Good to be King
By King Harris
Editor’s Note: Due to a mix-up, the wrong King Harris column was printed in this week’s edition. The correct column is published here.
How prepared are you for a natural catastrophe, like a major fire, flood, or earthquake? Does your family have a plan to coordinate with each other? Do you have backup provisions like food, water, and first aid supplies? Do you have flashlights, radios, and tools necessary in case of a calamity?
If the honest answer is “No,” and that wouldn’t surprise me, then perhaps you might want to think about attending a free all-day seminar on Saturday, March 21 at the SLO Vet’s Hall at 10 a.m. for the Fourth Annual Preparedness Expo.
Everything you need to know or learn about stocking up, training and being prepared for the next big one will be on-hand to guide you through a path of survival for you, your family, and your next-door neighbor.
One of the coordinators of the event is Loren Leidinger-Avila, chief development officer of the San Luis Obispo County Chapter of the American Red Cross, one of the sponsors of the Expo. She was there for the first expo in 2012 when she told me:
“You never know when something is going to happen to us. It can be so easy to procrastinate or believe ‘Oh that can’t happen to me.’ A great recent example occurred a couple of weeks ago when a nighttime fire quickly roared through a house on Johnson Avenue in San Luis, almost costing the lives of nine students who were in it at the time. And I’m sure none of them went to bed that night thinking they might be jumping out of second story windows trying to escape the flames. They barely got out with their lives.”
Leidinger-Avila stresses there are three major things one can do: have a pan, build a couple of emergency kits, and stay informed.
“I have three small children,” she told me. “The first thing my husband and I checked out was the emergency plan of the school that my kids went to. Learn about shelter in place if you’re not all together. And set up a contact with a family member not in the area who might serve as a coordinator. Plus know your neighbors. Dealing with the unknown is the scariest thing about an emergency.”
Leidinger-Avila and her dedicated crew will be at the Expo to tell you how to make an emergency plan, how to stay informed, and how to build disaster kits. “Kits don’t cost a lot of money if you build them week by week,” she said. “Worn clothing, old shoes, a previous pair of glasses is an inexpensive start. Include medications in this. Have a kit for your car and a more substantial one for your home. Have enough food and water for five days and don’t forget your pets. Flashlights are essential, as are tools to turn off water, gas, or electricity, and I recommend a crank radio in case the power goes out.”
Leidinger-Avila will also be teaching a free thirty minute course in hands-on CPR, which she says is a lot easier to learn and perform than it used to be.
Fire officials will be on hand offering information about a program called Community Emergency Response Training or CERT, a unique course designed to help you learn about taking care of yourself in the event emergency responders can’t get to you right away.
SLO County Sheriff Ian Parkinson said, “Preparing everybody for a disaster is extremely important. As we’ve seen on the East Coast we’ve seen these disasters where you get a lot of response from people wanting to help but when that’s not organized it becomes chaotic in itself. So the more we can educate people of ways to care for themselves, the better off we’re all going to be.
“We now have four fully engaged CERT units for the county which is great, we’d love to have 10, but the point is to educate people who want to know how to fend for themselves and almost be like a first responder. We might in the case of a tsunami, might have part of our coastline cut off and so our Cambria CERT team might have to deal with response in Cambria or we can bring over our Paso Robles team to help in Cayucos the more we communicate the more we educate on how to do things and how to prepare is extremely important and so helpful to first responders.”
Officials from PG&E, another major sponsor of the Expo, will be holding free seminars offering tips on gas and electricity dos and don’ts, as well as information on evacuation procedures involving Diablo Canyon.
Also at the event, vendors, booths, and displays, and a barbecue lunch benefiting the Red Cross. Food for thought that may save your life.