Welcome to the Oakland Community Preparedness & Response Program
Note: our 1-hour live, in-person or online (Zoom) workshop can be scheduled for your neighborhood group or community organization. Contact us for more information. And you can also view our short video workshops.
Start to Prepare Now – It is Too Late to Prepare Once a Disaster Strikes!
The Oakland Community Preparedness & Response (OCP&R) program provides information, Guides and videos on how you can prepare yourself, your family and your community for a disaster, such as a wildfire, a major earthquake or a flood.
The information provided by OCP&R is intended to cover the most important actions that you can take now to help protect your property and your lives.
OCP&R recommends that you follow the steps below to get started. To help you with this, please download or print this Action Checklist and mark-off the actions as you complete them.
Take these actions one-at-a-time. Work on them as your schedule allows and set dates as goals for completing them. Remember, each step you take to prepare for an emergency, the better off you are than before!
1. Watch the video workshops on this site
Watch each of the 4 short OCP&R video workshops on this site. Each video is less than 10 minutes. The videos will explain, at a high level, the most important actions that you should take to prepare for, respond to and recover from a disaster.
2. Review the Guides on this site
Review the individual Guides on this site so that you know what is available. Each Guide is a 1-page (front and back) PDF file with more detailed preparedness and response information that you can view, download and/or print.
3. Take the 5 most important actions to prepare
Take the top 5 recommended actions to prepare yourself, your family and your community for a disaster. These are outlined in the videos and Guides and include:
- Register for AC Alerts and understand emergency alerts and notifications (including Red Flag Warnings)
- Create your family emergency plan
- Know your Zonehaven evacuation zone name and learn about emergency evacuations (print this Evacuation Guidelines reference)
- Build your emergency Go-Bags/Stay Box
- Be able to assist your neighbors and friends, including those who may need extra help
4. Then work on additional preparedness steps
- Prepare for power outages/PG&E Public Safety Power Shutoffs
- Harden your home to protect against a wildfire and against an earthquake
- Become a Firewise USA certified neighborhood
- Be ready for wildfire smoke
5. Organize (or re-organize) your neighborhood (if not already)
Organized neighborhoods (also known as Block-by-Block Groups, Block Action Teams or Neighborhood Action Teams) are key to better preparing for and responding to a disaster as a community. Neighbors look out for each other and help each other in an emergency. Neighborhood groups can also work on making their area more firesafe (Firewise USA) and on crime prevention (Neighborhood Watch), among other activities. Check out the OCP&R Guide on Neighborhood Organization for more information. And even in this time of sheltering-in-place and social-distancing for COVID-19, you can help organize your neighborhood virtually on-line.
Organizing or reorganizing a neighborhood from scratch can take some time. OCP&R recommends that while this is taking place, you work on the actions noted above.
6. Take additional emergency preparedness and response training
Learn much more about preparing for, responding to and recovering from a disaster by taking Oakland’s new FEMA CERT curriculum. CERT (Community Emergency Response Team) training covers topics not included in OCP&R, including the Incident Command System (ICS), disaster first aid, fire suppression, search and rescue and terrorism/security. Note that the total CERT curriculum is about 33 hours in length, which includes 8 on-line Units and a 2-day, in-person skills training class.
We hope that OCP&R is a stepping-stone for you to want to learn all you can about being as prepared as possible for a wildfire, earthquake, flood or other emergency.