On September 20th, we held our neighbourhood emergency preparedness party. Our hope was to reach more of our neighbours to let them know about the ongoing efforts we are engaged in to improve our resilience in the event of an emergency.
Our core group of nine households identified what we felt was a manageable size for us to reach out to which resulted in an area of about 50 homes. We created a poster inviting people to join us and learn more about how we can create a better prepared and more resilient community. Members of our group went door to door to deliver the posters and many of the people they spoke to were very interested in what we are doing.
On the day of the event, we set up in the backyard of one of our group members. We had information on personal emergency preparedness (flyers, checklists, sample emergency kits), dealing with wildfire smoke, food resilience, a sign-up list to join our group, a draw to win an air filter along with snacks and drinks. We offered two workshops, one on building your own air filter and the second on backup power featuring portable solar panels and electric cars. This session featured a portable kitchen that served freshly cooked pizza. Because it was a sunny day, the portable oven was able to run almost exclusively on solar power. The air filters made during the demonstration were given to attendees who had entered our draw.
A local Firesmart representative participated in the event and gave a short overview the work they are doing to create homes and neighbourhoods that are better prepared for wildfires. Six households signed up for firesmart assessments while others had already had assessments and were working on the resulting recommendations.
Overall, we had 24 people participate in our event including two people from other NEP groups in our area that we didn’t know about. It was great to hear about what others are doing. We had very positive feedback and everyone who came felt they learned something new. It also strengthened the bonds among our core group. Everyone helped out in one way or another whether it was preparing snacks, picking up coffee, putting up posters or leading workshops. We believe this level of participation bodes well for how we would function in an emergency. And we had fun.
