VashonBePrepared is a federally recognized, educational 501(c)(3) non-profit coalition of disaster preparedness organizations on Vashon -Maury Islands in Washington's Puget Sound region.

Incorporated on April 12, 2007, we had already existed informally for several years as the Vashon Disaster Preparedness Coalition.

As a coalition of groups with many individual volunteers we have a real presence in many people’s lives now and considerable potential to do even more in the future.

VashonBePrepared has no operational role during disasters, instead see Vashon Island Fire & Rescue, for how that is handled..

VashonBePrepared is a 501(c)(3) coalition of other organizations – though we do house some of the teams that otherwise have no organizational structure. We are a Coalition of Organizations Active in Disaster, a COAD, and are registered with WAVOAD.

We were recently recognized by the state of Washington as the Vashon Island Citizen Corps Council, the local representative for the national Citizens Corp program.

Vashon Be Prepared from James Culbertson on Vimeo.

Documentary promo - VBP

Vashon-Maury Island (the Island) may face natural or environmental disaster, terrorist attack, or public health emergency and, as an island normally reachable only by ferry, could be isolated from mainland emergency resources. In recognition of the need to prepare for, respond to, and recover from such disasters and emergencies, VashonBePrepared, among other matters:

1. Motivates and educates individual citizens, households, businesses and neighborhoods to be as self-reliant as possible during a disaster through advance planning and preparation.
2. Forms partnerships with Island institutions, agencies, businesses, and volunteer groups to help create a structure capable of responding to a disaster in aid of the Island-wide disaster plans and procedures and in conformance with the National Incident Management System.
3. Develops and maintains Island-wide disaster plans and procedures in collaboration with Vashon Island Fire and Rescue (King County Fire District 13) for approval by the Vashon Island Emergency Management Area (VIEMA).
4. Recruits, organizes, and trains volunteer staff for an Island Emergency Operations Center (the EOC Team) utilizing the principles of the National Incident Management System in collaboration with Vashon Island Fire and Rescue (King County Fire District 13).
5. Raises and manages funds and property in support of all these organizational purposes.

- From VashonBePrepared's Bylaws

To navigate around the timeline, click on the large arrow on the right () to jump towards the more recent events. Once in the right time period, you can drag the timeline around. On the left, you can also zoom in or out. We need to add lots of other milestones, and remove Much of the COVID info as there's now another independent timeline for that.