In Case Of Emergency, Read Blog

With my chemotherapy finished, I have had the time and energy to participate in several Community Emergency Response Team (CERT) training sessions being offered by the New York City’s Office of Emergency Management (OEM) which oversees our CERT program. I ended up completing three in the same week (in addition to the drill at the the World Trade [...]

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The Safe America Foundation is launching a new campaign, “Drill Down for Safety,” designed to “create local practice drills on an annual basis in communities large and small to assure that Americans are prepared for disasters.” 
The nationwide campaign will focus initially on getting businesses — small, medium-sized and large — to organize emergency drills during September [...]

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The U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s Ready.Gov program and the American Red Cross are adding mobile phones and chargers to its recommendations for basic supplies in citizen emergency preparedness kits. This marks both a real and symbolic step for wireless communications and social media in public emergency preparedness and response. 
The Red Cross has already changed [...]

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On Sunday, I participated in “Operation Safe PATH 2009,” the largest terrorism drill in New York City since 9/11. I was one of approximately 150 Community Emergency Response Team (CERT) members who played bombing ‘victims’ for the exercise.

I am standing outside the PATH train station near the site of World Trade Center along with other [...]

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I have written before about the importance of offering the public some kind of incentive when it comes to trying to spur preparedness. One example is that New York City Fire Department regularly gives away batteries at public events to encourage New Yorkers to keep their smoke alarms working. Recently, I took this photo of [...]

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I want to bring to your attention a terrific new report, Public Role and Engagement In Counterterrorism Efforts: Implications of Israeli Practices for the U.S., prepared for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Science and Technology by the Homeland Security Institute (a federally-funded research and development center which serves as the Department’s think tank). The study was [...]

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Do you know how to say “pandemic flu” in Creole? (PANDEMIK FLOU) Czech? (NA PANDEMII CHŘIPKY) Korean? (악성 독감) Or in 20 other languages? Now, you can. New York City’s Office of Emergency Management (OEM) has recently released a new pamphlet , “Ready New York: Pandemic Flu”. The guide is available for download on the [...]

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The U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s Ready campaign is currently recruiting coalition members for “National Preparedness Month” (NPM) in September. Below is an email I just received from the Ready office:
September is National Preparedness Month (NPM) and 436 organizations have already registered as Coalition Members! If you have not yet signed up to be a 2009 [...]

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I wanted to highlight points that two friends of this blog, Robin Parker and Jon Abolins, made last week in regard to government’s social media effort during the H1N1 flu outbreak. Both of them noted that social media content suitable for computer users is not necessarily effective for those utilizing a mobile phone, and that [...]

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Hurricane Season is starting soon. How soon? You can know exactly: FEMA is offering a hurricane season countdown widget (below) which not only marks, to the second, the time until May 1st (correction: June 1st), but also provides a link to flood preparedness and insurance information. The widget can be found on the FEMA website here.

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