To most, a plastic foldable table isn’t very heavy, but to the members of the Alaska My Preparedness Initiative, the table represented a collapsed wall. They were tasked with using a crowbar and blocks to lift the “wall” and rescue the person pinned underneath. This exercise and many like it are part of the nationwide program training teenagers how to act in emergency situations.
“What we do is we drive that message, that preparedness message, home through our teenagers." says Ryan Acres, the MyPI National Project Director.
The program started in Mississippi to help rural communities deal with tornadoes and hurricanes, but Alaskans worry about a different kind of disaster.
“During our most recent earthquake, the responders, we have on duty --we're very busy, going in different directions at once, and it was really incumbent on people in their own homes to kind of minimize their losses." says Ron Swartz, the manager of the Alaska division of MyPI and UAA’s emergency manager.