Why Prepare?
More than seven out of ten Orange County residents have not made any preparations for an emergency.
What about you? Are you ready?
Why should you prepare for emergencies before they happen? From the Yorba Linda fires to the Laguna Beach landslides to ever-present earthquakes, our county continuously faces emergency situations.
We know that the next emergency is coming. We just don’t know when or what kind it will be.
But we can – and must – prepare now for the next emergency. Our family, friends and community depend on it.
The Benefits
- Being prepared can reduce the fear, anxiety and losses that accompany disasters. Communities, families, and individuals should know what to do in the event of a earthquake and where to seek shelter during a fire. They should be ready to evacuate their homes and take refuge in public shelters and know how to care for their basic medical needs.
- People can reduce the impact of disasters by flood proofing, securing items that might shake loose in an earthquake, and taking other pre-emergency precautions.
The Need
- Disasters disrupt hundreds of thousands of lives every year. Each disaster has lasting effects, both to people and property.
- If a disaster occurs in your community, local government and disaster relief organizations will try to help you. But you need to be ready as well. Local responders may not be able to reach you immediately or they may need to focus their efforts elsewhere.
- You should know how to respond to severe weather or any disaster that could occur in your area, including earthquakes, wildfires, landslides, pandemic, flooding, terrorism and more.
- You should also be ready to be self-sufficient for at least three days. This may mean providing for your own shelter, first aid, food, water and sanitation.
How to Get Started
- This Web site was developed by ReadyOC for the Orange County community. It contains step-by-step advice on how to prepare for disasters. And it provides you with a resource for information on how to respond or recover during an emergency situation.
- Used in conjunction with information and instructions from other local and county emergency management agencies and organizations, the information on this site will give you what you need to be prepared.
