September is National Preparedness Month (NPM), a time of year to assess how effectively your community is properly planning for a disaster. This year’s theme is “Don’t Wait. Communicate. Make Your Emergency Plan Today.” To help you communicate and celebrate NPM, ready.gov offers this useful NPM Social Media Kit.
Emergencies & Disasters is a key topic for ICMA and its community. Here are 8 of the best ICMA resources on different aspects of emergency planning:
Strategic Disaster Planning: A Karen Johnson and Avery Share authored PM article that focuses on the big picture planning that goes into disaster preparedness.
- Integrating 311 into Disaster Response & Recovery-A Toolkit for Local Governments: During emergencies, local 911 systems can be overrun with calls and inquiries. This toolkit describes how to use a 311 system to take the burden off 911.
- Wildfire Preparation and Response: Continuing droughts in the western part of the country raise growing concerns among local governments about wildfires. This blog post has some useful resources to help you develop a wildfire response and recovery plan.
- Flood Mitigation and Management: Similar to the wildfire blog post, this one has 5 resources to help mitigate the impacts of floods.
- Innovative Approaches to Planning for Public Health Emergencies: As highlighted recently with the spread of the Zika virus, local governments should regularly review and update their public health emergency response plans, and this article can help.
- Engaging the Whole Community in Disaster Preparedness: This article covers the importance of involving everyone in your community when developing an emergency plan.
- This resource is a 2007 ICMA e-book entitled Emergency Management Principles and Practice for Local Government (2nd edition). It offers a comprehensive approach to building sustainable, disaster-resilient communities while presenting the legal, social, and political context of disaster preparedness.
New, Reduced Membership Dues
A new, reduced dues rate is available for CAOs/ACAOs, along with additional discounts for those in smaller communities, has been implemented. Learn more and be sure to join or renew today!