The nation’s first training on how to organize and run a community disaster education program was initiated by FEMA's Community & Family Preparedness Program in 1997 and pilot tested at the Emergency Management Institute in June 1998, prior to the disaster education conference. A second pilot test will be held in North Carolina in November 1998.

The Organizer's Course, being developed in cooperation with the American Red Cross, is designed to teach state and local emergency managers, American Red Cross personnel, and others how to plan, implement, evaluate, and maintain a successful community disaster education program. Ideas on course content, methodology, and delivery of this and other potential public disaster education courses were offered during the pilot and conference. Participants' comments will be reflected in revised course materials and plans for future training. The Organizer's Course will be completed toward the end of 1998.

Recognizing the true benefits of disaster preparedness and the untiring work of the disaster education community, FEMA and the American Red Cross announced the first winners of the Disaster Saves Award. The award goes to individuals whose educational efforts have made a significant difference in people’s lives in a natural disaster.

Kay Goss, Associate Director for Preparedness, Training, and Exercises for FEMA, and John Clizbe, Vice President of Disaster Services for the American Red Cross, shared the honors in announcing the awards at the Community & Family Preparedness Conference (June 1998). The winners participated in the ceremony via conference calls.

In a remarkable multi-year effort following a series of devastating firestorms in Southern California in 1993, an umbrella group of homeowners associations in Pasadena -- the Eaton Canyon Recovery Alliance -- worked with public agencies and the American Red Cross to educate residents about wildfire, flooding, mud slides, and debris flow hazards.

The public education team (Ursula Hyman, Richard Baumer, Linda Williams and Frank Griffith) used a variety of means to educate the public: public meetings, door to door visits, partnerships, newsletters, materials distribution, and public signage. Community workshops covered such topics as "fire-wise landscaping," "flood safety," "earthquake safety," and "neighborhood preparedness." Additional hands-on training was provided in a "community safety training day." Hundreds of properties were protected by temporary and permanent mitigation measures as a result of efforts by the Alliance.

Rocky Lopes is a national leader in the field of community disaster education. He has demonstrated an untiring commitment to training and supporting disaster educators throughout the American Red Cross system, the fire service, and the emergency management community. Rocky manages the American Red Cross' Community Disaster Education program and is a full-time staff member at the national headquarters of that organization. As a researcher, teacher, trainer and conference facilitator since the 1980's, he has assumed a leading role in the creation of a nationally acclaimed bank of disaster preparedness messages and public education techniques. Rocky's 1992 study, "Public Perception of Disaster Preparedness Presentations Using Disaster Damage Images," led to a profession-wide change in the way images are used in public education. He has worked extensively building coalitions with the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the U.S. Fire Administration, the National Weather Service, the U.S. Geological Survey, and a wide range of industry and voluntary associations.

Thanks to the work of Elaine Mesitti and Arthur Burtman, senior citizens, elementary school children and many others in the Boston area are given life saving information on fire prevention and disaster preparedness. They work closely together to make sure that their messages are effective and appropriate.

Some time ago, Arthur developed a Disaster Preparedness Coloring Book Program. In March 1998, thanks to Elaine’s coordination, Arthur presented this program to the 4^th grade at the Josiah Quincy School. After the presentation, the students wrote thank you notes and described the things they learned from him. Wrote one student, "If you never warned us to check our smoke detector, my family wouldn’t know that our battery was dead." And another, "I checked my smoke detector that day when I went home. I’m glad you mentioned it. We had to change our batteries."

Participants of FEMA’s 1998 Community & Family Preparedness Conference were asked how to motivate a disaster response organization from within to be more proactive and supportive of disaster education. (See Update #5 for good ideas on selling mitigation to the public.) Here's what they said:

