Chasing4Life

Holiday Travel...WITH KIDS

2011-12-16T10:02:00.003-06:00

Guest Blogger: C4L Instructor Scott Allison

Ah! The holiday season is upon us. Egg nog, houses decorated for the holidays, classic holiday movies (my personal favorite is A Christmas Story!), spending time with family, and travel. If you are like me, travel means traveling with kids. Any parent can attest to the fact that traveling with kids can be a daunting task during any time of the year, but can be even worse during the holiday season. Why can the holiday season be so awful for traveling with kids? Stress, obviously, but also the winter season plays a major role. Winter brings up thoughts of snowball fights, watching the kids make snow angels, sledding down a large hill (local golf courses are great places for that). Winter, for me, brings up thoughts of people forgetting how to drive in the snow, watching for snow plows, driving more carefully because of wet/frozen roads, and preparing the car with a preparedness kit…not just for a preparedness kit for the car, but also for the kids.

Preparedness kits for the cars are fairly simple to put together. According to the Illinois Department of Transportation (IDOT) Division of Traffic Safety, a car kit should include the following: a flashlight, blankets, candles, matches/lighter, empty tin can to hold the lit candles, water, extra gloves, ice scrapers, sand or kitty litter, flares, first aid kit, jumper cables, and non-perishable food. I personally recommend a collapsible snow shovel, a hand-held can opener, a set of snow boots, motor oil, and antifreeze. Some of the things in the car kit should be self-explanatory. Some of the items may not make a lot of sense at first. For instance the sand or kitty litter, these are great items to use to regain traction in places where traction is at a premium (i.e. a road with black ice). Extra gloves can come in handy in case you need dig out the car and you don’t have a shovel handy. You may ask “Why water?” Well it may freeze, but at least while it thaws you can still have liquid refreshment for your body. You could also include some Gatorade/Powerade/Propel for the people in the car and save the water for the car itself just in case you need it. Non-perishable food means granola bars, Pop-tarts, nuts, canned veggies/fruits, cereal, cereal bars, and other foods like that.

Preparedness doesn’t stop with the car. It continues with the kids. There are two different kits you should have available for the kids. The first kit is the parents’ survival kit for the car. This kit should include anything and everything the kid(s) would need to occupy themselves in the car so you don’t hear the dreaded “are we there yet” question 15,000 times in a four hour trip to Aunt Sandy’s condo. For example, videos, portable DVD player, game system (fresh batteries are a must), coloring books, crayons, washable markers, and picture books or novels (dependent on kid(s) age(s). The kid(s) should also have a disaster preparedness kit to take with them when they travel. It can be as simple as a backpack with some if not all of the following items: portable weather radio with a set of fresh batteries, flashlight, list of emergency numbers, granola bars or other similar non-perishable food items, water bottle, money, identification card, medications, insurance information, letter stating that those caring for the kid(s) can authorize medical care, baby wipes, and diapers if traveling with infants. A couple extra sets of clothes wouldn’t be a bad idea either. All of these things would be very beneficial not only to the immediate family, but also to those who are caring for the youngsters at the time.

So as you prepare for the holiday travel season keep the information stated above in mind especially if you are traveling with children. It may take a few extra minutes to prepare the kits, but those few extra minutes could be the difference between life and death.

Have a safe, happy, and joyous holiday season!

Baby, it's cold outside...

2011-11-30T22:52:00.002-06:00

Next week, December 4-10, 2011, is National Influenza Vaccination Week (NIVW). It is a time for everyone to reflect on the importance of protecting ourselves and our loved ones from the complications of influenza “flu”.

The “flu” as it is most often referred to, can be a serious respiratory illness and even deadly to the very young, the very old and those with chronic medical conditions. At Chasing4Life it is important to us to respond to others in the face of a disaster….well, the influenza season is its own form of a winter disaster, a gift from Mother Nature every year. YOU need to prepare with a “flu disaster kit”…. An easy way to stay healthier this winter…. Because, “Baby it’s cold outside!” Family and friends will be gathering for the holidays and you don’t want to be the one sharing the flu!

Our safety elves have already “checked it twice” and know you’re on the “nice” list. Start protecting yourself today with the Flu Disaster Kit holiday shopping list:

1. Don’t let the flu get you! …Get a flu shot:

Stay healthy and ready to party with the kids when the Santa comes to town! CDC (Centers for Disease Prevention and Control) recommends that everyone 6 months and older get vaccinated against the flu. No longer are there all kinds of age restrictions. Over the last few years and even more so since the H1N1 “Swine Flu” outbreak in 2009, scientists have learned more about the value of “community immunity” and protecting the public from this serious virus.

2. Be a scrooge! Keep your germs to yourself! Use the 3 C’s: Clean, Cover & Contain:

Clean Hands! It is the number one, easiest and cheapest way to keep germs from spreading to others. Keeping hands clean by either killing the germs with (alcohol-based) hand sanitizer or by washing the germs down the drain with soap and water. Keep a bottle of sanitizer in your pocket, in your car, wherever you go and use often! Wash hands frequently when dirty!

Cover your cough – every cough, every time! Coughs spread germs through the air in a tiny wet mist of droplets. Cough germs spread to your eyes, nose, or mouth and on typical household surfaces CAN make you SICK. Keep those germs to yourself by turning your head away from others and coughing into your elbow area. Germs can spread from coughing even when you are feeling better! Have a lingering cough from a cold or flu virus? That cough can still spread germs, sometimes for weeks after your first felt ill!

Contain germs – many ways! In the trash can and stay home when ill!

