5 First Steps for an Emergency Manager
As an Emergency Manager, you care about your community and you see that it is underprepared for emergencies. You want to engage citizen volunteers in the preparedness effort and implement a plan for preparing your community at all levels. Follow our recommended 5 First Steps to get started.
1. Prepare Your Household
This step is part of the foundation of Prepare Your Community, which consists of Household- and Street-Level Readiness.
To prepare your Household, work through each of the 9 Lifelines at the Household Level. Alternatively, you can follow the Prepare in a Year plan, which gives you one readiness activity per month over the course of a year.
2. Work with Neighbors to Ready Your Street
This step is also part of the Foundation of Prepare Your Community.
Reach out to some neighbors to look for interest in implementing the Ready Your Street program on your street. Set up a meeting with all neighbors, distribute the Ready Your Street booklet to everyone, select a Street-Level Meeting Place, create a map of your Street and where utility shutoffs are located, and list each household's human and animal occupants, any special needs, and any emergency-related skills. These skills might include nursing, electrician experience, map-making abilities, or anything that could relate to helping you and your neighbors recover from a disaster.
Find out how to launch the Ready Your Street program here:
3. Identify and Reach out to Potential Partners
The most imporant partners are your local Anytown Prepares organization (if there is one) and your Fire and Police Departments. Also consider any potential partners in your service area, from the Park District, the School District, and local hospitals to the Rotary, Lions, or Kiwanis Clubs, to the Y, a local United Way chapter, local businesses, and community champions.
These partners will form your preparedness partnership.
4. Recruit Key People for the Community Management Team
The Management Team is one of the 20 or more possible teams you can have to support your emergency preparedness work. This team consists of the people who establish the emergency preparedness plan, prioritize different aspects of that plan, and make sure the different elements of the partnership swork together without duplication of effort.
5. Create Your Emergency Plan and Synchronize Partner Plans
Each partner entity involved in your community's emergency preparedness will be responsible for creating their own 1- to 3-year strategic plans, including you as Emergency Manager. Your job is to synchronize those plans to make sure everyone is working efficiently toward the same goals.
At Bainbridge Prepares we came late to the realization that sycnronizing different plans is essential for a smooth-functioning communitywide approach. But we got there eventually and now we want to spare you the troubles that come from failing to do so.
Celebrate!
If you've followed all our recommendations and accomplished the tasks we set out here, congratulations! Even if you haven't, congratulations are in order if you're taking steps toward preparedness in your community.
What you're doing is so important but it's also very labor intensive. Remember to celebrate your accomplishments. Maybe it's time for a party to acknowledge your volunteers, your partnerships, and the milestones you've reached.
If you've managed to get through all 5 steps, now it's time to move your organization to the next level by taking a deep dive into our other materials and programs. Build more teams, prepare more Disaster Hubs, recruit more volunteers, create more educational programs and materials, tackle more Lifelines, and ready more Streets.
The more you do, the more you will see there is to be done. Remember: You will never achieve complete preparedness. You don't need to. Just keep moving in the right direction, doing the best you can.