1/22/15: AMERICANS ARE UNPREPARED FOR NATURAL DISASTERS
Hi!
A few months ago a recent survey from Chapman University concluded
that ‘Americans are unprepared for natural disasters’. This is not news really,
as Federal Emergency Managment Agency (FEMA)
found out the same thing in 2013. We have to do
better than the cartoon..
Why are we unprepared?
In their
study the researchers found out that people tend to think bad things cannot
happen to them, only to others; and that when people try to prepare, it is
commonly for the wrong thing.
This has motivated new strategies to ensure people’s
awareness and preparedness, like FEMA’s PrepareAthon
Day, which this year is on April 30th; or involvement in
community emergency response like the CERT teams in Monterey.
For the next months, during the Spring semester 2015, the students
of ‘Earth’s Catastrophes and Disasters’ from Earth
Sciences at MPC will be studying all relevant hazards related to them and
discovering what we can do to prevent them and how to do mitigation afterwards.
They will keep their own blogs every week and I’m looking forward to reading
their findings.
To all my ‘Geol9’ students, welcome!
Ana