Contain germs in the trash can! When you use a tissue, immediately throw it away into a trash can and then clean your hands with hand sanitizer or soap & water. Once you have germs on your hands,you can move those germs to other surfaces where they can survive on surfaces for hours. Many of these germs can be innocently picked up by yourself or the kids by touching something as simple as the TV remote, the bathroom or refrigerator door handle or the light switch. The germs then transfer from your hands and then to your eyes or nose with a simple rubbing or itching motion. Voile`! You have just provided the germs a happy new home and you feel ill in 24-48 hours.

Contain germs at home! Whether you work or go to school, stay home when ill! Do not struggle in to work or school as a “walking wounded” only to share those germs with others who will then be sick with YOUR illness in a few days.

Well, you’ve done your Flu Disaster Kit shopping and now you are trying to get the rest of your family to do the same….. What are their arguments?

Joseph complains: “I always get sick from the flu shot!”

Your answer for Joseph: Nope, Joseph, not possible, the flu vaccine contains a “dead” virus. Getting the flu shot merely motivates your immune system to develop resistance to the strains of flu for each specific year. And, yes, you must get a flu shot every year as the strains of flu virus change from year to year! So, Joseph, if you’ve gotten sick after the flu shot, this just means that you already had germs in your body and they made you sick about the same time you got your flu vaccine.

Mary complains: “I don’t like shots!”

Your answer for Mary: Now, if you have a great fear of “shots” Mary, then ask your doctor if you can “pick your nose”? The FluMist nasal spray vaccine may be the right choice for you as this is not a shot in the arm but a brief spray of vaccine up your nose. But there are things to consider when choosing FluMist – first, it is OK for healthy, non-pregnant persons aged 2 through 49 years. It’s also a live vaccine that’s been designed to not cause flu illness, but still have your body develop immunity. You will likely feel ill for a few days… need to prepare for that while taking care of your newborn son.

Cousin Elizabeth complains: “I don’t need the flu shot, I just need a cure for diabetes ‘cuz I want to eat Christmas sugar cookies!”

Your answer for Cousin Elizabeth: While the scientists are working to help you with your diabetes, they HAVE found a way to keep you and your loved ones safer during the winter flu season by developing the flu shot so people like you with a chronic illness can still enjoy the holidays together with your family!

This year’s flu vaccine is an overall good match of the flu strains moving around this season. Good news! This means that approximately two weeks after receiving your flu vaccine, the risk of developing significant illness from influenza is lessened because you’ve developed immunity to the flu. Each year thousands of people die due to complications of the flu. Getting the flu is serious, and even life threatening, to many people. It is extremely important for the health of the community for as many people as possible to become vaccinated. Just think of how many more days parents would have for summer vacation if they hadn’t had to spend a week at home with an ill child in January? How much easier it is for kids to go to school and learn in a healthy environment instead of their classmates coughing in their faces? What about your 3 month old baby at home who you decided to keep in a home setting and not in daycare? Well, if your second grader is not immunized, then she will likely be bringing home all those school germs to your infant. People are so quick to blame others, but the reality is, that they are part of the problem if not protecting themselves and their family members from the flu.

With flu activity increasing and family and friends gathering for the holidays, now is a great time to get a flu vaccine to protect yourself and your loved ones! It is not too late....prepare today!

Creating a BUFFER between your business and disaster

2011-11-18T13:31:00.003-06:00

It was a scary night and the sounds of sirens kept you and your family awake. Luckily, your home sustained minimal damage, but upon arriving at the office, you realize that the problem there is much larger. Trees are down, power lines are down, and it appears that a portion of the office building has been damaged and water has damaged much of the interior. It could be weeks before things are back to normal.

More and more, businesses are writing continuity plans for just such a scenario, and the obvious focus needs to be on back-up systems, communication and order fulfillment… but there’s a problem…

You built this start-up company of yours from the ground up. You read every article, created a plan and your social media marketing campaigns literally built your customer base! How do you maintain that momentum while dealing with everything else? Half of each day for the next week you’ll be trying to dry out your file cabinets while attempting to find contractors! Don’t forget, internet around town is going to be difficult to access as well.

Using social media marketing is all about connections and momentum. Each day, businesses experience success simply because they have used social media to build their customer base and they have maintained that customer base by faithfully keeping up a level of momentum.

Now, for the next two weeks, your FaceBook Page will be a ghost town. Your Twitter will lay dormant. Momentum is gone while you recover from last night’s storm. You could lose followers, lose business, miss connections and opportunities and worse yet, lose months of hard work.

As a disaster preparedness educator and emergency response consultant, I am continually looking for that one solution to problems like this. In order for something to be a solution in my world, it has to be simple, affordable and easy to use. Buffer is that solution.

While you are inundated with the daily woes of rebuilding, recovering, reconnecting, restocking, re-ordering and well, let’s face it, re-thinking, Buffer can maintain momentum for your company behind the scenes. Your customers may never know you took a hit!

During a recent hospitalization, my clientele never even knew I was “out-of-the-loop”. Simple instructions given to my assistant along with my Buffer account password kept my social media campaign alive for over a week! I’m a Buffer-Believer.

According to the Business Institute of America, 25% of all businesses caught up in disasters do not reopen. Over the years, I have interviewed hundreds of business owners throwing in the towel after a disaster not because of poor insurance coverage, but because the thought of reconnecting with their clientele or customer base would “just take too long”.

Getting back to business after a disaster depends on preparedness planning today. Acquiring a simple Buffer account can secure your social media campaigning in the wake of a disaster and can easily be used by you in short bursts or can even be delegated to support personnel outside the disaster area until you are able to take the reins again yourself.

The folks at Buffer have created perhaps one of the easiest, most affordable business continuity protection tools available today without even knowing it. In a world that now thrives in a social media world, there is a way to stay alive even when the “real world” isn’t online.

