It’s the final week of National Preparedness Month, a time to plan ahead for when a natural or other disaster may affect you.

While it’s important to have your own affairs in order and to teach your family how to act in an emergency, Adair and Guthrie County Emergency Management encourages everyone to get involved in their community’s preparedness. Deputy Coordinator Jeremy Cooper says this can start simply by checking up on your neighbors and asking about their emergency plans. A volunteer firefighter himself, he says local fire and rescue agencies are always welcoming volunteers. Cooper also hopes that Adair and Guthrie counties can one day have their own Community Emergency Response Team, or CERT, “A CERT team, it’s a citizen emergency response team and you’re strictly a volunteer. So if you’re not available, you’re not available, and we need somebody to be able to lead that group. Now, we would oversee them and help them through the whole process, get them trained, and all that kind of stuff. But we need somebody to be able to be a leader because when disaster strikes, me and Bob (Kempf) are going to be busy too and we don’t want to have to worry about overseeing a 50-volunteer team somewhere.”

Cooper adds another way to help your community is to take CPR or first aid classes, so you can be prepared when someone is in need in the public. If you would like to learn more about National Preparedness Month, or are interested in forming a CERT team, you can contact Cooper’s office at 641-332-3030.