The best plans to prepare for natural disasters include taking into account your friends and neighbors. How can you help others in your community? How might people in or near your circle be able to help you? It’s one of Listos California’s five safety steps for preparing before any disaster.

As Listos California partner Blue Lake Rancheria Tribe in Humboldt County shows us, planning and preparation can also be a great help to neighbors during disaster response. When wildfires and public safety shutoffs in the heart of redwood country led to widespread power outages in the last few years, Blue Lake Rancheria stood ready to provide life-improving and even life-saving help to more than 10,000 of its neighbors.

Blue Lake Rancheria believes that through forward thinking and by working together as a community, everyone can help increase safety and resilience and successfully reduce impacts when disaster strikes.

We’re honored to share some of their story.