Week of Disaster Preparedness

This week, July thirteenth to the seventeenth, we were with Rich Saito. He took us to speak to the fire station and the police station.When we started this week, I didn't really know what sort of we would learn. Working with Rich, a former police officer, we had an opportunity to speak with police officers and fire fighters. To be completely honest, before this week, I felt that these officers were daunting and unapproachable, but getting to speak with them I learned that they are very friendly people.  Aside from that, we had an opportunity to speak and think about conditions for safety perception and actual preparedness. It's not a topic that really gets discussed in school and certainly nothing I've given too much thought. Obviously safety and preparedness is a major part of a community, but it's definitely an overlooked aspect. When we were taking the survey for Helen Hayashi, the main point of concern for the community was safety in the neighborhood. With that knowledge, we worked with Rich to conduct another survey about safety in the neighborhood. Not only was this a good way to gauge the state of safety that our Japantown, but to those who weren't as prepared hopefully began to think about ways that they could do their part to be more safe.

This week was definitely unexpectedly fun. Getting to see how much care is needed to care for the safety of a whole community. If nothing else, this internship has definitely shown me how much people care about this neighborhood.

Iszac Gaton