Services > Emergency Services > Preparedness Guides > Answers for Day Care Providers

Recently, our department has received many inquiries into what we were doing to assist day care providers in the event of an emergency. The Emergency Management Division will attempt to answer all questions as completely as possible. We can not however, tell you how to run your business. One of the many responsibilities business owners have is to ensure you have plans that address any of a myriad of situations you may face. These plans are for both emergency and non-emergency situations. Whether you are preparing for a hurricane evacuation order or preparing to deal with continuing your operations when your heat goes out in the winter for a week, the common thread is preparedness.

The state requires family day care homes and child care centers to have emergency preparedness plans for certain emergency situations including certain relocation sites to provide services to your clients. A County shelter or evacuation site can not be used for these purposes.

As an example, a day care provider we have spoken to (provider A) has as part of their plan, an agreement with a daycare provider in another part of the area (provider B) to use their residence (provider B’s) in the event on an emergency (power outage, damage, evacuation order, etc) to provide services to their (provider A’s) clients. This may require agreements among multiple providers to provide sufficient coverage and not exceed any particular provider’s capacity. Providers in other jurisdictions have agreements with commercial daycare centers as well. Whether your agreement is with other private, residential providers or with a commercial operation, day care providers are again like any other small business in the fact that they can not use public shelters to continue their operations.

With regards to where our sites are specifically, we do not announce shelter sites ahead of time. Shelters are identified with careful consideration given to several factors including: nature of emergency, expected duration of the emergency, location of the emergency, severity of impact to affected infrastructure and so on. We would not be doing anyone any good by providing lists of shelter sites in the County only to have people show up to those sites with the County having no intention of using them during a particular emergency. Unlike the days where fallout shelters or bomb shelters were marked and stocked for use by people at any given time, we now must pre-identify multiple sites for possible use as a shelter. Then, depending on multiple factors, a decision is made as to which qualifying facility will be used at that particular time.

Part of the change that came with Senate Bill 356 was that your emergency preparedness plans include “procedures for communicating with local emergency management officials or other appropriate state or local authorities. Our interpretation of the law as written is you need to identify a way to communicate with our office in emergency and non emergency situations. Should you experience a true emergency in your daycare, please do not hesitate to call 911. In non-emergency situations you may call 410-758-4510. This is a non-emergency number into the 911 center. In the event of an emergency requiring action to be taken on your part, such as an evacuation order, shelter in place order, etc. we will communicate to residents in one or a combination of ways. These include using the Emergency Alert System on local television and radio, door to door notifications by police or fire department personnel, or the county’s
REVERSE911 ® system.

Hopefully this answers your questions. Please contact either Chief Aftung or Lieutenant Stoner with additional questions or concerns.