Find Buffer

Cahokia's Kids and our philosophy on learning

2011-11-09T20:53:00.002-06:00

If you are a parent of kids who go to school, you have probably heard many times expressions like "I hate homework", "I hate school" or "I don't want to learn". I have several children myself, and believe me, we’ve been through this a thousand times.
As a program coordinator or even a volunteer for an organization, it is easy to fall into the trap of supplying entertainment for kids simply because your educational events don’t go over well; it is probably because those educational events resemble that “school learning” and the “draw is certainly not going to be as great as that of a magician, a haunted house or a pizza party.
Here’s the truth: learning is harder when you do not understand WHY you should learn, how you learn and what you gain from learning. Unfortunately, most kids do not know what happens to them in the process of learning, so they only see the pain associated with it, instead of the pleasure. There is a reason why Chasing4Life programs are not only popular, but SUCCESSFUL, and by that, I mean that children RETAIN what they are taught at these events, and they actually are motivated to become educators themselves.
The brain
Our brain has 100 billion cells. Each cell carries a single thought, experience or feeling. This single thing, which the brain registers as an experience, moves in the brain the way electricity flows from the power station to your house.
We do not use all the cells we have in the brain. Some people say we use only a small portion of the brain, others say we use a bit more, but everyone agrees there are plenty of brain cells we do not use. Everything you do in life helps you use more of the cells in your brain. When you play, sleep, eat, laugh, cry or learn, you use more cells in your brain. The theory then? DO MORE STUFF.
When the same experience happens again and again, we no longer need to learn it - we do it automatically. Take walking, for example. At first, you need to concentrate on sending the right messages from your brain to your legs and back and you still wobble and fall down. But after some practice, you do it automatically - you no longer think about it. It is easy. The system I created years ago when I founded Chasing4Life is the same teaching system I use to this day and it is embedded in the Cahokia’s Kids Programming: repetition. People will ask if their child can attend only those programs in the series that sound interesting to them, but with this system we are using, each program overlaps the next, repeating lessons learned and intertwining them with the next lessons being taught. Each program begins with a review so the repetition is constant throughout the year.
How successful is this? We have children in Junior High School now that can still, to this day, repeat the severe weather facts they learned in First Grade at Chasing4Life programs!
“We need to be smarter”
We have a lot of phrases that the kids learn throughout the programs. One phrase is, “We need to get smarter”. The brain is like a machine that needs oil. Learning is that oil. The more you oil your brain, the better it runs. If you want to be smart, you need to make sure your brain works all the time. Every new thing you learn and repeat until it is automatic makes your brain machine faster and smarter. When you are talking about disaster planning and preparedness, you need to be able to operate like a machine quickly and there is no time to try to re-engage your brain last minute.
If you want to use your thinking brain more, you have to do more of the things that make you happy. If you need to learn something that is important to you, do it in a way that will make you happy. The Chasing4Life programs are fun, they relate to current events, they cause families to interact, and they are FUN. Remember, when you are happy, you remember everything.
So, if you have not done so yet, visit www.cahokiaskids.com and check out a new and exciting way to learn.

Winds of change

2011-11-01T10:29:00.004-05:00

Texas oil tycoon H.L. Hunt was indeed a man who knew how to make a decision. The proof is in the fruit. He ended up a TYCOON.

Hunt once said, “Decide what you want, decide what you are willing to exchange for it. Establish your priorities and go to work.”

For years, operating Chasing4Life has been a labor of passion and love. Knowing that we were changing lives, knowing we were reaching massive amounts of people with a message that could save their lives all kept us going. Unfortunately, the financial end lacked. Several years ago, we decided to venture into the world of disaster response; the idea came easy as we saw need, and decided to meet it. We had no business plan, no financier, just a will to do the work.

The same happened when we saw the opportunity to present an I.C.E. Application for iPhones. The same happened when we got involved in animal rescue. The same happened when we began to create educational training DVD’s.

Now, none of these ventures came to us in the middle of the night or in visions. The calls, the requests, the inquiries and even sometimes the begging all came from people. When we presented the I.C.E. Application, it was because literally over 100 of our friends and clients said it was a great idea that they could support. When we got into disaster recovery work, it was because literally dozens of community leaders and church leaders said it was something they could get behind and support. When we began to create training DVD’s, it was because incredible numbers of agencies and organizations were requesting them.

But then there is reality. The check was always in the mail, but never arrived.

The I.C.E. App has been recreated because of the lack of support. We are taking it to a new market. The training DVD's are being distributed by a distributor. The TV show is being re-produced for a new market and a new network. A whole new staff for the C4LDRT will be announced by Christmas.

To those who never showed? We're still going...without you.

It is now November, and as the famous song says, the “winds of change are blowing”. A coldness is creeping across the country, changing the way people react, dress, operate, travel, plan and work. The same is happening at Chasing4Life.

Over the course of the last three years, we have “partnered” with many people and organizations only to find that the momentum was all ours. Many companies and organizations we have partnered with have yet to take their first step in cross-marketing, support or involvement. Simple Google searches pull up these “partners” who, some of which, have not even updated their websites in a year let alone have they thought to post something in the social media realm since the first months of the year. Momentum is non-existent, connection and communication seem to be all but vanished.

And then there are the people. The volunteers, the instructors, the administrators, the coordinators. So many that wanted to hitch themselves to Chasing4Life, yet as it was revealed, in name only to bolster other agendas.

With hundreds of thousands of school children educated in disaster preparedness, hundreds of agencies trained and tens of thousands of families reached, no matter what your opinion of the method, Chasing4Life has been a force to be reckoned with and our influence has travelled around the globe.

Now, as the winds shift outside, they shift inside as well.

