By Sarah Wallace

Emergency Preparedness Week celebrated across Canada

May 7, 2013 | 12:23 PM

Monday marked the start of Emergency Preparedness Week across Canada.

Lyle Karasiuk with Parkland Ambulance said this is the time of year when they want people to take stock of their everyday happenings and surroundings and be prepared for the worst.

“It’s pretty timely here in Saskatchewan, especially in the Prince Albert area where we’ve got some significant flooding happening but emergency preparedness means to look at things like ‘am I organized, do I have a plan, do I have a kit?’ [Those] are the three corner stones of emergency preparedness week,” Karasiuk said.

Karasiuk broke down each of the three corner stones.

1. Know the risks

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“If I live in an area known for flooding, if I live in an area that might have a big grass fire come through or even a forest fire or even just as simply at home if I have a family, we want people to know the risks,” Karasiuk explained.

2. Make a plan

“If something were to happen what do I do next? Where do I go? What do I need to do? We often think that emergency preparedness is that the government or someone else will look after us, municipal, federal, provincial. Certainly those people will take care of us but we want you to be prepared from an emergency services perspective at least for 72 hours,” Karasiuk said.

“[Seventy-two hours] is just before the system can take over and start to implement aid stations or housing or those sorts of things.”

3. Get a kit

“If you go to the simple easy website www.getprepared.ca, the Government of Canada has lots of great resources and lots of linkages that you and I can use to build up and make things much safer at home,” Karasiuk continued.

He said it’s really easy to make a kit.

“You can take an old piece of luggage, you can take a Rubbermaid tub, and you need to be sort of self-sufficient for the first 72 hours. So if you have kids maybe that’s going to involve some board games, it’s certainly going to involve battery-powered radios, battery-powered flashlights. If you have pets you have to think of them,” Karasiuk explained.

“Most importantly you need to think of some food and/or some water. But often it’s also just those important papers that we might have, a first aid kit and the list goes on.”

He said www.getprepared.ca has a full list of items that would be important to have in a kit.

Karasiuk used a simple example of why it’s important to be prepared for any type of situation.

If a police officer was to come to your door at 2 a.m. and said you have 10 minutes to leave your house because of a major fire down the street or something else major happened, would you be prepared?

“If somebody came and gave you short notice to leave, what would you take? Where would you go? What are the resources you need to take? And that’s where we start to say make a plan and build a kit,” said Karasiuk.

He used the big blackout in the summer of 2012 in Prince Albert and area as the perfect example of why it’s important to be prepared.

Many people during that time were without power for a minimum of 24 hours and many around Prince Albert were without power for a few days.

This winter there were even times where people became snowed in for a day or more.

“Make a plan, know that that plan is possible to be used and know what you need to do which is having those extra things in my kit ready to go,” Karasiuk finished.

swallace@panow.com

On Twitter: @sarahthesquid