New book offers emergency survival tips

BY MARC LALONDE

marc.lalonde@transcontinental.ca

Being on her own in a power failure with four children under 16, Dollard des Ormeaux resident Betty-Anne Lawlor learned very quickly how to navigate the perilous waters of everyday life and has parlayed that experience into a new book.

Lawlor’s ‘Survive any emergency; from blizzards to terrorism,’ ($11.95, Chestnut Publishing Group) details how to take care of your family during, well, any emergency, from extended power failures to terrorist attacks.

Lawlor, whose kids ranged in age from 16 years to 18 months when she first realized most families are under-prepared for an emergency — “diapers to dating; I had it all going on,” she quipped — when her Dollard des Ormeaux home lost power for an extended period of time in late 2000. She toyed with the idea of creating a web page that would give advice to “people like me. There was really nothing out there for us in terms of resources,” she added.

Instead, she decided on a book format after lamenting to a friend there was simply too much information to log onto a web page at once. The friend suggested she go a more traditional route, and Lawlor set out working on the book and finding a publisher.

The majority of the book came together in the first part of 2001, but when the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the United States hit the news, Lawlor realized she had some adjustments to make.

“I knew I had to add some of those elements to the book. So I went back to the drawing board and began to research the topic, see what was out there and add it to the book,” she said.

The product: a three-page compendium of the basic weapons a terrorist might use such as explosives, chemical or biological weapons and what to do in the case of an attack using either.

The book offers helpful hints for decidedly unlikely — but not inconceivable events — such as a hurricane or a tornado.

“If a tornado appears to be standing still, it is either moving away from you or right toward you,’ Lawlor wrote, adding a disaster is no time to explore your inner Mario Andretti.

“Turn and drive away from a tornado. Do not try to beat it to another road or cut-off.”

Planning an evacuation in case of a tsunami, purifying water in case of a power failure or mass contamination are other contingencies explained in the book, a matter-of-fact tome not designed to while away a rainy Sunday afternoon on the couch.

“No, I pretty much went right into it,” Lawlor said. “I’m not a writer by profession, but I feel like I had something to say to people.”

Getting published was almost as big a challenge as getting her family through that power failure, Lawlor said.

“I tried more than 200 different publishers out there and I didn’t really get anywhere. It wasn’t until a friend of mine from Toronto whose friend is an author mentioned Chestnut (Publishing Group),” Lawlor said. “It actually makes you wonder how many other authors are out there and have something to say and don’t have the means.”

Chestnut loved the book, owner Stan Starkman said, saying it meshed well with his company’s focus on instructional and resource publications.

“We do mostly textbook and niche publications, and (Lawlor’s) book very much fit our philosophy,” he said.

For more information, visit www.chestnutpublishing.com">www.chestnutpublishing.com">www.chestnutpublishing.com or call 416-224-5824.