Berkeley Emergency Preparedness Fair: Protect Kids and Pets
On Saturday April 26, at the North Berkeley BART station, the City of Berkeley Emergency Services hosted an Emergency Preparedness Fair. This proved to be a great opportunity for many agencies, including Berkeley Unified, to collaborate on outreach for preparedness especially for families and children, and the BUSD families were out in force. In addition to learning how to better prepare for disaster at home, families were able to visit the BUSD booth to see what BUSD has done to ensure that our schools are well prepared. The Transportation Department had a school bus on hand and offered demonstrations of the school bus evacuation procedures.
See the Berkeley Emergency Preparedness Fair Photos here.
As part of a friendly competition to reward participants, families were encouraged to drop by the BUSD booth and indicate the school they represent. The three Berkeley schools with the highest participation are being awarded one of three exciting emergency preparedness gadgets to go into their emergency container. The prizes will be presented to the winning principals at a school board meeting, and the Fire Department will do the same recognition at a school assembly for the students.
With this year’s fair focused on protecting children and pets, highly interactive trainings and activities planned for children and adults of all ages made emergency preparedness fun for all. This included booths for children and parent activities, children’s story time, fire extinguisher training, first aid training, as well as pet and animal response demonstrations.