Group Preps: Call Trees
Call trees are one of the best ways to spread up-to-date critical information to a group either immediately before or immediately after a disaster.
In 2005, Hurricane Katrina hit the east coast of the US. In the immediate aftermath, it was found that school bus drivers had taken their buses and fled, trying to preserve the very expensive vehicles from the flooding and property damage that would happen due to the hurricane. Most of them had waited until the last possible moment to flee, in case the hurricane turned out not to be as bad as advertised, like a lot of storms in the past.
They did this without using their busses to evacuate people as was on the emergency plan. City officials blamed the bus drivers for the loss of life and property damage that could have theoretically been avoided. When the bus drivers were blamed for this, many of the drivers pointed out that they had never heard of this plan, and in any case, had no idea how they would have organized the evacuation. The very few that had known about the plan pointed out that it had never been activated, so they were hardly to blame.
In the aftermath, it was discovered that there was a simple and effective tool built into the emergency plan that could have resolved the whole issue if anyone had used it- a call tree.
Call trees are one of the simplest, most overlooked preps out there for any group.
The basic concept is fairly simple- in case of emergency, one person calls several people, those people each call several people, and so on. This is often the quickest way to spread mission-critical information as quickly as possible and to make sure people get it. The chart for this looks like a tree, and since it is usually done by someone picking up a phone and calling people… call tree.
It spreads like a virus, and if it works properly, it has a far greater effect (though positive instead of negative).
Imagine little Timmy is in grade school and is sick. Little Timmy is not all that sick yet but knows that he is going to have a few sick days coming up where he gets to stay home and play video games.
Little Timmy wants his friends to join him in playing co-op, so before he gets stuck at home, he visits his friends’ houses one by one, and just to make sure they get sick, he licks them. (Timmy is 9 years old, and while I am not saying that what he is doing is a good idea, I am absolutely saying it is the kind of thing I would have thought about and possibly done at that age).
Here is the thing- Timmy has a lot of friends that he wants to play DigCraft with, and he has to go to each of their houses personally to get them sick. He realizes that his friend Joey is probably sick with the same thing, so he calls up Joey and convinces him to help get everyone sick because a 20-person raid on an End Troll would be awesome.
Timmy and Joey make a list of friends they want to get sick, divide it up, and start walking. This way, they can each get to more people in a shorter time, and spread the information as fast as they can.
How Does A Call Tree Work
This is how a call tree works.
The simplest way (please note I did not say the best way) to make a calling tree is to take a directory of people involved, look at the first name on the list, and assign the next three names on the list. The second name on the list gets the next three unassigned names, and so on until the end of the list.
This has a number of disadvantages, including but not limited to:
It ignores people who live together, who could just talk to each other.
It has no redundancy, in case someone is unavailable for some reason (vacation, family emergency, etc.)
It does not address leadership positions or the potential responsibilities of those involved.
It ignores things like time zones, in case a group is across a planet- businesses can have calling trees for response teams, and sometimes it makes sense to call almost everyone and to assign people to get ahold of those who will need a full night of sleep after they have gotten enough to be functional.
It totally ignores who is most likely to do their job. If Adam Aaronson is a total flake, having him be at the top of a calling tree can be a terrible idea, but having him be at the bottom of it is still potentially a very good idea since he is the only one with a good-sized tent.
The list goes on, but you get the idea.
For your group prepping, I suggest that you look at who is the most likely to be available in an emergency, and to do the job, and use them as the point of contact to start the tree. Self-employed people can be an excellent option for this, since as long as no one abuses the system you can use an emergency phrase or word to trigger a call tree from anyone, and they can start it. Alternately, if your group has clear leadership (Boy scout troop, airsoft crew, Kpop group, etc), use them to start the call tree.
Call Tree Example
Example:
Joe is a self-employed writer. He does ad copy, but he works at home as a contractor for a larger company, so he has an office, etc, and his boss is not allowed to tell him not to answer the phone at home.
