ve committed to paying attention and then doing thorough postmortems whenever something goes a bit wrong, like a short term power outage. I recently got a little evacuation drill in. When it was over I sat down to document what had happened with timestamps, and I’m quite proud of how it unfolded, even if it wasn’t perfect.

The Situation

Recently a new gas stove was installed in my apartment. It involved some shenanigans but eventually went as expected. But there was a moment during the installation when we smelled gas. After some poking and prodding, my building manager and the installer felt like it was resolved. All my windows were open and fans running all day and night because it was a nice day, but also because I needed to run the oven for a while to burn off any of the coatings on it before using it for food.

The next morning I woke up at 6:30 and went to the bathroom. I realized that the temperature of the house was great so I closed the windows while it was still cool, and went back to sleep. When I woke up a few hours later and got up again, I realized that I indisputably smelled gas in the apartment when I left my room to pee (my bedroom is blocked off from the airflow of the rest of my home). I didn’t grow up with gas, and I’ve never had a gas emergency before or really thought about it so I hadn’t specifically imagined that scenario.

First Steps

I got back to my room and immediately called my building manager because the incident was likely a result of the installation the previous day. He said he was on his way, and told me to call the gas company (NYSEG).

When I called NYSEG  there were problems with my cell phone connection, so I moved from my bedroom out to the living room, closest to the WiFi, and a bunch of windows.

(On a normal morning I would never try to speak and concentrate to make phone calls, or walk further than the bathroom, until 90 minutes after my meds kick in. So now I have already hit excessive exertion.)

NYSEG told me to evacuate. I told them I would try, but was unsure if I could due to my disabilities.

NYSEG then said they would have to call the fire department as well because I technically live in a multi unit building and it is their protocol to alert the other occupants and come as a precaution. But because I know my neighbors, I knew they weren’t home, and told them I was the only person in the building, with my two cats. They were able to forgo that call, which reduced the chaos I would have to deal with, and reduced use of emergency services. (KNOW YOUR NEIGHBORS is one of my strongest ongoing recommendations to people as a basic life need.)

It had not occurred to me before that call that I needed to get out. (I literally had way less blood in my brain at this moment because of my POTS.) And I needed to process if that was even vaguely possible, and whether I could at least get out to the front porch.

So I got in a test run, unexpectedly, but I was at a significant disadvantage that I had not previously taken into account in my planning. And that is, I had just woken up and I did not have any of my medications on board in my system yet. That’s a huge problem for me that impairs my capacity even more than usual, and guarantees that everything I do is gonna be over my anaerobic threshold and very difficult, extremely out of breath, weakness, extreme impairment, desperately needing to sit down, with chest pain from my heart pounding. And yet, sometimes we do hard things.

Evacuation

From the time I got off the phone with the gas company until I was outside in my garage and my wheelchair was 7 minutes. Perfect? No. Impressive? Yes. I am pretty proud of myself and my executive functioning.

Here’s what I did in that time:

• I walked back to my room. As my brain was trying to shift gears and calibrate, I was overwhelmed by the idea of trying to physically get myself outside. At first I thought it was impossible, then I thought maybe I could get to the front porch and acted accordingly.
• Took my medication
• Put on and started my heart rate monitor
• Grabbed my everyday carry (EDC) bag from my headboard
• Put the rest of my meds for the day and my phone in my EDC
• Bribed one cat into my bedroom with food. Carried the other cat in. Closed the door. I considered trying to crate them to leave with me, but I knew there was no way I was physically capable of it. I decided the best thing I could do was lock them in a single room with a litter box, water, and a little food. That way they would not be able to escape as others went in and out of the house. And if someone else was able to crate them, they would at least already be confined in a small space.
• Realized that while I had been partway through making my coffee before this all started, I could not finish that and needed to let it go. (I use it somewhat medicinally in the morning.)
• I grabbed my laptop, tablet and reading glasses. That does not all fit in my EDC easily, and I did pause for a moment to consider my secondary bag options. I realized I should put them in the back pack by the back door. Somewhere around there is when I realized I should not be going to the front porch at all, but instead should be going to my outside wheelchair straight away using the back door. If anything escalated I was going to need my chair, and it was better to just use less energy and start that way. But this also meant that lying on the front porch under shade would no longer be an option.
• I left my bedroom, locking the cats in, and put on the flip flops I keep right outside the bedroom door.
• I walked to the back door and grabbed the backpack I keep there. It is mostly empty except for a waterproof blanket. Since I didn’t need that and it is large, I took it out. (* there might have been a reason to keep it in retrospect, but this was a good decision.) I instead grabbed down the two wheelchair cushions that I can put ice packs in, and all the ice packs for them from the freezer and put them in. Plus the laptop, tablet and reading glasses.
• I very briefly considered grabbing my bug out bag, and it was right there. (So I made the right choice of storage location!) It is heavy, and I was already past my capacity. I also knew the new stove was extremely likely to be the culprit, and that it was unlikely to escalate into a bigger problem. That I was just taking a series of precautions.
• I thought about grabbing an N95 mask from the basket by the back door, since I had decided not to grab one from next to my bed. But I assured myself that I had one or more in my EDC. I also remembered I was wearing my orange glasses, not my black ones, so I didn’t have my transition lenses. But reminded myself my actual sunglasses were in my EDC.
• I went out the back door and down the stairs (a rarity for me), then out to the garage.
• I opened the big garage door, got my backpack on the back of my chair, unplugged the charger from the chair, sat down, hooked my EDC to the chair with caribiners.

