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Friends,
One of the most important steps we as a nation can take to defend ourselves against the next disaster is ensuring that the general public is prepared. To this end, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) is doing extensive outreach to all constituency groups to ensure that this critical message of preparedness is reaching every community.
The truth is, our success is directly tied to the preparedness of the public. Personal and family preparedness not only helps make sure that people have the resources they need immediately following a disaster, but also ensures that the vital resources available during a disaster go to our most vulnerable citizens, instead of those who could have prepared but chose not to.
New FEMA Administrator Craig Fugate comes to the position with over 25 years of experience in disaster management in Florida. Administrator Fugate understands from experience that emergency management is a team effort, and that a successful team must include community leaders, federal, state, local and tribal governments, representatives from the private sector and, most importantly, the American people. All disasters are ultimately local, and FEMA is dedicated to working with, respecting and supporting our local communities.
That is where you come in. As a leader in your community whose voice can move thousands, we are asking you to please help us to educate all of America about what FEMA does and how we can better work together as a team to prepare for, respond to, and recover from any and all disasters we may face.
In an effort to make sure information is getting to all communities in a disaster, FEMA Administrator Craig Fugate will be holding a conference call on September 24th at 2pm EST to introduce himself to community leaders across the country and explain his vision for FEMA. We would like to invite you to be a part of this call.
Please RSVP to Alison Schwartz to receive the call in information – Alison.Schwartz@dhs.gov. I strongly encourage you to be on this call and learn more about FEMA’s activities.
FEMA is also putting together an email list of leaders like yourself across the country so that we can better communicate in the case of an emergency and make sure that no one is left behind. Alison Schwartz, the agency’s Director of Intergovernmental Affairs, will be your point of contact at FEMA. Alison can be reached at 202-646-7906 or Alison.Schwartz@dhs.gov. Please email the following information to her to get on the email distribution list:
Name (whomever you would like to be your organization’s point of contact)
Organization
Title
Phone
In case Alison is not available, you can also speak with Brent Colburn, Director of External Affairs. Brent can be reached at 202-646-3010 or Brent.Colburn@dhs.gov.
I encourage you to reach out to Alison to learn more about how you can get involved with emergency preparedness in your community and bring your constituency to the table so we are all better prepared should disaster strike.
Kalpen Modi
Associate Director
White House Office of Public Engagement
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This should be a good call. I know Craig Fugate through his tenure as Florida's Disaster Director and Hurricanes Charlie, Frances, Jeanne, Wilma, and Katrina.
We will be pushing for FEMA to consider a new disaster preparedness/relief tool, the WaterBrick. It can store 3.3 gallons of water, be air dropped into disaster sites, and once the water is used, it can be turned into interlocking building blocks for shelters or filled with sand or water for today's modern sand bag. You can see more about WaterBrick at www.WaterBrick.org.
As mentioned in the letter above, our collective success is inextricably linked to the preparedness of the public. Were every home in America to have a 72-hour kit backpack as well as a few weeks or months worth of food and water, we would be able to ride out a disaster that much more independently. It's our responsibility to prepare ourselves instead of relying on FEMA or the government to arrive on the scene in the event of an emergency. As we saw from Hurricane Katrina, despite best efforts, this is simply not a reasonable expectation.
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