FEMA

After Disastrous Hawaii Incident, Senators Propose Ending States’ Power to Send Missile Alerts

In mid-January, the Hawaiian state Emergency Management Agency sent out an erroneous text to all cell phones in the state warning of a “BALLISTIC MISSILE THREAT INBOUND TO HAWAII,” sending many residents into an hour-long panic as they ran for cover from what they feared was a North Korean nuclear bomb. Though it first appeared…

FEMA Will Cut Aid to Puerto Rico on Wednesday [Update: FEMA Reverses Course]

Not a single region in Puerto Rico has its power fully restored, yet the Federal Emergency Management Agency has decided to end its humanitarian mission to the U.S. territory by Wednesday, according to NPR. Update 1/31/18: Earther reached out to FEMA for comment on this matter, and the agency has informed Earther that a spokesperson…

FEMA Preps ‘Air Bridge’ to Bring Puerto Rican Hurricane Survivors to New York and Florida

The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) is planning to help Hurricane Maria survivors in Puerto Rico leave the island to stay in temporary housing in New York and Florida. Typically, FEMA’s Transitional Shelter Assistance Program provides the funding and resources to house those stranded from disasters—be it in a shelter, hotel, or motel—within their state.…

FEMA Deletes Information About Lack of Water and Electricity in Puerto Rico

The FEMA website has been an important tool for keeping Americans up to date on disaster recovery efforts in Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria. But yesterday, the agency deleted statistics about how many people have access to electricity and clean water on the island. The FEMA website now only displays information that casts the recovery…

Politics Is Making Puerto Rico’s Problems Harder

Nearly a week after Hurricane Maria made landfall in Puerto Rico, President Trump finally waived the Jones Act for the island, allowing more emergency supplies reach the battered territory’s shores. The World War I-era law prevented foreign-owned ships from delivering their goods for days, leaving Puerto Rico without enough food, water, and fuel. And that’s…

FEMA Debunks Hurricane Irma Rumors on New Webpage

Accurate information can be the difference between life and death during a hurricane. So FEMA has launched a new webpage in an effort to debunk rumors that people might be hearing about Hurricane Irma as the historic storm barrels down on the US mainland. Natural disasters breed a lot of misinformation. Sometimes it’s fake photos…

How To Survive A Mass Shooting

As a kid, fire drills taught you fire safety. And you haven’t been killed by a fire. Your parents trained similarly for nuclear war. With 248 mass shootings in US in the 238 days of 2015, it’s time we began treating those the same way. This is how. That statistic is drawn from ShootingTracker.com, a…

Massive Floods Are Coming. We Are Not Prepared.

The risk of flood is on the rise, and experts agree: society isn’t ready for what lies ahead. Yesterday, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) published a landmark investigation on the connections between climate change, population growth and sea-level rise. The study concludes that the amount of the U.S. at risk for floods could increase…

Everything You Need to Be Ready for Disaster

Doesn’t matter if your regional disaster is a flood, tornado, hurricane, snowpocalypse, or earthquake, when the next one strikes you’re going to need to be ready for it. Here’s what you should have on hand to keep you and yours safe for at least three days. Food You can’t survive a natural disaster on an…

FEMA: Text or use social networks instead of calling to keep phone lines clear of congestion during Sandy. [TechCrunch]

What happened when a 7th grader asked Ronald Reagan to declare his bedroom a federal disaster area

In 1984, a young boy named Andy Smith came up with a clever scheme to get his room cleaned with minimal effort: he would convince President Ronald Reagan to have his room declared a federal disaster area and then clean his room with the resulting funds. But the president didn’t exactly send folks in biohazard…

Are coffins being stored in Atlanta for a “high casualty event”?

For years, the internet has swirled with rumors about a large number of black plastic containers stored along a stretch of interstate near Atlanta. Conspiracy theorists dubbed the black containers coffins, and hypothesized that they were being stored for a planned or foreseen event that would cause the deaths of millions of North Americans. This…

FEMA Determines How Bad a Hurricane Is By Checking if The Waffle House Is Open

This seems lifted from The Onion but it’s not. According to the WSJ, FEMA Administrator Craig Fugate uses a ‘Waffle House Index’ to help him determine how destructive a hurricane has been to an area. If a Waffle House is closed, you’re probably screwed. Specifically, in Fugate’s interpretation: Green means the restaurant is serving a…

Get Prepared for Hurricane Irene with the FEMA App for Android

The ever so timely FEMA just released an app for Android phones that’ll get you prepared for that bitch of an Irene. The app will give you checklists to build an emergency kit, maps of disaster recovery centers, information how to stay safe and more. You’re going to need this this weekend (if you live…

Pentagon Quake Nightmare: Fukushima on the Mississippi

In May, the federal government simulated an earthquake so massive, it killed 100,000 Midwesterners instantly, and forced more than 7 million people out of their homes. At the time, National Level Exercise 11 went largely unnoticed; the scenario seemed too far-fetched – states like Illinois and Missouri are in the middle of a tectonic plate,…

Anonymous Hacks Again, Releases Counter-Hacking Manual

With LulzSec out of the picture, bros-in-arms Anonymous has taken up the cause with hacks of their own. One being the release of an “anti-cyberterrorism” training file, allegedly published by FEMA. The irony is not lost on us. https://gizmodo.com/lulzsec-calls-it-quits-5815546 ABC News took a look into the ISO and found: Many documents and links to security…

If You’re Buried Alive, This Camera Is Your Only Hope

The next time you’re trapped under a pile of rubble that used to be a building, wedged into a spider hole, don’t expect your local USAR team to pop their head in to find you. Instead, they’ll send in this. The SearchCam 3000 is a telescoping, waterproof camera for locating victims trapped in collapsed buildings.…

How To Make Yourself Apocalypse-Ready

We often talk about fictional apocalypses here at io9, but what if the collapse of civilization actually happens in your lifetime? Here are some things you can start doing right now to make sure you’re ready to ride it out. Learn To Make Fire. In a post-apocalyptic scenario, you have to account for both short…

FEMA Firefighters Manual Covers UFO Attacks, Crashes

This video shows how FEMA no only deals with credible threats as hurricanes and terrorist attacks, but also with credible threats like alien attacks and UFO crashes: They have an entire chapter dedicated to this topic in their firefighters manual. Great. As if it wasn’t enough with the UK government revealing airplane encounters with UFOs…

Firefighters’ Manual Teaches First Reponders to Deal with UFO Attacks

No, I’m not kidding: A recent ABC newscast focuses on how a commonly-used firefighters’ manual from FEMA has an entire chapter devoted to UFO preparedness. Hey, it’s a good idea to be ready for anything, right? If aliens crash-landed, there wouldn’t just be fires — there’d be mass panic. First responders need to have a…