As the new year approaches, we know that the needs are going to be great. Disasters are increasing, schools are beckoning more than ever. Agencies are looking for more of the quality Chasing4Life has presented in the past, and the time has come to follow in the words and footsteps of H.L. Hunt and make decisions, establish priorities, and get to work.

The new year is bringing a whole new application process for our C4LDRT volunteers and staffers. The arrival of the new mobile command unit has brought with it opportunity to serve like never before, but we have chosen to man not only the vehicle, but the entire organization with only those dedicated to training, serving, protecting and sacrificing. We are only going to consider those willing to answer the call.

Our sponsorships and partnerships will be similar. No more can we afford to spend time and effort on those with no momentum, no passion, no vision and no dedication. Companies and organizations alike will have to have their own momentum that they bring to the table; and a plan as to how to combine it with the power, momentum and reach of Chasing4Life.

As for our staff? So many have voiced concern that their careers are not lucrative enough, that there has been no real explosion of their popularity, no real increase in demand. With over 700 programs presented this year by only three of our instructors, we will leave this portion of the conversation with one statement: If the grass seems greener on the other side of the fence, it is perhaps because they maintain it better over there…

It is a year for change. The Mayans could have been right, after all, which means we have 12 months to leave our mark. If they were wrong, then this will be the year that changes Chasing4Life forever. We will reach more, teach more, save more, fix more, respond more, love more, laugh more and last longer.

Now, why the change?

It is because of the advice of the wise few. Tim. Chris. Theresa. Jeff. Hearts tuned to what we do and where we are going. It is also because we have a responsibility to be good stewards of what has been given us by Baron Services, HiViz, FoxFury, and NUPLA. Partners that have proven they understand partnership and the word “support”.

To those of you that have been that support? There is no way to ever thank you enough.

Why the change?

Because it’s time to take this whole thing to a new level.

The future's in the air
I can feel it everywhere
Blowing with the wind of change

(Scorpions-Wind of Change)

If the Mayans were right...

2011-10-17T09:46:00.002-05:00

A few months ago I had the opportunity to visit Cahokia Mounds State Park on the outskirts of St. Louis. Never heard of it? I am not surprised.
The Cahokia Indians lived in St. Louis long before Lambert was built; long before the floods of the 90's. Long before the Arch. They lived (and died) in St. Louis from 800-1400 AD.
For years I have wanted to experience the Mayan temples and pyramids in Mexico, but as I had never gotten there, with 2012 quickly approaching, I went to Cahokia Mounds... a Pre-Columbian settlement right in the heart of America.
As I walked the grounds with my son, Jonathon, we talked about what their life must have been like and wondered what connections there were to the Mayan culture. Much of it was similiar.
With all the "hoopla" about 2012 being the end of the world, I wanted to see if there was "spiritual experience" I could have with my son, so we climbed to the top of the Priest's Mound, and stood still listening as if we might hear some spirit speak to us...
It did.
Here is what I heard:

"We lived a long time ago and we know you have forgotten us. Most of you do not know we ever existed, and so you attribute much of your history to the American Indian that hunted buffalo and battled the white man, but we were before that...
We lived here. Ate here. Farmed here. We had no science to speak of, no weather radios, no television, and so we lived here without any knowledge of where we were or what we might encounter.
We settled here against the banks of the most powerful river, built huts and temples here on top of the New Madrid Earthquake fault, and we experienced powerful twisting winds that destroyed all that we built every couple of years...swirling forces that came with no notice.
And now we are gone. There is nothing here bu some broken pottery, a few stone tools and these mounds...
Learn from us..."

Okay, maybe I did not hear a voice, but that is what I heard in my mind.

I did my research. There are a lot of explanations as to where these people went, but each one is as good as another, and so I added my own theory... these people lived in the worst disaster area I could think of and never had a chance.

Now, in 2012, we are launching our new "Cahokia's Kids" Disaster Preparedness Series of programs. This series will not only replace our 2010-2011 Scouting Series, but will offer the opportunity for ANY children to participate. We will teach about the Cahokia's. We will speculate as to what happened. We will look at how we can be better prepared for the future...

The Mayan Calendar never said life would end, folks... it said that the TIME would end. What time? Well, it could be that time we live in now where travel is easy, gasoline is available, homes have heat and electric and there are groceries available at every corner market. Maybe they are right... maybe the TIME in which we live will end and will find ourselves thrust into a new time where those who were prepared will stand on their mounds and watch cities crumble.

I hope not, but it makes you think doesn't it? After all, at some point, there were these Cahokias...

