A couple things to keep in mind:

In many cases you won't know the extent of the event until after it has happens, by the time you know it is bad enough to leave it may be to late.

If you decide your family is more important and leave at the beginning or before an event and it ends up being nothing or less severe than you thought you may have just proven yourself unreliable and be risking your job or you ability to grow in your job.

I have a job where I could be called to help out in an emergency(3 times in 4 years) If I thought my family needed me I would take a work truck and head home to check on them and take the risk of getting in trouble. Of course what I do in an emergency is minimal compared to a fire fighter, EMT, cop or Dr., so I doubt they would or could do the same.

 

No solution to ANY problem can be found unless one goes down to nuts and bolts level. For example, what is it one can expect from the emergency personal, exactly? Policemen would be lost in minutes, certainly in an hour; the whole great cities would burn to the ground; the patients in hospitals would all die (if they could not leave) etc.

 

Not a cop/ems but I have some theories I consider reasonable

As long as communications systems remain at least partially intact and vehicular transport available I suspect most emergency responders will continue to operate. Once there is no longer any form of mounted transport available and/or all communication is lost, I expect them to focus on survival and family first and foremost. The ones that stay on duty at this point may be quickly overrun.

The reality of police and firemen is that there's not enough to be a unit on every street corner. The strength of police is not in the handgun on their belt or the badge on their chest. It's in the ability to call for overwhelming backup that will arrive quickly in vehicles. Without those things they will be stretched too thin to hold the line.

 

Nailed it.

 

There are some good cops. There are some evil cops.

Most are meh. I won't be counting on or hoping for any heroic efforts from cops or military.

I do expect some to try and use thier uniforms to take advantage of folks.

 

Attempting to take advantage of people as a cop in a WROL situation is the worst possible thing any cop could ever do. There's little enough love lost when the rule of law is intact.

 

I expect most people to do their job as long as it looks like they will get paid and they will live to get paid.

Take the respondents to Chernobyl for example. I would bet the next time it happens, desertion will be wide spread because the gubernment didn't honor the commitment to provide real health care or benefits to the families that lost their provider. Just go die over there isn't motivating.

A major ELE like say Yellowstone or giant rock strike, I think most folks are going to try and get home to help their families.


Remember the New Orleans Police Dept. We are stealing your generator/fuel to cool our beer. Oh and we are stealing your guns so you can't defend yourself. Try and escape we will murder you crossing the bridge. I doubt regular people will let that happen to them again.

 

I expect most people to do their job as long as it looks like they will get paid and they will live to get paid.

Take the respondents to Chernobyl for example. I would bet the next it happens, desertion will be wide spread because the gubernment didn't honor the commitment to provide real health care or benefits to the families that lost their provider. Just go die over there isn't motivating.

A major ELE like say Yellowstone or giant rock strike, I think most folks are going to try and get home to help their families.

The people who worked on Chernobyl were originally supposed to be rotated through so they received relatively "safe" amounts of radiation. They very quickly rotated through the people they had and after that they were more or less forced to continue working under threat of violence .

 

Should I stay or should I go? The age old question for anyone in a field that requires their skills during SHTF. I asked myself that question often during 22 years on the OR. It's too broad for an honest answer. You have to take each incident as they come.

What I finally rested on - tornado, flood, fire, riots or bombs being dropped on the opposite side of town from where I live? I stay. The same in my neighborhood or a wide-scale event: pandemic, full scale conventional war, Yellowstone eruption, I go.

Age and family matter a great deal in how that question is answered. At my age, if I were still in the OR and didn't have my husband, I would stay under most of those conditions.

 

Should I stay or should I go?

I don't think it is a relevant question: in a real crisis every hospital, every medical institution, even pharmacies, would be attacked by well armed gangs in search of drugs. There is an additional attraction for the hospitals because that's where women and children are. And, unlike in peacetime, the attackers would not take hostages or leave anyone alive. So much for the medics. Very similar outcomes can be expected for cops, firefighters and such. A cop leaving his post quickly would have only a small chance to get to his family in one piece (especially if he has to go on foot). And even if he manage to get home his ability to actually save his family would be compromised. The firefighters would never get to the fire and kikely to be shot en route. The schools would be some of the choicest targets also.

 

I know during one of our hurricanes, forecast to be a 5 - the worst - many 911 dispatchers refused to work and instead "took care of their families".

Now, let's just rest it there. If you are already prepped there is very little you need to do last minute, for your family.

