Join the Home Safety Council’s Expert Network – It’s Free!

Firefighters, public health educators and other fire and life safety advocates from around the country are joining the Expert Network to benefit from high quality home injury prevention education tools and services. Downloadable, customizable teaching tools for people of every age are available to members, on demand, at no cost.

Members of the Expert Network have access to selected hard copy educational materials sent through the mail. The majority of these materials are free -- you just pre-pay the shipping and handling costs. Quantities of materials are also available to members for a modest production fee.

• Click here for more information and to sign-up!

Disaster Preparedness and the Home Safety Council’s Get Ready with Freddie! Program Webinar

In August, the Home Safety Council (HSC) hosted a Webinar on disaster preparedness and HSC’s educational preparedness program – Get Ready with Freddie!. The Webinar covered the latest disaster preparedness research, tips on engaging diverse audiences and the most effective methods to get community members involved in being prepared.

The presentation also highlighted HSC’s innovative disaster preparedness program for kids – Get Ready with Freddie! and offered ideas on how to implement it in schools and communities nationwide.

• Click here to view the Webinar and download the discussed resources.

Helping People Prepare for Disasters

As a part of HSCs monthly online Bottom Line column, Dr. Rocky Lopes, Manager of Homeland Security with the National Association of Counties, discusses the challenges faced by those involved in community outreach for disaster preparedness and tips on how to get people more engaged.

This monthly column features safety experts from across the country and focuses on a variety of safety topics. Previous columns include: “You Can Teach Fire Safety to Adults who Can’t Read,” “Fire Prevention and Public Health Partnerships,” “Fire Safety Solutions for People with Disabilities” and more!

• Click here to read the column from Dr. Rocky Lopes

New Research Shows Families Are Not Prepared for Disasters

New research commissioned by the national nonprofit Home Safety Council (HSC) finds that while a majority of mothers have talked with their children about preparing for emergencies, very few have taken action to ensure that their family is prepared to respond in the event of an emergency.

The survey polled mothers and their children ages 6 to 11 and found that while nearly 60 percent of mothers feel their families are prepared for an emergency situation, less than one-third have developed and discussed a family communication plan. Alarmingly, even fewer families have assembled readiness kits. The children surveyed echo the same sentiment with 64 percent saying they think their family is prepared for an emergency, but only 27 percent reporting that their family has developed and discussed a communication plan or assembled readiness kits to use in an emergency situation.

• Click here to read more about the results of the survey

Are You In Need of Some Idea Starters?

Review the ideas below and adapt them for your classroom or community, or use them to develop your own ideas. Be sure to tell us your Ideas that Worked so that we know how YOU helped to get your students and community ready for emergencies.

• Create "Ready" Kits for the Community: As a community service project, have your students work together to assemble Ready-to-Go and Ready-to-Stay kits that can be donated to people in the community who may be in need of the supplies. Review the components of the kits as a class, and then host a fundraiser and use the proceeds to purchase the items needed for the kits. Or if possible, ask students and their families to donate these items as part of the project. This could be a school-wide project. Once the kits are assembled, contact your local fire department, emergency management office, or American Red Cross Chapter so they can help you deliver the kits to people who may need them.

• Families Getting Ready: Host a family event and invite members of the community to speak to families about possible natural disasters that may affect your area, and provide additional tips on how families can prepare themselves for such things. Have your students create flyers to announce the event and program schedules to describe the guest speakers.

• We're Ready: To help motivate students and families to prepare their kits and to develop communication plans, create a large bar graph for the cafeteria, library, or hallway. The name of each teacher in the school should appear on the horizontal axis. The vertical axis will count the students. Provide all the teachers in your school with copies of the Get Ready with Freddie! reproducible pages to send home. In addition, create a template for each family with check-off boxes and lines for the student and parent signatures.
  
  The check-off list could be as simple as:
  o My family discussed emergency preparedness.
  o My family created a communication plan.
  o My family created (or started to organize) a Ready-to-Go kit.
  o My family created (or started to organize) a Ready-to-Stay kit.
  When a student brings the paper back to school checked off and signed, he/she gets to add his/her name to the bar graph above his/her teacher name. The goal is to get every name on the graph. If requesting families to complete both kits and the communication plan may be too difficult, start with asking them to complete their communication plans.

The Latest in Home Safety Council News

Learn more about other Home Safety Council initiatives including the Great Safety Adventure®, a traveling educational exhibit for children. The link below highlights the latest Home Safety Council news and projects.

• HSC Headlines

Kids Prepare America Contest: In the News

The word has quickly spread about the Kids Prepare America Contest - encouraging communities and schools to get their children involved in preparing for disasters. See the latest news stories about the contest below:

• “Would Your Family Survive a Natural Disaster?” - iVillage.com
• “September is National Preparedness Month" - Parents Express Magazine
• “Disaster Preparation: Is Your Family Ready?” - BlogHer.com