By Kellie Hale
September is recognized at National Preparedness Month (NPM). It was launched back in 2004 by FEMA through the organizations Ready Campaign as a way to promote disaster planning for families and communities. With COVID-19 continuing to impact our nation, it is the perfect opportunity to be involved in NPM.
Ready.gov provides a week-by-week plan of activities for September you can partake in with your family on how to be better prepared. Such activities include Make A Plan, Build A Kit, Prepare for Disasters, and Teach Youth About Preparedness.
Understanding more about the ways you can be prepared for disasters, not only helps reduce risks to the environment and health, but provides a great opportunity to for homeowners, families, communities, and businesses to help others understand the importance of disaster and emergency preparedness.
Our website offers its own webpage dedicated to preparedness. We honor the National Preparedness Goal core capabilities, which list community resilience as the ability to “lead the integrated effort to recognize, understand, communicate, plan, and address risks so that the community can develop a set of actions to accomplish Mitigation and improve resilience.”
Remember, emergencies can occur at any time and usually without warning. Multiple studies have demonstrated that if people proactively receive training before a disaster, they can minimize fatalities, injuries, and property damage.
Here are additional resources on how to be better prepared for emergencies and disasters:
https://www.epa.gov/natural-disasters/september-preparedness-month
https://www.weather.gov/bmx/outreach_npm
https://www.census.gov/newsroom/stories/preparedness-month.html