In Case Of Emergency, Read Blog

More precisely, Administrator R. David Paulison held a 45-minute q & a with the public yesterday using the microblogging tool, Twitter. 
Paulison took questions and offered answers (within Twitter’s limit of 140 characters or less) to all comers on the agency’s Twitter account, femainfocus.  A “tweet log” as well as an audio file and full transcript of the event [...]

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The Hurricane Information Center (at www.hurricanes08.org) is a one-stop shop site with governmental information, weather updates, maps, evacuation housing as well as ways to help and be helped. There is a link to a related Hurricane Wiki at www.hurricanewiki.org/wiki/Main_Page.
To follow the Red Cross’ relief efforts, go to the Red Cross Hurricane Ike Newsroom at hurricaneike.wordpress.com/
The Houston Chronicle’s website is doing excellent on the ground coverage – www.chron.com/
You [...]

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In a previous post, I mentioned how I have been closely following the Red Cross’ social media sites, including the ARC Online Newsroom and its Twitter feed to keep apprised of what was happening ‘on the ground’ during Gustav. I have also been monitoring other non-Red Cross related social media sites over the past couple days as they provide [...]

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After my post last Sunday about the text/email alerts from Philadelphia and Miami, I received an email from Cheryl Bledsoe, an emergency manager from Clark County in Vancouver, Washington. She has been studying how to best use social media and personal technology in public emergency preparation and response for her area. As part of that [...]

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With anniversary of Hurricane Katrina approaching, CIO magazine has an interesting article titled “How Social Networking Saved New Orleans” about how web-based new media tools such as Flickr, Yahoo Groups, wikis and Google Maps have been integral in citizen efforts to help reestablish and rebuild their community. The article highlights the work of Alan Gutierrez from the nonprofit [...]

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Readers of this blog know that I am a big advocate of the potential of personal technology in helping the public prepare for and respond to emergencies, whether they be small everyday incidents or major disasters. So, I am very happy to see that the Wireless Foundation, the Wireless Association’s charitable arm, has just created a terrific new [...]

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Within 38 minutes this Sunday morning, I received two text/email alert messages from different governmental authorities. Both transmitted potentially important information, though on a very different scale. I thought I would mention them.
First at 8:22am, I received this from Miami-Dade County in Florida:
Miami-Dade Alerts: Miami-Dade County is under a tropical storm watch. Please prepare now [...]

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The blog “Web Strategy by Jeremiah” does an interesting, multi-media analysis of the role of the social messaging service Twitter (as well as other civilian media coverage) in reporting a propane gas explosion in Toronto early Sunday morning. In the post, titled “Crises Tracking on Twitter: The Benefits -and Dangers- of New Media,” Jeremiah (Jeremiah Owyang, [...]

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Though today’s 5.4 earthquake in Los Angeles was fortunately not too serious, some experts are already saying it was a “warning” of a major one to come.
But the question is whether this warning will actually spur civilian preparedness. That’s why I was happy to see the Los Angeles Fire Department quickly take advantage of the small [...]

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I received an email last week from the Arlington, Virginia Office of Emergency Management alerting subscribers that they were going to start sending fewer email/text emergency alerts.
From: “Arlington Alert”
To: “Arlington Alert Subscribers”
Subject: Policy change concerning Military Flyover Alerts
Routine ArlingtonAlert notifications regarding military flyovers are being discontinued. This change was made due to the almost [...]

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