The Fall Season of Emergency Preparedness Is Upon Us!
With September being National Preparedness Month and October being the 24th anniversary of the Loma Prieta Earthquake, this fall the San Francisco Department of Emergency Management encourages you to take these reminders as incentives to build upon your preparedness and resilience. Whether by visiting 72hours.org to develop your emergency plan; downloading SF Heroes to your smart phone to test your preparedness know-how; registering for AlertSF, DEM’s text-based message system that delivers emergency information to cell phones and other text-enabled devices, as well as email accounts—there are many simple and often immediate ways to enhance your preparedness and resilience. DEM also highly encourage you to become a trained member of your local San Francisco Neighborhood Emergency Response Team.
Being prepared isn’t necessarily about buying an expensive earthquake or emergency kit. It’s about having basic items gathered and ready at hand. It’s about talking with your family about where to meet after a disaster or making sure everyone knows where your emergency supplies are. It’s about knowing to drop, cover and hold on during an earthquake.So, the good news is that you are more prepared than you think.
While on the topic of knowing what to do during an earthquake, this October marks the 5th Annual Great California ShakeOut, California’s state-wide drop, cover and hold on drill. We hope you will participate and help to spread the word about registering and participating in the drill planned for Thursday, October 18th at 10:18am. The purpose of the ShakeOut drill is practice and preparation: knowing what to do before, during and after an earthquake and preparing our homes, workplaces and schools for any type of an emergency.
"ShakeOut is a great way to practice mental and muscle memory so you know what to do the next time the earth shakes" Kate Long, California Emergency Management Agency Earthquake and Tsunami Program Deputy
How to Participate?
Register yourself, your household and your workplace for the drill at www.shakeout.org and join the rest of California on October 18th by practicing drop, cover and hold on at 10:18 am. Additional ways to participate include posting ShakeOut posters in your organizations public areas and/or handing out post cards to promote awareness of, and participation in the drill. Finally, tweet about your ShakeOut experience (#shakeout)!
San Francisco is a great place to live, work and play and it’s important we all do what we can to be prepared for any kind of emergency, small or large.
A strong believer that we are more prepared they we think, sfdemkristin advocates it is not a looming disaster that inspires us to prepare, but rather the peace of mind that comes from having taking a few simple steps in advance of an emergency to take care of our loved ones. Kristin can be reached via Twitter @kristinlhogan.