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FEMA and the American Red Cross teamed up to
introduce the "Prepare with Pedro: Disaster Preparedness Activity Book."
The activity book provides parents and educators a creative way to teach
children how to prepare for disasters and emergencies. Prepare with Pedro is
a fun way for parents, teachers, and community leaders to talk about safety
with young children.
The activity book features Red Cross
character Pedro the Penguin, who demonstrates how to stay safe during a variety
of natural hazards. The activity book is designed to be both educational and
engaging for young children, offering safety advice alongside crosswords,
coloring pages, matching games, and more.
To obtain copies of the activity book:
- Download and print by visiting: Prepare with
Pedro: Disaster Preparedness Activity Book
- Order printed copies for free through FEMA's publication warehouse online or by
phone at 1-800-480-2520. Request publication number #2005.
For more youth preparedness activities, visit www.ready.gov/youth-preparedness.
Parents, caregivers, and educators can also learn about disaster safety for
children by visiting the American Red Cross website at www.redcross.org/get-help/how-to-prepare-for-emergencies/disaster-safety-for-children.
FEMA and emergency management partner
organizations today released two new
PrepTalks from Michele Gay and Kristina Anderson focused on improving school
safety. Communities around the country can use these resources to assess and
improve their school safety protocols and engagement strategies before the next
school year begins in the fall.
Gay
is a mother of three, former teacher, and co-founder of Safe and Sound Schools,
a nonprofit started by Sandy Hook parents to support school crisis prevention,
response, and recovery. In her PrepTalk, “Rethinking School Safety.” Gay
relays her personal experience as the parent of a child killed in the Sandy
Hook shooting in 2012. She highlights some of the solutions that students and
staff needed during the crisis at Sandy Hook, and presents Safe and Sound
Schools’ Framework for Comprehensive School Safety Planning and Development:
Emergency Management, Community Engagement, Physical Safety, Mental and Behavioral
Health, Climate and Culture, and Health & Wellness.
Anderson
founded The Koshka Foundation for Safe Schools, a non-profit dedicated to
helping local community and school stakeholders work together to prevent,
respond, and heal in the aftermath of school violence. Her PrepTalk, “Safety is Personal: Lessons Learned as a
Survivor of the Virginia Tech Tragedy,” begins with her experience
of the Virginia Tech shooting in 2007, when she was shot three times. She translates her experience into a focus on the
importance of threat assessments in schools to identify and mitigate potential
threats. She explains that it’s important to improve physical safety, but it’s
just as important to encourage people to monitor their environment and to build
a supportive culture in a school.
PrepTalks is cutting-edge research and insights from
academia, other government entities, and non-governmental organizations,
designed to spread new ideas, spark conversation, and promote innovative
leadership on the issues confronting emergency managers today and in the
future.
The next PrepTalks Symposium will be held on
September 6, 2018 in Washington, DC. All PrepTalks, question-and-answer
sessions, discussion guides, and related resources are available at www.fema.gov/preptalks. PrepTalks are presented by FEMA, the
International Association of Emergency Managers, the National Emergency
Management Association, the National Homeland Security Consortium, and the
Naval Postgraduate School Center for Homeland Defense and Security.
FEMA, in coordination with the Federal Communications
Commission (FCC), will conduct a nationwide test to assess the capabilities of
the Emergency
Alert System (EAS)
and Wireless Emergency
Alert
(WEA) on September 20, 2018 (primary
date) or October 3, 2018 (secondary date). The WEA portion of the test
commences at 2:18 p.m. EDT and the EAS portion follows at 2:20 p.m. EDT. The
test will assess the operational
readiness of the infrastructure for distribution of a national message and
determine whether technological improvements are needed.
This is the fourth
EAS nationwide test and the first national WEA test. The WEA test message will
be sent to cell phones.
The EAS test is
made available to EAS participants (e.g., radio and television broadcasters,
cable systems, satellite radio and television providers, and wireline video
providers) and is scheduled to last approximately one minute. The test message
will be similar to regular monthly EAS test messages with which the public is
familiar.
The WEA system is
used to warn the public about dangerous weather, missing children, and other
critical situations through alerts on cell phones. It allows customers whose
wireless provider participates in WEA and who own a WEA compatible wireless
phone to receive geo-targeted alerts of imminent threats to safety in their
area through unique tones and vibration. The national WEA test will use the same special tone and vibration. The test
message will read “THIS IS A TEST of the National Wireless Emergency Alert
System. No action is needed."
The WEA test will be sent through IPAWS, as part of the
nation’s modern alert and warning infrastructure that automatically
authenticates alerts. Significant coordination has been conducted with EAS participants, wireless providers, and emergency managers in preparation for
this EAS-WEA national test. The test is intended to ensure public safety
officials have the methods and systems that will deliver urgent alerts and
warnings to the public in times of an emergency or disaster.
More information on IPAWS and Wireless Emergency Alerts is
available at www.ready.gov/alerts.
This year, the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) is 28 years old, and FEMA remains committed to ensuring that all Americans have access to its programs and programs we coordinate during disasters. This week on the FEMA Podcast, we discuss the ADA with Linda Mastandrea, FEMA’s Director of the Office of Disability Integration and Coordination (ODIC).
The FEMA Podcast is a new
audio program series available to anyone interested in learning more about the
Agency, hearing about innovation in the field of emergency management, and
listening to stories about communities and individuals recovering after disasters.
The FEMA Podcast is available on Apple iTunes
to stream or download. Approximately 20 to 30 minutes in length, the podcast
will be updated with a new episode on a weekly basis. By subscribing, new
episodes will automatically update on a listener's device. For more
information, visit www.fema.gov/podcast.
Register for the Emergency Management Institute's Chlorine Emergency Response Virtual Tabletop Exercise
FEMA’s Emergency Management
Institute (EMI) Virtual Tabletop Exercise (VTTX) Program in cooperation with The Chlorine
Institute, will offer three chlorine response VTTX sessions August
21, 22, and 23, 2018. The VTTX will address contamination recognition and
subsequent response efforts after a major chlorine release. The VTTX occurs 12
p.m. – 4 p.m. ET. To participate, send an email to Doug Kahn at douglas.kahn@fema.dhs.gov or call 301-447-7645. Also, send a courtesy copy email
to the Integrated Emergency Management Branch at fema-emi-iemb@fema.dhs.gov or call 301-447-1381. Content is the same each day and
participants should attend only one session. Additional information is
available at https://training.fema.gov/programs/emivttx.aspx. The registration deadline is August 10, 2018.
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