n understatement: I am a worrier. My friends and family can vouch for this. I pack for vacation using a spreadsheet, calculating the amount of sunscreen we’ll need for the beach. My husband once said, “You know, we’re going to South Carolina. They have stores there and you can buy more if you run out.” I shot back that he clearly didn’t know how much sunscreen costs down in South Carolina.

I have both Tylenol and Advil, Band-Aids and bee sting wands, antacids and some more sunscreen. Extra socks, always. Two more pairs of shoes than I might need. Some electrolyte packets in case someone gets dehydrated. An extra phone charging cord.

It’s not just vacation. My purse always includes, well, both Tylenol and Advil, dental floss (See, Dr. Lanz!?), hand lotion, sunglasses, hand sanitizer and at least six pens. I also have a drink chip for the Saloon, a $2 bill my mother gave me and my library card!

I don’t need to go on. The point is that preparation is important to me. Even if I’m not actively worried about something, it is nice to be covered just in case.

When I came to work at the municipality in 2007 and I started going to our emergency preparedness training sessions, I felt like I found my people. Municipal staff, especially first responders, plan for everything. Some of the drills are required by state agencies. Others we do just so that we have muscle memory when things go wrong. And they do go wrong — although not usually the way we have rehearsed them. I won’t list all of the safety steps we take but know that they have run the Final Destination scenarios and they have a procedure for all of it.

Take Snowmageddon in 2010. We had prepared for blizzards, but this one went on and on. On top of the snow, we had electrical outages, so we needed to ferry people from their homes to our warming centers or to family members who had heat. Just when the people were all settled, we had another problem — house temperatures were dropping so fast that we needed to find temporary shelter for pets who needed to get warm, so we had to match people with pets with people with warm homes who liked pets. All of this with streets that were largely impassable. The staff who had been working all day needed to eat. The fire department took the food in the fridge for its Super Bowl party and used it instead to feed us. Problem solved.

Winter weather is just one of the emergencies we plan for so that you can stay safe. Read Merle Jantz’s story. Rest assured that your municipal staff will always be here for you for those big headaches. If it’s just a little headache, can I interest you in some Tylenol or Advil?