Posts Tagged ‘NEPP’

Emergency Preparedness.

We in Surrey, as a community, need to ensure everyone is prepared and able to survive on their own for the first 72 hours after a large-scale disaster, while we wait for our services to be restored. The Surrey Fire Services has a very comprehensive plan to deal with large-scale emergencies that include (but are not limited to) reconnaissance of the area surrounding the fire station locations to determine emergency activity, accessibility and communications.  Triage is also an important part of a large-scale incident so the most critical items are addressed in priority. All of this takes time which means we need to have our neighbourhoods prepared for large-scale incidents today.

The Surrey Fire Service has been, and continues to be, the lead agency with regards to emergency preparedness.  The Neighbourhood Emergency Preparedness Program (NEPP) was developed by Surrey Fire Service members and the program is facilitated by our Surrey firefighters. The NEPP utilizes resources from Surrey community groups such as Search and Rescue, our Amateur Radio group and Emergency Social Services along with the Fire Department in the event of a disaster.

This program provides key information for people in a neighbourhood to comfortably survive in a disaster for at least 72 hours.  The NEPP has been in place since 2001 and has trained over 22,000 people during this time. There is one week set aside in May of each year to promote Emergency Preparedness and displays are all over the City. The program is free to Surrey residents and the delivery can be customized to fit any group’s needs and will be delivered (dependent on size of group which can vary from 15 people to 150 people) between 45 minutes to 2 hours. For more information, please go to the City’s website at https://www.surrey.ca/city-services/698.aspx