I grew up in the Midwest were we had routine floods on the Eastside of the town I lived in. There was a tornado that came through town very close to where I was living. We, on occasion went to the basement when there were tornado warnings.
If you are an emergency manager you might not have the public education function as a direct responsibility, but as professionals working in the disaster field we need to 1) Model the behavior that we are asking others to do 2) Talk about disaster preparedness with relatives, neighbors and friends. They already expect it of us—so, get on with it.
Perhaps there is something in Steve Eberlien's message above that you can use to help others and likely yourself, overcome the "common sense gap" in why we don't prepare.