Police teaching
disaster safety

Classes will be offered on preventing
and responding to crises

Safety lessons To schedule a presentation or for more information, call the Honolulu Police Department's Community Affairs section at 529-3351. Requests can also be made online at honolulupd.org. Click on "Community Affairs" and "Speakers."

Honolulu police are checking to see whether residents know how to keep their families and neighborhoods safe during a social or natural disaster.

Police are going out to businesses, schools and community organizations as they kick off National Preparedness Month. The Honolulu Police Department started offering free one-hour classes to groups this week on planning how to deal with everything from a terrorist attack to a hurricane.

"Take care of your families first, then mobilize to go out there and help the community," said community affairs officer Eddie Croom. "Everybody can help, and has an obligation to help, during a disaster."

The program, "Strategic Actions for Emergency Responses," or SAFER, originated with the federal government but has been "localized" to include natural disasters, according to Croom.

HPD is willing to go into the community and hold the classes at workplaces and communities.

"What if you are at work at a bank and there's a hurricane and you can't get home: Is there a plan?" Croom said. "Or you work at 7-Eleven and you have about 10 employees that can go out into the community and distribute ice or something."

Croom said the impact of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans, and how the community handled the crisis afterward, offered a good example of how planning and preparedness can make a difference.

"I was watching the news and saw a man with a warehouse open it up to the public. And it ended up with people fighting over everything," he said. "Now, if he had a plan and had contacted authorities and said, 'I've got all this food that I'd like to get distributed safely,' things would have been different.

"Now is the time to plan ... not while a disaster is already happening."

The sessions also aim to teach attendees how to prevent crime and terrorist attacks in their communities.