CRESA Kicks Off 5th Year of #30Days30Ways Challenge

September is the 11^th Annual National Preparedness Month which means that public safety agencies are busy working on a number of events to ensure that their communities are educated, informed and ready to face any type of crisis situation.  This year’s national theme is “Be Disaster Aware, Take Action to Prepare!” 

This year, CRESA will  help You take action as we launch the fifth year of our huge online social media game called the 30 Days, 30 Ways Preparedness Challenge which has its own website. Game rules can be found at www.30days30ways.com.    

Being prepared for emergencies should be as common as wearing your seatbelt, and yet nearly every emergency preparedness survey conducted over the past 11 years indicates that 40-80% of people are unprepared to face certain hazards. 

Clark Regional Emergency Services Agency (CRESA) created this 30-day contest in September 2010 and have, in the last 4 years, recorded the completion of over 10,000 readiness tasks from players in 36 states, 1 territory and 13 countries.    

  

 #30Days30Ways 2014

Players are given a daily challenge at 7:00 a.m. PDT each morning.  Players may submit replies to each of the tasks involved throughout the month to either Facebook, Twitter, commenting on the 3O Days Blog or by email.  Players can choose to play as many days as they would like throughout the month. Players may also catch up and complete past tasks for the month if they miss a day.  All tasks will be short and will not require a significant amount of time to complete.   

CRESA’s primary goal is for people to share information about emergency preparedness, on social media, to reach people who may not otherwise think about being ready for disasters.  Through sharing and re-sharing information, it is vital for people to think about these interesting themes.         

Submissions will be reviewed for their creativity, relativity to the task and its evident popularity online.  Thanks to generous sponsors, winners will be selected and rewarded with gift cards to Amazon.  There will also be 2 Grand Prize winners, based on overall play and creativity selected in October, who will win a $50 Amazon card.

This game sparks great conversations and is a wonderful platform for neighborhoods, scouts, schools and workplaces.  Let it help you “Be Disaster Aware...”  to “Take Action to Prepare!”

30 Days, 30 Ways Contest Winners Announced

September was National Preparedness Month and among the many activities that the Clark Regional Emergency Services Agency (CRESA) hosted, one of the most revealing events was hosted online in a preparedness game called 30 Days, 30 Ways.

In this game, contestants were asked to complete 1-3 simple preparedness tasks every single day during the month of September. When CRESA hosted this game in 2010, 608 preparedness tasks were completed. In 2011, nearly 2,000 preparedness questions & tasks were answered or completed.

People played this game from all over the world including New Zealand, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia and from many states within the United States.
This year, the game was hosted on its own website at http://www.30days30ways.com/, had its own Facebook Fan Page at www.facebook.com/30days30ways and its own Twitter Account @30Days_30Ways. This allowed CRESA’s regular social media accounts to continue to post specific and local information about other events throughout Clark County, Washington.

There were 98 points possible within the 30 days of the game. And while everyone who played or considered the tasks was a winner to CRESA, here is the list of the 8 participants who scored the most points and won prizes:

1. Heather Zager (Renton, WA) won a $25 Barnes & Noble Gift Card
2. Tippy Rutherford (Portland, OR) won a $20 Gift Card to See’s Candies
3. Karen Trumbull (Vancouver, WA) won a $20 Gift Card to See’s Candies
4. Caroline Milligan (New Zealand) won a book entitled Emergency Food Storage & Survival Handbook
5. Adam Mayer (Vancouver, WA) won a book entitled The Survivor’s Club
6. “Drew” (unclaimed so far) won an Emergency Essentials Premier Bottled Kit
7. Chuck Westbrook (Vancouver, WA) won an Emergency Essentials Premier Bottled Kit
8. Kevin Coughlin (Woodinville, WA) won 1 pound of chocolate from See’s Candies

Each of the prizes provided were donated. CRESA would like to thank CRESA staff, Clackamas County Emergency Management and the Cities Readiness Initiative (CRI) of the Portland Metro Area for donating prizes and enhancing emergency preparedness through this unique way.

The tasks are still available online at http://www.30days30ways.com/ should others want to challenge themselves to see how personally prepared they are. Over the next few weeks, CRESA will share some of the great answers, ideas, and wisdom received from the players of the 2011 game.

What Can You Do in 30 Days? Challenge Starts September 1st

No one wants to think about disasters, especially when they could hit close to home, right? But getting a community to prepare for emergencies is vital to ensuring that we have the ability to get back on our feet when true disaster strikes.

This year, you can test your readiness to face disaster by participating in an online game called 30 Days, 30 Ways which is located at http://www.30days30ways.com/.  See the button on the right hand column of this blog??? Click on that each day and you'll be transported directly to the daily game task.

Being prepared for emergencies should be as common as wearing your seatbelt, and yet nearly every emergency preparedness survey conducted over the past 10 years indicates that 40-80% of people are unprepared to face certain hazards.

Clark Regional Emergency Services Agency (CRESA) created this 30-day contest in September 2010 in honor of National Preparedness Month. Participants completed a daily “preparedness task” worth 1-6 points. Answers came in via email, CRESA Blog, CRESA’s Facebook Fan Page and to @CRESA on Twitter. In 30 short days, 82 participants completed 608 emergency preparedness tasks with participation in 29 different states and 5 countries including the United States, Canada, France, Australia and New Zealand.
We want to exceed those numbers in 2011. This year, the game will be hosted on its own website at http://www.30days30ways.com/, its own Facebook Fan Page at www.facebook.com/30days30ways  and its own Twitter Account @30Days_30Ways.

Because CRESA uses its own social media pages to share response & preparedness information, we want to ensure uninterrupted focus on both the mission of our agency and the effort of the game. Game players outside the local area are unlikely to want CRESA response information for hazards that we may have to share information about locally here in Clark County, Washington.
The person (or people, in the event of a tie) who earns the most points from the daily challenges will be identified as the winner of the game. We challenge everyone to join us in this fun quest to become better prepared together.

Game rules and information can be found on the website at http://www.30days30ways.com/.