with treating injured survivors as part of the exercise.
Residents Practice Their Response Together
During the exercise, community members took part by pretending to be civilian community responders or injured survivors of an earthquake. An hour into the exercise, after community members provided basic first aid and completed search and rescue missions, local law enforcement, firefighters, Community Emergency Response Teams (CERT) members, and other emergency responders joined the exercise. They practiced how the neighborhood would work with responders arriving on the scene of a disaster. The responders evaluated how the community carried out their plan and gave feedback at the end of the exercise.
save injured survivors as professional responders evaluated them.
“Saying ‘it will never happen’ is not an effective neighborhood disaster response plan,” explained Emergency Manager Mona Curry, Los Angeles EMD. “This full-scale earthquake drill taking place in South Los Angeles, which can be applied to any neighborhood, allowed neighbors to practice responding on their own in the event of a massive earthquake or other type of disaster.”
Visit the 5 Steps to Neighborhood Preparedness website for more details and photos from the exercise. The website also has information you can use to build a similar program in your own community.
The success of the 5 Steps is in the News!