In Case Of Emergency, Read Blog

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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On October 4th, it will be 10/4 and out for the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) interesting online experiment, A National Dialogue on the Quadrennial Homeland Security Review. The third and last round began this week and will run through Sunday.
The Dialogue tool was developed by DHS with the National Academy of Public Administration to help [...]

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Speaking to a workshop on crisis communications yesterday, DHS Secretary Napolitano said both ‘old’ and ‘new’ media “can and need to” continue to address the accuracy of rumors and conspiracy theories on homeland security issues such as H1N1 and terrorism. In her remarks, she also outlined some other news/information challenges faced by the media as [...]

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In Baltimore today, about 120 area journalists, government officials, business executives and scientists faced the following [mock tabletop] situation:
A major explosion at City Hall; another explosion at Baltimore’s World Trade Center; gunmen firing upon those on at the two sites; their actions are obviously being coordinated using complex communications partly utilizing info/images broadcast by the media; [...]

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