America’s PrepareAthon! National Day of Action Set for Thursday

DENVER – Thursday, April 30, is America’s PrepareAthon! National Day of Action, a grassroots campaign for action to get families, organizations and whole communities better prepared for emergencies. The campaign offers easy-to-use preparedness guides, checklists, and resources to help individuals prepare for common natural hazards and to take action, including downloading alerts and warnings, holding a drill, or safeguarding critical documents.

Despite the devastation that tornadoes, wildfires, and other natural disasters have caused in recent years, nearly 60 percent of surveyed Americans have not participated in a preparedness drill or exercise at their workplace, school, or home in the past year. The Federal Emergency Management Agency’s (FEMA) Denver-based regional office joins the states of Colorado, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Utah and Wyoming in encouraging the whole community to participate in the America’s PrepareAthon! campaign by performing one of these simple preparedness actions:

1. Sign up for local text alerts and warnings and download weather apps to your smartphone.
   Stay aware of worsening weather conditions. Visit ready.gov/prepare and download Be Smart: Know Your Alerts and Warnings to learn how to search for local alerts and weather apps relevant for hazards that affect your area.
2. Gather important documents and keep them in a safe place.
   Have all of your personal, medical, and legal papers in one place, so you can evacuate without worrying about gathering your family’s critical documents at the last minute. Visit ready.gov/prepare and download Be Smart: Protect Your Critical Documents and Valuables for a helpful checklist.
3. Create an emergency supply kit.
   Bad weather can become dangerous very quickly. Be prepared by creating an emergency supply kit for each member of your family. Visit ready.gov/kit for information on what to include in your kit.
4. Develop an emergency communication plan for your family.
   It’s possible that your family will be in different locations when a disaster strikes. Come up with a plan so everyone knows how to reach each other and get back together if separated. Visit ready.gov/make-a-plan for communication plan resources.

Every state in FEMA Region VIII has shown support for America’s PrepareAthon! this spring by aligning a variety of preparedness activities with the campaign. The National Weather Service in North Dakota, South Dakota and Wyoming held statewide tornado drills to prepare residents for severe spring and summer weather; nearly one million Utahns participated in earthquake drills during the Great Utah ShakeOut; and communities throughout Colorado and Montana will hold wildfire preparedness events on May 2 for Wildfire Community Preparedness Day, an America’s PrepareAthon! partner event.

For more information about America’s PrepareAthon!, visit ready.gov/prepare. Follow America’s PrepareAthon! on Twitter using the handle @Prepareathon and #PrepareAthon.

###

FEMA’s mission is to support our citizens and first responders to ensure that as a nation we work together to build, sustain, and improve our capability to prepare for, protect against, respond to, recover from, and mitigate all hazards.

Follow us on twitter @femaregion8.

For accessibility: The recommended font type is sans serif 12 point for regular print and sans serif 18 point when specifically printed for people with vision impairments.