Attend the Hurricane Workshop on June 4th. This is an annual event hosted by the Houston / Galveston Weather Service. It will include sessions, exhibits and and free expo at the George R. Brown Convention Center. Plan to attend early since it is open on Saturday until 2:30 pm.

The Popular Mechanics sponsored Home Safety Prep Show is down at Reliant Center and is an all day event on Saturday. It seems to have a bit more sponsorship and showmanship behind it.

Both will offer good exhibits by vendors on safe home improvements to protect against wind damage, backup energy solutions and family safety best practices.

Hurricane season runs from June 1st through the end of November and it is time to review your family plan.

Did 9/11 change us a country? Yes. Did it make us more prepared as a county, not really. But, I do believe many individuals have changed their outlook or habits to become more self-sufficient and understand that all we take for granted can change in a single morning.

Take care of your family, enjoy your life, and honour those who have gone before.

Presenters for Social Media response to Health Emergencies

Ann Aikin is the Social Media Strategist at the CDC
David Hale Project Lead from the National Library of Medicine
Andrew Wilson New Media Strategist from SAMHSA
Andre Blackman from Pulse + Signal

Introductions from the panelists include background on activities during the 2009 breakout of the H1N1 virus media peak in March and April of 2009.

Ann starts with several new projects the CDC rapidly expanded or created during the H1N1 breakout.

• Worked with Community Voice Mail to write emails and send voice mails to under-served communities.
• Twitter was used to monitor messages and see if there were gaps in knowledge or discrepancies in the information.
• Used several different accounts to deliver messages. WebMd partnered to expand reach, the information on that blog was the second most popular blog on WebMD by pageviews.
• Modeling behavior partnership with kids at Whyville.
• Finally, the CDC encouraged innovation in XML to provide transparency and collaboration. http://www.cdc.gov/socialmedia for data metrics on what worked and didn’t.

David Hale worked on situational awareness (ability of group or individual to have access to information needed to make decisions). Works on Semantic webline at NLM and decided to release auto semantic reviewer. Ex. “swine flu travel” vs “how fast swine flu travels” are different salient tweets and with different needs for information. Used the Natural Language Processing system designed to read medical abstracts and used to analyze tweets. Real opportunities came from biosurveillance, respond to misinformation trends, monitoring of wide-spread sentiment, and potential for evaluating authenticity. Example: Monitor twitter streams and if everyone is tweeting about washing hands and coughing into sleeves, then good. Tweeting about using painter’s mask, then need to key in on that and see how to modify information. Partners with Swift River (Ushahidi) with the University of Wisconsin to evaluate ongoing work.

Andrew Wilson at the Department of Health and Human Services took a brief moment to show a PSA (barnyard conference) from their contest around the H1N1 flu spread of information. Great use of spread of social media and reaching people where their audience is. “Need to leverage social media to produce content that is more personally relevant that will resonate with all of our audiences.” As much as they can deliver a core message to their peers, they need people to deliver to their own personal networks in the tone needed impact to individuals and spread. Example: Spike in twitter traffic. See connectedthebook.com. Worked with Google Health Map via a quick connection during Twitter in initial information storm. Flattened the top down network structure to directly impact response time and spread of information to update and add H1N1 to the list of Diseases.

Twitter accounts for Health Emergency

@flugov
@cdc_eHealth
@cdcemergency
@cdcflu
@NLM_Sis

Web Site for Flu and Health Information

www.flu.gov/socialmedia
www.cdc.gov/socialmedia
www.newmedia.hhs.gov

Facebook accounts from H1N1 and CDC

www.facebook.com/h1n1flu
www.facebook.com/cdc

YouTube for video response and information of CDC

www.youtube.com/USGOVHHS
www.youtube.com/CDCStreamingHealth

Find relevant hashtags to follow include #opengov #gov20

Final wrapup included a discussion of how to manage during non-breakout communication. CDC continues to push content consistently and engage during non-ermergency issues. Primary takeaway is all or most of the social media tools were already in place prior to the breakout, so were readily available as people began looking for the information in real-time.

Hurricane Ike just off the coast of Texas. We lost power about 30 minutes after this screen photo, and are still without power ten days later. When power returns, what worked and what didn’t. The short answer is we are doing okay, no physical damage and only downed trees and limbs on the fence and yard. House is in good shape and we are learning very much about camping in our own modern house.

Note: I <3 Plylox!

