All Roads Lead to Civil Defense: Survival is a local Issue. Civil defense is the organizing and training of civilians to play key roles in a community’s survival. Another term for this, coined by Civil Defense Virginia, is “continuity of community.” The concept is simple: A community’s citizens, in partnership with their emergency management and…
“While each year the hurricane season comes to an end on November 30, the lessons from the response and recovery operations that we are performing this year, under incredibly difficult circumstances, will transform the field of emergency management forever.” – FEMA Administrator Brock Long, November 30, 2017. Building a culture of emergency preparedness is now…
“We have to do more pre-disaster mitigation. Pre-disaster mitigation is the key to becoming more resilient and reducing disaster impact.” – FEMA Administrator Brock Long FEMA says pre-disaster mitigation has to be a whole community effort In last week’s blog post, I discussed Brock Long’s comments to the House Appropriations Committee on November 30,…
FEMA Administrator Brock Long has it right FEMA Administrator Brock Long testified before the House Appropriations Committee on November 30, 2017 and what he said was a game changer. Here are some key points he made: “While each year the hurricane season comes to an end on November 30, the lessons from the response and recovery…
We all want resilient and prepared communities This week, I was in touch with a group of citizens who started a non-profit civil defense organization, Civil Defense Virginia. They are approaching emergency managers in their area to talk about the benefits of a grassroots civil defense organization. I was also in touch with an emergency…
Civil defense gradually morphed into emergency management. There are several good documents that give us the history of civil defense in the United States. Here is one from FEMA and here is an interesting manual (FEMA 107) from 1986. (Thank you to the Civil Defense Museum for making this available to us!) It can be hard to parse…
We have always had hurricanes. We always will. In one very important way, Hurricane Katrina and Hurricane Maria were both best case scenarios. Prior to Hurricane Katrina hitting New Orleans in 2005, we knew that the levy system was only built to handle a category 3 hurricane. And prior to Hurricane Maria hitting Puerto Rico,…
Skills vs Stuff — what is more important? Also, books we got at the library sale and other thoughts I had while weeding my garden. Skills vs Stuff A lot of new preppers make the mistake on spending a lot of money on a lot of “airborne-death-machine” tactical gear that may be nice…
Civil Defense: Why We Need It Here are two undisputed facts: FACT: The electric grid is extremely vulnerable to a variety of natural and man-made threats. FACT: A long-term loss of the electric grid would be catastrophic for the U.S. Everything depends on the electric grid. Food, water, fuel, sanitation, medical services, the economy and…
Congress thinks we need a community preparedness “civil defense” plan for a long term electric grid outage. So why doesn’t your town have one? “Seven U.S. government departments and agencies have now concluded that if our national electric grid is not upgraded to ensure its continuity in the event of a massive solar event —…
