Picture this: The power’s out, cell phone towers are down, the kids are still in school and it’s dangerous to drive on the roads.

Now what?

Sammamish Citizen Corps’ leaders want residents to start thinking about “what if” circumstances like this one, in order to prepare for emergency situations.

As the saying goes, practice makes perfect.

“Then you’re more comfortable or familiar going forward,” Sammamish Citizen Corps information hub coordinator Barb Clayton said.

On Saturday, Clayton led an information hub exercise from 9 a.m. to 11 p.m. throughout the city to practice emergency operations.

By dividing the city into 11 zones, information hubs are central locations within those zones. In case of a disaster, citizens can go to their zone’s site for information, resources and to communicate with the city.

“People in a disaster typically don’t have a lot of information,” Sammamish Deputy City Manager Lyman Howard said.

The city partners with the citizen corps, a nonprofit organization, to provide outreach activities and education about emergency preparedness for residents.

“The community needs to have places to go (in a disaster),”  Sammamish Citizen Corps President Kent T. Kierman said.

Currently, the local citizen corps has established eight information hubs in the city.

The citizen corps established the information hubs system in 2013, which is based on West Seattle’s Emergency Communications Hubs. Organizers began hub practices in 2014.

The Sammamish Citizen Corps practice activating these hubs every fifth Saturday in a month, which works out to be about four times a year.

Six hubs activated on Halloween, the fifth Saturday in October, offering trick-or-treaters candy and passers-by more information on emergency preparedness options in their community.

Ideally, information hubs would activate within several hours of a disaster, Clayton estimated.

First things first, individuals need to ensure their own safety before attending to others, she said.

After that, family members are the next priority.

Clayton and Kierman suggest neighbors get to know each other, to establish what resources the community would need — giving the example of an elderly neighbor who relies on an oxygen tank.

Additionally, residents should take stock of what skills their neighbors have, which might come in handy in an emergency, and to create a log of resources the community might already have, like a generator.

Kierman and Clayton define a disaster as “anything that overwhelms a 911 dispatch.”

And when one hits, it can save lives and reduce property damage if people are prepared.

The city has seen several storms in the past decade that have shut down normal operations.

In 2006, a November snowstorm knocked out power for several days and “crippled” the city, Kierman said.

In 2008, a milder storm, according to past news reports, still left stores stripped of products like cable chains, windshield wiper fluid, propane tanks and antifreeze. Even the gas stations ran dry.

“Those kind of things are what you practice for,” he said. “If you’ve ever been in a grocery store in a disaster there are certain shelves that are gone pretty quick.”

Items like water and batteries were among the first to disappear, he said.

Information hubs, manned by a HAM radio operator and hub host, help community members get information on available resources and can send messages via the radio to the city’s emergency operations center.

Typically, the city’s operations center is based in the executive briefing room, just to the left when using the main entrance to the Sammamish City Hall.

It’s “hardened” to withstand a major earthquake, fitted with several television screens, large, wall-sized maps of Sammamish — and in the event of a major disaster, it’s where a Sammamish administrative staff would run a base of operations.

The city manager or deputy city manager would take command during the operation, which would be active 24 hours a day during a disaster.

It’s not activated often.

Howard, the city’s deputy city manager, said the city has had the most practice with it during power outages.

The city would coordinate with Sammamish Police and Eastside Fire & Rescue and the city’s two water and sewer districts. For example, during a significant storm, the city would have public work crews out working on transportation-related issues, like redirecting traffic due to a downed tree.

During a more significant disaster, the city would coordinate with King County’s Emergency Operations Center, and the county would communicate with the state, which would communicate with the federal government for relief and aid.

“The whole thing is a team effort,” Howard said.

Sometimes the city will partially activate the emergency operation, Howard said.

City staff are currently revising the emergency operations center procedure manual, called the emergency management plan. It was last updated in 2012.

The last time it was fully activated was during the storm and ice storm a few years ago.

The city set up “warming stations” in the council chambers, where people could warm themselves. There were also a few charging stations, both run off a diesel generator.

The generator should last a minimum of three days, five if the city uses it efficiently.

The city’s main concern is for the citizen’s safety. During that ice storm, crews visited adult care homes throughout the city to make sure their generators were running and they had necessary supplies, like fuel and water. This “blew their minds,” Howard said.

And if City Hall failed, staff would base its operations in the city’s maintenance and operation center off 244th Avenue.

In June 2016, along with the city, the citizen corps will participate in the Cascadia Rising exercise. The organization, joining what is expected to be a national-level exercise, will run a 12-hour test of emergency operations and information hubs.

The exercise helps prepare organizations and improve their joint operational readiness in the case of a 9.0 earthquake along the Cascadia Subduction Zone, which runs from southern British Columbia to northern California.

For more information on the Sammamish Citizen Corps and to view the city’s information hubs, visit www.sammamishcitizencorps.com or contact info@sammamishcitizencorps.com.