The San Francisco Interfaith Council:
A Child of the Loma Prieta Earthquake
30 years ago today San Francisco suffered the devastating Loma Prieta earthquake. That event forever changed the complexion and mindset of our City. Many lessons were learned and precautions taken to ensure the safety and well-being of all of our residents.
A little known fact is that the
San Francisco Interfaith Council was born as a result of that earthquake. Just a year earlier, at the behest of Mayor Art Agnos, religious leaders responded to the burgeoning homeless crisis by initiating the Interfaith Winter Shelter, which will shortly commence its 31st year of feeding and sheltering 60-100 homeless people from the Sunday before Thanksgiving through the end of March. Those same religious leaders were invited to a meeting at Calvary Presbyterian Church in the aftermath of the Loma Prieta earthquake to assist the humanitarian aid organization, Church World Service, in distributing vital funds to the most vulnerable residents displaced by the earthquake. Realizing the importance of interfaith collaboration after the earthquake, those religious leaders committed to creating today's San Francisco Interfaith Council. Since then, in addition to responding to homelessness, a core mission of the SFIC is disaster preparedness, response and recovery. Working together with our civic and NGO disaster preparedness partners, the SFIC continues to engage the broader interfaith community as a key stakeholder in our City's disaster planning efforts.
On this important anniversary we encourage all of our constituent members to participate in this effort by signing up for emergency notification/text messages and by visiting the important disaster preparedness resource pages below.
Download the new
MyShake app to your cell phone
(early warning earthquake app)
Sign Up for San Francisco's Emergency Notification System at:
Sign Up for San Francisco's Emergency Text Message System
by
texting your ZIP CODE to 888-777
Receive tips and updates from
SF72
(San Francisco's hub for emergency preparedness)
For Additional Disaster Preparedness Resources please visit:
October 17th is a big day in SF. The
Great ShakeOut
(California's annual earthquake drill) occurs this morning so
DROP, COVER and HOLD on wherever you are at 10:17 am!
This evening between 5:15 pm and 5:45 pm PST
the
Department of Emergency Management (DEM)
will conduct a test of the Wireless Emergency Alert (WEA) system to test the readiness of public safety alerting during an emergency.
Additional info at:
sf72.org
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