Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) Promoting Preparedness

Preparedness and being ready to mobilize assets to address community needs can be a positive, life- and health-affirming conversation for all people -- IF we separate it from the doom and gloom disaster messages.

To change a culture, you must start with the children. The campaigns for seatbelts and recycling were successful not because they changed the existing behaviors of adults but because they defined new behaviors as children became adults.

So simply shift the focus of preparedness efforts to children via school programs such as teen CERT. Fund not only curriculum but delivery.

Let’s look at a few brainstorms that could be expanded on The media could be asked to run regular human interest stores on how popular preparedness is. The media could show how much fun it is to have your own Victory Garden, how to prepare food for long storage. Other aspects of preparedness like alternate energy, using your camp gear during an emergency, root cellars and so much more. Getting local businesses to add ...more »

We realy need to push just as hard as we did in september during emergency preparedness month. That Emergency Prepaedness is an all year event. If anyone has a good logo lets hear it and maybe it will be a start. I thing that the general public still has the not here not to me I can wait till it happens or is goinf to happen mentality MBookman Bev EMA

This new campaign has to driven into the minds of everyone. We all remember the Smokey the Bear campaign. We need a similar drive to convince America that each person is responsible for being prepared and taking care of themselves and their family. When this is accomplished it will be much easier creating a whole community approach. Ways to do it could be a national campaign to come up with a slogan (Google recently did ...more »

Based on article from the Rand Corporation at rand.org: http://www.rand.org/blog/2012/06/why-arent-americans-listening-to-disaster-preparedness.html Research over the last decade has shown that American's do not listen or follow through with disaster preparedness statements. Why? One reason may be that those producing and disseminating the information are making invalid assumptions about the user who is supposed to ...more »

Work with local communities to develop realistic disaster possibilities. Many communities are not aware of the potential risks that may affect them. We have a preparedness program to assist with preparing for the common natural disasters but what about the dangers that are miles away that are going to have just as large of an impact. Many of our communities are not skilled enough or effective at identifying the potentials ...more »

We have seen throughout the National Planning Frameworks firm statements to the emergency management community about full inclusion of the whole community, but this concept is not fully yet embraced by the emergency management and homeland security community at the local and state level. These attitudinal barriers keep people with and without disabilities who have access and functional needs from the planning table ...more »

We have a highly active 400+ member prepper group in Marshall County, Alabama. Started in April 2012. We seem to have found a good formula for involving and educating our county residents. It starts with a dedicated core group of leaders and uses a "value added" website with a huge preparedness library for members... over 1000 pages. We also hold free seminar and workshops every 2 to 3 weeks and send out informative ...more »

Communities can come together and create COADs (Community Organizations Active in Disasters). This is a replicable program that involves no federal support. What it takes is motivation and a little work. Since character limits restrict my ability to give a thorough understanding of my meaning I would direct you to these links for examples of COADs from all over the United States. http://www.continuityinsights.com/articles/2009/06/public-private-partnerships-coads-voads-and-more ...more »

FEMA and CERT need to engage celebrities, notably action hero actors and actresses, in the promotion of preparedness and CERT volunteerism. Once that is done have national and local news channels feature that spokesperson weekly in delivering a preparedness message or demonstration of training. this would give local areas a way of advertising their upcoming trainings and events.

I recently saw several billboards around with pictures of crumbled buildings and office equipment in dumpsters after a disaster struck. These ads were starting to get people talking but were gone 30 days later. A more aggressive ad campaign and TV commercials will work, but they need constant "air time" to get, and keep people on the subject long enough to make it a topic of discussion and take action.

Please consider offering training such as L550 –COOP PLANNER’S TRAIN-THE-TRAINER WORKSHOP February 6-8, 2013 8:30 a.m. – 4:00 p.m. through VTC/WebEx in the future. Offering these courses through WebEx will in turn increase participation and outreach for all courses. As a Regional Emergency Manager there is no better way to reach the masses than to offer all my training to the 8 States in my Region through VTC/WebEx. ...more »

Two counties in the Panhandle of Florida recently came together to promote business continuity initiatives to all the small businesses in a two county area. The brain child of the Pensacola Bay Area Chamber of Commerce, this initiative, which included public and private sector partners from Escambia and Santa Rosa Counties, have entered a cooperative arrangement to the benefit of small businesses. It was proposed that ...more »

Remember not long ago when we transitioned to digital TV from analog? You could get a coupon for a DTV converter box and then buy one from anywhere with the coupon at a greatly reduced rate. This coupon program would be very similar. Two coupons per household - must be used on an approved All-Hazards Radio - coupon knocks off $30. This make a cheap on free and a good one 1/2 price! A great way to get the word out and ...more »

During the BP Oil Spill, no chemical-specific monitoring was available for workers on cleanup vessels operatng in the Gulf of Mexico. In fact, the majority of chemical sensors used by USEPA were land-based, primarily at Venice and Chalmette, and used non-specific PIDs (Photoionization detector), incapable of chemical-specific measurement, according to a risk assessment conducted by the Deepwater Horizon Study Group at ...more »

I would like to suggest a change to the FEMA “National Continuity” Training failure. FEMA has posted on its FEMA EMI Web site the requirements to complete the Level II Continuity Practitioner certification. FEMA’s National Continuity Manager and Acting FEMA Region IV Continuity Managers have not or do they current follow the listed requirements on the EMI Web Site. Additionally, they verbally add or change the Level II ...more »