SUPPORT & REPORT ON STATE/LOCAL PREPAREDNESS EFFORTS — We should provide money for state and local government to assist civilian preparedness programs. Encourage authorities to report on their level of citizen preparedness and create ways for better measuring civilian readiness.  Expand support of disaster volunteer opportunities including Community Emergency Response Teams (CERT) and other community programs. Combining state, local and community leadership and citizen involvement with federal commitment and focus. Ensure that government authorities can competently and quickly respond to disasters, but more strongly emphasize the need for the public and local communities to be prepared and self-reliant, most importantly in the first 72 hours after a disaster.

BRING IN MORE BUSINESSES TO HELP MARKET PREPAREDNESS Design and roll out a full service preparedness marketing campaign with help from the private sector. Galvanize business to take on disaster preparedness the same way they have with disaster response.  (ie. big box stores, packaged goods manufacturers, bottled water companies, wireless industry). In addition, work with private sector to alleviate existing obstacles to personal preparedness (ie. work with health care industry to allow for extra prescription medicine in advance of a disaster.)

GET THE CHILDREN INVOLVED — Put more emphasis on educating young people on preparedness by adding them to other related school-based education efforts. (like fire safety, for example). The challenge is both the nation’s leniency on the education system and the already high demands on teachers. However, an effective fire education program was implemented in the schools in the 1970’s, and there seems to be a perfect fit to integrate a preparedness module into that existing program. The federal government should work with state and local officials as well as fire and education officials to determine how best to accomplish this objective

AN OFFICIAL PREPAREDNESS DAY Create a National Preparedness Day to focus the public’s attention before disasters.  This should include briefing citizens, conducting drills, and filling emergency kits. A helpful model is Japan’s Disaster Prevention Day held on the anniversary of the catastrophic 1923 Tokyo earthquake.<

BUNDLE CITIZEN PREPAREDNESS PROPOSALS TOGETHER INTO “CITIZEN PREPAREDNESS INITIATIVE”– For too long, well meaning public preparedness efforts have been ignored or lost by the public. They have not been packaged and presented as being specifically directed to citizens, but if the government would assemble these small disparate proposals listed above into an overall citizen-preparedness package it would have a better chance of getting attention and gaining some traction. Basically, making things work with citizen preparedness is less of a matter of money than it is of focus and attention.