Logan finds out that the zombie apocalypse is starting, so he texts Joe with the agreed-on emergency word (“Pineapple”), and then an explanation (“Zombies!”). Logan then calls Joe, explains what is happening, hangs up in order to finish packing his family into the minivan, and head to Idaho.
Joe sets down his work, grabs a headset, texts the emergency word and explanation, and then calls the three people on the list (Erin, Corric, and Torrence) he is responsible for contacting while he gets his truck ready. They know to expect a call from Joe in case of emergency, so they actually pick up if they can. By the time the tree gets back to Logan, he is on his way out of town, and everything is in motion.
In an organization with clear lines of leadership, especially if there is a clear hierarchy, it can make the most sense to go up and down the lines of leadership- troop leader to assistants, assistants to quartermaster, etc, all the way down to the bottom, since that theoretically ends up putting the most responsible people at the top of the call tree, the second most at the next layer, etc. When you hit the bottom of the call tree that way the people at the top of it are usually taking care of things that they need to take care of for the entire group, which takes longer, while the ground level people have marginally less time to prep, they have less to do
Redundancy is the last key to a really effective call tree.
I know that there are organizations that have had emergencies, and call tree, and due to one weak link- someone getting caught in the earthquake that they are responding to, for example- portions of the organization are not activated in a timely manner.
There are a few ways to address this. The first and most common is for everyone to have a copy of the entire tree, and if you are unable to get ahold of someone immediately down a branch from you, you call the people down the branch from them. This is not a bad idea, but you need to have it spelled out beforehand.
(On a related practicality note, I recommend you laminate the copy of the call tree for everybody. In fact, I recommend you laminate all sorts of stuff. I use one of these with the thinner pouches, but there are all sorts of good options out there, so do what works best for you).
The second way requires a second way to contact people. If you have the president of the emergency preparedness group start the call tree, he might have a second person who might start a contact tree might be his second in command- who sends texts one at a time to their people. These two trees have only minimal overlap in who contacts who (Person 1 calls people 2, 3, and 4, but texts 5, 6, and 7, who would each have been called by different people on the tree). This means that when the cell circuits are full, texting can still go on.
I have also seen Ham Radio, but that requires a fair amount of prep above and beyond, as well as certification. Explore that option if you think you have the resources to do so effectively.
There are a lot of other options, and use whatever you find is the best for your group or organization- making sure that you have redundancy in place of some sort is critical for major disasters, however.
Notable variant I have seen: using the top down for the initial calls out and using a secondary system for a report back. That can get complex, but it tells you everyone both heard the message and that they are in a state to report back.
So, to review, a call tree needs three things to be really effective:
1. A trigger
2. Organization
3. Redundancy
Common Questions:
Why call not mass text? Why not have one person call everyone?
Mass texts tend to get ignored, especially if someone has questions so everyone’s phones go off at once. That is the opposite of useful in this situation.
Having one person call everyone takes much longer, and relies on a single link in the chain- which can be fine for bridge club, but not so much if life and death are on the line. If your organization has the resources to have a dedicated person spread the word, that can work, but a well-rehearsed call tree is usually radically faster.
How do I know that everyone was contacted?
You don’t. This is why you have redundancy, and people that you can trust.
What happens if I only have a few people (under 5)?
This may not be the best plan for you, or it may make more sense to have a very abbreviated call tree- anyone calls one person who distributes it to everyone else. This is meant to be a tool in a toolbox, not a prison.
To sum it all up:
– If one person is meant to call many people, it is less likely to happen. Getting “buy-in” from everyone in the group is important.
– If at all possible, everyone should be contacted twice, if possible by two different forms of communication, and by two different people. Redundancy is important in a disaster.
– Practice is essential. If you do not practice, you will have no idea what issues will happen in a real disaster- and plenty of new ones will pop up no matter what you do. Practice is to keep problems to a minimum.
– Having the list of contact information in front of you and the people you are to contact makes everything easier.
– Make sure everyone knows when this tool should be used. If you don’t use it when you need it, you might as well not have it. If you overuse it, it becomes useless. This is The Penned Prepper. Go learn something