In Case Of Emergency, Read Blog

With the hurricane season beginning, FEMA has a free E-mail subscription service that delivers news updates and disaster-related information directly to your computer or wireless device, such as: when a major disaster is declared, where local recovery centers are located, what kind of financial aid is available, how to obtain disaster-related assistance, and what to [...]

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With a new survey reporting that residents of coastal states are unprepared for hurricane season, Virginia held its annual hurricane preparedness tax holiday last week to try to boost civilian readiness in that state. Virginia made a significant effort to promote the week and enlist the private sector with its marketing capacity and expertise behind citizen [...]

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In his forthcoming book, former Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, warns about the U.S. becoming complacent and returning to a “September 10 mindset.” But he is equally cautionary about going too far in the other direction. “There are two opposite extremes that must be avoided,” he writes in the book, Homeland Security: Assessing the First [...]

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In his first ‘Blogger Roundtable’, new FEMA head Craig Fugate said today that increasing citizen preparedness will be a major priority for the agency and the “one area you’ll hear me talk about more often about.” He acknowledged that the emergency management community “hasn’t done a good job of using the public as a resource” [...]

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I wanted to mention a new mini-guide/chart from the Yale University School of Public Health Preparedness called Social Media And Preparedness. In a simple basic form, it lists the leading social media tools and how they can be used in public health and emergency preparedness. As the introduction describes:
“The internet is buzzing with tweets, diggs, podcasts, widgets, and [...]

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On Tuesday, the day after Hurricane Season officially starts, recently confirmed Federal Emergency Management Administration head Craig Fugate will be holding a ‘blogger roundtable’ — a telephone press conference for bloggers like myself. The purpose of the roundtable is to draw attention to the need for personal and government preparedness, especially as it relates to [...]

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During a visit to FEMA’s National Response Coordination Center on Friday, President Obama said that preparing for hurricanes and other disasters was a “personal responsibility” and a responsibility of citizenship. According to the President:
“True preparedness means having federal and state and local governments all coordinating effectively, and as you just heard, one of the most important [...]

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