In Case Of Emergency, Read Blog

Over the past several years, I have had the opportunity to work with the group, Voices of September 11th, on emergency preparedness issues. As you probably know by now, one the organization’s founders, Beverly Eckert, died this week with 49 other people in the crash of Flight 3407 outside of Buffalo, New York. She was [...]

[Read more →]

I just finished reading a new book that I think will be of great interest to many of the readers of this blog. The Survivors Club: The Secrets & Science That Could Save Your Life (Grand Central Publishing), written by Ben Sherwood, examines the questions of human survival in crises — Who survives and who doesn’t? [...]

[Read more →]

This segment of the “What Should We Tell The Public?” video series features Pat McGinnis, President Emeritus of the Council for Excellence in Government. Pat and the Council have been leaders in citizen readiness and engagement, including the creation of the much heralded What’s Your RQ? public preparedness quiz. In the video, she lists a number of things [...]

[Read more →]

One good way for private citizens and businesses to get involved in the nation’s homeland security effort is through InfraGard. I applied for membership last year and recently joined.
According to its website, Infragard is: 
“an association of businesses, academic institutions, state and local law enforcement agencies, and other participants dedicated to sharing information and intelligence to prevent [...]

[Read more →]

I recently attended a panel sponsored by New York University’s Center on Law & Society on the “World At Risk,” report released late last year by the Commission on the Prevention of Weapons of Mass Destruction and Terrorism. As I wrote previously, “World At Risk” includes a refreshingly significant focus on the role of the citizen in [...]

[Read more →]

Previously, I’ve written about the weekly “Homeland Security Inside & Out” radio show hosted by Dave McIntyre and Randy Larsen. I subscribe to its podcast through iTunes and find that I learn at least one thing from the show each week that is helpful to my work on public preparedness.
Over the past two weeks, the [...]

[Read more →]

“Homeland Security USA”,  a new reality show on ABC-TV, aired its fourth episode this week. Television reviewers have had two primary criticisms of the program: first, that the show offers too positive a gloss on the work of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) because it was produced with the cooperation of the Department; second, that “Homeland [...]

[Read more →]

I am happy to report that a helpful weekly email resource is going daily beginning this Monday. The Biosecurity Briefing, published by the Baltimore-based Center for Biosecurity of the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, is being expanded. I have found the weekly edition useful in following developments on biosecurity and other threats so I look forward [...]

[Read more →]

The U.S. Homeland Security Department’s Ready Campaign and The Advertising Council have created a new ‘widget’ to provide citizens with emergency information. The widget provides users: 
“with updates on emergency situations, local emergency contact information, an instructional video, emergency kit checklists and guidelines on how to better prepare for an emergency. Users can also access a clickable map to find contact [...]

[Read more →]

Thanks to the Homeland Security Policy Institute’s Twitter coverage of its citizen preparedness forum I found out about an interesting new study, “A Social Infrastructure For Hometown Security: Evolving The Homeland Security Paradigm”. It is co-written by David Kaufman and Robert Bach from CNA. Kaufman mentioned the study at the preparedness forum, which was reported [...]

[Read more →]