Primghar, Iowa — We are wrapping up September — National Preparedness Month. It’s recognized each September to promote family and community disaster planning now and throughout the year.
The awareness month is put on by the Department of Homeland Security.
O’Brien County Emergency Manager Jared Johnson tells us how the month is marked in Iowa.
(as said:) “Iowa Preparedness Month is held in conjunction with National Preparedness Month. So throughout this month, each week there is a different theme. So our first week was talking about making a plan. We encourage individuals to work either at your workplace or at home to form a plan that can be used in an emergency situation. And then we recommend, once your plan is created — sharing that information with your family members so that they understand what to do during types of disasters that we could face.”
He tells us about the next topic.
(As said:) “…what to do to build a kit and items to include in that kit — so some items that we recommend an emergency kit include water, non-perishable food, weather radio, blankets… sometimes it’s good to include personal hygiene items, and then extra batteries and flashlights as well. There is information over what to include in an emergency preparedness kit on the website called bereadyiowa.gov. There’s also ready.gov which provides information to the public over items to include in the kit.”
He says the next topic was how to prepare for disasters.
(as said:) “It’s good to know the different risks in the area that you live and also in the area that you work. Some of the hazards that we may face in our area include flash floods, thunderstorms, severe wind, hail. We face snowstorms, and then we also need to prepare for the potential for a tornado. So it’s good to know what type of risks are in the area that you live so you can try to prepare and mitigate for those risks.”
According to Johnson, they also focused on how to teach children about preparedness.
(as said:) “We recommend, you know parents working with their children or grandparents working with their grandchildren to discuss, you know, what things to do if there would be an emergency situation that occurs… where the emergency preparedness kit is at and then also items that are included in the emergency plan which may include emergency contact information if something were to come up. There is a variety of great information and resources that are out on several websites, but one that we do reference quite often is the www.bereadyiowa.gov there’s also information on the OBrienEMA.org website. We have kind of information that includes PDF documents that you can download for what to include in an emergency plan or in an emergency kit.”
Johnson tells us one of the ways you can be prepared is to sign up for “O’Brien Alerts” if you live in O’Brien County.
(as said:) “O’Brien alerts is a way that you can receive a text message or a voice call for different types of natural weather emergencies and we can also send out different types of other types of specific alerts such as like a law enforcement warning or a shelter-in-place warning or if there were it was a different type of hazard that’s not a weather-type of warning we can create our own alerts to send out. So that’s something we’ve been advertising over the last several years, and we’ve had a great amount of new participation in that program, which is great.”
Again, those links he mentioned:
ready.gov
beready.iowa.gov
obrienema.org
