Emergency Community Response Plan 2015 - Prepared Communities

The Paremata Residents Association, Porirua Healthy Safer City Trust and Safer Porirua have approached the Wellington Region Emergency Management Office (WREMO) to facilitate development of a local plan for how our community responds in the first few days following a major event.

Our local Community-Driven Emergency Response Plan will show how we plan to respond in the initial stages of a large scale emergency. We know it may take some time before our area receives an official response so we have to be ready! We want to hold a series of short meetings to put together the Paremata Papakowhai Community Driven Emergency Response Plan and we need your help. We plan to hold four or five meetings during February and March 2015 and develop the plan together. At one of these meetings WREMO will run an emergency event with us so we can practice everything we have learnt.

Who should be involved?

We want to involve all individuals and organisations that make up our community; identifying particular skills sets and owners of useful resources. We need one or two representatives from organisations to participate. Ideally they should have a solid understanding of what their organisation does and what resources and capabilities they have available. 

Why should you be involved?

We need to know how to keep ourselves, our families, neighbours and wider community safe(particularly in the first 72 hours) following a large scale emergency. To do this, we need to know what resources there are available to us in the Paremata -Papakowhai area. By attending the meetings you will better understand what you can do, what resources are available and who will be around locally to help you as well as have a unique opportunity to connect with our community. You will also discover what other communities in the Porirua area have developed so far with regards to their own Community Response.

Emergency Management handy hint

If you have cell phones in your household we strongly recommend that you register your number(s) with WREMO so that you will receive emergency text messages when they are issued.  For further information on this service go to: http://www.getprepared.org.nz/text-alerts

If you don’t have a computer, the following extract from the WREMO Web site will give you the information you need to register:

1. Text follow WREMOalert to 8987. You’ll get a text saying thanks for joining Twitter.
2. Reply with set discover off to avoid receiving other Twitter messages.

When you receive an emergency text, spread the word.  Forward it to your family and other personal contacts, post it on Facebook, and re-tweet on Twitter.

Text alerts are only sent in potentially life threatening emergency situations such as tsunami warnings.  Receiving the alerts is free.  To sign up you will need to send two texts, which are charged at your service providers’ standard rate.