Sally Furniss
Well-known member
Plan for emergencies
Carrie Lane Budgeteer News
The Citizen’s Guide to Emergency Planning, in last week’s issue of the Budgeteer News, is the work of Public Health and Human Services staff and five student interns. Our hope is the guide will be a resource for you to keep with your family emergency plan and family emergency kit. Probably the hardest thing about preparing for an emergency is getting started. We tend to have so many things, and so little time to do them, that we put off things that don’t need our immediate attention, even though we recognize how important it is to plan for these emergencies.
What will it take to motivate you to put your emergency plan or emergency kit together?
The national news is full of examples of tragic wildfires and floods that could make you wonder how you would handle an evacuation or rescue. Too far away you say. The folks who live in the Grand Marais area may disagree with you given last spring’s wildfires. Duluth will never flood when it’s built on such a hill, you say. Perhaps not the city itself, but many low lying areas next to lakes and rivers are at risk. So, if the thought of a distant disaster or pandemic flu doesn’t get you planning, then use the next winter storm without electricity as motivation. Or, the next time you will be without water for an extended period of time. The department’s pandemic planner set a good example by having an emergency kit at home, and the 12 times his home was without water in 2006 was quite the motivation to revise his estimate of how much water he needed in his kit.
Besides the Citizen’s Guide, there are many resources on the Internet that can help you get ready. Nationally www.ready.gov and www.redcross.org are great resources.
Minnesota has recently launched a unique Web site that features an interactive function which will allow you to enter information about your family that results in calculations that are specific to your situation. You can print your custom results, and then log off the site. No one will be able to obtain or use any information you have entered, because it will be erased. Therefore, it’s important to print your plan and kit information before you leave the site. The codeReady web site is www.codeready.org.
St. Louis County Public Health and Human Services is motivated to ensure we are fully prepared, and we are helping others to be prepared as well.
Our current task is to get other businesses and organizations to first think about disasters and emergencies, and then plan how they will respond. We have begun to help the business and faith communities prepare for a probable pandemic influenza. Faith communities are encouraged to help their members prepare to be of assistance when a pandemic occurs.
While we can help others get ready, the responsibility largely rests on their shoulders. Each person, each family, each organization and business must do it themselves. When an emergency, disaster or pandemic happens, we won’t know how severe it will be or how long it will last. We won’t be able to predict when it will happen. So, if we all wait to prepare, there won’t be enough supplies; food, water, batteries, etc. We all have the responsibility to get ourselves up to speed sooner, rather than later.
That’s my attempt to get you motivated.
Now, it is up to you.
http://www.duluthbudgeteer.com/arti...OKEN=11666796&jsessionid=8830876e6fd32b752926
Carrie Lane Budgeteer News
The Citizen’s Guide to Emergency Planning, in last week’s issue of the Budgeteer News, is the work of Public Health and Human Services staff and five student interns. Our hope is the guide will be a resource for you to keep with your family emergency plan and family emergency kit. Probably the hardest thing about preparing for an emergency is getting started. We tend to have so many things, and so little time to do them, that we put off things that don’t need our immediate attention, even though we recognize how important it is to plan for these emergencies.
What will it take to motivate you to put your emergency plan or emergency kit together?
The national news is full of examples of tragic wildfires and floods that could make you wonder how you would handle an evacuation or rescue. Too far away you say. The folks who live in the Grand Marais area may disagree with you given last spring’s wildfires. Duluth will never flood when it’s built on such a hill, you say. Perhaps not the city itself, but many low lying areas next to lakes and rivers are at risk. So, if the thought of a distant disaster or pandemic flu doesn’t get you planning, then use the next winter storm without electricity as motivation. Or, the next time you will be without water for an extended period of time. The department’s pandemic planner set a good example by having an emergency kit at home, and the 12 times his home was without water in 2006 was quite the motivation to revise his estimate of how much water he needed in his kit.
Besides the Citizen’s Guide, there are many resources on the Internet that can help you get ready. Nationally www.ready.gov and www.redcross.org are great resources.
Minnesota has recently launched a unique Web site that features an interactive function which will allow you to enter information about your family that results in calculations that are specific to your situation. You can print your custom results, and then log off the site. No one will be able to obtain or use any information you have entered, because it will be erased. Therefore, it’s important to print your plan and kit information before you leave the site. The codeReady web site is www.codeready.org.
St. Louis County Public Health and Human Services is motivated to ensure we are fully prepared, and we are helping others to be prepared as well.
Our current task is to get other businesses and organizations to first think about disasters and emergencies, and then plan how they will respond. We have begun to help the business and faith communities prepare for a probable pandemic influenza. Faith communities are encouraged to help their members prepare to be of assistance when a pandemic occurs.
While we can help others get ready, the responsibility largely rests on their shoulders. Each person, each family, each organization and business must do it themselves. When an emergency, disaster or pandemic happens, we won’t know how severe it will be or how long it will last. We won’t be able to predict when it will happen. So, if we all wait to prepare, there won’t be enough supplies; food, water, batteries, etc. We all have the responsibility to get ourselves up to speed sooner, rather than later.
That’s my attempt to get you motivated.
Now, it is up to you.
http://www.duluthbudgeteer.com/arti...OKEN=11666796&jsessionid=8830876e6fd32b752926