Emergency Preparedness Information
Everyone should at the minimum adhere to Maryland's Plan 9. This is the 9 essential things everyone should have to be prepared for a disaster or emergency. Now is the time to GET READY!
Plan 9
Everyone should also have a plan on how they will communicate during a disaster or emergency. We depend on our cells phones for every day communications but in many disaster situations they are the first thing to go out. You need to think and plan now how you will communicate, where you will meet, how you will evacuate and how will you care for your pet.
Family Emergency Plan
This link is the Cecil County Family Emergency Planning Guide put out by the Department of Emergency Services. This is the latest version which I updated working with DES. It contains a lot of good information specific to our county.
CCFEP2011
I encourage all our residents sign up with the Department of Emergency Services Blackboard Connect. This will ensure that you are alerted by officials of situations that can affect you. It allows you to register many different devices with which to contact you to make sure you receive important information.
Blackboard Connect
If you have disability it would be in your best interest to complete an Emergency Needs Survey for the Department of Emergency Services. They survey is only a couple of questions about what your specific needs are for your disability. The information will be stored in a confidential data base, when you call 911 the emergency personnel will be alerted to your requirements. In a disaster situation DES will know who has special needs in a particular area and can respond accordingly.
This list was originally put together by former long time EF resident John Poole. I liked it so much I've tried to keep it up to date and hand it out to people I give presention for the Cecil County Health Department. It is a useful list of contacts for our area.
Since our August 23, 2011 earthquake I get a lot of questions on what you should do during a earthquake. After some research it turns out it depends on where you are at. In the United State our building codes pretty much insure that total building collapse is unlikely and the FEMA recommendation of duck under a table is best. However, if you're not in the US you may be more likely to survey by laying next to something that will not completely compress like a file cabinet. Bottom line you should always know what emergency procedures are best for where you are at, BE INFORMED, it can save your life.
The western section of Cecil County is within the 10 mile emergency planning zone (EPZ) for the Peach Bottom Atomic power plant. All of Cecil County is within the 50 mile ingestion pathway of several nuclear power plants which if a incident happened radiation could contaminate our food and water resources. Here is some information about radiation be it from a power plant or dirty bomb that everyone should know.
FEMA Get Ready Information
For more information on the things you can do to get ready go to: