Reliable information

I’ve had to do a lot of research for my Advisories and my books.

If you take a quick look at our Advisory archives you’ll see topics you may never have really thought about! I certainly hadn’t thought of them all when they came up . . .

Consider these issues, for example:

• Best respirators for after a forest fire
• How to know if your home is vulnerable to landslides
• How are drones being used in disaster response?
• Will this fire extinguisher work on this fire?
• Insurance for volcanoes
• Are you within the range of a nuclear reactor emergency?
• Front office security – are you liable as owner?

When I first started, it’s probably safe to say I knew very little about any of these. (Well, I DID know something about security in the workplace.)

Now, however, after writing not once but in some cases several times on these topics, I feel that I am pretty knowledgeable. Maybe even better,

Now I know where to go to get reliable information!

Here are three of my favorite sources. I recommend them to you.

1. NFPA. Anything to do with fire prevention, statistics, standards, careers, education for children – The National Fire Prevention Association has global reach and its site is an amazing treasure trove. I also subscribe to their newsletter. The illustration for this Advisory came from NFPA.
2. Agility Recovery protects businesses against interruption and disaster. I’ve followed the company’s growth over the past half dozen years, and taken advantage of their excellent webinars, case histories and other free resources they make available on their site.
3. Earthquakes. Because I live here in California, where there are typically over 200 noticeable (over 5.0) earthquakes a year, I have a permanent link on my desktop to the United States Geological Survey Earthquake map. I check it often and read all the fine print!  (When we had the earthquakes over the 4^th of July, the site was temporarily down because so many people were trying to find out just what had happened!)

I urge you to go to these sites if you’re looking for info on fires, business continuity or earthquakes. And if you are looking for information on other preparedness topics, please drop me a line. There’s a lot of misinformation or half-information out there and perhaps I can steer you around some of it to more reliable sources.

Virginia
Your Emergency Plan Guide team

Day 23 of Summer Vacation: A time for some shorter and lighter Advisories as a welcome change-of-pace!