The city of Cottonwood has launched a Summer Preparedness 101 campaign in hopes of educating residents, and those passing through, about staying safe in a hot Arizona summer.
The campaign will be run by the Cottonwood Fire Department and the Cottonwood Police Department. Both entities will be getting safety information out to the public through radio PSAs, flyers, social media and bus posters.
Tourism and Economic Development Director Tricia Lewis said this is the first year the city has done something like this. The concept for the campaign came from Cottonwood Fire Chief Ron Sauntman, who though it would be good to engage with the increasing number of tourists who come to the area to enjoy the outdoors.
“We launched this as a proactive approach to safety and summer preparedness as we approach the hot summer months. It is for anyone who recreates in Cottonwood, not just tourists,” Lewis said. “We see great value in this proactive safety awareness campaign to remind people that the summer heat is intense, and we want everyone to be safe, enjoy their time here and be remindful of things to do to ensure a great and pleasant experience is had by all.”
Sauntman said the program is set to last throughout the entirety of the summer and will cover a variety of topics, including hiking tips, hydration reminders, pool safety and the safe shopper program with a primary focus on wildfire safety, flooding and general preparedness.
“These are going to be a lot of things that you hear regularly out of both organizations and the public safety arena; however, we’re just looking at mechanisms that we can get the information out on a more simplistic basis,” he said. “It will be redundant with the idea being that … people are seeing this stuff repetitively and kind of drilling it into them on these ideas that they need to be considering.”
One of the biggest issues the departments will be promoting is wildfire safety, especially considering the number of fires going on in the state.
“Arizona is a wildfire state. We’ve got to a place now within the state’s evolution and/or time frames that the wildland season is almost year-round at this point based on what we’re seeing with the environment,” Sauntman said.
The second biggest issue the campaign will discuss is water safety. This will take the form of pool safety, but it will also be to inform people of the dangers of flooding, which is the second-largest threat in the state.
After a wildfire, the soil in the area becomes unable to properly absorb moisture. So when monsoons or snow-pack come, that water runs off quickly, creating downstream flood hazards that can bring debris and other dangers to an area, Sauntman said.
The third important thing they want the public to take away from the campaign is how to be generally prepared for emergencies.
“We want folks thinking about preparedness almost on a daily basis,” Sauntman said. “Preparedness is not a once in a while thing, it’s an all the time thing.”
Preparedness can include making a go-bag or being prepared for power outages, including loss of air conditioning, having medical supplies on hand and signing up for emergency alerts.
Finally, Sauntman hopes the community takes away a sense of needing to help care for their neighbors in addition to being prepared themselves.
“Take care of each other. Look out for your neighbors. If you have elderly neighbors or folks that may not be able to take care of themselves as easily, be there to support them,” he said. “It’s not as easy for some folks, especially if there’s any kind of disabilities or handicaps, that they need maybe somebody to help them prepare go bags and things of that nature.”
