St. Louis Stands Ready: Three Steps to Take This September

September is National Preparedness Month, and this year's national theme—Americans Stand Ready—is built on a simple idea: the households that prepare in advance are the ones that come through an emergency best. The St. Louis City Emergency Management Agency (CEMA) is asking every resident to take three steps this month.

• Sign up for emergency alerts. NotifySTL is the City's free emergency notification service, delivering urgent messages—severe weather warnings, boil water advisories, and other public safety alerts—by text, email, or phone call. Register at stlouis-mo.gov/notifystl. CEMA recommends residents have more than one way to receive warnings, since no single channel works in every situation.
• Add a NOAA Weather Radio to your home. A weather radio sounds an alarm for warnings in your area at any hour, including overnight when phones are silenced. Most models are programmable and run on battery power when the electricity is out.
• Build or refresh a kit. If you already have emergency supplies, September is a good month to check them. Food, water, medications, batteries, and flashlights all have shelf lives. If you're starting from scratch, Ready.gov has a checklist to work from.

Get trained: City/County CERT

Residents who want to go further can join the City/County Community Emergency Response Team (CERT). CERT volunteers learn basic disaster response skills—fire safety, light search and rescue, disaster medical operations—and support their own neighborhoods when professional responders are stretched.

The next session begins the week of September 7 through St. Louis Community College's Continuing Education program. Classes meet Tuesday evenings at the Wildwood Campus or Wednesday evenings at the Forest Park Campus for eight weeks, concluding with a hands-on skills exercise Saturday, November 7, in Fenton.

Registration is $9 and available through STLCC’s Continuing Education website.

The City's side of the commitment

Preparedness runs both directions. Over the past year, CEMA has invested in important capabilities our community relies on when something goes wrong.

• The agency formalized proactive partnerships with city, regional and national partners, including the National Weather Service St. Louis office, which provides tailored weather briefings and direct support from meteorologists during activations.
• The Mayor’s Executive Order #93 established a two-tier, NIMS-compliant activation system, giving the City a defined structure for scaling its response to the size of the event—including the Winter Weather Unified Command that coordinates snow operations and Code Blue protocols across departments.
• CEMA has also run multiple tabletop exercises with City department leaders to test disaster response procedures before they're needed.

CEMA continues to bring on experienced emergency management professionals. Every position added is a capability the City didn't have before, and most of them exist to do one thing: get accurate information and coordinated help to neighborhoods faster.

"Preparedness isn't something the government does for residents. It's something we do together," said Gregg Favre, Commissioner of Emergency Management for the City of St. Louis. "The City's job is to be ready to coordinate, warn, and respond. Your job is to know how you'll get an alert, and to have what your household needs to get through the first few days. Both halves have to work."

Support from the Department of Public Safety and Mayor Spencer's office has funded the plans, policies, and personnel behind this work.