Long Beach Emphasizes Emergency Preparedness

Kelly Truong and fellow members of the Long Beach Fire Corps and CERT demonstrated a rescue of a victim trapped under a car Saturday at the 6th annual READY Long Beach emergency preparedness event at the Cal State Long Beach campus. A 4.5 magnitude earthquake on Sept. 18, a wildfire on the other side of Los Angeles for most of the month, the continuing COVID-19 pandemic — and September is National Preparedness Month. That was enough for Long Beach’s Disaster Preparedness and Emergency Communications Department to send reminders that people should prepare for disasters. The annual Preparedness Expo was canceled because of the pandemic, but that only emphasizes the need to be prepared, according to department director Reginald Harrison. 300×250 image ad The gold standard of preparedness is the ability to be self-sustaining for seven days after an emergency in case first responders are unable to get to them. Every person in the household should have a “go bag,” full on the necessary items in case of an evacuation. Long Beach also has an alert system to send emergency notifications to cell phones via text. People can sign up, and find much more about emergency preparedness, at Gazettes.com/go/alert . […]

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