With home fires on the rise in winter months, and a new study showing that young children are at an especially high risk of getting seriously injured or dying in residential fires, today the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and the National Commission on Children and Disasters are announcing a new public awareness campaign to help keep children and families safer from the threat of home fires.

As part of this effort, today FEMA’s U.S. Fire Administration is releasing a new report on the risks fires pose to children.  The report, which is based on the latest available data released by the National Center for Health Statistics, found that young children face the greatest – and a growing – risk of death or serious injury in home fires, with 52 percent of all child fire deaths in 2007 involving children under the age of four, a slight increase from the most recent study previously conducted in 2004.

To read a press release with more about this new public awareness campaign to assist personal preparedness and give families and communities, even more, access to this valuable resource, CLICK HERE.

To view and download the full report on the risks that fires pose to children, CLICK HERE.

Though we often expect hurricanes mostly in August, hurricane season actually runs from June 1st through November 30th. While that’s a long stretch of time, travelers can save up to 75% off Caribbean vacations during this period, so many of those travelers who would like to take advantage of those travel cost reductions might find a recent article and video written and organized by Karen Schaler and posted on the Huffington Post website a valuable lesson in improving personal preparedness before embarking on such a journey.

Click here to view the video and read Ms. Schaler’s article.

Americans who make New Year’s resolutions are 11 times more likely to report continued success in achieving a goal than individuals who have not made a resolution, according to the Journal of Clinical Psychology. This holiday season, please join FEMA’s Ready Campaign in promoting Resolve to be Ready in 2011 and encourage members of your community to make the resolution to put together a family communications plan, and take other simple steps to be prepared. Anyone can log onto http://www.ready.gov   or our Spanish language site, www.listo.gov, to learn more about how and what you can do to be more personally prepared in the event you must face and survive a disruptive event in 2011.

 In a recent article written by Elaine Pittman, posted on the Emergency Management website, and entitled, “Preparedness Video Game Seeks to Combine Fun, Learning for Illinois Students”, we are made aware of the ongoing efforts by The Illinois Emergency Management Agency (IEMA) to spread the disaster preparedness message.

If your family would like to learn more about this preparedness resource, and how to make it available to the children in your family, please click here to read the full article.

The Ready Campaign, FEMA, Citizen Corps, American Red Cross, and The Humane Society of the United States have come together to develop an emergency preparedness toolkit that can assist you in your planning efforts as you work toward keeping your community, and specifically, the pets and people who care for them, safe from disasters.

This toolkit provides you with the resources on how to stay current on your local pet disaster plan, policies and procedures; examples of how to promote preparedness in your communities and engage other organizations in your efforts; as well as resources to educate the community about how to assemble a pet emergency supply kit and make a family emergency plan. In addition, there is a tools section that provides sample preparedness brochures, PowerPoint templates and press materials you can use to develop and distribute your internal and external preparedness messaging.

Click here to access and download the emergency pet preparedness toolkit.

Each individual who is a part of our nation’s military, whether on active duty, reserves, civilian employee or family member, plays an important role in ensuring the welfare and security of our entire homeland.

It is also important to prepare yourself and your family for all types of emergencies so you can increase your personal sense of security and peace of mind. Preparing makes sense. Get ready now.

Click here to learn more about what, when and how to prepare yourself and your family.

As individuals face the reality that in the event of a disaster, they may well have to rely on each other for help in order to meet their immediate lifesaving and life sustaining needs, the U.S. government has taken action to prepare its citizens for such an eventuality.

That action is best expressed and encompassed in the Community Emergency Response Team (CERT) training programs located throughout the United States, which do the following:

1. Present citizens the facts about what to expect following a major disaster in terms of immediate services,
2. Give the message about their responsibility for mitigation and preparedness,
3. Train them in needed lifesaving skills with emphasis on decision making skills, rescuer safety, and doing the greatest good for the greatest number,
4. Organize teams so that they are an extension of first responder services offering immediate help to victims until professional services arrive.

CERT is about readiness, people helping people, rescuer safety, and doing the greatest good for the greatest number. CERT is a positive and realistic approach to emergency and disaster situations where citizens will be initially on their own and their actions can make a difference. Through training, citizens can manage utilities and put out small fires; treat the three killers by opening airways, controlling bleeding, and treating for shock; provide basic medical aid; search for and rescue victims safely; and organize themselves and spontaneous volunteers to be effective.

Click here to read more about this valuable personal preparedness resource.

Recently, Don Byrne, one of this website’s major contributing writers, found an interesting posting on the BBC NEWS Science and Environment website, written by Jonathan Amos, Science correspondent, BBC News, and which talks about a recent update made to an original “impacts effects calculator” first released to the public in 2004.   

Our staff agrees that this story might be of interest to many of our readers who might have an interest in this potential personal preparedness topic.  However, we also state that this exercise in preparedness must always be considered under a calculation of relevant probabilities and put into a perspective of a priorities planning process in any crisis or emergency management plan for any individual (or organization for that matter).

Based on the belief that impacts from space are a topic of fascination in both the general public and the scientific research field, scientists at Purdue University and Imperial College in London have released this new version of the original “impacts effects calculator” and its new title is “Impact: Earth!”

Once you enter some hypothetical information about the imposing impact element into this program, the program then estimates the scale of the ensuing disaster, such as the size of the crater left behind, and, how far away you need to be to avoid being buried by all of the material thrown out by the blast or being set on fire.  The updated program also incorporates some additional impact effects, such as the tsunami wave height from an ocean impact or collision.

This updated tool was devised by Purdue’s Professor Jay Melosh and his colleagues; it is underpinned by scientifically accurate equations, and regularly linked to as an educational tool by many governmental organizations and scientific institutions.

 You can view and download this interesting tool when you CLICK HERE, and, if you want to read more about this information in the posting by Jonathan Amos, then please CLICK HERE.

If you found this information interesting, please pass it along to others who share your interest in personal disaster preparedness or disaster recovery planning activities.

This website continues to search for relevant information to support personal preparedness so that our readers can have as much information as possible to be resilient in the face of any disaster or disruptive event coming into their lives.

It is with this is mind, that we suggest reading a fairly recent article written by Joan Goodchild, Senior Editor, CSO and posted on the CSO website and entitled, ” Travel Security: What to Pack to Survive a Natural Disaster“.

Much of this information in this article is focused on individual preparedness requirements, but fully recognizing that in some cases that individual is traveling not just for personal recreation travel but also for business travel purposes.

If any of our readers have other information to share with us, please let us know and we will be happy to post that information on this website for you.  Also if you have any comments or personal experiences to share on this topic, please comment below.

Click here to read Joan Goodchild’s full article on travel security preparedness.  You may also want to include this information in the library of reading or reference that might be included in your personal preparedness emergency plan for you and your family.

Recently, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) released a posting on its website offering thirty (30) top tips to help you, and your family, become better prepared for an emergency. 

Please add this information to your reading materials under the “personal preparedness” heading.

Click here to read the full list of helpful tips to follow.