I was extremely out of breath, and my heart rate was way too high, but I managed to call a friend who was already scheduled to come, let them know what was happening, and ask them to pick me up coffee from elsewhere.

I then headed out to the front tree lawn to the shade.

Settling In and Waiting

I had to do several things to tend to my body which was in crisis from that level of exertion without all my meds. I often carry a yoga mat on the back of my chair, and I regretted that I didn’t have it. * This is where having the waterproof blanket could have alternately been helpful. My orthostatic intolerance is so severe that I cannot sit upright and have my legs down without careful planning and medication. So I needed to get myself as non vertical as possible, and do so with ice – both to to help get my heart rate down and mitigate the reality that outside was a little warmer than I like it to be. Getting down to the ground with my cushions, ice, etc was more stress on my body, but necessary.

Once I did that I drank some water from my EDC, and was relieved to remember there was a protein shake in there as well if I needed it. I considered that my phone battery wasn’t full, and remembered that I have a fully charged brick in my EDC in case I need it. I was texting with another close friend who was picking me up some fresh fruit. I told her what was going on as an FYI. She is my emergency contact and health care proxy, so I like to keep her in the loop when things get weird.

My building manager came and checked things out. He figured out the source of the problem and fixed it. NYSEG arrived and they went through my place with him to double check everything. They were all here and then gone in about an hour from when I made my first call. My friend got here a few minutes after they left. We sat outside and talked while I drank my coffee, cooled myself down, and let my meds kick in. About an hour after that I had recovered enough that with some help from my friend I was able to get back inside (up a flight of stairs) and back to my bed.

Lessons Learned

I did a good job! I was not totally clueless or ineffective despite absolutely terrible body conditions.  My heart rate got as high as 132 in this process! This is extreme. I’m supposed to do what I can to keep it below 86, which is my anaerobic threshold.  (The last time my heart rate was that high was 22 months ago in September 2023 when I was dealing with significant end of life care needs with my dog and we had a crisis.) I spent a lot of time over my anaerobic threshold.

I am developing a newer protocol for how I try to mitigate overexertion. I don’t have that routinized yet. And there is a new medication I’m trying that I should add to my EDC. (Thanks, L for the empty contact lens cases!)

I want to revisit whether the idea of having oxygen on hand might be useful when I’m at such high levels of over exertion. One of my doctors recommended the possibility before, and I probably won’t know if it helps without trying it.

I should trust my past self! I was reflexively thinking of things to grab and reminding myself I already had them.

At some point I looked briefly for the file I knew I had on my phone of my checklist of things I can’t keep packed to grab in an evacuation. I was annoyed with myself for not having printed it out and hung it next to my bed as I intended to. But when I did review it later, I realized I got most of what was on the list.  It might have been easier though, if I kept the backpack on the back of my bedroom door instead of by the back door. I used to do that.

I made a judgement call on leaving my bug out bag, and it wasn’t wrong. But I could more easily have opted into taking it if it was on wheels. I have thought about this before, as well as things like getting a cart to attach to the back of my wheelchair. But in the short term, I think I want to put my bug out bag, which is a backpack that can go on the back of my wheelchair, in a rolling suitcase. there is nothing in that bag that would be particularly damaged by thunking down the stairs. And I could drag it instead of lift and carry it. I already have clips I could use to clip the suitcase to the back of my chair so it can roll behind.

I could revisit my ideas for a better way to keep my yoga mat on the back of my chair. I like having it because its easy to just lie down anywhere. But the way I’d been carrying it most recently wasn’t working well and I set it aside without solving it.

And as always, my friends and community are awesome. I had physical and processing support from a friend who sat with me, helped me get back inside, and followed the usual morning routine to get me set up for the day. I had my emergency person calmly in the loop. And I knew that if things became more serious, or I needed to be out of the house for longer that I had people I could call and places to go. And I’m glad I know my neighbors.

[I write a lot. Journaling to myself. Long essays I never publish anywhere. Missives I end up using as Facebook posts. I’m trying to sort out what should be public and what should be private. What to share and what to simmer. When to post here. So while this may seem out of nowhere without hearing from me for a while, it isn’t in my mind.]