Chesterfield County, Virginia Excerpts from Board of Supervisors meetings, 9 Mar 2022

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From YouTube: Chesterfield Community Preparedness Update - BOS Meeting March 9, 2022

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Chesterfield County Emergency Management Coordinator Jessica Robison presented a severe weather awareness update to the Board of Supervisors at the March 9 BOS meeting. Robison also highlighted several programs available to the community stay safe.

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Yes, if I could have chess robinson come down our emergency management coordinator, it is severe weather awareness week and you know she helps keep everybody prepared, citizens, employees and employers, and I think it's just with everything going on. Nowadays, too, it doesn't hurt to be reminded of what you may need to do to survive through uh storms, whether natural or otherwise.

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Absolutely good evening, mr.

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Members of the board, dr casey, thank you for giving me this opportunity to share information about emergency management's community preparedness program. This week is severe weather awareness week in virginia. So this is the perfect time to get everyone thinking about the hazards and threats we face as a community and how to prepare mitigate respond to and recover from them.

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While we have several weeks per year dedicated to various types of severe weather preparedness, we take an all hazards approach to our outreach and training efforts, meaning we talk about natural, technological and man-made disasters.

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A resilient community is a prepared community, one that can not only withstand a disaster but bounce back and then thrive. Community outreach and education is one of our most prioritized mitigation strategies. According to fema, every one dollar invested in mitigation saves six dollars in recovery costs.

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In recent years, fema has placed a national priority of a national priority on proactive preparation. There's a lot of peas going on there rather than a reactive response.

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In addition to our popular cert program, emergency management has a thriving public outreach program with a robust list of course offerings. Our household personal emergency preparedness course is designed to prepare residents for impacts associated with a variety of hazards.

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The common themes of household preparedness, regardless of the specific disaster, are get a kit make a plan stay informed.

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Topics discussed during this course include items needed to be self-sufficient for at least 72 hours, with limited resources such as power how to make a family communication plan, how to plan for pets and family members with medical, functional or access needs, and where to receive timely information.

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This class can be adapted for people of all ages, including children in teaching household preparedness. We have learned that financial preparedness was a topic. Residents asked more questions about. We realized a need and developed a financial emergency preparedness course.

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This course is designed around fema's emergency financial first aid toolkit and provides information and insight on insurance, the importance of vital documentation and records how to keep your personal information safe, how to spot a scam, post-disaster and the realities of fema assistance for individual residents.

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Each participant will receive a printed version of fema's toolkit, which is also available for download on our and fema's website.

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In addition to home and financial preparedness classes for individuals and households, we have a preparedness training for the business community as well, where we discuss concepts of how to prepare the business the workforce and discuss important topics of continuity of operations. Planning emergency management also offers preparedness training on how to appropriately respond to everyday emergencies, which also translates into useful disaster preparedness skills.

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You are, the help until help arrives, is fema's active bystander training. In this course, we teach residents how to effectively communicate with 9-1-1 how to ensure scene safety, how to attend to bleeding and injuries prior to the arrival of ems and awareness of the psychological impact that event has on themselves and their victims stop. The bleed is a course that focuses more in depth, on techniques to control life-threatening bleeds and, as a result of the pulse point release.

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We have now partnered with fire and life safety to provide hands-only, cpr and aed awareness training, which provide residents with the basic know-how to render aid to those who experience sudden cardiac arrest.

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All the trainings I have mentioned are absolutely free to the community. We do have offerings of preparedness courses every month. Residents can sign up for already scheduled classes in march and april on our webpage at www.chesterfield.gov.

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Em, if there is a community group organization or business that would like an individual, offering email, em, chesterfield chesterfield.gov and our team will work with that organization to schedule a group training and yes, those trainings can be held on nights and weekends.

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Additional resources, information and downloadable materials for an array of hazards can be found on our website. You see our little screenshot there or by contacting us via email.

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We also are able to pull additional preparedness, information resources and downloadables from the websites you see here on your screen. The virginia department of emergency management, as well as fema, also provide hazard, specific information according to different threats that you may experience again: natural, technological or man-made.

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We also have select printed materials at our local libraries.

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Information before during and after disasters can be found on our social media sites be sure to follow. Chesterfield, va emergency management on facebook and em chesterfield on twitter, as well as the chesterfield county, social media sites managed by our friends in communications and media.

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With that, I would also like to take a moment to highlight and congratulate communications and media this evening for being selected as the 2022 adam ward, public information excellence award recipient by the virginia emergency management association.

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The adam ward, public information excellence award is presented to an individual or organization in recognition of their outstanding efforts to educate and inform the public about life-saving actions before, during or after a disaster.

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This award recognizes the importance of creating clear and actionable information that helps the public, make informed decisions and the importance of public information in emergency management. Our emergency management team is so grateful that we have such a close relationship with our public information team information is everything when talking about disaster preparedness, response and recovery.

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When we have the need to push information, communications and media nail it every time and do it in ways better than what we ever imagined.

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So please join me in extending a heartfelt thank you and congratulations to the communications and media team.

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And with that I will be happy to answer any questions.

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Board members: well, I will say that you know being prepared as an individual as a business as a local government as a country, I think, has really come into focus in recent weeks and in recent months, there's a lot of things going on in the world and certainly the invasion of ukraine comes to mind, and we actually had a closed session today as members of this board, with a couple of members of the school board and staff regarding threats, and so we are trying to be prepared and lead by example, and and be um be someone who is thinking ahead, and so I am truly grateful for you and for communications and media team and for all of our men and women in public safety who are working and keeping their eye on um the next.

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The next thing right, it's always the next target or the next um thing to come down the pike. So we um we, we appreciate you and I don't know if any other members have any other comments.

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I just want to say, mr chairman, thank you. We appreciate ms robertson you're being here and your outstanding job you're prepared, so it makes us feel more comfortable, and certainly I congratulate again our communications and public affairs department, community, education and media. Thank you for all. You do and the difference you make, because communication is essential. You made that comment on your presentation, especially in disasters and in uh situations such as those, so information is critical, so thank you, jess. We appreciate the outstanding job you're doing in your department and communications as well.

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Thank you all. Thank you. Thank you.

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