National Preparedness Month 2022

September is National Preparedness Month. Each year National Preparedness Month is recognized to promote family and community disaster and emergency planning. Each year FEMA puts out a themed campaign during National Preparedness Month to bring attention to the need to prepare for potential disasters. This year’s campaign is called, “A Lasting Legacy“.

The Ready.gov website has a number of resources to help your community conduct disaster and emergency planning. A variety of handouts, guides, public service announcements, and a link to the FEMA app are all available through the website. 

FEMA also has a YouTube site with a wide array of videos that your community can watch and learn from. One such video is on developing and facilitating tabletop exercises. No, this is not a community-based version of Dungeons and Dragons. But exercises that take into account different scenarios and helps your community work through how to respond to them.

As per the FEMA website:

Tabletop exercises are discussion-based sessions where team members meet in an informal, classroom setting to discuss their roles during an emergency and their responses to a particular emergency situation. A facilitator guides participants through a discussion of one or more scenarios.

Even if you think your community is prepared, think again. Go through some of the planning exercises offered through the Ready.gov website to find areas you’ve missed. Even if there hasn’t been much change in your community since the last disaster and emergency planning exercise, there may be new information and ways to prepare, requiring changes to your plans.