In Case Of Emergency, Read Blog

Pegged to National Preparedness Month, the U.S. Citizen Corps just announced it has added some new social media tools to its website, including widgets, web banners, and RSS feeds. They complement the Corps’ existing Twitter, E-mail lists and Facebook web presence. According to a news release:
“Widgets: Widgets are web tools that can be put on your webpage, [...]

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The National Federation of Community Broadcasters (NFCB), National Public Radio (NPR), and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) in collaboration with three public television stations, and the Integrated Media Association are developing the Station Action for Emergency Readiness (SAFER) project, a plan to help public broadcasters serve their communities when disaster strikes.
SAFER will develop customizable plans [...]

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At one of the opening panels of the recent Citizen Corps’ National Conference On Community Preparedness, I heard a terrific presentation on San Francisco’s new preparedness initiative, “Prep SF Because It Rocks!”, given by Rob Dudgeon, the Deputy Director of  the City’s Department of Emergency Management (SFDEM), and Kristin Hogan from the consultancy CirclePoint who helped [...]

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He’s back! The much anticipated return of @Disastersrus (a.k.a. Florida Emergency Management Director Craig Fugate) to Twitter with a new identity and under a new management occurred yesterday as now Federal Emergency Management Administrator Fugate launched his new feed @CraigatFEMA.
Based on @Disastersrus and his public statements thus far as Administrator, I can almost guarantee that @CraigatFEMA [...]

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Ron Callari of The Inventor Spot blog has put together a thoughtful and useful list: “10 Social Media Methods To Fight Hurricane Season”.
Many of the methods will be familiar to readers who follow social media and disasters, but Callari offers some new ideas and resources for preparing and responding to hurricanes and other emergencies. His list [...]

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This edition of the “What Should We Tell The Public?” video series features Jeannette Sutton, a leading researcher on social media and disasters, from the University of Colorado’s Natural Hazards Center. I filmed this segment at the Center’s recently completed Natural Hazards And Applications Workshop held in Broomfield, Colorado. Jeannette’s work was featured in a recent Reason magazine article, [...]

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MercuryNews.com has an article, “Got Swine Flu? Tweet It?”, about Santa Clara (California) County’s Public Health Department’s H1N1 flu prevention campaign which will aggressively utilize social media tools to focus on young people:
When students return to school this fall, school nurses will once again chase after them with hand sanitizer. Familiar posters about sneezing into [...]

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I wanted to bring your attention a very interesting and useful study on the role of social media in crises. The newly-released report, “Expert Round Table on Social Media and Risk Communication During Times of Crises: Strategic Challenges and Opportunities,” comes out of a day-long workshop in March at the American Public Health Association (APHA) [...]

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I had the opportunity to attend Thursday’s U.S. H1N1 Flu Preparedness Summit held at the campus of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in Bethesda, Maryland. The all-day event was organized by the Obama Administration to focus attention on preparation for and response to a possible more serious H1N1 outbreak in the Fall. Five hundred [...]

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In another example of government authorities utilizing social media as a new way of reaching out to the public, Ohio State University police have posted a request for tips regarding a fatal house fire on Facebook. In the post titled “OSU Fires — Looking for Answers,” the police write:
“Do you remember this??? We are desperately [...]

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