In Case Of Emergency, Read Blog

Almost two-thirds (64%) of Americans say they would be willing to take a 20-hour training class to assist their community recover from disasters, according to a new survey released by the U.S. Citizen Corps. Initial results of “Personal Preparedness In America, were announced by Citizen Corps Director Karen Marsh at the National Conference on Community Preparedness this [...]

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This edition of the “What Should We Tell The Public?” video series features Claire Rubin. Claire is a veteran emergency management scholar who I have written about before. She is the author of Emergency Management: The American Experience, 1900-2005 which has just been released electronically by the Public Entity Risk Institute. You can purchase it here. She [...]

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Via the U.S. Citizen Corps comes an intriguing invitation for those interested in the future of national emergency preparedness and response as well as homeland security in general:
U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano invites you to participate in the National Dialogue on the Quadrennial Homeland Security Review (QHSR). This groundbreaking, web-based interactive dialogue is designed [...]

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As part of the Obama Administration’s new public service initiative, the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the  Citizen Corps have partnered with the Corporation for National and Community Service to create a Community Preparedness Toolkit. It is one of a series of Toolkits that can be found on Serve.gov, the nation’s new online resource for finding volunteer [...]

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As part of the Obama Administration’s voluntarism initiative, the United We Serve summer service program launches today. It will conclude with the National Day of Service and Remembrance on September 11.
You can participate in United We Serve events across the nation this summer by visiting the new White House website, Serve.gov (http://www.serve.gov/).  To encourage participation in [...]

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In a report released yesterday, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) says ”too many Americans don’t know how to get critical information or where to go in the event of a disaster,” the report, “Personal Preparedness in America: Findings from the Citizen Corps National Survey” concludes. “60% of respondents were unfamiliar about their local evacuation routes. 54% of [...]

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This week, I happened to be on the Community Emergency Response Team (CERT) page of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security website. (I was creating a link for a previous blog post which suggested CERT as one way to answer President Obama’s call for Americans to volunteer in their communities.)
While on the site, I was pleasantly surprised [...]

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A bill that would bolster the public’s involvement and engagement in their own homeland security advanced in Congress this month. This is particularly important to this blog as it is legislation specifically focused on citizen preparedness – in fact, ‘citizen preparedness’ is even in the name.
“H.R. 5890, the Citizen and Community Preparedness Act of 2008″ passed the Homeland Security Committee’s Emergency Preparedness and Response Subcommittee, chaired by [...]

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I attended an emergency preparedness forum yesterday for local religious leaders held at the Queens Museum. It was organized by the New York City Citizen Corps Council along with the American Red Cross of Greater New York, the NYC Office of Emergency Management and the NYC Department of Health. Approximately 75 people, representing many different denominations, listened to presentations and took [...]

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