In Case Of Emergency, Read Blog

In a speech concluding National Preparedness Month, DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano urged Americans — when they are in their workplaces and social organizations — to ask a simple question:
“…we’re asking you to raise your hand and ask whenever you are in one of those groups, ‘What’s our plan? You know, the next time your group [...]

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Michael Coston at the Avian Flu Diary had another helpful post today in which he highlighted a good citizen H1N1 prevention idea from Seattle’s Carol Dunn (also a terrific preparedness resource).
She suggests that when it comes to the flu every American should make this commitment: “If you get sick, pledge to yourself: ‘This germ stops [...]

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In a recent post ‘An Appropriate Level Of Concern’ on his very helpful blog Avian Flu Diary (AFD), Michael Coston, asks and answers a key question a lot of people have about the H1N1 flu:
“Just how concerned should the average (insert your nationality here, AFD gets visitors from more than 100 countries) be about this [...]

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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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After I posted DHS’s 2006 “Civil Defense And Homeland Security” report last month, Bill Cumming reminded me about another study, Amanda Dory’s “Civil Security: Americans And The Challenge Of Homeland Security,” published by the Center For Strategic & International Studies (CSIS).
I read Dory’s terrific report when it was released in 2003. And, six years later, as the [...]

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During National Preparedness Month in September, the Red Cross Oregon Trail chapter ran a contest on Twitter called Just1Thing which asked twitterers to tweet just one thing they had done this month to become prepared.
Below is a list of the Just1Things that the twitterers did (I actually did just 2 things in an unsuccessful attempt to [...]

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In a speech marking the end of National Preparedness Month, DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano today asked Americans “to raise your hand and ask ‘What’s our plan’” at their schools, workplaces, houses of worship, social organizations, and homes.
The full speech text has not yet been released but in the Department’s “Leadership Blog,” Napolitano summarized its contents:
“Today, [...]

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U.S. Senate Homeland Security Committee Chairman Joseph Lieberman (I-CT) said earlier this month he agreed with the findings of the Commission on the Prevention of Weapons of Mass Destruction Proliferation and Terrorism that a biological attack on the nation is more likely than a nuclear attack.
Lieberman and ranking member Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) introduced a bill that [...]

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This past weekend, I finished two good books that are definitely worth reading for anyone interested in emergency preparedness and response: Homeland Security And Federalism: Protecting America From Outside The Beltway (Praeger International) by Matt A. Mayer and A Paradise Built In Hell: The Extraordinary Communities That Arise In Disaster (Viking) by Rebecca Solnit.
At a time [...]

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An interesting and comprehensive piece on the changing paradigm of disaster communications, “Information Trickles Up,” by Jerry Brito and Daniel M. Rothschild was recently posted on the Local Knowledge project site of the Mercatus Center at George Mason University. The authors write:
The traditional view of disaster communications holds that in an emergency, information and instructions must [...]

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