In Case Of Emergency, Read Blog

Readers of this blog know how excited I get about creative, well-planned emergency exerrcise that involve the public. So, I wanted to bring your attention to “Quakeville,” an two-day earthquake drill in Palo Alto, California that begins on September 11th. As described in an article at Palo Alto Online:
The ground is shaking violently. Family heirlooms [...]

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“On January 12, 2010, Haiti’s capital, Port-au-Prince, was struck by a 7.0-magnitude earthquake that caused widespread destruction and killed approximately 222,000 people. The next month, Chile was hit by an 8.8-magnitude earthquake — approximately 500 times stronger than that in Haiti — but only 500 people died. Why the disparity?”
That’s the question addressed in an interesting [...]

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On the six-month anniversary of the earthquake in Haiti, the Disaster Accountability Project (DAP) released a report today criticizing the lack of transparency by groups raising relief funds from the public.
The “Report On The Transparency of Relief Organizations Responding to the 2010 Haiti Earthquake”, according to DAP, is the result of an investigation aimed at determining [...]

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Soon after this week’s 5.2 earthquake near San Diego, the Twitter feed of the Great California Shakeout asked their followers to visit the United States Geological Survey’s (USGS) “Did You Feel It?” website. “Did You Feel It?” collects reports from citizens after temblors from around the world.
These public reporting can be very helpful according to the [...]

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Earlier this month, I wrote about a Community Emergency Response Team (CERT) group from New York City that went to Haiti to train earthquake survivors in emergency preparedness and response.

CERT team members along with their Haitian students
Herman Schaffer, the NYC team leader, kept an interesting journal of the experience and posted it on the City’s Office [...]

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A University of Illinois study commissioned by FEMA and just released publicly says the New Madrid seismic zone is capable of producing a massive earthquake that could devastate parts of the central United States — and notes the lack of preparedness for such an event.
According to a Chicago Tribune article on the study:
“I think everybody [...]

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As part of a special report from Seattle’s local public radio station, KUOW, “On Shaky Ground: Waiting for the Big One in the Pacific Northwest,” there’s a three-minute audio interview with JoAnn Jordan, the Public Education Coordinator, Seattle Office of Emergency Management, on how to stay safe in an earthquake.
Jordan is a top local public emergency communications [...]

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With April being Earthquake Preparedness Month, the always creative Robin Parker from the Red Cross Oregon Trail Chapter has a guest post on the American Red Cross blog with some ideas for “interesting items you could add to your earthquake preparedness kit. Or, as they to call them,”prepare-aphernalia”. The post with links can [...]

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With today’s 7.1 earthquake in western China on the heels of the quakes in Haiti and China as well as those last week in Baja California and Indonesia, seismologist Roger Musson has a timely op-ed in the New York Times addressing the question: “Are earthquakes becoming more frequent?” His answer: “no.”
It’s true that more earthquakes [...]

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In the wake of this week’s Baja California earthquake, San Diego’s KPBS had an interesting piece discussing why so few state residents have earthquake insurance.
[There] may be good reasons to get earthquake insurance, but there are reasons why most people decide to just take their chances. Those reasons boil down to the rarity of severe [...]

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