Carmel Prepares
Carmel Prepares
Building village resilience through disaster preparedness, community response, and sustainable recovery.
This partnership—between the City of Carmel, the Carmel Library, and the Community Emergency Response Team (CERT)—is all about giving our community the tools, knowledge, and support to stay safe and strong.
In the months and years ahead, Carmel Prepares will offer hands-on workshops and training sessions to help you:
- Be ready to respond in an emergency
- Connect and collaborate with neighbors and local organizations
- Build a stronger, more resilient Carmel—together
Join us and take action now to protect what matters most.
Upcoming Events
Share with your friends and neighbors!
Community Safety Series
- Ready, Set, Defend! Saturday, June 21, 2025, Sunset Cultural Center, 10:00 - 11:00 a.m.
Defensible Space, Home Hardening, & Fire Extinguisher Training, Learn how to protect your home and yourself with expert advice, great raffle prizes, and breakfast! Let’s get prepared and stay safe!
- Build Your Kit, Boost Your Skills Saturday, September 6, 2025, Sunset Cultural Center, 10:00-11:00 a.m.
Disaster Kits & First Aid Training, Learn how to build a Disaster Kit, Basic First Aid Skills, and AED Training with expert advice. Enter to win great raffle prizes, and enjoy breakfast! Let’s get prepared and stay safe!
- Winter Ready, Prepare to Help Saturday, November 8, 2025, Sunset Cultural Center, 10:00 – 11:00 a.m.
Winter Storm Tips & Hands-Only CPR, Winter is coming! Learn how to prepared ahead of storms and how to perform Hands Only CPR from the experts. Enter to win great raffle prizes and enjoy breakfast! Let’s get prepared and stay safe!
Quick Ways to Start Getting Prepared
- Sign-up for Alert Monterey County and sign up for Nixle by texting your zip code to 888777 to enroll to receive notifications from our police, fire, and city to let you know about road closures and other emergencies with real-time updates on your cell phone, email, or both.
- Sign-up for Earthquake Alerts from Earthquake Warning California, the country’s first publicly available, statewide warning system managed by the Governor’s Office of Emergency Services (Cal OES) that uses ground motion sensors from across the state to detect earthquakes before humans can feel them and can notify Californians to “Drop, Cover and Hold On” in advance of an earthquake.
- Bookmark the PG&E Power Outage Map for easy access.
- Bookmark the Food Safety for Power Outages to find out what you can do to keep food safe during a power outage, and when you need to throw away food that could make you sick.
- Print out (or stop by the library for a copy) the City’s Evacuation Routes to put on your fridge and in your car for quick access if needed.
- Print out (or stop by the library for a copy) the Carmel Emergency Preparedness Quick Guide to put on your fridge, so you have important info handy.
- Print out (or stop by the library for a copy) Emergency Kit Supply List to help you start building up your cache of emergency supplies.
- Prepare for wildfires with help from Fire Safe Council for Monterey County to learn how to reduce the risk of loss of life, property, and resources from wildfires, and to educate everyone on wildfire dangers and how to reduce them.
- Check out the Workshop Slides from the January 6, 2024 Carmel Prepares presentation.
- Participation in Events & Trainings organized by the City and Carmel CERT throughout the year.
Resources for Businesses / Organizations
Having a Business Continuity Plan is an important part of your organization’s risk-management efforts.
We also know that you are busy and that preparing a plan takes time and effort. Ideally, you already have an up-to-date plan. If not, please use one of the following resources to kickstart your team’s conversation about preparedness.
- Get to know FEMA’s national disaster recovery framework and the economic recovery support function.
- Start to build your plan with workbook templates from the US Chamber of Commerce.
- And/or check out small business disaster recovery plan from Insurance Information Institute’s for more ideas.
Presentation Videos
Carmel Community Emergency Response Team (CERT)
The Carmel by-the-Sea Community Emergency Response Team (CERT) is made up of 35 dedicated volunteers who support our Village as well as provide mutual aid to our neighboring communities.
All CERT members complete a 21-hour training designed to emphasize hands-on experience taught by FEMA trained personnel. Training includes emergency first aid, light search and rescue, traffic and crowd management along with disaster relief.
Ready Monterey County
Your actions and emergency preparedness will help you and your family stay safe and be ready for the next disaster.
With help from the Monterey County Department of Emergency Management, understand disaster risks in your region and develop a plan to stay safe, have an emergency kit, and receive information as events unfold.
