WPV-Ready Class
Basics of Personal and Neighborhood Emergency Preparedness
This class covers the unique risks in our area, how to stay informed, how to get ready for emergencies/disasters, how to engage with your neighbors, and how to learn more and get involved in Emergency Preparedness and Response today.
Topics include
- The emergency risks in our area
- What to do before, during, and after a wildfire
- What to do before, during, and after an earthquake
- Basic First Aid
- Smoke and CO alarms
- Fire extinguishers
- Engaging your neighborhood
- Next steps
The basic recipe for emergency preparedness...
- Know the risks. In our area, those are earthquake, wildland fire, and storms and the landslides that they bring.
- Get emergency alerts. SMCAlert is the primary source for alerts in our area. Get more information below.
- Make a plan. There is no time to prepare, once the emergency strikes. Make a plan now.
- Get involved. Think about your plan. Expand it. Work on it with neighbors and the rest of the community. The more we work together, the better we are individually prepared.
You can get a copy of the class slides here.
You can watch videos of the last online presentation of this class on our YouTube channel.
Resources
One of the "problems" of the emergency preparedness community is that there is so much material available, it can be hard to find trustworthy sources. Here we provide a sample of good resources from trustworthy sources. Some of it is repititious. But sometimes one source says something in a way that makes more sense than another.
We hope that you will make it a part of your "occasional curiosity," to do some searches on these topics and read some other articles on them. Find resources that work for you.
WPV-Ready
Of course, we have some of our own home-grown resources. These are particularly relevant to us here in our district.
Cal Fire
Cal Fire is the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection.
FEMA
FEMA is the Federal Emergency Management Agency. It is part of the Department of Homeland Security.
NFPA
NFPA is the National Fire Protection Association.
Ready.Gov
The Ready campaign is a project of the Department of Homeland Security, devoted to Emergency Preparedness.
American Red Cross
Fire Safe San Mateo County
This is a partnership of organizations in our county, founded by local Fire Chiefs, and dedicated to maintaining "the quality of life while protecting property and the environment for citizens living in the wildland/urban-interface zones of San Mateo County through public and private partnerships for education and fuel reduction."
DisasterSafety.org
DisasterSafety.org features projects to help home and business owners protect their property from damage caused by natural disasters. It is a product of the Insurance Institute for Business & Home Safety (IBHS).
Washington State Emergency Management Department
These folks have some good material. They also worry about volcanos in Washington!
WFPD
WFPD is the Woodside Fire Protection District. This is our fire department.
Earthquake Country Alliance
As their website describes, "Creating a culture of resiliency for all Californians depends on leveraging our efforts and sharing our strengths. The purpose of the Earthquake Country Alliance (ECA) is to facilitate these efforts. ECA is a statewide public-private partnership of people, organizations, and regional alliances that work together to improve preparedness, mitigation and resiliency."
USGS
USGS is the U.S. Geological Survey. They have more useful resources on earthquake, flood risk, and other geology-related issues than we can begin to cover here. This is the kind of website where you will discover something new every time you browse it for a while.
San Mateo County
Our county doesn't often post a lot of emergency preparedness content. But recently, they convened a Civil Grand Jury to examine the issue of wildfire risk. Below are the results.
Some Post-Disaster Tips
Our friends at PreparednessGuide.org sent us these useful pages full of tips to help recover after a disaster.
Of course, a lot of it has to do with preparing properly!
Other
Some things just do not fit under a larger category. So they go here.
There was an article in The Atlantic that caught our eye. It was based on a research paper published in the Wiley journal, Earth's Future. Here are the article and the paper.