In Case Of Emergency, Read Blog

Reader Jonathan Haber was kind enough to send me an article in yesterday’s Washington Post about how Montgomery County, Maryland’s e-mail alert system didn’t notify thousands of people after a major water main break, because the two employees who know how to operate the system were out of town. According to the Post:
When those two employees couldn’t be reached, a third employee […]

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With many parts of the country suffering from extreme weather emergencies, David Stephenson, the guru of Preparedness 2.0, among other things, has reposted his ’21st Century Disaster Tips You Won’t Get From Officials’ and a video version via You Tube on his blog, stephensonstrategies.com. They are well worth reading and watching. The tips focus on the:
“…smart use of personal communication devices, especially in […]

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A fellow CERT member just sent me this interactive web quiz on earthquake preparedness. It doesn’t take long (only 10 questions) and is easy to use for all ages. Go to: www.nwcn.com/sharedcontent/features/flash/quake/during.html
In all candor, your preparedness expert got only 6 out of 10 answers correct — earthquakes are not my strength — so I definitely learned something from […]

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I know you all already get too much email (including, for some of you, the weekly summary of this blog). And the idea of getting any more, particularly from the Department of Homeland Security, may not sound on first blush very enticing
However, if you are interested in citizen preparedness — or for that matter any aspect of homeland security – I suggest you go to […]

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As I reported in an earlier post, a question asked by many residents of the buildings who could not get back into their apartments after the crane collapse on Friday was how they could recharge their cell phones. In fact, keeping your mobile device powered during and after an emergency situation is crucial – so you can both communicate with others and get the latest information. As mentioned often on this blog, […]

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A little Friday afternoon humor  (with a citizen preparedness 2.0 angle)
About an hour ago, I received an “Arlington Alert” e-mail from Arlington, Virginia OEM as I signed up for with the subject line: “Rapid Fox”. I opened it with some curiosity and read:
A fox that bit a woman in south Arlington has tested positive for rabies, Arlington […]

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NPR’s Melissa Block had an interesting story about how many Chinese throughout the country communicated with each other directly after the earthquake using text messaging:
The first word about the massive earthquake in China did not come from the news media. In China, some 600 million people have cell phones, and when the quake hit, many reached for them — but not […]

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The aftermath of both major Asian natural disasters – the earthquake in China and the Burmese cyclone — has displayed the web’s ability to be an source and aggregator of multi-media information in the wake of disaster situations.
This phenomenon is being well covered by Global Voices, a non-profit citizens’ media project founded at Harvard Law School’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society.
This post combines post-earthquake video mashups […]

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The aftermath of the major earthquake that struck central China has underscored the importance and potential of personal technology in helping the public deal with major disasters. 
As this posting from Matthew Ingram’s 2.0 blog in Canada’s Globe and Mail newspaper explains, Twitter broke the news of the earthquake and its ‘coverage’ has filled a news niche.
Like many others, I woke up this morning […]

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I recently viewed a new emergency preparedness video produced by the Centers of Disease Control (CDC) for the public called “A New Era of Preparedness”. I think it is one of the better productions on this topic for citizens that I have seen. It can be viewed on the CDC website at emergency.cdc.gov/video/newera.asp.

I liked it […]

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