Seattle Southside Chamber: Be Prepared (& come to a special event Feb. 6)

Be Prepared

By Andrea H. Reay CEO/President Seattle Southside Chamber of Commerce “Be prepared,” the scout motto used around the world since 1907, is more than just good advice. It can save your life and your business. Unfortunately, most of us are woefully unprepared when it comes to preparing our families and our businesses for natural disasters. The Puget Sound Region sits on top of numerous fault lines and is close to the Cascadia Subduction Zone, where the Juan de Fuca and North American tectonic plates meet. According to the Washington State Department of Natural Resources, more than 1,000 earthquakes happen in Washington State each year. The average cycle for earthquakes characterized as, “the big one” is roughly 243 years, if you use the last 10,000 years as a measuring stick. We are beyond this average by 75 years, which means that the chances of one of these large earthquakes in the next 50 years is between 10% and 33%. Such a quake is predicted to cause up to 30,000 landslides in the Seattle area alone (Schulz, Kathryn. “The Really Big One,” The New Yorker 2015). The Chamber is committed to preparing our business community and residents so that we can be resilient in the face of a natural disaster. That is why we are partnering with the City of Normandy Park to host an emergency management event, on Wednesday, Feb. 6 at the Criminal Justice Training Center at 5 p.m. Colonel Kevin McMahan with the Washington National Guard, along with staff from Washington’s Emergency Management Division, will provide a presentation on “What You Need to Know to Survive a Natural Disaster.” Residents and business owners from the cities of Burien, Des Moines, Normandy Park, SeaTac, Tukwila, and Federal Way, as well as Seattle Southside Chamber Members, are invited and encouraged to attend. For more information about this event visit our website at http://www.seattlesouthsidechamber.com/events/details/emergency-preparedness-event-what-you-need-to-know-to-survive-a-major-natural-disaster-2656, or send an email to our Membership and Programs Manager, Renatta Emerson: Renatta@SeattleSouthsideChamber.com.

Andrea H. Reay is the President/CEO of Seattle Southside Chamber of Commerce – “A voice for business, a leader in the community.” Seattle Southside Chamber has served the communities of Burien, Des Moines, Normandy Park, SeaTac and Tukwila since 1988. For more information on the Chamber, including member benefits and resources, please visit www.SeattleSouthsideChamber.com.

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