The dispatchers had signed a contract, and, when the storm turned at the last minute, they came back to work to learn they had been fired and would also be up on charges for abandoning their posts.

They had been told, when hired, you had better have a plan for your family because we will need you SHTF. But they did not, left, got in trouble, and then went crying to the media.

 

I think it depends a lot on WHAT happens and how widespread it is and how self reliable your family is.

Pregnant wife with 3 kids under five yrs old is going to need more assistance than a pretty self reliant woman with trained teenagers. The father of those tiny children should be there doing what fathers were invented to do.

A tornado is very local. The nearby towns will send help and have undamaged stores and supplies.

Katrina had 9 million square miles of area affected. There was no help coming form nearby and nowhere nearby to get away to. Aside from a hurricane with rain and wind damage there was storm surge flooding then civil unrest on the top of it, and corrupt local LEOs out looting and thugging. In some cases LEOs brought in from non-local further confused things by making up their own rules.

The large wild fires in California is another example of a disaster that may be hard to get away from.

I think each emergency personnel needs to evaluate for themselves how much they are needed by their family vs can they stay to help the public. Just like jurisdictions now warn people that they won't go risk their people to help those who had been told to evacuate, it's entirely fair that LEOs, medical people, etc. think of their family above and before the public.

There has to be a place where you say I can't help any more people without serious risk that I (or my loved ones) will die as well. You swore to help where you can. You did not swear to help other people while you know your own babies are dying.

 

No one answer to this.

But Im willing to bet most will pick family over duty if severe enough.

 

I am currently just a Vol first responder, but I have a background in Emergency Mgmt.
(Personally: disaster yes, pandemic I'm staying home.)

Generally in trying times it pays to be "on the side of the organization"

Supplies, security, etc.

Depending (pandemic or zombies notwithstanding) this will keep emergency responders on task longer than otherwise.

JMHO

 

I can lend some perspective to the topic as I am a full time paid paramedic. I live in a moderate sized city of about 80,000. As others have said many incidents you could not or would not realize were as big as they were right off the bat so all I can speak to is once I realized things weren’t “normal”. I have been on multiple major Mass Casualty Incidents to include the Aurora Theatre Shooting and they are all chaotic and crazy. If I got to the point where I thought things were legitimately out of control I would leave work and head home to be with my wife and children. Would that leave a void in the city emergency response plan and hurt people maybe needing me for medical emergencies? Sure it would but my family comes first. I have 4 little daughters and they aren’t figting off a band of thugs without me. All that said it would take a major incident, some form of shutdown, or a reasonable level of lawlessness for me to do that. I take my career and job seriously and enjoy helping people and understand there is some level of sacrifice as a first responder. Plus side is that if it was that bad I’d take my ambulance with me and have a fully stocked mobile small emergency room with radio communications equipment etc. again, things would have to be bad.

 

The answer to this vague event question lays in the length, breath, and longevity of the SHTF.
Any event that has solid indicators that life as we know it is over, not many will stay longer than necessary. If there's a chance this passes and civilization will recover, many will continue as best they can.
For any who have such a job (including military), a plan, now, is worth it's weight in gold. Gives you peace of mind while youre trying to manage chaos and collapse. Let's your family have tasks to keep their mind off worrying while your gone. And if a bug out is required, things should be ready to go by the time you get home.

 

Read the details of what happened to many nurses (and some doctors) who stayed on duty during Katrina to care for their patients when everyone else scarpered. Then, you may wish to rephrase the question.

 

Interesting reading everyone's thoughts. I'm pretty on board with the concept of staying at work until it becomes necessary to take care of my own, though I think thats a pretty universal concept. I guess I was looking for some more concrete thoughts and WHEN that turning point would come. What would tip from from staying on post to getting home to deal with family?




Somehow I haven't read a whole lot about this. I'll have to do some googling, but do you have any particular stories in mind? Widespread results or isolated case study?

 

Also, when SHTF management will raid my stockroom again and steal all my supplies to feed staff, like they did last time. No point in going to work, there will be nothing to stock.

They did pay us back last time after we submitted an invoice but it took a while, and in the meantime I had no inventory.

 

They did pay us back last time after we submitted an invoice but it took a while, and in the meantime I had no inventory.

Remember what I said about letting the money accrue in savings in case SHTF...?


That's a (personal) SHTF.

 

If its just someone else's problem, then yes, I'm staying tell the bitter end. If I wanted to live forever I wouldn't do emergency response.

