In Case Of Emergency, Read Blog

Today, November 19th, is the 34th annual “Great American Smokeout” aimed at helping smokers “use the date to make a plan to quit, or to plan in advance and quit smoking.” Here in New York, the Department of Health is continuing its aggressive anti-smoking effort by handing out free nicotine gum and patches at sites throughout the [...]

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As I had mentioned last week, the first-ever Random Hacks of Kindness took place this weekend in Mountain View, California. The event — which came out of discussions at the inaugural Crisis Camp held in May of 2009 in Washington, D.C. — was aimed at identifying key challenges and developing technological solutions to ‘real world’ problems [...]

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Today, I attended the second in a series of “stakeholder forums” being held by the Obama Administration’s “Long-Term Disaster Recovery Working Group” to solicit input and ideas.
The White House Working Group — co-chaired by Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano and Department of Housing and Urban Development Secretary Shaun Donovan and composed of the Secretaries [...]

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In an effort to reach out to its stakeholders, including the public, FEMA has announced outreach initiatives on business preparedness and flood insurance.
First, the agency will be holding a series of public meetings throughout the U.S. on the Department of Homeland Security’s Voluntary Private Sector Preparedness Accreditation and Certification Program (PS-Prep). PS-Prep is a partnership between DHS [...]

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I had the wonderful opportunity this morning to view the arrival of the U.S.S. New York — which was built in part with steel from the fallen World Trade Center towers — into the harbor which bears its name.

THE USS NEW YORK PASSES BY GROUND ZERO THIS MORNING (ABOVE)
The Navy ship was welcomed on the [...]

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Like most kids, I never liked getting shots when I was younger. Yesterday morning, I was recalling those days and thinking whether it would have been easier had they been given with the Health Commissioner, the School Chancellor and a room full of television cameras in the room.
That’s exactly how students at P.S. 157 in [...]

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Congratulations to the organizers of The Great California Shakeout which took place yesterday at 10:15 PT. In the ShakeOut’s second year, 6.9 million Californians participated up from 5.5 million in 2008.

IN SAN FRANCISCO, ACADEMY OF ART UNIVERSITY STUDENTS LISA ALLEN AND SHAOFU ZHANG DROPPING AND COVERING AS PART OF THE GREAT CALIFORNIA SHAKEOUT (Photo: Associated [...]

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I had the nice opportunity this past week to be the moderator of an American Red Cross “Town Hall” focusing on the growth and evolution of the organization’s partnerships with non-profit groups in disaster preparedness, response and recovery, particularly since the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.
The forum, titled “Convergence and Cooperation: Town Hall With Our Service [...]

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In recent posts, I have highlighted a couple of major California preparedness events occurring in mid-October — “The Great California Shakeout” and “The Great Rumble”. I wanted to mention another one, the “Ojai OK Drill,” which takes place next week.
Organized by the Ojai Valley CERT, the “OK Drill” aims to improve the community’s emergency readiness. [...]

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I attended a very interesting hearing on Capitol Hill late last week, “Preparedness: State of Citizen and Community Preparedness,” held by the House Subcommittee on Emergency Communications, Preparedness, and Response which is chaired by Rep. Henry Cuellar (D-TX).
At the hearing, Bill Jenkins Jr. from the Government Accountability Office (GAO) presented a preliminary report, Emergency Management Preliminary Observations on FEMA’s Community Preparedness Programs Related to [...]

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