Are you ready for an emergency?

Personal preparedness is the theme for this year’s Emergency Preparedness Week.

“This year, London's team will be focused on raising awareness of the importance of personal preparedness for every member of our community,” said Mayor, Josh Morgan. “Emergencies can affect all cultures, genders, and age groups. Thinking about what you would do in the event of an emergency is the first step to being prepared.”

London fire held an extrication demonstration Monday morning to kick off the week — highlighting some of the tools they use, both new and old, and how those tools are critical to getting a victim out safely and into the hands of paramedics.

“In auto extrication. We talked about the golden hour. From when we're dispatched when that patient or patients are at the hospital is an hour depending on the level of injury so we've tried to work within that obviously” said Ron Vermeltfoort, platoon training instructor.

The tools and techniques are evolving over time. This year marks 150 years of service for the London Fire Department and acting Fire Chief Richard Hayes spoke about the dedication to training.

“We as a fire department do prepare ourselves for these inevitable emergencies that do impact our community. A demonstration of new technologies to extricate people from their new cars and the new cars keep changing. And so our technology and our training practices have to change as well.”

One of those advancements will soon be seen and give crews more options in dealing with heavy crash scene accidents.

London fire fighters demonstrating a new extrication tool as part of Emergency Preparedness Week. May 8, 2023. (Marek Sutherland/CTV News London)"We are in the midst of working on getting a new rescue for London. It will be a heavy rescue and we will have the capacity for all our tools of course," said Captain John Peter.

Morgan was on hand and spoke about the theme of this year’s awareness week of personal preparedness.

"I think about my young family in an emergency. You know, what do we do? Do we know where to go? Do we know if there is a tornado warning happening? Do my kids know what they should be doing in that instance? Preparing for an emergency. The best time to do that is not during an emergency. It's now,” said Morgan.

On Tuesday, London’s Emergency Management Program will perform a public test of the Alert London Notification System at 1:30 p.m.

In the event of an emergency, Alert London will provide critical public safety messages to anyone who has signed up to receive this service, and all residents of London are encouraged to sign up.