In Case Of Emergency, Read Blog

Mike Ellis from the Emergency Comunications Network decided yesterday to try to launch “Thank A Cop Thursdays” (hashtag: #ThankACopThur) on Twitter. He started tweeting the idea out with help from law enforcement social media expert, Lauri Stevens (@lawscomm).

This afternoon, Ellis gave me an update on the effort:
“The response to #ThankACopThur was immediate and continues today. I [...]

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The same people who brought you Preparedness Piggy, Johnson County Emergency Management & Homeland Security in Kansas, have come up with another creative idea — using Twitter and Facebook to ask the public whether its emergency sirens are covering the area adequately.
Today, just after drill testing its 177 outdoor warning sirens, officials requested through Facebook [...]

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The American Red Cross today unveiled new and updated technology  – an improved “Safe and Well” site and a real-time way to find shelter — to help families during a disaster.
According to the Red Cross news release:
Safe and Well is a secure and easy-to-use online tool that allows people inside a disaster-affected area to list [...]

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The Colorado Division of Emergency Management and READYColorado are among the most innovative and energetic state operations in the nation when it comes to citizen preparedness.
So, it’s not surprising that the agencies are developing a special social media response team comprised of teenagers to assist the state’s efforts in dealing with disasters. Tentatively called the [...]

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As social media becomes an increasingly important way for emergency managers to distribute disaster preparedness information to the public, officials are facing communications issues they have not dealt with before. One such issue — should FEMA be sending information in Spanish as well as English to the feed it sends its ‘fans’ on Facebook? – has [...]

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FEMA Administrator Craig Fugate released a short video today promoting — and demonstrating – how disaster survivors for the first time can apply for government assistance with their smart phones through the agency’s mobile site, m.FEMA.gov.
Throughout his tenure, Fugate has been a major advocate of personal technology (particularly smart phones) as a disaster preparedness and response tool [...]

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I wanted to post a report that came out while this blog was on hiatus last year. New Technologies In Emergencies And Conflicts, written by Diane Coyle and Patrick Meier. It was published by the United Nations Foundation and the Vodafone Foundation.

The study looks at the opportunities and challenges that communications advances present for humanitarian [...]

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The Federal Emergency Management Agency, National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration and the American Red Cross have produced a menu with their various social media tools (including Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and widgets) for the public to use/bookmark during hurricane season. It can be found on FEMA’s website here. You can also receive e-mail and text alerts [...]

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In the weeks since Deepwater Horizon explosion, the Louisiana Governor’s Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness (GOHSEP) has found itself in the middle of an evolving and unprecedented crisis. And, the agency has been relying on its new Twitter feed @GOHSEP, which has become a vital communications platform and resource.
Though the @GOHSEP feed has been [...]

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There’s a nice — and well deserved — profile of government/emergency social media innovator Brian Humphrey, “A Gov 2.o Pioneer,” by Michelle V. Rafter in the blog, Prime Time. Humphrey (photo left) is a veteran Los Angeles Fire Department (LAFD) public information officer who has made the LAFD a leader in the use of governmental [...]

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