The tipping point is if its something so bad me or my family becomes part of it. In that case the family I'm saving is my own.

My duty is to save lives. My family and myself (to a lesser extent) is alive so I don't feel there is a conflict if they have become part of the disaster.

 

Oh, we have personal savings. The theft just meant we had to come up with a couple hundred MORE dollars and make ANOTHER trip to the warehouse.

Next time a storm is coming in we are not making a supply run. If I run out of Cheetos that is just too bad. After a storm everyone is looking for free food - it's the whole teat seeking thing. "We had a disaster, I need a teat to feed me and my family"

Sorry, back to subject.

 

Just the way my brain works:

If I had the cash to restock AND handle any personal emergency I'd put MORE food in the stockroom.

...they pay for it, even late.... It's more profit your otherwise leaving on the table...


$0.02
(Just too many years working for myself not to think like that.)

 

As mentioned with the nurses and some doctors during Katrina stayed. And nursing home aides and nurses -- some stayed some didn't. Plenty of examples. That dozer operator that saved people in Paradise. And so on.

But in most cases -- what happened was known to 'gonna happen'. [well, not much warning with the fires.....]. I have heard of plenty of police, medical types, ems, fire fighters, who lost homes to the fire, but I haven't heard of any who lost family members in those homes -- so there must have been some sort of 'set up' personal or institutional to result in that.


Also, as mentioned -- there are cases where folks 'won't ' know until things are well underway.

MAJOR, fast spreading, Pandemic and you work in a hospital? I sure hope you don't go home to share the germs -- unless you're already planning on murdering them and this would be a better method than you already though out. [and you are delusional enough to figure you'll survive].

One of those major earthquakes they predict -- the Big One -- for California. If it happens in the day time -- then one kid will be at one school and the other at another school and the wife at her job -- and you are trapped in your section of wherever you are. Good luck.

Nuclear war. If your community isn't hit or close to a hit -- then things might need considering. But I'd suspect your community will tell everyone to shelter in place and try to figure out what they are supposed to do. Then you might have more leeway.

Major hack of the communication/electrical system. No way to report calls to go to or call for aid in whatever situation you are in. If no generators work at the hospitals [a possibility] the hospital has just joined the third world.

Major solar flare, probably ditto with a lot of fires thrown in.

What do military personnel do? I know from pre-Berlin wall days that if 'something happened' Mom was to put us in the car with the dog, some extra gas, [and later learned a pistol] and drive towards France or the Netherlands [preferred][some food and water was included in this, and she had a small suitcase with kids clothes ready]. Dad in artillery was supposed to 'go to work'.

 

Somehow I haven't read a whole lot about this. I'll have to do some googling, but do you have any particular stories in mind? Widespread results or isolated case study?

Curious about this too. The only Katrina nurses are remember are the ones that killed their patients and then evacuated.

 

I will continue working at the hospital until its too dangerous to. It depends on the SHTF event.

 

From an LEO perspective: LEO Manpower is TINY these days. Without vehicles and either cell phones or radios, it's over. There's not enough manpower to even do foot patrols or anything of the sort. Even during the old west there was a large reserve of manpower mounted on horses to go after someone. Without communications, there's no ability to know a crime has even happened, let alone respond soon enough to do anything about it. All you can do is maybe guard a few static locations. Your own station, a jail, and/or a local center of government like a city hall. Without the ability to coordinate and move LEOs very quickly to concentrate force on a threat with reasonably good intel, there's simply not enough strength to enforce anything.

So yeah, you can still have LE until one of those things isn't functional. Then there's simply no point in showing up.

Having worked hospital for many years as well: Once the supply chain breaks down or backup electricity generators are no longer functioning... it's pretty much over. Hospitals won't be able to function as anything more than first aid stations. Everyone's work is heavily dependent on machines and disposable equipment. The large majority of medical staff will simply serve no purpose and be sent home.

 

Having worked hospital for many years as well: Once the supply chain breaks down or backup electricity generators are no longer functioning... it's pretty much over. Hospitals won't be able to function as anything more than first aid stations. Everyone's work is heavily dependent on machines and disposable equipment. The large majority of medical staff will simply serve no purpose and be sent home.

First aid stations could still save many lives. I would think there is a lot more doctors could than I could do with little more than a basic tool kit and very few supplies.

