answer:Many local governments produce disaster guides in both hardcopy and on the net. Here is an example from my home county in the US. It covers just about everything except earthquakes because they don’t have them there. I find that the best way to get through a disaster is to pitch in and help with any skills you may have. Once you’ve put your own family and property in order, helping keeps you occupied, keeps you in the info loop even before the news agencies and is very rewarding on many levels. You will meet some very good people in the process and there is no better way to serve your community. And it beats sitting around waiting for relief to come to you. This is how you get on the team: Emergency response and local government is often overwhelmed and need help during a disaster. The Red Cross and other organizations in your area give classes in various forms of disaster response and relief. Once you get certified in one or two of these disciplines, you are put on an on-call list and you’re on the team. In the process, you learn more about disasters and how to handle them than other citizens. After handling a few local disasters, you might be asked to join a team to go to naional and international disasters. During a disaster, they need medical people of course, but they also need many other types of people. They need property management, insurance, mortgage, engineering and real estate people in general to do property damage assessments for relief level purposes. Anyone with childcare experience is needed. They need people with people skills to get families out of their destroyed homes and into special shelters. They need people to do paperwork and assess reports from the field. Food service people to run emergency food service programs in the field and in shelters. They need people with good management skills to manage everything from shelters to staff. They need internet people to put up and man minute-by-minute emergency info sites, lost persons sites that bring the lost and their families back together. They need people with good teaching skills to teach these courses to everyone else. The need is great as are the rewards as are your fellow volunteers. Even the most unskilled person has something to offer in a large disaster, boots on the ground so to speak, and it is an excellent way to pick up new skills and test one’s mettle. When I first got involved with disaster orgs, I was an unskilled, 21 year-old college student /waiter.with no real skills that I thought would be helpful in a disaster. It was summer break—hurricane season—and I took the courses out of boredom. It was one of the best things I’ve done in my entire life.