• Come up with fun and interesting small projects that can be completed with little effort but show good results.
• Demonstrate the potential impact disaster education will have on the community. Be realistic about budget needs.
• Demonstrate the financial advantage of mitigation. Put a weather alert radio in every school.
• Involving other agencies and coalitions creates a certain expectation that something will be done now. FEMA and the American Red Cross are trained to react when disasters happen. Involving leaders from outside the response agency circle, agencies that have proactive postures, may help.
• We need to demonstrate the benefits of being proactive. Our agency has been highly successful in a mitigation buy-out and relocation project. It has taken five years and has been difficult to stay focused, but our agency can now see how being proactive will benefit everyone. I will use this as an example to others: Being proactive works.
• Talk with your agency board or management about the positive rewards for being seen daily in the community, in schools, and working with other agencies. As in the case of the American Red Cross, such outreach builds your organization's reputation for being concerned about helping people before disaster. It also generates volunteers and it can create a new youth corps. You can also mention the financial benefits of preparedness.
• Propose interesting, high energy projects that are fun and enjoyable for all participants. Presenting information is important, but the way you go about it is what interests people.
• Keep the interest up by appealing to your agency's interests. Organize fun activities that get people actively involved. Make sure activities, drills and exercises relate to your agency's needs.
• My agency is not in the disaster business, so we have to educate our managers about the need for disaster education. Once management is on board, getting other staff members to be proactive is easy.
• Support neighborhood advocates who continually support disaster education and mitigation programs among elected officials. Establish performance measurements, monitor and evaluate your program, and then give elected officials a report on your progress. Show results to justify expanded outreach and funding.
• The main motivational tool might be the availability of funds. More funds are becoming available for disaster education and mitigation.
• Be sure to recognize and reward all volunteers who contribute to your program. Enlist volunteers from coalitions and seek alternate funding sources to expand your ability to reach more people.
• We hold annual "status of emergency management" briefings for elected officials, highlighting program advancements and new initiatives. We conduct employee disaster awareness training, a 90-minute session that features speakers, a video and a question and answer period. Each employee receives the most recent edition of our all-hazards handbook. In addition, a refresher summit is held for each Emergency Support Function (ESF’s 1-17) prior to the start of hurricane season.
• Offer incentives to companies that are proactive. Offer training and safety courses to proactive businesses. Get businesses involved in disaster education. Make them active participants. Point out the benefits of being a community leader -- which will improve their sales and service.
• Plead your case one more time. Go into the meeting armed with the right supporting materials and facts. Subtly find someone who can convince your CEO or supervisor to be your advocate. Sell your cause to them. It must be someone you trust and who can "see" the benefits of saving lives through mitigation and education. If your organization is the American Red Cross, state that for the organization to achieve the "standards of excellence" in community disaster education for re-chartering, you need to educate the identified high risk group in your community. If this doesn’t work, maybe a "work-around" is needed. For the American Red Cross, mitigation is a "must service."
• Disaster response is not reaction -- it should be the combination of mitigation and preparedness actions, the largest elements in the disaster cycle.
• Test your organization's own preparedness with exercises related to business interruption and resumption.
• In a bureaucratic environment, you need to have the ability to show a good cost/benefit ratio (a lot of bang for the buck.) The academic field can help those of us doing disaster education by doing empirical studies about human behavior and preparedness, e.g., how much money, time and effort was saved in a disaster because of disaster education.
• Conduct workshops for various segments of the community, schedule meetings to follow-up with the organizations and to assist with their plans. Assist in exercise development and evaluations. We have a fire/chemical safety house that we use in the schools. These activities keep staff motivated and challenged.
• I think the leadership of the organization has to demonstrate support for proactive practices. If there is not support from an organization's leadership, it’s much harder to develop and sustain proactive practices.
• The best motivation for my agency, which is political, is to demonstrate how disaster education can be used to that (political) advantage. I also want to show my "community," which is law enforcement, that the best way to do our job is to ensure that the larger community is prepared. This makes our job easier and ensures that our families are prepared -- we may need to be away from them for some time during an event.
• Fortunately, my American Red Cross chapter is already motivated and supportive of disaster education. However, I would like to see "unseen disaster education." This is a very opportune teachable moment. Also, when we respond, we provide clients with shelter, clothing, and in some cases extended care, but we can't require them to participate in training, skills development or preparedness activities. People are much more likely to make life changes after they have been impacted by a disaster. Likewise, that is one of the most effective times to produce educational intervention.
• Educate the agency on the fact that a dollar spent on mitigation will save two dollars on recovery and rebuilding. It’s easier and less costly to mitigate than to rebuild.
• Educate the people who hold the purse strings. Train them in emergency management and disaster education. Talk to them about the issues. Relate disaster education as a competitive advantage for the organization's positioning in the community. Include disaster education in the organization’s strategic plan and annual operating plans. Do small projects that are successful which demonstrate results and prove that disaster education is a valuable activity for the organization.