Talking Points for Approaching Elected Officials

Sooner or later, this community will experience a disaster. The disaster will either completely disable us or only temporarily affect us. We may suffer thousands of dollars or millions of dollars in damage. Businesses might be destroyed permanently or just briefly slowed down. Dozens of people or thousands of people will become casualties. The difference in each case has to do with how prepared we are.

Preparation doesn't have to be overwhelming or cost prohibitive. Prepare Your Community provides all the steps and information we need at no charge.

Prepare Your Community is based on the learned wisdom of Bainbridge Prepares, an award-winning and nationally recognized community emergency preparedness organization.

You don't want to be the official who votes against preparation. You want to be the visionary official who increases our community's resilience.

Community emergency preparation comes with additional benefits. It brings a community together. It increases neighborhood awareness and vigilance, which is likely to decrease crime. It brings people together who end up solving other problems too besides a lack of disaster preparedness. It encourages people to take responsibility for the preparation of their own households, which increases their sense of community responsibility. It drives volunteerism.

Prepared businesses are all ready to submit insurance claims and requests for federal and state assistance, putting them ahead of businesses in unprepared communities, and making it more likely that the money will flow into ours.

A disaster, by definition, overwhelms our first responders and local government resources. But a prepared community can fill in the gaps and take up the slack.