Wanda Vollmer knows what it’s like to go through a disaster. When she was in her twenties, she moved back to her family’s central California ranch to help care for her mom. In August of 1994, in San Luis Obispo County, what became known as the Highway 41 fire burned 49,000 acres of land and 42 houses including Vollmer’s family home.

The task for February is to make an action plan. Creating an action plan involves deciding what to do when a disaster strikes and practicing it in advance. There are three main steps to creating an action plan.

The popular Veg Club returns for its 2024 season on February 6 with a class on achieving the best start for your garden. Learn how to choose the best site and bed type, where to get local amendments, and all about local community gardens so you can have a garden even if you have no space. You’ll also get Northwest-adapted seed sources and precise, region-specific planting calendars.

The public is invited to attend a new training opportunity, a FEMA class called Until Help Arrives. The class is being offered March 19 from 5 to 8 p.m. at the House of Awakened Culture in Suquamish through a partnership among Kitsap911, North Kitsap Fire & Rescue, and Suquamish Community Health.

We’re going to take a moment here to play a True/False game. The goal is to dispel some very commonly held beliefs about Bainbridge Prepares and to share some actual facts about our organization.

The Prepare in a Year task for January is to create a communications plan. The City’s Climate Smart Team is focusing on creating a Climate Smart Communications Plan for when you’re traveling.

Bay Hay and Feed is currently featured in the Chamber of Commerce display window and is using the occasion to emphasize two ways to prepare for emergencies: water storage and sanitation kits.

Bob Johansen, a futurist and author, and our own Scott James, founder of Bainbridge Prepares and author of Prepared Neighborhoods, will participate in an interactive dialogue about “Being Future-Ready in the Noisy Now” on January 23. The two will discuss the mindset it will take to thrive in a world that is increasingly volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous. They will look at how we can individually and collectively be more prepared in the present.

Bainbridge Island takes its pickleball quite seriously. Ever since the game invention right here in 1965 by Joel Pritchard, Bill Bell, and Barney McCallum, islanders have devoted time, energy, and intense emotion to the sport. Maybe that is why pickleball lends itself perfectly to emergency preparedness.

Temperatures way below our normal are expected through Monday night. Tonight’s predicted low is 14°F, Saturday night temps will drop to 17°F, and Sunday we can expect about 22°F. During the day, temps will be in the 20s through Sunday and then climb to about 34°F by Monday. If you are cold, seek warm shelter—these temps are life threatening with any prolonged exposure.

Helpline House, Island Volunteer Caregivers, and Bainbridge Prepares have partnered for 24 for 24, a community-wide effort to increase volunteering on the island. The partners ask everyone who can to give 24 hours to whatever cause they choose in 2024.

Kitsap Transit is reminding riders that, when it snows—like it might through Sunday—and road conditions become unsafe, they may activate Snow Routes and their Emergency Service Plan.

We've had a mild fall here on Bainbridge Island, but this week the weather is revving up and bringing us high winds, more rain, and then cold and snow toward the end of the week. That means power outages are likely

You can prepare your household for emergencies in one year by taking a few small steps each month. In January, make a communications plan.

The Bainbridge Prepares partnership is excited to announce Prepare in a Year 2024, a year-long participatory event for the entire community.

Every year since 2013, FEMA has conducted a survey on how well American households are prepared for disasters. The results for 2023 have just been released.

One of the very best things you can do in 2024 to prepare for emergencies is to take a Stop the Bleed (STB) class. In this class you’ll learn exactly what to do in a crisis when someone is bleeding heavily and will die without intervention.

The National Weather Service (NWS) just awarded Bainbridge Island with its TsunamiReady® and StormReady® designations. The designations mean the City has followed NWS guidelines for enhancing public safety in face of the likelihood of a post-earthquake tsunami reaching the island’s shores or of storm surges that affect the coastline.

More than 100 fun-loving BP volunteers crammed into the Senior Center event room Friday night, December 15, to celebrate preparedness, our prepared community, and, most important, one another.

BP founder Scott James, City of Bainbridge Island Emergency Management Coordinator Anne LeSage, and City Climate Mitigation Officer Autumn Salamack attended a seminar on resilience hubs at Seattle’s Centro de la Raza yesterday, December 12.