Pick a weekend, it can even be at random. If you need, tell your family ahead of time, but just shut off the power. Try it for 12 hours, a day… shoot, even a whole weekend. Put the car keys away, no shopping at the store, no internet… in fact, turn off the breakers at the electrical box. Ohhhh… this isn’t going to be easy. Nope. It is going to kind of suck. But, what if the power were off for 3 days from a storm and you couldn’t go to a hotel or family’s house? What would you need to be comfortable and safe?

If you really want to be strict, don’t use the water faucet’s either. Most major storms, floods, hurricanes totally jack with the water supply and it is usually regulated to a boil-only situation. Do you have enough water on hand for cooking and basic cleanliness?

You thought you were prepared and it would be uncomfortable, but you could hang. But, how about your family? How do you entertain the kids? Are there any special medications the family members need refrigerated or special diets to consider? Do you have a grill, is the propane bottle full? Extra bags of charcoal and lighter fluid? Can you unhook your garage door from the electric motor to get large items out?

The local energy companies in the Gulf region typically indicate that a small Category 1 Hurricane can leave residents without power for 7 to 10 days. A Category 2 can quickly extend that time to 2 weeks.

Mentally, run through this exercise a few times before the test and definitely before the real thing. Then, pick a day… you will feel better after the fact knowing how to keep your family happy and less stressed in a real power out situation.

Top off your fuel tanks, grab a flashlight and NOAA radio, then settle in for some good rain and maybe a bit of wind. Read the Sci Guy at the Houston Chron’s blog for great analysis and interpretation.

A recent trip to the Houston Hurricane Preparedness Workshop and meeting the Houston Mosquite Control team taught me how poorly I had underestimated the aftermath of a severe rain and flooding. Recent midwest flooding in the United States has produced a hatch of epic proportions. “For example, last week, 3,674 mosquitoes were counted in Ames-area traps, compared with 182 for the same week last year, Bartholomay said Wednesday. Trap quantities are just a tiny snapshot of the true numbers of mosquitoes flying around.”  The relief workers are being run out of areas or hampered with their efforts. The same thing happened after Katrina in New Orleans. Fortunately for the midwest, they are not fighting the particular types of mosquitoes identified as carriers of the West Nile Virus.

If you plan on weathering a severe storm or returning to a hurricane or flood zone, bring lots of safety measures for working in the area. This also means considering your family and pets. Make sure you have basic quantities of repellent and in your work and emergency kits. Then add more. Here are some basic measures for mosquito control:

• Wear insect repellent containing deet, picaridin or oil of lemon eucalyptus and apply it frequently. Don’t skimp, get 30% or greater percentage of Deet if possible.

• Drain standing water from backyard bird baths, discard old tires and other containers that trap water, and frequently replace water in wading pools. Don’t overwater plants and keep drains and woodpiles clean.

• Avoid going outside from dusk to dawn, peak activity times for some mosquitoes. Mosquito hatches can be present all day, but start as early as 3pm.

• Avoid dark clothes, which can absorb heat and make you more visible; choose neutral colors that blend in with the environment. Purchase mosquito netting for your head and cover other parts of exposed skin with netting if possible.

• Avoid perfumes and sweet-smelling lotions and cosmetics, including lavender scents, which attract mosquitoes.

• Perspiration is a lure, so wash after exercising or sweating heavily.

• Antihistamine tablets taken throughout mosquito season or after being bitten can help reduce bumps and itchiness.

Notes included from Chron.com and Associated Press.

From the blog:

Focused on providing families with the information they need as the hurricane season begins, this year’s workshop promises to be even more popular, with an agenda that includes:

• An update on hurricane forecasting techniques and the region’s 2008 hurricane outlook
• Emergency management experts explaining the latest plans for hurricane preparedness and evacuation along the upper Texas coast
• An interactive kids’ learning activity center

Free and open to the public, the 2008 Hurricane Workshop is once again being sponsored by CenterPoint Energy, the City of Houston the National Weather Service. Harris County, Interfaith Ministries for Greater Houston and the John C. Freeman Weather Museum are also active participants.

As I have indicated before, the only good emergency system is one that is familiar and we use on a nearly everyday basis. This seems one step closer to a viable system of alerts.

The article indicates the carriers could voluntarily deliver messages for any of these three types of events:

The NY Times writes this week about how the new trend in lifestyle may be preparedness in the wake of economic uncertainty and maybe even a touch of Peak Oil worry. A depression, either real or self-prophecy, has many middle-class americans learning new(old) skills of gardening, wine making and living more energy efficient to sustain their way of life if the world around them changes.