July FEW Meeting | Personal and Community Safety Panel

Personal and Community Safety Panel

This month’s meeting will be featuring a panel on Community Emergency planning, understanding a plan, the tools and resources we have available to us in our community and understanding it in practice, those that are responding to emergencies in our community. 

Our first speaker on the panel is Erin Tufte, the Emergency Manager at Stearns County Emergency Management : 

Stearns County Emergency Management is responsible for development of community based plans and programs to maintain a state of readiness to meet natural, man-made, and technological disasters on a local or countywide basis. We will be learning from her how preparedness is one of the largest components of emergency management. As a function this is all the action we can take to prepare ourselves for any number of threats or hazards we may face in our local communities.  Preparedness is a partnership between people who live and work in the community as well as local government.  As residents it is important to take action such as developing emergency plans for home, work, and in the car.  

The second presenter on our panel will be: Deb Ocloo who is a St Cloud Police Officer, involved in the COP house, and in the women’s self defense 500rising. She will be discussing what they are seeing in the St Cloud area- what should we be aware of. Being Proactive vs Reactive. 

The third presenter on our panel will be Kelly Sayre- Author of Sharp Women/Founder & President- The Diamond Arrow Group. She will be giving us  more details on keeping yourself and your family safe. The reason for this is the importance of situational awareness and personal safety as a foundational skill in community emergency preparedness. In C.E.R.T. training (Community Emergency Response Training), they stress the point that you have to take care of yourself and your family’s safety before you can help others.