Get Healthy Carson City: Neighbors helping neighbors effective in disaster planning

This column appears in the Nevada Appeal Tuesday health pages. It addresses topics related to the health of our community.

Research on preparedness shows that people who believe themselves “prepared” for disasters often are not as ready as they think. According to the Department of Homeland Security, 40 percent of survey respondents did not have household plans, 80 percent had not conducted home evacuation drills, and almost 60 percent did not know their community’s evacuation routes. Additionally, nearly 20 percent of those surveyed reported having a disability that would affect their capacity to respond to an emergency situation, yet only one out of four of them had made arrangements specific to their disability to help them respond safely in the event of an emergency.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) places a huge value on communities that embrace a whole community, comprehensive preparedness attitude; a neighbors helping neighbors approach. With 46 percent of individuals expecting to rely a “great deal” on people in their neighborhood for assistance within the first three days after a disaster, whole communities coming together to plan, respond, and recover from emergencies, often helps meet the needs of everyone.

Becoming more prepared in case of an emergency is easier than you might think. Whether it is your home, your neighborhood, your work place, or your school, every step you take to prepare helps your community be better prepared. A variety of free tools are available to help you become better prepared in each of these settings. You can access Ready.gov to learn more about how to help your family, neighbors, and community be better prepared for a disaster.

Our community’s emergency managers, firefighters, law enforcement officers, EMT/paramedics, and other emergency responders do an incredible job of keeping us safe, but they cannot do it alone. We must all embrace our individual responsibility to be prepared — in doing so we contribute to the safety and security of the nation as well.

Carson City Health and Human Services (CCHHS) wants you to be prepared for any type of disaster to assist our community with being ready for an emergency. For more preparedness tips and information, please visit our website at http://gethealthycarsoncity.org/ or visit us at www.facebook.com/cchhs.

This article is part of a four-part series developed for National Preparedness Month. The Public Health Preparedness (PHP) Division at CCHHS is funded entirely by federal grants from the Centers from Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response (ASPR), awarded each year through the Nevada Division of Public and Behavioral Health. CCHHS works closely with partner agencies such as fire, healthcare, social services, and nonprofit community organizations to accomplish preparedness activities across Western Nevada.

This article is part of a four-part series developed for National Preparedness Month. The Public Health Preparedness (PHP) Division at CCHHS is funded entirely by federal grants from the Centers from Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response (ASPR), awarded each year through the Nevada Division of Public and Behavioral Health. CCHHS works closely with partner agencies such as fire, healthcare, social services, and nonprofit community organizations to accomplish preparedness activities across Western Nevada.