In Case Of Emergency, Read Blog

This morning, the East Coast-based Twitter followers of @CraigatFEMA (aka FEMA Administrator Craig Fugate) got a bit of a provocative challenge:

It was little less cheeky than his reminder tweet from the day before:

Usually, preparedness messaging — particularly as a threat approaches — is Boy Scout earnest (and Fugate uses that approach as well — see [...]

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A major highlight of the Red Cross Emergency Data Summit earlier this month for me was meeting in person someone I have known — and have learned from — remotely for the last several years, Brian Humphrey from the Los Angeles Fire Department (LAFD). Brian has been a pioneer in the use of personal technology [...]

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With the Federal Emergency Management Administration (FEMA) recently unveiling the redesign of its FEMA.Gov website, I asked Administrator Craig Fugate if he would explain why the agency undertook the overhaul.
In the brief video (below), Fugate says FEMA wanted to make the site more focused on helping the public in answer the following questions: “How do I prepare? [...]

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Last week, I visited the three-member Ready Campaign team — Director Darryl Madden, Deputy Director Rebecca Marquis, and Campaign Specialist Chris Bernstein – at FEMA headquarters to get a briefing on the 7th annual National Preparedness Month (NPM) which begins in less than two weeks.
NPM, sponsored by the Ready Campaign in partnership with Citizen Corps and the Ad [...]

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I am in Washington this morning and was about to walk over to the American Red Cross’ “Emergency Social Data Summit” when – maybe appropriately considering the topic of the event — I received on my BlackBerry from the District of Columbia’s Emergency Management Agency’s AlertDC “Flood Warning” and “Severe Thunderstorm Watch” e-mail/text:
National Weather Service has [...]

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With Pakistan suffering its worst flooding in 80 years, I wanted to bring to your attention a web-based, civilian-created effort to raise money and be an information conduit both inside and outside the country on the disaster.
The Pakistan Crisis Wiki was created in 2005 by Pakistani native Sabahat Ashraf, a technical writer living in Silicon Valley, in [...]

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I’m posting another story from today’s Boston Globe, because it is a good example of Twitter as a useful public safety tool, and it illustrates how a good number of government entities are late to the social media party.
The article explains how a Twitter tweet led to the arrest of a man accused of exposing [...]

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In the wake of the catastrophic flooding in Pakistan, the U.S. State Department’s blog, DipNote, yesterday asked the public for ideas on “What Are Innovative Ways The International Community Can Respond To Natural Disasters”.
The post notes that Americans have been donating to Pakistan relief from their cell phones, by texting the word “SWAT” to the [...]

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Mike Ellis from the Emergency Comunications Network decided yesterday to try to launch “Thank A Cop Thursdays” (hashtag: #ThankACopThur) on Twitter. He started tweeting the idea out with help from law enforcement social media expert, Lauri Stevens (@lawscomm).

This afternoon, Ellis gave me an update on the effort:
“The response to #ThankACopThur was immediate and continues today. I [...]

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The same people who brought you Preparedness Piggy, Johnson County Emergency Management & Homeland Security in Kansas, have come up with another creative idea — using Twitter and Facebook to ask the public whether its emergency sirens are covering the area adequately.
Today, just after drill testing its 177 outdoor warning sirens, officials requested through Facebook [...]

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