America’s PrepareAthon! National Day of Action is being held today, April 30, to provide a national focus for individuals, organizations, and communities to participate through drills, group discussions, and exercises to practice for relevant local hazards.
Across the nation, over five million people are participating in events to increase emergency preparedness and resilience through hazard-specific drills, group discussions and exercises. Secretary Johnson and Federal Emergency Management Agency Administrator Fugate encourage you to take part in America’s PrepareAthon!, a nationwide, community-based campaign for action to increase local preparedness and resilience through hazard-specific drills, group discussions, and exercises.
The goal of this new campaign is to increase the number of individuals who understand which disasters could happen in their community, know what to do to be safe and mitigate damage, take action to increase their preparedness, and participate in community resilience planning.
Research shows that communities are better prepared to withstand a disaster and can recover more quickly if the entire community is involved.
The America's PrepareAthon! campaign offers easy steps that you can take to get prepared now so you are able to take immediate action and recover more quickly during and after a disaster. These actions include:
- Practicing going to your protective location if you live in tornado-prone areas
- Signing up for local text alerts/warnings and downloading hazard-related apps to your smartphone
- Gathering all of your important documents and keeping them in a safe place
- Creating a family communications plan so that everyone knows how to reach each other and meet each other if separated during an emergency
While participating in PrepareAthon! events today, we encourage you to share information about your PrepareAthon! events by using #PrepareAthon in your social media postings. We’re proud of you for taking action; it shows the spirit of individual and community preparedness is continuing to reach new heights.
We encourage you to learn more about how you can play a role in your community’s preparedness by visiting www.ready.gov/prepare.