Cedar Rapids program focuses on helping residents prepare for disasters

CEDAR RAPIDS — Cedar Rapids residents are all too familiar with disasters.

That’s why the city recently launched its Neighborhood PACT program, an initiative to encourage people to be prepared for a disaster and always be armed with emergency supplies and a plan.

With events like the 2008 flood and last summer’s derecho in recent memory, the city has made efforts to better respond to disasters.

Since the derecho, Cedar Rapids has formalized partnerships with WMT 600 AM and KKSY 96.5 FM to provide updates in future emergencies, in case typical communications are challenged as they were after the storm.

Locations to prop up Neighborhood Resource Centers also have been identified to act as distribution points for information and resources after a major disaster. Radio stations and city communication channels will broadcast where those centers have been activated after a disaster.

Additionally, the city contracted with a firm for $25,000 to conduct an after-action review of its derecho response. The report containing the firm’s findings is expected to come soon.

But this new initiative aims to empower residents by working with the Linn County Emergency Management Agency, local service providers and neighborhood associations to promote emergency preparedness and encourage residents to do the same with their families, friends and neighbors. The goal is to help residents feel prepared no matter the disaster, whether it is a fire, flood or severe storm.

“When we approach disaster preparedness, it really isn’t on one entity,” said Greg Buelow, public safety communications specialist for the city of Cedar Rapids. “It’s involved the city, partner agencies, our neighborhood, our family and ourselves, so it goes really at a micro-level that if we all have the responsibility for emergency preparedness, the results are probably going to be better.”

That does not necessarily mean a disaster will be severe, but Buelow said being prepared is the most essential component to minimizing risk of injury or death.

“If everybody plays a part in emergency preparedness, I think as a community we can be better prepared for an emergency,” Buelow said. “And this effort that we’re trying to do is really a campaign to try to help residents become more familiar with emergency preparedness plans, what resources are out there and what actions they can take before an emergency strikes.”

Here’s what else Buelow had to say about this public awareness campaign.

Q: How do you think the program will help people plan for the unexpected and have strategies in place no matter what disaster might strike?

A: The first thing that it’s going to do is it’s going to increase awareness, and that’s always a good thing. We want individuals to be informed about that there are steps they can do to prepare for an emergency. It will increase the likelihood that people will not become injured, and it can minimize property damage in some cases as well.

It also builds community camaraderie … where people are helping each other, so we use the word PACT to use four things that people can think about, and this follows the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s ready.gov campaign initiative. We just put a little bit of a twist on it in Cedar Rapids. We want people to be prepared.

I think that many people are going out right now thinking about that three-day kit — what they need to have to be able to sustain themselves for a period of time if the things that we count on every day like power, cellphone, internet, accessibility to places like grocery stores and stuff is disrupted — what can we do? And that includes making sure you have a flashlight, first aid kit, that three-day supply of food and water, a battery-operated radio and backups for your cellphone, and then a plan …

Getting people to act, make a plan and know ahead of time what they’re going to do is so important.

Q: This seems focused on what the city can do and what nonprofits and other organizations can do, as well as how neighbors can help neighbors to make it a grassroots effort. Why is that?

A: For things to really work well, you have to have that grassroots investment and it has to be at each level … Emergency preparedness comes down to that ownership. Each one of us has to be prepared. Each one of us needs to know what to do. That way we can help our family, that way we can help our neighborhood, that way we can help our community.

Q: This will mean ongoing education for residents. But how does this fit into the larger picture of the city’s efforts to become more resilient, and when disaster strikes to continue to have more effective responses?

A: With any type of situation that challenges you as an individual, as a city, as a county or as a state, especially when you talk to disaster professionals, there are always going to be opportunities to learn something from the disasters, with the different responses, with the different processes that you use to become better. And if a community doesn’t strive for that continuous improvement, they really do themselves a disservice. And so, I believe this is continuing to show that continual process and community improvement as we’ve met each challenge that we’ve been presented.

When you look at where the city was after the flood of 2008, it was devastating to see the core and neighborhoods in Cedar Rapids destroyed … The leadership and the community both said that we don’t want to just come back and get back to where we were — we want to get back to where we were and be better. And so, when they rebuilt, they did with a focus that we have to talk about flood prevention, we have to talk about ways that we can assure or try to make this not happen again, or if the impact does happen, it’s not so disruptive and devastating — how can we do that?

There was a number of things they did, but one of them was more people bought flood insurance, they want to be prepared. More talked about when they rebuild, what did they do to mitigate so they were above base flood elevation. We know the flood protection walls are going in. The city made a commitment that they were going to recover and try to improve not only the lives, but our preparedness. You saw the benefits with the 2016 flood, so many of the lessons born in 2008 were employed in 2016, and the response was tremendous …

The challenges that we have faced as a community, I think largely people have learned from these challenges and had the mindset that this was a really catastrophic event that’s happened to us, but how can we come back and how can we be better? And I think people have really embraced that.

Comments: (319) 398-8494; marissa.payne@thegazette.com