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Health & Fitness

Citizen Corps for New Milford

The mission of the Citizens Corps is to make communities safer, stronger and better prepared to respond to disasters of all kinds. They do this through education, teaching and volunteer service.

        New Milford has been plagued by natural disasters over the past decade. We face the reality of harsher, more frequent storm events. The loss of power for days on end has become expected. While these natural disasters have repeatedly knocked us down, we continue to pick ourselves up and start over yet again.  

         New Milford has always adopted a neighbor-helping-neighbor approach.That is why I suggested at the last council meeting that the borough participate in FEMA’s Citizen Corps.

        The mission of the Citizens Corps is to make communities safer, stronger and better prepared to respond to disasters of all kinds. They do this through education, teaching and volunteer service.

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        According to the Citizen Corps website “46 percent of individuals expect to rely a great deal on people in their neighborhood for assistance within the first 72 hours after a disaster.” When the whole community comes together to respond to and help recover from disastrous events with neighbors helping each other we can often meet the needs of everyone.

         With New Milford’s adoption of Citizen Corps, we tap into our most valuable resource: our residents.  This program will provide a formal training program at no cost to the borough and will strengthen our community’s emergency response capabilities.  

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         As I pursue the adoption of this program by our council, I urge you to find out more about it by visiting www.citizencorps.gov. You can also learn how to make an emergency disaster kit for your family at www.Ready.gov.

 

Austin Ashley

Councilman

Borough of New Milford

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