National Preparedness Month: Preparedness Is Built Before the Emergency

Start with Five Practical Actions

Preparedness does not have to happen all at once. Use National Preparedness Month to complete or update these five essentials:

1. Know your local risks. Learn which hazards are most likely where you live, work, and travel. Review local evacuation zones, flood information, shelter locations, and emergency procedures.

2. Make a communication plan. Decide how household members or coworkers will reconnect if phone service is limited. Choose an out-of-area contact and identify meeting locations. Include plans for children, older adults, people with disabilities, medical needs, and pets.

3. Build and maintain emergency supplies. Keep water, nonperishable food, medications, flashlights, batteries, chargers, first-aid supplies, copies of important documents, and other essentials in an accessible location. Prepare smaller kits for vehicles and workplaces when appropriate.

4. Receive alerts from more than one source. Enable Wireless Emergency Alerts on mobile devices and subscribe to state or local alert systems. A battery-powered or hand-crank weather radio can provide information when power or cellular service is interrupted.

5. Practice the plan. A plan is more useful when everyone understands it. Walk through evacuation routes, shelter procedures, employee responsibilities, and backup communication methods. Update the plan after moves, staffing changes, new medical needs, or changes to local risk.

FEMA provides free tools to help households make a plan and build an emergency kit. Organizations can also use the Ready Business resources to review continuity planning, employee communications, data protection, and operational recovery.

Prepare for the Risks in Your Region

With teams serving communities nationwide, DCCM understands that preparedness priorities are shaped by local conditions. The examples below highlight several regions within our national footprint and the hazards most relevant to those communities.

Gulf Coast, Texas, and the Southeast

Florida, Louisiana, coastal Texas, Georgia, and Tennessee can experience hurricanes, flooding, severe thunderstorms, tornadoes, extreme heat, and extended power outages. Inland Texas communities may also face drought and wildfire.

Know your evacuation zone, identify more than one route to safety, and learn which roads commonly flood. Choose a sturdy shelter location away from windows for tornadoes and severe winds. Plan for medications, mobility needs, pets, and prolonged heat or power loss. Follow local officials during an emergency, and never drive onto a flooded roadway.

Indiana and the Midwest

Indiana communities prepare for severe storms, tornadoes, river and flash flooding, winter weather, temperature extremes, and power outages. Know the safest location at home, work, and school. Keep emergency supplies in vehicles, especially during winter, and plan for interruptions to heating, cooling, travel, and communications. Businesses and public agencies should identify the staff, systems, suppliers, and backup resources required to maintain critical operations.

California

California communities may face wildfire, earthquake, flooding, landslide, extreme heat, drought, and power disruptions. In wildfire-prone areas, prepare a go-bag, maintain more than one evacuation route, and follow local guidance for defensible space. For earthquakes, practice Drop, Cover, and Hold On, secure heavy items, and keep supplies accessible. The U.S. Geological Survey's ShakeAlert system can warn that strong shaking is expected imminently.

Preparedness at the Community Scale

Personal readiness is essential, but community resilience also depends on the systems people rely on every day. For public agencies, utilities, school systems, businesses, and property owners, preparedness means understanding vulnerabilities, prioritizing improvements, and having the right technical and operational support available before, during, and after an event.

DCCM supports that work through a broad range of services, including:

• Hydrologic and hydraulic modeling, watershed studies, floodplain management, and drainage master planning

• Stormwater, detention, flood-control, river, coastal, and erosion-control improvements

• Water and wastewater planning, pump and lift stations, pipelines, and utility coordination

• Transportation planning and design that support reliable access, mobility, and recovery

• Surveying, subsurface utility engineering, GIS, and digital mapping that provide accurate information for planning and field response

• Building safety, code consultation, Wildland Urban Interface review, and inspection services

• Environmental planning, permitting, and restoration support

• Program and project management, construction management and inspection, municipal staff augmentation, emergency response, and disaster recovery support

These services connect preparedness to the physical systems that support daily life. Risk studies and field data help communities see where vulnerabilities exist. Planning and design translate that information into practical improvements. Construction oversight helps ensure those improvements are delivered as intended. Program management and staff support help agencies coordinate funding, permitting, communication, and recovery across many projects and stakeholders.

Resilience in Practice

In Auburndale, Florida, the PK Avenue Stormwater & Roadway Improvements addressed chronic roadway flooding within a 261-acre urban drainage basin. DCCM helped develop a concept that combined transportation and stormwater improvements, including bioretention swales, pervious parking with subsurface storage, and a one-acre retention pond. The improvements demonstrate how communities can reduce flood risk while enhancing mobility, water quality, and public spaces.

Along the Upper Mississippi River, DCCM completed a hydrodynamic and sediment-transport study to evaluate the risk of the river forming a cutoff across the Dogtooth Island Peninsula following a levee breach. A high-resolution, two-dimensional model helped assess floodplain conditions, flow patterns, and sediment movement while evaluating structural and nonstructural alternatives. The study provided USACE with critical information to support risk-informed river management decisions.

On St. Thomas in the U.S. Virgin Islands, DCCM provided hydraulic modeling, analysis, and design support for improvements along Turpentine Run, where the surrounding community has experienced decades of flooding from hurricanes, tropical storms, and major rainfall events. The work evaluated existing and proposed conditions and informed improvements designed to protect the area from a 25-year storm event while accounting for streambank stability, constrained site conditions, and sea-level rise.

In Benicia, California, DCCM provided construction management and full-time inspection for the 24-inch Putah South Canal Emergency Raw Water Repair. The accelerated project addressed a critical raw water transmission line beneath Interstate 80 and required careful coordination, traffic control, safety oversight, and construction documentation. The repair demonstrates the importance of experienced technical support when essential infrastructure must be restored under emergency conditions.

These projects address different hazards in different regions, but both demonstrate the value of planning beyond the immediate event. Resilience is strengthened when recovery work also reduces future risk and improves how infrastructure serves the community every day.

A Stronger Community Starts with the Next Step

National Preparedness Month is an opportunity to move preparedness from intention to action. Review one plan. Build one kit. Sign up for one alert system. Identify one infrastructure vulnerability that deserves closer attention.