Spuyten Duyvil Library's disaster preparedness workshop sees no attendees despite critical importance
The Spuyten Duyvil Library recently held a citizen preparedness workshop to educate residents on preparation for natural disasters.
But no one showed up.
The workshop was to be held in partnership with the state’s Citizen Preparedness Corps, a division of the state’s homeland security department. The corps leads training to provide tools and resources that prepare people for all forms of natural disasters and emergencies so they know how to safely respond.
The typical agenda for each training session is for residents to prepare a plan, remember they are the first response to the emergency, and discuss recovery.
A large part of the preparation for any disaster includes having a go bag or a kit filled with supplies an individual would need in the event of an emergency. Having a kit prepared and ready to grab makes the difference in urgent situations. The training course discusses what is deemed essential (see sidebar). The corps recommends kits contain “key items to assist individuals in the immediate aftermath of a disaster.”
The corps recommends each family member have an individual kit with their own emergency supplies. The list contains more obvious items like bottled water, canned foods, dried meat, energy bars, prescription medication, toilet paper, a list of family physicians and important medical information, change of clothes, photocopies of important family documents and flashlights. Other, less common, items on the list include N-95 masks, a mop, reflective vests, a scrub brush, chocolate bars, chlorine bleach and a deck of playing cards.
The lists of emergency supplies offered on the corps website are not a one-case-fits-all solution for emergency preparedness, but the supplies are meant to prepare people for events like 2012’s superstorm Sandy or Hurricane Ida in 2021.
A spokesperson from the mayor’s office of climate and environmental justice said other tips, like knowing if your apartment is fireproof and having emergency stock of food to last seven days or more, can be just a critical.
Heather Groll, director of communications for the state’s homeland security and emergency services department, said all training workshop participants receive emergency supplies.
“People attending get a backpack filled with some emergency supplies like a flashlight with batteries and a collapsible water jug,” Groll said.
According to data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, New York has experienced 91 total weather and climate disasters in the last 44 years that have cost the state more than $1 billion in losses.
Included in these disasters was Ida, during which The Press reported waist-deep water flooding large sections of the Major Deegan Expressway in Kingsbridge, leaving cars abandoned in the high flood waters.
A 2023 study in the scientific journal Nature Climate Change found the average rainfall rate has been steadily increasing over the last 75 years and, expanding through 2100, the increase could exceed 30 percent. This level of extreme and continuous rainfall becomes hazard-producing and, with more frequency, there would be little time for places like greater Riverdale to recover.
The corps teaches training program attendees the types of hazards they could end up facing, which go far beyond the natural disasters for which people are often told to prepare. Bomb threats, cyber-attacks, power failures, train derailments, infectious diseases and animal disease outbreaks are all possibilities.
Groups like the New York City Panel on Climate Change advise the mayor in order to help the city and its residents prepare.
“According to the NPCC, precipitation in New York City is projected to increase up to 14 percent by the 2050s and 30 percent by 2100. Sea level rise will exacerbate other types of flooding, including tidal and storm surge flooding,” a spokesperson from the mayor’s office of climate & environmental justice said.
Groll said outreach about events is completed through social media, the department’s website and the people they are working with in the community.
Spuyten Duyvil Library branch manager Agnieszka Chen said the library is working with the corps to bring back the preparedness session to hopefully get a turnout and educate greater Riverdale redidents on how to stay prepared.
Further information from the Citizen Preparedness Corps can be found at DHSES.NY.gov/Citizen-Preparedness-Corps.
Keywords
citizen preparedness workshop, disaster readiness, Spuyten Duyvil Library, emergency preparedness training, Citizen Preparedness Corps, natural disaster preparedness, emergency supplies kit, New York weather disasters
