If you missed City Council Member David Ryu’s Town Hall meeting on El Niño preparations last night, don’t worry – there are a lot of city resources you can still tap into. Many of them are collected on the city’s new website ElNiñoLA.com, which is part of the City of Los Angeles’s effort to educate residents and help them get prepared.
The site provides basic information, or “El Niño 101,” explaining that, “In Los Angeles, the normal wet season happens between October and February. The peak of our wet weather for this El Niño is expected to occur between December 2015 and February 2016. After four years of drought and wildfires, much of the land across L.A. is incapable of absorbing large amounts of rain, increasing the potential for flooding and mudslides.”
To prepare for potential flooding, there are tips for assembling an emergency kit, making a plan for your family and for your pets, as well as advice and resources for preparing your property (did you know you can get sandbags from your local fire station?). And all the steps are broken down into short lists, making it easier to get started. One of the simplest recommended first steps is registering to receive emergency alerts from the city, which you can also do on the site.
Finally, if you missed this week’s meeting, or don’t know if you’ll be able to attend any of the others coming up, there’s also a video of the full November 12th meeting at Peck Park Recreation Center.
We don’t yet know exactly what El Niño has in store for us, but we owe it to ourselves, our families and our communities to be as prepared as possible.