Check out our new pages at www.CahokiasKids.com

Everyone can go...somehow

2011-09-09T08:20:00.002-05:00

As the 9-11 Anniversary has, for the most part, arrived, members of the Chasing4Life team have found themselves in Joplin, Missouri. The airwaves are literally full of images, videos, recordings, TV specials and talk shows all focusing on the events that shook this country ten years ago, and the atmosphere in Joplin is one of resolve, of remembrance, and of hope.
The country has certainly come together, at least mentally, as the media and the calendar have offered us all something to focus on together.
But there is a lot more going on in this country right now other than an anniversary.
It is this weekend that Joplin will focus on service, with volunteers in the thousands descending on the city to work and to rebuild. It is this weekend that Texas will continue to battle against hell's flames in a drought-stricken nightmare. It is this weekend that already-weary eyes along the eastern seaboard will watch tropical storms that will bring more wind, more storms and more misery. It is this weekend that states like Pennsylvania will hope no lives are lost in flood waters as residents watch their dreams and hopes wash away.
It is this weekend that we need to do more than watch the 9-11 specials on cable. It is this weekend that our efforts need to be more than hanging that flag on the porch. It is this weekend that churches need to do more than add The Star Spangled Banner to their morning worship service. It is this weekend that we need to realize the call to act, to support, to go.
Over the course of the last several years, we have seen so many disaster strike this country, and yet, as our teams watched these disasters, the reality was always present that the support was not there to always respond.
Social media has become a great revealer.
We watch as our friends, our families and even some of our partners have posted continually disaster after disaster about how they "feel horrible", how their "hearts break" and how they "wish they could help", but yet the pleas for support go ignored. Please directed at those specific people...
Now, I realize not everyone can go. I realize not everyone can give. I also realize everyone knows someone.
Two weeks ago we received a call from a woman that has, for a full year, told us repeatedly she was putting together support efforts for our response teams... she called because she was finally caught up in a natural disaster and wanted to know if we were deploying and was requesting help. How were we to get there? We had the volunteers ready to go, but due to lack of support had no ability to deploy them...
One of our teams have been inundated with requests to respond to a ravaged area, but those requesting the deployment, when asked to assist us in finding housing when we arrived, seemed almost indignant because we asked.
One of our partnering organizations has never hesitated to call us around the clock to have us assist them in monitoring severe weather for them during deployments, but yet for 6 months we have awaited simple returned calls regarding our requests for help from them.
All this is to bring up a point.
While Chasing4Life is a wonderfully successful educational organization that provides life-saving educational programming across the United States, the Chasing4Life Disaster Response Teams are made up completely of volunteers. The gear carried and used by our members is paid for out-of-pocket or from companies that believe in giving back to their communities. Most of our members have jobs, families and other responsibilities just like everyone else, but everytime a disaster occurs or looms on the horizon, they call in, make themselves available, and then they wait... for you to help them use their training and passion.
And as to that training; these volunteers have become or are becoming highly trained responders because when not deploying, they are enrolled in courses, taking classes and attending training exercises.
As we enter this 9-11 Anniversary weekend and a weekend of service in Joplin, it is time to ask yourself: "What have I done to respond? What have I done to ensure that there are teams that will deploy when it happens to me? What have I done to help others go in my stead?
It doesn't have to be C4LDRT that you choose to assist, but it has to be something, somebody, some organization. To sit and watch events unfold day after day on the television without responding SOMEHOW is not how America was formed. It is not how it grew. It is not how lives were saved during Katrina. It was not how lives were saved during the 9-11 attacks. It was not how lives were changed in the Iowa floods.
Everyone can go somehow.

Are YOU ready for the ride of your life?

2011-09-05T09:13:00.003-05:00

C4L announces new campaign in Dorothy tradition

Hudson, IA. Chasing4Life has become a leader in disaster preparedness education across the United States over the years and nobody will contend that we owe much of this growth and popularity to “Dorothy”.
For several years, Chasing4Life’s founder, Eddy Weiss, toured the country in Dorothy, a fully outfitted storm chase vehicle visiting hundreds of libraries, schools, churches and organizations with a message about disaster preparedness.
Three years ago this month, Dorothy was donated to the Sci-Tech Children’s Museum in Aurora, Illinois where she still continues to thrill and to teach.
The popularity of Dorothy and the connection that she made was incredible. Dorothy became an icon that was recognized by families across the country and the Chasing4Life office still receives letters for her every month.
2011 has been a year of disasters like none we have ever seen in the United States and many have referred to this year as “the ride of their life”. It has been statements like this that have inspired a new preparedness campaign to follow that of Dorothy’s.
Chasing4Life is excited to announce that in January of 2012, we will launch Chasing4Life’s “8 Seconds”. This new preparedness and training campaign will feature new programs with a new theme. You will see new instructors, a broadened scope of programming, and a tremendous increase in trainings for fire departments, emergency management agencies, law enforcement agencies and disaster response organizations.
Like the original Chasing4Life “Dorothy” campaign, this campaign will have its motorized spokesperson as well; our new Mobile Command Unit “8 Seconds”.
The campaign is inspired by how quickly lives were changed in 2011 and by the drama and popularity of rodeo; particularly bull riding.
“Our family has always loved the rodeo,” explained Weiss recently. “As the year progressed and we watched these disasters unfold, interviewed the victims and aided in recovery, we were overwhelmed at how fast lives were changed by disaster. It can all be gone in less time than it takes a rodeo star to win a buckle…less than 8 seconds!”
The new campaign will be themed around the “8 second ride” in bull riding.
“A bull rider is judged on many things, but it all comes down to their actions during that 8 second ride…and of course, they have to stay on the whole 8 seconds!” said Weiss.
“Disasters are often like that bull charging out of the chute,” he explains. “It is raw power, and it is just you against him at that point. It all comes down to how hard you have trained and how determined you are.”
The new campaign will feature the release of a special edition of the “Red Book”, a disaster preparedness guide that Chasing4Life has sold for the last two years. New DVD’s will be available as well as Chasing4Life will focus more on training programs for agencies and response teams as well.
At the center of it all?
The new Mobile Command Unit will begin to go through modifications over the next two months to make it a vehicle that rivals Dorothy according to Chasing4Life staff. This vehicle will be used by the Chasing4Life Disaster Response Team (C4LDRT) in disaster response deployments, but will also make special appearances at events, festivals, fairs, shows and conferences in the tradition of Dorothy’s travels.
The command unit will feature a rodeo theme and is a converted ambulance that will be used to set up and monitor disaster response operations, severe weather situations and mobile communications.
“We’ve got our boots on and we’re ready to ride,” stated Brandi Hodgen, the Chasing4Life coordinator that will operate the unit in the field. “We cannot wait to roll this out and start this new campaign. The message is great, the theme is great and we think the people will love it”.
Plans are being made to partner with new sponsors for the new campaign and the staff at Chasing4Life is already talking about new coloring books and the possibility of a music video as the campaign progresses into the new year.

