In Case Of Emergency, Read Blog

As today is the last day that you can vote in the U.S. Health and Human Services’ H1N1 Flu Prevention PSA contest on Flu.Gov, I thought I would ask some folks from the worlds of social media, public health and/or emergency preparedness for their top pick from the 10 worthy finalists.
Among those I surveyed, the most [...]

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In a speech at the Heritage Foundation on Tuesday, the current President of the National Emergency Management Association (NEMA) Nancy Dragani said that the nation has a “culture of entitlement” when it comes to disaster preparedness and response. According to an article by Daniel Fowler of CQ Homeland Security, Dragani, the Executive Director of the Ohio Department [...]

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To kick off the launch of the “National Dialogue On The Quadrennial Homeland Security Review,” the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) held a “Blogger Roundtable” yesterday at the agency’s headquarters featuring Assistant Secretary For Policy David Heyman.
DHS is conducting the first-ever “Quadrennial Homeland Security Review (QHSR),” a Congressionally-mandated strategic review which aims to help guide the Department [...]

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In his first ‘Blogger Roundtable’, new FEMA head Craig Fugate said today that increasing citizen preparedness will be a major priority for the agency and the “one area you’ll hear me talk about more often about.” He acknowledged that the emergency management community “hasn’t done a good job of using the public as a resource” [...]

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I recently had the opportunity to participate in a “Blogger Roundtable” on emergency preparedness with Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Michael Chertoff and Federal Emergency Management Administration (FEMA) chief R. David Paulison held at DHS Headquarters in Washington, D.C. I joined Jonah Czerwinski of the Homeland Security Watch and Rich Cooper of Security Debrief as one of three questioners. The full transcript can be found here. 
It was a wide-ranging, [...]

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The valiant efforts of the civilian responders in Cedar Falls, Iowa provides yet another example of how average citizens come together and rise to the occasion in major disaster situations. On the Security Debrief blog, Rich Cooper offers a nice tribute and offers the important reminder that even those of us not in currently harm’s way should not miss this “teaching moment”:
“…pay close attention to what is [...]

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The Department of Homeland Security has just released the transcript of Monday’s ”Blogger Roundtable” on emergency preparedness with Secretary Chertoff and FEMA Administrator Paulison held at DHS Headquarters in Washington, D.C. 
I had the opportunity to join Jonah Czerwinski of Homeland Security Watch and Rich Cooper of Security Debrief as one of three questioners.
It was a lively, back and forth discussion of emergency preparedness, much of it focusing on the role of the [...]

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