Building Resilient Communities

September is Emergency Preparedness month, so this is a great time for all of us in the Greater Brighton area to think about what we can each do to prepare ourselves, our families, our neighbors, our schools and workplaces, and therefore our community, to be able to respond to and recover from an emergency situation. An emergency may be as personal as a fire in your home or a serious illness in your family, or community-wide, such as severe weather, a flu epidemic, or an event, deliberate or accidental, that results in massive injuries or damage, or disrupts power, communications, or transportation.

During the month of September, Brighton Emergency Management will be presenting articles, presentations, and information to help you take some simple steps that will make your family and your community better prepared to handle many different types of emergencies. We encourage you to share the information in these articles with your immediate and extended family members, friends, and co-workers. Discuss the information in a Homeowner’s Association meeting, at your church, with your PTA. Ask to have a discussion about emergency preparedness added to your office’s staff meeting agenda. Start the conversations!

Disasters are first and foremost a local phenomenon. Local communities are on the front lines of both the immediate impact of a disaster and the initial emergency response. You have probably heard that in a wide-spread disaster, first responders (fire, police, paramedics) may not be able to reach you for 72 hours, perhaps longer. How well we are each prepared as individuals, employees, parents, and neighbors to respond to a disaster will make the difference in our ability to quickly recover and to assist others in immediate need of assistance. Those of us who do not become educated, informed, and prepared to respond appropriately to an emergency or disaster situations may become a burden to our neighbors or to the community. Building a resilient community starts with each of us, individually.

Here are 10 things you can do to help you be more prepared to respond to an emergency situation, and to help others in your community:

1. Develop family emergency plans so information on the various hazards that we deal with can be discussed for awareness purposes, initial response actions/expectations shared and recovery efforts will be easier to implement if everyone has an understanding of what could happen while at home, work, or school. These plans can include:
• Fire preparation and evacuation - making sure you have working fire alarms and carbon monoxide detectors, and knowing how and where to evacuate your home/school/work and where to meet outside of that location.
• Evacuation Plans – making sure you know the major routes in your area, having the needed supplies to make a quick evacuation, knowing where your shelter locations are and educating your family members on this plan if you are separated.
• Shelter-in-Place Plans – making sure you know what this means and how to get your home prepared for this, having the proper supplies to stay in home for up to 72 hours. All planning should ensure that everybody, including caregivers, knows what to do in the event of any type of emergency or disaster.
• Develop an emergency communication plan with your family. Designate an out-of-state friend or relative who will act as a central point for messages from family members; it may be easier to reach an out-of-state phone than to place local calls if communications infrastructure is disrupted. Put critical phone numbers in everybody’s cell phones and in their wallets.
2. Develop and practice several types of plans at-home so everyone is aware of what to do, know and understand the warning systems that are available to us. Practice makes perfect.
3. Talk to a neighbor, relative, or co-worker and encourage him or her to develop these various plans as well and practice them with their family members. Network with your neighbors and build support systems for one another. Reach out to the elderly, shut-in, or disabled population. Ensure that they have practical plans for responding to emergencies, including current information on how to contact family, friends or neighbors who will come to their aid. Offer to help them create plans and emergency kits. Elderly people or people with disabilities who live alone tend to become isolated and may hesitate to ask for assistance. People helping people.
4. Begin developing in-place sheltering capabilities. What would your family need if you could not leave your house and nobody could get to you for several days? What if you had no power and there was a snowstorm? We’ll provide you with some suggested items for a 72-hour Family Emergency Kit in an upcoming article, but some things are going to be obvious. Buy three or four things on your next trip to the grocery store to get your kit started, such as bottled water, canned food, and toilet paper. If you buy a few things each time you go grocery shopping, you’ll get your kit built up and you won’t have to spend a lot of money all at once.
5. Develop evacuation plans for your family, in case you are instructed to leave the neighborhood on short notice. Know in advance who will pick up the kids from school, where you would meet locally, and where you would meet several miles out of town. Have a list prepared in advance of the critical things you would want to take with you. Keep extra cash on hand. Fill your gas tanks when they are half-empty, so you never have less than ½ tank of gas in each vehicle.
6. Make sure that all of your pets have current vaccinations and that you have copies of all of those records. We’ll give you additional information about preparing your pets for emergencies in an upcoming article, but this will be action item #1.
7. Make a donation to an organization that provides assistance in the event of a disaster. This could include local services such as Meals On Wheels, local animal shelters, the Red Cross, Salvation Army, etc.
8. Volunteer within your community. Know and understand how you can assist the local government during emergencies or disasters. Your skill set maybe needed. Check with current organizations such as the Red Cross, Salvation Army, Goodwill, food banks, local churches and get involved.
9. Give blood.
10. Register for Brighton’s next “Be Ready” class, an 8-hour class that covers many aspects of preparing for and responding to an emergency. The next class is scheduled for Saturday, November 17 from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. at the Brighton Police Department. Contact Rebecca Martinez at rmartinez@brightonco.gov or 303-655-2316 to register.
11. Extra Credit! Make five copies of this article (on recycled paper, of course!) and share it with others in your neighborhood, your community, or your workplace. Give a copy to your barista, your dry cleaner, your kid’s teacher. Get the conversation started.

If you can complete one, two, three or all of these you will have taken significant steps to help yourself, your family, and our community be more prepared to respond to and recover from an emergency event.

For more information on how you can prepare your family and others in your community, visit the City of Brighton website, http://www.brightonco.gov/, click on Departments, then Emergency Management. We will be running more articles during the month of September giving you more information about creating a 72-hour Family Emergency Kit, preparing your pet for an emergency, Emergency Management within the City of Brighton and the Greater Brighton Fire Protection District, and how you can help to make your neighborhood and community more resilient.

Contact the City of Brighton Emergency Manager, Rebecca Martinez, with questions or comments. She can be reached at rmartinez@brightonco.gov or 303-655-2316. “Community” can be de