Historic Nationwide Restoration Tour of National 9/11 Flag to end this September 11, 2011 in Joplin, Missouri

2011-09-01T19:36:00.005-05:00

When 9/11 happened, it did not only happen in New York City, at the Pentagon, and in a field in Shanksville, Pennsylvania.

9/11 happened in America.

It is for that reason that The New York Says Thank You Foundation announced today that it will end its historic 50-state restoration tour of The National 9/11 Flag on September 11, 2011 in Joplin, Missouri –the site of one of the nation’s deadliest tornadoes in history which took the lives of 160 people and destroyed 40% of the town this past May 22.

“By going to Joplin with The National 9/11 Flag on the 10th

Anniversary of 9/11, we will be making a powerful statement that New Yorkers will never forget what people from small towns and big cities all across America did for us in our time of need,” stated Jeff Parness, founder of New York Says Thank You Foundation. “By letting the folks in Joplin place the final stitches in The National 9/11 Flag and by letting them heal this national treasure, it will make an historic statement that ‘we are all in this together’ and that the resilience and the compassion of the American people is so much greater than any act of terror or catastrophic act of nature.”

About The National 9/11 Flag

Destroyed in the aftermath of the World Trade Center attacks on September 11 and stitched back together seven years later by tornado survivors in Greensburg, Kansas, The National 9/11 Flag has become recognized as the modern day version of the Star Spangled Banner.

Over 200 Million Americans have experienced The National 9/11 Flag through national and local TV coverage, public displays in small town gatherings, and major cultural and sporting events. The flag has been stitched by soldiers and schoolchildren who survived the shooting at Ft. Hood, Texas, by WorldWar II veterans on the deck of the USS Missouri in Pearl Harbor, by the family of Martin Luther King Jr., by Members of Congress at the U.S. Capitol, and by thousands of everyday service heroes nationwide.

On President Lincoln’s Birthday, a piece of the flag that Abraham Lincoln was laid on when he was shot at Ford’s Theater was stitched into the fabric of The National 9/11 Flag. In May 2011, The National 9/11 Flag was presented as the official flag for The Kentucky Derby. On August 9, 2011 The National 9/11 Flag was stitched at the base of Mount Rushmore.

Currently on a journey across America through the 10th Year Anniversary of 9/11, the goal of The National 9/11 Flag Tour is to display this historic flag at leading venues nationwide, to empower local service heroes in all 50 states with the privilege of stitching the flag back to its original 13-stripe format, and to inspire 300 million Americans with the flag’s rich visual history in order to deepen our sense of citizenship and national pride and bolster the spirit of volunteerism on the 9/11 Anniversary and year-round. When complete, The National 9/11 Flag will become a part of the permanent collection of the National 9/11 Memorial Museum being built at the World Trade Center site in lower Manhattan.

“Our hope and our prayer is that for generations to come, The National 9/11 Flag will tell the story of not just what happened on 9/11, but was also happened on 9/12 – when Americans came together to help one another recover from disaster. It is that spirit of humanity, kindness, and volunteerism that united us on 9/12 that we hope to celebrate in Joplin, Missouri this September 11,” added Parness.

SEPTEMBER 11, 2011 DISPLAY & STITCHING CEREMONY

The National 9/11 Flag will be displayed by Joplin first responders, local residents, and by disaster survivors from across the United States in a silent tribute at 8:58AM CST through 9:28AM CST at Cunningham Park at the corner of 26th Street & Maiden Lane in Joplin, Missouri. The two times correspond to the exact moments that the South Towers and North Towers of the World Trade Center collapsed. From there, The National 9/11 Flag will be processed to Leggett & Platt Auditorium on the campus of Missouri Southern State University where the flag will serve as the backdrop for a 9/11 Memorial Service beginning at 10:30AM. Following the Memorial Service the community will be invited to place the final stitches to repair The National 9/11 Flag at which point material from American flags that survived the Joplin tornado will be sewn into the fabric of The National 9/11 Flag. Stitching will be open to the public until 5:00PM.

It is with great pride that we can say Chasing4Life will be represented by some of its staff at this historic event. We will be posting pictures upon our return.

A Pandemic

2011-08-10T13:38:00.003-05:00

The Spanish Influenza pandemic is the catastrophe against which all modern pandemics are measured. It is estimated that approximately 20 to 40 percent of the worldwide population became ill and that over 50 million people died.

When you think about the population at that time period in our history, 50 Million is an incredible amount of people. Heck, it is an incredible amount by today’s standards!

Between September 1918 and April 1919, approximately 675,000 deaths from the flu occurred in the U.S. alone.

Now, when we look at the records of this pandemic, we find that many died very quickly. These were the folks that perhaps already had an illness, were already susceptible for some reason, or just did nothing to protect themselves.

There were others, according to the records, who woke up feeling perfectly fine in the morning, became sick by nightfall and succumbed to the disease by nightfall. These were, by all rights, folks with no real strength, no real stamina. People that were not ready to fight.

Then there were the others… people who caught colds, got another form of the flu, or who had been trying to respond to the disaster and finally fell victims to the disease they were trying to stop.

Pandemics come in many forms. Throughout our history, we have had many; more than most people like to think about. There was this one, and then of course in 1957 we had the Asian Flu, then in 1968 the Hong Kong Flu, in ’76 Swine Flu came on scene, then in ’77 the Russian flu did its best. A few years ago, we started looking at chickens as if they were Al Qaeda… and it continues.

Are there other pandemics we don’t pay attention to?

I think so.

The word Pandemic is a Greek word.

