Today, I listened to JoAnn Jordan coordinator for public education for the SNAP program, Seattle Neighborhoods Actively Prepare. She walked us through the program and the ins and outs of beginning it from scratch. She said she had to garner support for the program from anywhere she could. She was very happy when the Mayor of Seattle became a champion of SNAP. She said that the first people to join where the wealthy, affluent neighborhoods of Seattle, they had matching hats, gloves and goggles. She also said that neighborhoods already involved in the program were resistant to change as the City of Seattle began to take over SNAP. It was very illuminating to hear the trials and tribulations of starting a program from the ground up.
I also attended Social Media Trends by Cheryl Bledsoe, Clark Regional Emergency Services Agency. How does the web, Facebook and Twitter react during an emergency? It turns out that people are already using social media almost exclusively in a natural disaster. Voice-Telephones are the first to go down in a disaster. It seems that texting and Twitter remain because there is less information to transmit. Twitter only has 140 characters, but with hash tags and the @ symbol you can pack a lot more info into your messages. Cheryl said that on the whole emergency responders were not the early adopters of this technology, but “thankfully” that is changing and more and more emergency response agencies are seeing the value in using social media as a communications tool-to not only get information out, but to keep track of what is happening during a disaster.
Preparing your dog or cat or any companion animal for a natural disaster was the hot topic of the day. Jo Becker, Oregon Humane Society said that in the future emergency responders would deal with people who need to be rescued, but have their pets too. Hurricane Katrina was a real game changer in this arena as people were told to leave their animals behind with just a couple of days of food and water. But as the floodwaters continued to rise, many people went around the barricades to rescue their pets and risked their own lives. Now the new government policy is that you and your pets are rescued together, so that you do not go back for them. There is a small problem because currently pets are not allowed in a Red Cross shelter, so you would have to go to a hotel that allows pets or to a friend or relatives house. As a matter of fact NPR radio reporter Tom Banse was on hand to interview people about their pets & what would happen in natural disaster. He interviewed me about the GSK.
Everything I learn in these seminars I use to make the GO|STAY|KIT an ever better product than it already is.
