Are YOU ready for The Great Central U.S. ShakeOut? The new and improved "duck and cover" drills.

[dixiegrrrrl]

There is a website promoting The Great Central U.S. ShakeOut on April 28th, for those of us in the Central USA.

I suggest you take a look at the site, and then try to figure out who actually put it up.
http://www.shakeout.org/centralus/


Hint: it is connected with Ready America's National Level Exercise 2011.

What? Haven't heard of that, you say?

http://www.ready.gov/nle2011

I would be interested in first impressions of these sites.

[Motown_Johnny]

1. For the Shakeout site, that kid's face was my first impression

and it pretty much stuck


On the Ready site I noticed that the national exercise is from May 16 to May 20th, and then the "We Can Know" people think that Jesus returns on May 21st.


I may be seeing things that are not there, but that is my first impression of each site.

[NYC_SKP]

2. Nothing new here, it's a production from FEMA & USC (University of Souther California)

You can see their logo at the very bottom of the page.

Earthquake preparedness.

Does it seem a bit fear-inducing?

Maybe.

I remember a certain president and a certain Hurricane.

That our new president has programs that are preparing for disasters at a national, state, local level in coordination makes me happy.

:patriot:

[Turbineguy]

4. Program to deal with potential disaster?

That will get the repubs riled up.

[IndyPragmatist]

5. The New Madrid seismic zone is a legit threat....

I've worked with geologists quite a bit over the years and many of them are much more concerned about what could come from the NMSZ than they are of anything in California. The science shows that the area has produced a MASSIVE earthquake every 200 years, with the last one in 1811 being one of the largest ever in North America.

Considering that these sort of efforts cost very little money and really only consist of students spending 5 minutes learning and doing an earthquake drill, I'm perfectly fine with it.

Also, the Shakeout has nothing to do with the national level exercise, that is just a coincidence that they are in the same area.

[NYC_SKP]

6. Nice, though, that the So Cal Earthquake Center is supporting this.

My point is that the new sites seem to demonstrate a more comprehensive approach to disaster preparedness than was seen under Bush during Katrina.

FEMA is a national agency, I didn't mean to suggest that this is a national exercise which it clearly is not.

But it does represent inter-agency cooperation.

:donut:

[Old and In the Way]

3. Department of Homeland Security?

That seems to be the inference I get, looking at the ready.gov website. Interesting that they claim 5.4MM people participated in the California exercise last year...I never heard any mention of that on DU.

[dixiegrrrrl]

7. If you click on "contact us"

the link ID on my status bar says "earthquakecountry.org" but when the page comes up,
it says:
please add [e-mail] to your email list.

It is hard to realize/find out at first reading if this a US Gov. page, or a private enterprise page, and if it is
US gov. information, why do they want all these sign ups and emails?

Btw.....the National Level Exercise 2011 (NLE 2011) in May is one of the many FEMA/Homeland Security Exercises
( used to be known as TOP OFF).
From FEMA page,

Exercise Focus

NLE 2011 will simulate the catastrophic nature of a major earthquake in the central United States region of the New Madrid Seismic Zone (NMSZ). The year 2011 is the bicentennial anniversary of the 1811 New Madrid earthquake, for which the NMSZ is named. NLE 2011 will be the first NLE to simulate a natural hazard.

NLE 2011 activities will take place at command posts, emergency operation centers and other locations to include federal facilities in the Washington D.C. area and federal, regional, state, tribal, local and private sector facilities in the eight member states of the Central United States Earthquake Consortium (CUSEC). The eight member states of CUSEC encompass four different FEMA regions: Alabama, Kentucky, Mississippi, and Tennessee (FEMA Region IV); Illinois and Indiana (FEMA Region V); Arkansas (FEMA Region VI); and Missouri (FEMA Region VII).
Exercise Objectives

Through a comprehensive evaluation process, the exercise will assess response and recovery capabilities both nationally and regionally. The exercise is designed to validate the following capabilities:

* Communications
* Critical resource logistics and distribution
* Mass care (sheltering, feeding and related services)
* Medical surge
* Citizen evacuation and shelter-in-place
* Emergency public information and warning
* Emergency operations center (EOC) management
* Long term recovery

[surrealAmerican]

8. Good idea.

Eventually we will have a major quake here. It makes sense for people to know what to do when that happens.

[IndyPragmatist]

9. They already did the event in Indiana,

and it seemed to be a huge success. From what I understand, the southern part of the state (Evansville area) is still in a very high risk area for a major earthquake, but not so much in Northern Indiana.

I've also worked a little with an IUPUI professor who has spent a great deal of time studying the Haiti earthquake and comparing it to the recent Japan earthquake. The biggest difference was the quality of buildings and building codes, but the Japanese people knowing how to properly respond during the earthquake was also a major factor in the amount of deaths caused by the earthquake.

Thousands of Haitians were killed because they ran outside immediately during the earthquake and were hit with falling debris from poorly built homes. Had they known to stay inside under some sort of sturdy furniture, many many people's lives could have been spared.

Saying all that, I am actually happy that these efforts are being made to educate the public.

[Edweird]

10. I'm ready. I grew up in Memphis - I now live in South Florida.

[madrchsod]

11. no and i don`t care

unless the Madrid starts to rumble i may get concerned. i doubt the fault lines where i live are going to cause any major damage.