In Case Of Emergency, Read Blog

In a report released yesterday, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) says ”too many Americans don’t know how to get critical information or where to go in the event of a disaster,” the report, “Personal Preparedness in America: Findings from the Citizen Corps National Survey” concludes. “60% of respondents were unfamiliar about their local evacuation routes. 54% of [...]

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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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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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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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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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The Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee held a hearing yesterday on the nomination of Craig Fugate for Administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Administration. Fugate received enthusiastic backing from committee members and his confirmation seems assured. 
From a citizen preparedness perspective, I think it was terrific that very early in his opening statement Fugate made [...]

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Acting FEMA Administrator Nancy Ward speaking at the National Hurricane Conference in Austin, Texas on Wednesday underscored the need for the general public to do their own risk and communications assessments as storm season approaches. And, she said in an interview now on FEMA’s YouTube channel that the agency would be continuing to expand its use of [...]

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As described in the previous post, FEMA Administrator-Designate Craig Fugate’s trip from Tallahassee to Washington, D.C. to begin preparations for his Senate confirmation hearings has not gone exactly as planned. ‘Followers’ of his Twitter feed, disasterrus, have not only read that Fugate was delayed in Atlanta and missed a connecting flight, but they also got to [...]

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I wrote recently that I thought the Twitter feed, Disasterus, of Florida’s Division of Emergency Management Director Craig Fugate provided some interesting and even fun insight into the activities of the future FEMA Administrator. In a tweet earlier today, Fugate wrote:
Tallahassee this morning, flying out to DC to begin briefings to prepare for Senate Confirmation 
In the era of [...]

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