“Pan” means ALL. “Demos”, where we get our word demographic, means PEOPLE. Therefore, the word PANDEMIC means ALL PEOPLE.

Let’s look at the beginning of the year.

On New Years Eve Day, tornadoes raked across Arkansas and into Illinois. Before noon, houses were destroyed, teams were deploying, and it was the last day of 2010. Nobody paid much attention. Sure, we knew it was happening, but really, it was a freak thing, right? We dismissed it like we would a light cough or slight sore throat.

As the next month began, the weather got worse. By Ground Hog’s Day we were sick of the blizzards, weary from the ice cold arctic blasts, and we had all seen the coverage of snow in the Gulf States. Now we paid a little more attention. It slowed things down, but not too much. We looked at it like the 24 hour flu…it came…it went. A bad, but short memory.

Now springtime came. We knew it was the “season”, and we even talked about it as we watched towns like Mapleton, Iowa get creamed. We started to think it was a lingering cough. Some of us thought of it like walking pneumonia… we wondered if it would get worse or if we could maybe work through it.

Then came Tuscaloosa. Then flooding. Dikes were blown. Levees failed. Then Joplin.

Joplin...

It seemed like pandemic! Every day there was more reports!

But alas, with the exception of a house here, a tree here, a flooded basement here, a county blown apart by a wind storm, the activity died down. And so did our concern and awareness.

Finally, the atmosphere was stable. The weather channel actually had regular programming for a week of days in a row! Greg Forbes went fishing. Think I am kidding? He posted it on his FaceBook.

We are relaxed. The pictures of Joplin are on Google, but at least not in our dreams and nightmares. The grass is green, but it is all that remains of the standing water. The temperatures are even okay here; I might clean out the gutters today.

But is it over?

There’s something you need to know about a pandemic…

They come in waves.

One of the notable characteristics of the pandemics we have had in this country is that they do not occur once. Like an earthquake, sometimes the aftershocks are worse than the initial quake.

The 1918 pandemic began with outbreaks of low mortality in the spring and summer, followed by a more lethal wave in the winter. This pattern has fueled speculation that the strains will undergo mutation that will create similar pandemics.

It is this mutation that leads to the emergence of more lethal versions of the original killers.

And so it might seem with this year’s weather threats.

Just as the temps began to fall. Just as we had time to clean out and organize the Chasing4Life Disaster Response trailer, the news came in…hurricane season is ramping up and everyone that is anyone is back at their desks trying to figure out just how bad it’s gonna get.

The next wave.

So much speculating occurs each day at conferences, in offices, in magazines, on television and elsewhere; is the weather changing?

Couldn’t tell you for sure, but my parents did not raise an idiot.

Did yours?

Where is your weather radio now? Did you ever get one? Was it left on this summer? Is it on now? Are you checking weather forecasts daily? Have you spent time with your family putting together a disaster plan and a home disaster kit? How’s the disaster plan for your pets coming along?

Have you invested in your own recovery? What I mean is, have you given of time or finance to response agencies or groups this year to make sure they can continue to respond to disasters?

Have you seen this year’s conditions change the way you think, live, spend, travel and plan?

Guess what folks. We have a disaster pandemic. Sure, it started out as random coughs and sneezes, but you have to admit, there are towns, cities and communities spread across the country on stretchers and cots now…

It ain’t over.

September is National Preparedness Month.

What will YOU do?

Help

2011-07-22T11:32:00.002-05:00

As we look toward the rest of the year, the record number of disasters in the United States is a bit frightening. Our thoughts here at Chasing4Life include, “How will we respond again?” Organizations and response teams are tapped out. The year has been exhausting. Our C4LDRT is looking at re-deploying to Joplin, but fundraising is at an all time low, and after talking to a number of other response agencies, organizations and non-profits, I find this is the case all over.
America is breathing a sigh of relief right now, glad to not be seeing coverage of mass casualties on the news for a change, but you know it is only temporary…

Disasters lurk in the shadows even today…

It is time to give, to support, and to volunteer. Here’s a short list of do’s and don’ts for you. The most important are these:

DO make sure you support something
DON’T think it can’t happen in your community.

Here’s a few more…

Make sure you know what the needs are.
I remember after Katrina, we got a phone call from a woman who was so excited. She had collected blankets for hurricane victims. Now, don’t get me wrong, blankets are needed all over the world and nobody should be without one, but it was over 100 degrees outside in Louisiana the day I got the call!
Make sure you know what the needs are. The safest thing to do with your money is to give it to an organization that is on the ground in the disaster zone that KNOWS what the needs REALLY are. Do not give based on the last news story you saw.
When you watch television and see the destruction, it is hard to imagine that a city or town would NOT want assistance, but sometimes this is the case. There are many communities with plans and sometimes, there is not the help needed you are perceiving.
If you are going to collect items or goods, make sure you have a means of transporting them yourself, and that you have someone to receive them at the other end. Make sure you have a church or organization of SOMEONE that has COMMITTED to taking delivery!
Shortly after the Joplin tornado, we watched a truck loaded with goods roll into town. It was unloaded, then loaded back up, and then sent to a mission in another state because there was such a overload of goods in the town.

Look at a variety of organizations before giving
There are hundreds of organizations that respond to most disasters, take the time to evaluate a few before giving. Also, just because they have name recognition does not mean they’re best able to respond to the disaster. Look at the capability of the organization to get the work done. Many times, an organization may be formed BECAUSE of the disaster. This is not always a bad thing, but just because the organization is named “REVIVE JOPLIN” does not mean it is the organization to give to or to assist. Watch the FaceBook page, look at the website, ask questions. Are they involved or TRYING to get involved? Are they working through a recognized channel? Social media is a GREAT way to monitor an organization. Since the San Diego fires in 2007, social media has created a means by which you can watch the daily operations of an organization.

