During a recent Twitter exchange with a Emergency Manager in Oklahoma, who is also an active Ham and a major proponent of #SMEM, I asked him if he was worried about a backlash from the ham community regarding the ongoing integration of Social Media into Emergency Management and Response.
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Some key reasons on why Emergency Management needs to participate in Social Media, and take it seriously.
Every Christmas, there are several Public Safety agencies across the country that broadcast a BOLO (Be On the Look Out) for Santa Claus. These are done in the spirit of Christmas, and for fun.
Originally Published: June 17, 1996
We get inquiries about why volunteers are not called upon after they have some kind of agreement with a local official. Here, in the words of an unnamed emergency management agency official, is one perspective on why they are left out. There seems to be a major misunderstanding of how Emergency/Disaster Response works.
During Hurricane Katrina, the media blasted FEMA for not immediately getting involved. During Superstorm/Frankenstorm/Hurricane/Whatever Sandy, FEMA was first on the scene, for better or worse. I came across a blog article related to trying to get local government emergency management types to integrate Social Media into their public interaction strategies.
This article, along with others on the same subject, started me thinking about how one would present the pro-Social Media argument to local agencies and groups. In the early 1950s, the California State Office of Emergency Services began issuing bulletins to assist agencies and radio operators to become more familiar with RACES. They were issued periodically until 1985, at which time they began to be issued weekly over voice and digital radio systems of Amateur Radio and in print. Originally intended for California, increased demand, and a 1988 request by the ARRL for national distribution, led to their eventual worldwide distribution. With the development of the Internet, demand for these materials soared, leading to their being put online on several FTP sites and a couple of websites, including mine.
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