By Al Litman
As you may know, I have often talked about public safety as my top priority in Mesquite. We are very fortunate to have both a proactive police and fire department, but they can only do so much to assist and protect you in a disaster.
Mayor Al Litman
In my 19 years here, there has been only one major incident, the flood of 2005. No one perished, and the property damage was minimal considering. We don’t have non-contained fires, earthquakes, hurricanes or tornadoes, but we could. Nothing is impossible. As a former resident of Southern California, I was in the epicenter of the 1994 Northridge earthquake.
We had minimal damage to our home, but had no electric, gas, or water for many days following the quake. A few months later, we moved to Lahaina, Maui, and just several months later we had a tsunami warning.
We lived directly on the ocean front, and as soon as we heard the sirens we evacuated up the hill to the local airport. We had no water, food or provisions for our cat with us, and no idea how long the warning would last, or for that matter, if our home would be washed away. Luckily for us, no tsunami occurred. The point I’m making is that we had no emergency plan.
Since the disaster of my former home in Lahaina a few weeks ago, I have had some serious discussions with our police chief and fire chief about just where we stand with our Emergency Preparedness Plan.
As you know, we have no radio station in operation, no sirens, for early warning, but we do have NIXLE, which is an alert warning system. You can download the NIXLE app and receive alerts through the internet instead of texts. It’s free.
Your smart phone will alert you very quickly. Yes, I understand that not everyone has a smart phone or the internet, and that there may be no power available. To use NIXLE on your phone, text your zip code to 888777 to opt-in to this service. It will keep you up to date with relevant information from your local public safety departments. Mesquite isn’t Hawaii, but we are like an island when it comes to resources to assist us in an emergency.
Remember the washout of the I-15 in 2014, and the frequent closing of the gorge heading north. There has never been a greater time for preparation and the role our emergency management plays in our community.
In speaking with our emergency preparedness team, they agree that we could be on our own for an extended period of time in a regional emergency. We need to be prepared within our own home. I won’t go into details as to how our Emergency Operations Center works in this article due to space restrictions, but I will next month.
I will however, talk about what you need to do at home in the case of an emergency. It most cases, you need to be proactive, not reactive, because there is rarely a warning that would give you the opportunity to get ready.
Mesquite has an older population, so I’ll address them first. The Center for Disease Control recommends a minimum three-day supply of medications, along with a cooler and ice packs if your medications require refrigeration.
If you have a hearing loss that requires hearing aids, you should have extra batteries available. You should have some sort of identification that lists any medical conditions you have and emergency contact information.
If you are using oxygen, you need to know where to go if you have no power for these devices. Most of us keep our important documents at home. You should have copies of medications, doctors names, medical insurance cards and durable power of attorney and /or medical power of attorney documents in a waterproof sealed bag, You may need to have some cash on hand if automatic teller and credit card machines are down. This is only the start of what all of us should have, along with much more that I will address next month.
Al Litman is mayor of the City of Mesquite.
