In Case Of Emergency, Read Blog

During hurricane season and National Preparedness Month, state and local emergency management offices in communities around the U.S. will often work with private businesses to promote public readiness. Typical is North Carolina County Emergency Management Services hurricane project with the United Way in which:
Stores across the area are hosting a Hurricane Preparedness and Awareness event throughout the [...]

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Alabama’s innovative “Be Ready Sunday,” initiative encouraging faith-based organizations to educate their congregations on how to respond when a man-made or natural disaster strikes takes place this weekend. It should be replicated in other parts of the nation.
According to the “Ready Alabama” website:
The Governor’s Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives and the Alabama Department of Homeland [...]

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A two-day drill, Exercise 24 (X24), was launched today by San Diego State University’s Immersive Visualization Center in large part to test how social media would be used to respond to a crisis. According to a CNN.com article, “Fake Earthquake Disaster Drill Tests Facebook, Twitter”:
The idea is to test the speed and widen the scope of responses [...]

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On Saturday, the first-ever “Global CrisisCamp Day” will be hosted in London, Toronto, Washington D.C., Calgary, and virtually to encourage people to lead CrisisCamps and volunteer their expertise and skills to create innovative approaches, resources and tools for crisis response and global development. I would be attending the event in Washington but have a medical appointment, and [...]

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A report released at today’s National Summit on Youth Preparedness says “schools are an ideal place for children to learn disaster preparedness.” The study, Bringing Youth Preparedness Education to the Forefront: A Literature Review and Recommendations, looks at best practices, scholarship and offers recommendations. It is worth reading for this interested in the subject.

The Department [...]

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File this blog post under ‘no good turn goes unpunished’.
The Red Cross has organized a series of preparedness events for personnel and families on military bases, including one at Fort Belvoir earlier this summer and another at Fort Polk last month. The families were able to build an emergency preparedness kit and learn about emergency preparedness, [...]

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Yesterday, I participated in several Community Emergency Response Team (CERT) activities as part of New York City’s kickoff of National Preparedness Month activities.
First, I handed out preparedness ‘goody bags’ to passersby in Manhattan’s Columbus Circle after stuffing the packages with other members in an impromptu assembly line. In each bag was a READY New [...]

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To mark National Preparedness Month, the Empire State Building is lit tonight in Ready New York  Yellow making emergency readiness, at least for one evening, the ‘highest’ priority in the City. I took the (amateur) photos earlier this evening.

The Empire State Building lit in Ready New York Yellow tonight.

These icons link to social bookmarking sites [...]

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Though yesterday’s launch of National Preparedness Month was filled with a lot of great activities taking place throughout the U.S., it also a day that underscores the shortcomings in the nation’s public readiness efforts — because also yesterday Japan held its annual Disaster Prevention Day during which 670,000 citizens participated in emergency drills in Tokyo and 34 [...]

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As the U.S. kicks off  National Preparedness Month today, I thought I would reprint a letter to the editor from a newspaper in Canada during that nation’s Emergency Preparedness Week. I think anyone involved in public preparedness will empathize with the challenge of engaging the public on this issue. The letter:
To the editor:
I guess everyone in Scugog [...]

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