 

Supposing all evidence is for a truly severe SHTF/ EOTWAWKI situation, where I can believe the hospital is just going to keep going for as long as it can before inevitably falling and will not be back to normal next month... For me, 3 things.

1. How much my family needs me vs. how much hospital patients need me.

Depending on the type and severity of disaster of course, but my family is a prepper family. They are probably doing much better than just about anyone in town. So, I’ll probably stay a while, at least enough to finish up my shift. Coming back might be a different story.

2. How much staying will impede my ability to eventually get out.

My work is 30 miles from home, and to get home from work I either have to go through the middle of town or along a longer winding back way that is also vulnerable to blockage at several places. If staying makes it significantly more difficult to get out, maybe making the difference between being able to drive out or having to walk, I need to prioritize my ability to escape the city. This may be difficult to judge from the basement of the hospital where I work, but I’d have to make my best judgment.

3. Can I even still do any good at work?

I work in the laboratory, not direct patient care. We’re essential to the functioning of the hospital, but if the disaster goes on long enough that the hospital generators run out of fuel, or we use up our reagents so we can’t run our instruments, or we run out of blood products for transfusion and can’t get resuplied, there is no point in staying.

 

I hope that posting relevant links is OK. Please, mods, let me know if it is not.

http://archive.boston.com/news/educ...n/higher/articles/2006/07/24/doctors_wary_of_helping_after_katrina_murder_case/

https://www.newyorker.com/tech/annals-of-technology/the-moral-dilemmas-of-doctors-during-disaster

https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/d.../news/doctor-and-two-nurses-arrested-for-hurricane-katrina-euthanasia-nightmare

https://journalofethics.ama-assn.or...n.org/article/case-dr-anna-pou-physician-liability-emergency-situations/2010-09

 

The general consensus here in terms of organizations like the SES is you can't look after other people if you can't look after yourself. So families and stuff generally are looked after.

 

My personal view:

When I am on duty, patients come first.

When I am no longer on duty, but patients continue to arrive, overwhelming our staff resources, I go where I am sent or stay to triage and treat. Been there, done that, a few times (e.g. Turkey quake, Aceh tsunami, Bali bombings, Djakarta bombings). I can (could) afford that because my wife took over and were we seriously well-prepped in those locations. IIMSSAID.

Now - if I am overseas on assignment when SHTF / EMP / global war etc, I stay where I am to help. I'm not getting home.

If I am home - I stay at work, working, until we have neither staff nor materiel resources remaining. (Likely ~ 36 hours). Then, I go home to tend to my family.

Flame away if you wish....

 

Colt, my husband was admitted to the hospital this last summer. He had blood clots and anemia. Kind of challenging to treat both.

Anyway, his numbers dropped below 7 so time for a blood transfusion. The computer went down and nothing happened, I mean, nothing.

They had to "go manual" to administer medications. No blood transfusion that whole day, and half the night, because they couldn't do the protocol on the donor blood with his blood. I remember sitting in the visitor chair watching "My 600 Pound Life" thinking it was a very good thing he wasn't critical. It could have killed him.

One reason I try to keep him away from hospitals as much as possible - although he likes the bed and the room service.

 

Anyway, his numbers dropped below 7 so time for a blood transfusion. The computer went down and nothing happened, I mean, nothing.

They had to "go manual" to administer medications. No blood transfusion that whole day, and half the night, because they couldn't do the protocol on the donor blood with his blood. I remember sitting in the visitor chair watching "My 600 Pound Life" thinking it was a very good thing he wasn't critical. It could have killed him.

In my hospital we have downtime procedures for transfusing blood when the computers are down. It’s considered far too critical to only be able to do when everything is working properly. But, it does take a lot more work to do it that way. It’s probable that they just decided to wait until the computers were back up since he was chronically anemic and could wait a day without significant risk, and just told you they “couldn’t” because it was easier than explaining.

It’s a constant source of frustration to those of us in the lab that the nurses often tell the patients easier lies rather than more difficult truths, such as to say the lab messed up a specimen and thus it has to be redrawn, when the truth is the nurse didn’t label it properly and we rejected it. They do it to “preserve trust” in the nursing staff, but it has the effect of creating less trust in the lab and/or the hospital in general. They probably don’t think about the fact that now you and your husband believe that their hospital is incapable of giving necessary blood transfusions during computer outages and are less likely to go back there when either of you needs medical care. They kinda shot themselves in the foot.

Of course, if they really can’t do a transfusion when their computers are down, maybe going to another hospital would be a better bet.