Town Crier Articles

Are You Prepared for an Emergency?

Posted on March 1, 2021 7:00 AM by Jack Espinal

Staring down a tornado or watching rising hurricane water adjacent to your home or losing heat and water due to a deep freeze are not the times to start thinking about emergency preparations. Do you currently have the knowledge, skills, and supplies to keep your family, pets, home at the ready in the event of, for example, a major weather emergency?

While we have not experienced any recent major disaster be it weather or otherwise in New Town, it would be irresponsible not to assume one will happen. The keys to maximizing safety and survival are in planning and preparation.

Our New Town Residential Association has an Emergency Preparedness Committee to help our community with advance emergency plans and preparations. All committee members are New Town residents who by profession and/or informal training have the motivation to be of assistance and are prepared to offer support in an emergency. Like other Williamsburg area community emergency teams our committee is affiliated with the James City County’s 318-member volunteer Community Emergency Response Team or CERT program.

Why are New Town’s Emergency Preparedness Committee and CERT necessary? In the event of, for example, a major, catastrophic weather incident we must be prepared to initially help ourselves. First responders from James City County and the Commonwealth of Virginia may be simultaneously needed in many areas of a widespread emergency stretching personnel and other assets thin. Normal modes of communications may be down. Thus, it may take additional hours or even days for assistance and support to reach us. Prepared and working together, we can temporarily fill that gap in services.

New Town’s volunteer Emergency Preparedness Committee and CERT members are trained to deal with many household and medical emergencies that are commonly encountered during emergencies. They may be the first to respond in any disaster. Some are also amateur radio operators who are prepared to provide emergency communications both short and long range via amateur “ham” radio.

What should you do now?

Talk with your family and make your own emergency plans. Depending on the emergency, one plan should be for an evacuation and one for a shelter in place.

Establish a meeting location (for any times you are separated from family members) in cases when evacuation from the Williamsburg area is recommended/mandated.

Build Emergency Bags containing things that will need during an emergency. It should include medications, change of clothing, personal hygiene items, battery-powered radio, blankets, bottled water, nonperishable food, and a hand operated can opener. Any important documents should be placed in sealable plastic bags. A battery or solar powered phone charger may be especially useful. Include some cash, because if the infrastructure is damaged by the emergency, credit and/or debit card may not be useful.

Take pets with you in the case of an evacuation. Have a crate for your pet with photo, vaccination record, medicine, food, and water. (If time permits, try to get any other animals to safety/shelter.)

Store everything you will want in the same area as much as possible to avoid using valuable time searching for items. Small items should be put in the Emergency Bags for ready access at a moment’s notice.

Finally, consider becoming CERT trained. The training will provide in-depth information on how to plan for and be prepared for an emergency – weather or otherwise. At the end of training one may elect to become a CERT member, but there will be no pressure to do so. No prior knowledge or skills or training are required to participate in the training. (CERT training will be offered in the spring; contact me to register.)

Our Emergency Preparedness Committee needs more members. This committee consists of six voting NTRA Members, but may have additional nonvoting members. So any New Town resident is welcome to join us!

Please call me at 703.946.5787, if you are interested or have questions about emergency preparation.

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