Prepare for life after disaster with Great Oregon Camp-In

The Great Oregon Camp-In, an event to help Oregonians prepare for life after disasters, will take place this weekend.

In recent years, Oregon has experienced a slew of disasters — a global pandemic, wildfires, floods, droughts, ice storms and excessive heat waves. Oregonians also participated in the Great Oregon ShakeOut on Thursday , which encourages earthquake preparedness.

The Camp-In, which began Friday and runs through Sunday, aims to have participants spend a couple of hours or days creating an emergency disaster plan and practicing daily activities at home.

An emergency plan starts with a conversation covering basic details:

• Where to meet: Choose a meeting spot for your family and walk the route to gain familiarity.
• Primary contact: Identify a point of contact, who is preferably out of town and less likely to be affected by a large disaster. Their contact information should be memorized by all members of the family.
• Alert subscriptions: Adults should be subscribed to www.oralert.gov and have Wireless Emergency Alerts activated on their cell phones.

The Great Oregon Camp-In is an opportunity to make preparedness a fun learning experience for young children. Some tips include:

• Provide age-appropriate activities that don't involve electricity like coloring books or puzzles.
• Include kids in setting up campsites and meal preparation.
• The Red Cross has an entire website, Prepare with Pedro , with activities to make the Camp-In fun.

The Oregon Department of Emergency has compiled a list of Great Oregon Camp-in activities .

More information on the Camp-In and disaster preparation can be found on the Be 2 Weeks Ready webpage .

Elliott Deins is an outdoor reporting intern for the Statesman Journal. You can reach him at edeins@salem.gannett.com

This article originally appeared on Salem Statesman Journal: Prepare for life after disaster with Great Oregon Camp-In