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Show Lindon City To Conduct "Drill Down For Safety" by Cody Cullimore Lindon City Police Chief On September 12, 2011 Lindon City, in partnership with the Federal Emergency Management Man-agement Agency and the Safe America Foundation, will again participate in a nationwide effort ef-fort of partner communities to hold a city-wide emergency preparedness pre-paredness drill. Termed the "911 Drill Down for Safety" this event is scheduled near the anniversary of the terror events of 91 1 with the intent of raising awareness and agency ability in the areas of emergency management and emergency preparedness. As the smallest national partner last year, Lindon City won the top prize in 2009 with 78 percent of our citizens participating partic-ipating in our drill. Residents' efforts earned the city a small cash award which has been used to help purchase emergency HAM Radio gear for the city's emergency operations center. The city was in competition competi-tion with some heavyweight jurisdictions ju-risdictions in the nation, such as Chicago, Illinois, Atlanta, Geor gia, Dallas, Texas, Boca Raton, Florida, York County, Maine, San Diego County, California, Salt Lake County and Sandy City, Utah. Lindon's winning drill has been used as an example to them all in National Conferences in Chicago, Washington DC, and Philadelphia. Not bad for a little city out west. ...somewhere! FEMA Director Craig Fugate has made citizen preparedness pre-paredness a priority. Director Fugate said, "Personal disaster preparedness is and must be a national priority," and while FEMA can and is making improvements im-provements to how to plan, organize, or-ganize, and respond in a catastrophic cata-strophic disaster, there remains one area of improvement that still needs considerable national attention: personal preparedness. prepared-ness. Studies continue to indicate that far too many households do not have personal disaster plans that include provisions for assuring as-suring the self-sufficiency of their households for up to 72 hours following a disaster. A family should also think through personal preparedness plans in case of a catastrophic event that devastates their city. Mayor Dain and Lindon City officials also wish for all of you to be prepared. Lindon City has again accepted ac-cepted the challenge to participate par-ticipate in this nationwide effort to drill with our community commu-nity focus on communications. The community will again utilize uti-lize the LDS Church's organizational organi-zational structure of ward and stake boundaries in conjunction conjunc-tion with the city's 3-step program pro-gram utilizing block captains to account for all residents of Lindon City. We would like to emphasize em-phasize that this exercise is a "community" drill, not an LDS church drill. The city is simply utilizing the structure which is already in place in the community. Please plan to participate with the community, communi-ty, regardless of your religious affiliation. This year the event will again include trained CERT members and will again drill all of the schools. As citizens of Lindon, residents will be reporting the number of indi viduals accounted or missing from each block. Watch for twists and complications to be introduced, just as would happen hap-pen in a real world emergency. The primary goal is to account ' for the whereabouts of each individual in the city. Testing the effectiveness of our methods meth-ods of communications is critical crit-ical for emergency response. Lindon City will continue to lead in the effort of personal preparedness and as a city is dedicated to promoting safety and emergency preparedness efforts among residents. Residents can watch for further information regarding the events planned for September Septem-ber 12 and plan to participate and take this opportunity to make the community and the nation a safer place. A training meeting will be held on Thursday, August 25, 2011 from 7 to 8:30 p.m. at the Lindon Community Center. Training items will include in-clude information for Preparedness Pre-paredness Specialists, Block Captains, Lindon Ham Radio Operators, and Lindon CERT members. |