DISASTER PREPAREDNESS

No one really wants to think about emergency situations and their consequences. Unfortunately, bad things, including natural disasters like tornadoes or severe thunderstorms, happen when we least expect them. For this reason, we all need to do our best to prepare for the worst.  The old adage of an ounce of prevention being worth a pound of cure certainly applies when we find ourselves without power, no water, or recovering from fire.

This section of our website has been created as a community service to the Creek’s Edge residents with the goal of providing information on and ideas for dealing with a variety of scenarios that could occur when outages affect essential services.

Many of us have experienced these types of events. They include and are not limited to:

• Hurricanes and storms that affect essential services,

• Shortages of food and goods,

• Failures in the provision of water and electricity

When similar events of this type (and more) occur, lack of planning (by individuals and communities) cause disruptions as many people scramble for scarce resources. Often, lack of planning can be life-threatening. The links included below are well-thought out and cover many scenarios that you can use to consider the best way for you to plan to deal with severe events.  Many of the events listed on the Federal Government's planning website include outages of the following:

• Know what disasters and hazards could affect your area, how to get emergency alerts, and where you would go if you and your family need to evacuate or shelter in place.
• Loss of water and wastewater distribution systems.
• Loss of perishable foods and medications.
• Loss of heating/air conditioning and electrical lighting systems.
• Loss of computer systems, telephone systems and communications systems (including disruptions in airline flights, satellite networks and GPS services).
• Loss of public transportation systems.
• Loss of fuel distribution systems and fuel pipelines.
• Loss of all electrical systems that do not have back-up power.

This is a link to a Federal Government planning site is comprehensive. Specific planning approaches are in the “Plan” section of the site. There are at least 27 types of events listed.

Empower yourself to be ready ahead of time. As a community, having planned allows us to deal with unique issues that arise, knowing that we have done the essential planning.