Fort Huachuca, Arizona, - Over the month of April events have been taking place nationwide to help ensure America's preparedness in the event of an emergency.
America's PrepareAthon is a grassroots movement that highlights the importance of preparedness for reacting to any sort of emergency situation.
"The U.S. Army has teamed up with the Federal Emergency Management Agency, or FEMA, in a partnership to encourage everyone's preparedness and that is captured under the theme of America's PrepareAthon 2015," said Stephen McCann, installation emergency manager.
Two events are held every year to encourage citizens to prepare for emergency situations, April 30 is America's PrepareAthon Day and the month of September is National Preparedness Month.
Fort Huachuca has already conducted several events as part of America's PrepareAthon! One major event was during the Month of the Military Child celebration April 11 at the Thunder Mountain Activity Centre.
"I had a booth set up that provided handouts, that encouraged the young people to prepare for emergencies," McCann said. "Let me tell you, I was so excited about the response I got from some of the young teens and preteens. They really showed an interest in preparedness. The standard Ready Army materials were available. They highlight some of the important steps of being prepared. The four steps are be informed, make a plan, build a kit and be involved. FEMA materials were also available."
The preparedness events were broken down into four themes and have been held weekly for the past three weeks. The first week's theme was preparing the individual workspace by updating rosters and familiarizing personnel with the AtHoc desktop emergency notification system, McCann said.
The second week was going over internal procedures, such as fire drills and updating people with emergency plans inside and outside of the home and office, he added.
"The third week was technical training on some of the programs that are used such as Web Emergency Operation Center," McCann said. "Which is a program that provides a common operational picture so both our installation partners and off post partners have the means of maintaining situational awareness if an event is taking place on the installation that causes the activation of the EOC."
The fourth week's activities, which take place next week, will include booths set up throughout the installation, including Raymond W. Bliss Army Health Center, Network Enterprise Technology Command, the Exchange and the Commissary.
"In addition since this is a partnership with FEMA we've also scheduled to have a representative from the American Red Cross provide a couple of briefs at [Cochise Theater] on April 30," McCann said. "The times for the briefs are 10 a.m., noon and 2 p.m. Each brief will be roughly 45 minutes."
The briefs are an opportunity to see examples of emergency evacuation bags and as well as to ask questions on how to prepare for an emergency situation.
"It is important to have the PrepareAthon! because sometimes people forget about the dangers in their local surroundings," McCann explained. "An emergency situation often doesn't advertise itself, they happen quickly and if we don't on occasion think about the emergency situations, we may not be prepared both physiologically or psychologically.
"So it's an opportunity to just reset and focus on those things that would help insure a quick response and more importantly a quick recovery. If you are prepared for an event you will be more prepared to recover.
"It takes just the involvement of the individual citizen to ensure that the next event will be a minor interruption in everyone's lives as long as we prepare for that event," he added.
For more information on how to be better prepared in an emergency situation, visit www.acsim.army.mil/readyarmy or www.ready.gov.
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