Natural Disaster Preparation in Your Pocket

Most of us are familiar with how convenient apps can make our lives these days. Do you need to map out your daily caloric intake? You’ve got it. Want one-button access to local movie showings? There’s no problem there either. What you may not know is that there are apps designed to even save your life during an emergency. Most U.S. Regions are susceptible to one form or another of natural disaster. Here are some ways your smart phone or tablet can help you get out of them safely:
American Red Cross
The American Red Cross apps: Hurricane App, Shelter Finder App, First Aid App, Earthquake App, and Wildfire App provide an easy-to-use toolkit designed to help you during a weather emergency. Information on these apps can be found at http://www.redcross.org/prepare/mobile-apps and accessed at the iTunes App Store and Google Play. You can broadcast your safety status to social networks like Facebook or Twitter with the touch of a button, create a family emergency plan using steps and checklists, monitor weather alerts for your location (or the locations of friends and family), or find an open ARC shelter.
Plerts
Plerts for the iPhone, iPod Touch (formerly BuddyGuard) is a free app platform with a plethora of useful tools to stay connected during a natural disaster or emergency. You can set up Plerts interface to connect to social media outlets like Facebook, sharing your condition with your personal network. The app includes the Lifelink program, which backs up recorded activities on your phone (real-time) during an emergency and stores them on a temporary cloud website. Plerts is also equipped with an impact detection function which uses the hardware in modern smartphones to recognize when the user has fallen or been involved in an impact over a certain degree of force. Find more information at https://plerts.com/. It is available on the iTunes App Store, and soon to Google Play.
iMAPWeather Radio
The iMapWeather Radio app accesses the GPS capabilities on your phone to monitor your location and safety, provides you with local weather information, and activates your phone’s alarm automatically in the event of an emergency. Find this app at http://imapweatherradio.com/ or Google Play and the iPhone App Store.
Disaster Readiness
Disaster Readiness is a preparation app that comes preloaded with 175,000+ resources on how to survive any given natural disaster. Its biggest highlight is that these resources are inherent to the app.In other words, should you be without service, you don’t need the internet to access them. Topics include: emergency planning, sheltering, evacuation in addition to specific emergencies like terrorism, fire, wildfires, chemical emergencies and more. Find the full list at http://www.phoneflips.com/2011/disaster-readiness-guide/. This app is available at iTunes, Google Play and Amazon.
FEMA
Frequently, the primary concern involved with communication during a natural disaster is power outages. Cell phone airways may be under a lot of pressure, taxed by thousands of worried people trying to contact their families. In contrast, text messages leave a very small footprint, requiring little service and are a reliable way to send as well as receive information. FEMA, along with its standard natural disaster app featuring many of the benefits of the other apps listed above, offers a text messaging program. By texting the FEMA number (43362), including a command in the body of the text, you can receive monthly alerts. These include preparedness tips, shelter locations and open disaster recovery centers. For more information on how to use FEMA’s text messaging program, visit www.fema.gov/text-messages.
Don’t be caught off guard during an emergency. In our digitally-connected world, the solution is as simple as your smartphone. Be prepared by putting all the tools requires, listed above, to safely emerge from a natural disaster as close to you as your pocket.
Jay Acker leads a production team at safetyservicescompany.com that creates safety training materials. SSC offers contractor certification assistance for ISNetworld®, PICS®, and other contractor verification servicers.