It is 7:03pm on a cold, winter night. You're sitting in the living room with your family watching the latest episode of DEAF U. All of a sudden, the power turns off. The house is pitch black. You grow concerned. You double check the breakers, and realized it was not the problem. You frantically call your electric company and they inform you -
"We are having problems with the power grid. It may have frozen. We are working on this and hopefully will have everything back up soon."
You wait several hours, and you realized how much colder the house got. You start to shiver. You bundle up and snuggle with your loved ones and sleep restlessly throughout the night. The morning comes and your water pipes have frozen. Fear freezes in. You now realized you are in an emergency crisis!
That is what happened in millions of people in Texas on February 10th of 2021 and it lasted 2 weeks and four days.
Natural and man-made disasters can happen anywhere at anytime. This is inevitable and it is unfortunately a daily reality in Texas. However, we can be ready for it. The deep freeze only scratched the surface. There are many natural disasters that could happen in Texas. We all wonder what we would do in an emergency crisis and depending on where you are from, the type of national disasters can vary from state to state.
But with a state as large as Texas - what could we expect next time? Are we ready?
Texas, known as one of the infamous Tornado Alley states, is prone to tornados more so than any other state in America. Statistics show an average of 130 tornados hit Texas every year.
Did you know that Texas is also the number one state with the highest number of fatalities due to flash and river floods with an alarming 883 unfortunate deaths reported from 1959 to 2014.
Do you know how many wildfires spread in Texas every year? Do you know how many chemical accidents have occurred in Texas the past year?
At Bus Door Films, we believe in ready at all costs. Fortunately, we were given the opportunity to partner with the Texas Department of State Health in June of 2019 to create a informative, preparation video in ASL for the Deaf community! In this project, we hired a native American Sign Language user that communicated clearly in our language for full accessibility. Why is that important? Because public safety applies to all! As of right now, there is a greater demand to create more videos in ASL than ever before because our culture is demanding equal accessibility to all video content. Whether that be COVID-19 related, safety-topics, or just training resources. Accessibility matters! And now we can proudly say we played our part in making sure everyone is #Texasready.
We highly encourage you to click on the following link in where you will be directed to the video we created: https://texasready.gov/video-series/
But don't stop there! Their website contains tons of information with the latest updates on recent events. Take the time to familiarize yourself with the website and be informed. Take the necessary actions to prepare yourself for any possible disaster and most importantly - Forward the link to your Deaf Texan neighbors, ya'll!