Lake County emergency resilience event set for Two Harbors April 26

A free NOAA radio giveaway and a room full of local responders will turn Two Harbors High School into a practical crash course in surviving the next outage, storm or road closure.

Survive This!: Lake County Emergency Resilience is set for April 26 from 1 to 3 p.m. at Two Harbors High School, with booths hosted by Lake County organizations, brief presentations from a panel of speakers and audience questions built into the program. KTWH 99.5 FM said the event will also include free food and a first-come Cuban sandwich offer from The Rainy Rose Food Truck, giving the gathering a neighbor-to-neighbor feel even as its focus stays squarely on safety.

The timing is deliberate. Lake County tied the event to Severe Weather Awareness Week, which in 2026 centered on alerts and warnings, severe weather, floods, tornadoes and extreme heat. Statewide tornado drills were held April 16 at 1:45 p.m. and 6:45 p.m. CDT, but the county is using the April 26 event to push the conversation beyond drills and into what households actually need when the lights go out or the weather cuts people off.

That matters on the North Shore, where Lake County says emergency management covers preparedness, response, recovery and mitigation for both natural and man-made hazards. The county says wildfire is its greatest natural hazard, and its latest Hazard Mitigation Plan was approved by FEMA in December 2024. Lake County has also used mitigation funding in the past to bury power lines after ice storms and to install wildfire sprinklers and metal roofs in high-risk areas, a reminder that resilience here is not abstract planning. It is about keeping homes powered, access open and damage limited when the weather turns.

County officials also point to 19 wildfire planning zones in the Community Wildfire Protection Plan, which shows how local emergency planning has been broken down into specific geographic risks rather than treated as a one-size-fits-all exercise. Warren LaPlante, the county’s emergency management director, oversees a system that encourages residents to register for emergency alerts and use multiple ways to receive warnings, including a NOAA radio and National Weather Service phone apps.

That is the real takeaway from the Two Harbors event. If one storm can isolate a road, knock out cell service or leave a family waiting for updates, a battery-powered radio and a working alert setup can matter as much as food or flashlights. Lake County is making the pitch that resilience starts before the emergency, and April 26 will show residents exactly what that looks like in practice.