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CRESA Emergency Manager Cheryl Bledsoe stopped by COUV.COM on May 24 to talk about emergency preparedness the #140 Characters Conference Northwest, a Twitter conference she recently organized.

Bledsoe suggests people have food — things that can be prepared without having a stove or microwave — and water store three days worth of food and water.

She also suggests people have water, food and other supplies in their vehicles. If you’re prepared in your vehicle, you’re prepared to help others who might have been in accident, if you’re on scene a bottle of water can save a life, she said.

Learning how to react to a disaster before one happens is crucial. Know how to text message — one thing we’re seeing in emergency after emergency, the bandwidth for making a phone call goes away, but phone can still text message, she said.

She also mentioned that half a million Japanese signed up for Twitter the day after the earthquake because that was the only way they could communicate with each other.

People can follow CRESA emergency information account, @CRESA , or its “chatter” account, @CRESAtalk on Twitter; interact with it on Facebook or follow its blog.