Emergency preparedness: Are you ready for the little ones too?

VANCOUVER (NEWS 1130) – An emergency is not always a major incident. That’s coming from the City of Vancouver on emergency preparedness week.

There will be a number of events and activities happening to help make sure people are ready for a wide range of incidents.

Often in Vancouver, people associate an emergency with the “big one” and whether they’re ready for it. Director of Emergency Management Daniel Stevens says while earthquake preparedness is important, Canadians should be prepared for smaller-scale incidents.

“When you look at what’s happened in Vancouver in the last number of years, we’ve had the chemical fire that took place down at the port that put a large air quality issue over much of East Vancouver. And we had a shelter-in-place advisory that was provided to people, saying ‘Please stay in your homes, close your windows, and if you can seal them seal them with plastics,'” he explains.

Stevens says there are little things people often don’t think about — for instance, if there is an apartment fire, do you have a place to relocate to? Do you have a grab-and-go kit with basic supplies such as prescriptions, extra set of glasses, food, and water?

“It’s not all about the big one, but having a lot of the things in place for what we term as ‘the big one’ — that earthquake — is going to help you with a lot of the smaller emergencies that we deal with and make our lives much easier,” he tells NEWS 1130.

There will be an emergency preparedness week event at Canada Place, co-hosted with the Port of Vancouver, on Friday May 11.

“There will be an earthquake simulator that people can sort of get to experience what an earthquake feels like. There will be a giant emergency preparedness snakes and ladders game for the kids, to sort of engage them in the topic of emergency preparedness. As well, [there will be] information booths from a range of partners on the science side of hazards and emergency — how to get prepared and how to join our emergency preparedness teams.”

A recent survey by PreparedBC found many people are not prepared for an emergency.

“A lot of people have it in their mind but taking the steps to get prepared — whether that’s a plan or stock-piling some supplies at home or putting together a grab-and-go kit or getting to know your neighbours and building a more cohesive community that you live in — Those are the steps that are challenging to take and that’s one of the reasons we have emergency preparedness week to bring this to the front of mind to the public,” explains Stevens.

Emergency preparedness week is until May 13.

Check the City of Vancouver’s website for more information.

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