Note: This is day 29 of National Preparedness Month . Follow this year’s campaign on Twitter by searching for the #NatlPrep hash tag.
This month, as part of NPM15, I’ll be rerunning some edited and updated older preparedness essays, along with some new ones.
#10,575
All month long FEMA, READY.Gov, state and local Emergency agencies, and grassroots coalition members have been promoting National Preparedness Month through community events, drills, and exercises and yes . . .blogs like mine . . to encourage Americans to become better prepared to deal with any emergency or disaster.
To see this month’s preparedness blogs (newest to oldest) click this link.
Tomorrow is the culmination of these combined efforts, where it is hoped that you and your family will take action, review their local threats, and increase their level of preparedness to deal with them. Although preparedness takes a lot of forms, FEMA has four first steps to get you started, and the first three won’t cost you anything but a little time.
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FEMA Encourages Families and Communities to Participate in National PrepareAthon! Day
Release date: September 28, 2015
(EXCERPT)
National PrepareAthon! Day is part of America’s PrepareAthon!, a nationwide grassroots campaign for action to increase community preparedness and resilience through hazard-specific group discussions, drills, and exercises. The campaign offers easy-to-implement preparedness guides, checklists, and resources to help individuals, organizations, and communities prepare for the types of disasters that are relevant to their area. People can take these simple steps to increase their preparedness:
- Create a family emergency communication plan. Visit ready.gov/prepare and download Be Smart. Take Part: Create Your Family Emergency Communication Plan. Collect the information you need, decide on the places you will meet in case of an emergency, share the information with your family, and practice your plan.
- Sign up for local text alerts and warnings and download weather apps. Stay aware of worsening weather conditions. Visit ready.gov/prepare and download Be Smart: Know Your Alerts and Warnings to learn how sign up for local alerts and weather apps that are relevant for hazards that affect your area.
- Gather important documents and keep them in a safe place. Have all of your personal, medical, and legal papers in one place, so you can evacuate without worrying about gathering your family’s critical documents at the last minute. Visit ready.gov/prepare and download Be Smart: Protect Your Critical Documents and Valuables for a helpful checklist.
- Create an emergency supply kit. Be prepared for bad weather by creating an emergency supply kit for each member of your family. Visit ready.gov/build-a-kit for more ideas of what to include in your kit.
Visit the America’s PrepareAthon! website, ready.gov/prepare for more information, to sign up, and to register your participation.
As you can see, it doesn't take a huge investment in either time or money for you and your family to become better prepared. It just takes the resolve to do so. But I can assure you, just having the peace of mind knowing you are prepared for an emergency is well worth the effort.
After all, preparing is easy . . . it’s worrying that is hard.
