Community group to offer emergency response training

Long Beach Community Organizations Active in Disasters, a collaborative effort between groups in the city that work together to address the unmet needs of residents in response to natural disasters, will sponsor a presentation on disaster preparedness at the Long Beach Public Library on Wednesday, April 1, hosted by the Community Development Corporation of Long Island.

The event, called Organizing Neighborhoods for Emergency Response, will be held from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. and promises a day of presentations, discussions and workshops designed to educate participants on how to remain safe during a disaster. NeighborWorks America, the parent company of CDCLI, will conduct the training.

“We’re a community that had a major [disaster] event, and we need to prepare ourselves for the next major event — whether that’s a blackout or a blizzard or a heat wave,” said resident Liz Treston, president of COAD’S board of directors. “The goal is to make preparedness part of everyone’s everyday consciousness so that it almost becomes a habit, like putting on a seatbelt when you get in the car.”

The presentation will include hands-on activities such as learning how to design a volunteer management plan, organizing and registering volunteers, communication strategies for living day-to-day and during an emergency response, individual and family preparedness, building a “Go Kit,” evacuation plans and how to develop and maintain partnerships among local emergency groups, businesses and governments.

A portion of the training will include instruction in the block captain system, in which one or two individuals are responsible for a block or small section of homes in a neighborhood and are tasked with keeping everyone living in that zone up-to-date on community events and each other’s phone numbers in case of an emergency.

Dr. Tom Phelan and Ron Dwyer-Voss will serve as trainers for the event. Both have years of disaster recovery and community engagement experience, organizers said.