The most popular blog posts (updated on August 8, 2012)
#1: Emergency Manager: “What People Think I Do / What I Really Do” Meme
This meme went viral pretty quickly and I set my personal record of over 500 views in one day. It seems to be a favorite of emergencies managers who are often misunderstood.
#2: Learning from the Deadly MGM Fire: The Next Step in Evacuation Preparedness
In this post, I review 30-year old MGM fire and make the case for requiring hotels, colleges, and other buildings to distribute cards with evacuation, shelter-in-place, lockdown, and active shooter procedures. Additionally, I advocate for using the reverse side of the cards to receive self-disclosures from individuals needing assistance during an emergency.
This simple ICS chart for my wedding got a lot of positive responses and generated the most email (mostly folks asking if they could use the org chart in their ICS training classes. Will I let others use images/content from my site if they attribute it to me? I do!
#4: Relocation after Evacuation: The Danger of Outdoor Evacuation
Think your emergency ends once you evacuate? Think again. Evacuation is a means to an end, but not an end itself. Post-evacuation relocation needs to be carefully planned and trained. Currently, few buildings and institutions have taken the next step of planning post-evacuation relocation.
#5: Doomsday Preppers: Social Fear and Loathing & Threat to Legitimate Preparedness
In this post, I make the case that the National Geographic show about extremist survivalists is not a healthy or helpful role model for community preparedness and resilience.
#6: Active Shooter Training Isn’t Just for Cops and Teachers
This is probably the most technical blog post that I’ve written, with a lot of detailed explanation of TCCC.
#7: Responding to an Outdoor Active Shooter
Many agencies train for an indoor active shooter, but it’s important to remember that tactics are different for indoor and outdoor active shooters, as well as sniper-type attacks.
#8: Ten Cool Disaster Preparedness Gadgets
Who doesn’t want some really cool gadgets? Especially if they can safe your life and make you look like MacGyver in the process…
#9: Disaster Myth Buster # 2: Only the Gov’t Responds to Disasters
This blog post confirmed what those of us in emergency management have known to be true for a while: it takes a whole community to prepare for, respond to, and recover from a disaster!
#10: Disaster Myth Buster #1: Mass Panic
Even within the emergency management field, there’s a premonition that mass panic is likely to occur. This myth has the potential to limit the appropriate distribution of public information, drive resource allocation, and many other components of proper incident management and emergency management.