Look for organizations with experience and expertise
There is a great deal of money after well publicized disasters. The ease of raising money makes it tempting to respond even if the organization does not have prior experience in that area. This past 6 months, we have seen MANY organizations and church groups respond to disaster zones in flip-flops and and shorts ready to work, but not trained for the work. These groups were well-financed by folks back home that gave to their passion but not to their experience. Make sure you are financing a group or organization that can get the job done in the conditions that exist.

Don’t get sucked into excitement and popularity.
Many response and recovery opportunities are big news, so it makes them “popular” to give to. This is true of the recent surge in breast cancer awareness as well. Americans think nothing of giving massive amounts toward a pink ribbon campaign, but what color is the ribbon for prostate cancer? I don’t know either.
My point is this…Tuscaloosa was not the only city hit, but it will forever be referred to as the Tuscaloosa tornado. Is there a smaller community where your gift could make a bigger impact? Educate yourself as to where the needs are. While the nation’s focus was on Tuscaloosa this past Spring, the town of Mapleton, Iowa was recovering alone.

Don’t earmark funds
When we are on the ground in a disaster zone, what we thought the needs were may change. Don’t earmark funds. If you write a check that says “For tools” and we arrive in the zone to find out we have the right tools but no diesel, we’re in trouble. Don’t force organizations to spend money needlessly. We recently had a woman that brought money to a zone that was “earmarked” for food, but when we arrived, a gracious church offered to feed the team. As the deployment progressed and we struggled for other needs to be met, all I could think about was that untouchable money in that woman’s pocket…

Don’t expect the funds to be spent immediately
The initial relief phase encompasses search and rescue, immediate medical care, food, water and shelter. After that the much longer recovery and reconstruction phase begins. Organizations that feel pressure from donors to complete their work quickly may try to speed their work by cutting corners, leaving aid recipients out of the decision making process, avoiding coordinating with other organizations, or ending projects before they’re able to survive on their own. Allow the organizations adequate time to ensure they are providing help in the best way possible.
Don’t give based on news coverage.
It isn’t over because it isn’t in the news, and just because nothing has happened in the last three weeks doesn’t mean there won’t be a need tomorrow. Our biggest struggle at present is that we cannot deploy to another major disaster without continued support. If you wait to give until you see it on the news, you could be limiting an organization and preventing them to respond immediately.

Connect and Train
If you want to volunteer, connect. There are many organizations that will train you in advance to respond safely, efficiently and with the right credentials. Chasing4Life is just one of those organizations. Make your passion and energy count by deploying with a team.
Support disaster preparedness programs
Programs that help communities prepare for and respond to disasters save more lives and are more cost effective than large rescue operations after the disaster. Our slogan is “With more education, we will need less response”. With over 800 programs per year, Chasing4Life is actively trying to reduce the impact disaster can have on communities. Can your company help? Can you? Do you know a potential sponsor?

Be educated

Joplin

2011-06-29T11:26:00.003-05:00

The Army Corps of Engineers sent out a press release this morning regarding the work that is continuing in Joplin, Missouri. I noted one phrase they used in the release especially; the release stated that Joplin recovery was "evaporating" from the new coverage. This is true, just like the coverage of Tuscaloosa did. There comes a time after a disaster that the news crews move on. Sure, like the other day, Mike Bettes visited Joplin and did a "30 days later" special, adopted a dog from ASPCA and showed the continuing work, but today, Mike isn't there. And neither is anyone else. The country is moving on.

While I remember the advice of President Bush after 9-11 to "return to normal", there is another side of it as well. We cannot forget.

With heat indexes rising, resources still in short supply, news coverage spotty at best and years of work to be done, I am not content to simply watch Joplin's tragedy slip into the archives on some television station's website. During the intial phases after an event, the help is overwhelming. We watched truckloads of goods dropped in the city. We watched youth groups and church groups show up by the bus-loads. Red Cross trucks dotted the streets, The Salvation Army stopped regularly to check on our team. The military and law enforcement where everywhere, and any church with a roof had become a distribution center.

Now it is changing.

We are hearing from youth groups and churches planning missions trips for a year from now. Caylee Anthony fills the news. The weather, for the most part in the United States has been pleasant, and the July 4th weekend is quickly approaching.

Yesterday, a woman in Bloomington, Indiana was speaking to our team at an event and made this statement: "The tornado in Joplin was tragic!".

We corrected her.

The tornado in Joplin IS tragic. It will be tragic for a long time to come and we need to remember

You see, long after the debris falls to the ground, long after the streets dry, long after the tents are folded up, the tornado is still in the town spinning through the streets causing problems with recovery, with infrastructure, with emotions, with families, with health, with economy, with life.

That tornado will be churning through that town for years, and we need to think about what we can do. The initial campaign to volunteer or to give is over, but each hour we receive word that there are very real needs for crews, for specialists, for volunteers.

It is now that we can step up. The initial surge is over. It is time to start making longer-term commitments. If you can't go, GIVE. The Chasing4Life DRT's are ready to go back as are hundreds of others, but the funding to go just doesn't exist. Is this something you can help with?

Joplin is a community of Americans, just like you and me. They are our family and our neighbors.

This July 4th while we fly our flags over pristine porches and emerald green lawns, there are tattered flags flying over piles that were once the homes of the citizens of Joplin.

This 4th of July, don't celebrate freedom. Celebrate A freedom. Celebrate the specific freedom to support teams willing and ready and geared to go to Joplin. Celebrate the freedom to give. Celebrate the freedom to help. You have these freedoms.

This 4th of July, while you sit on a blanket with your family and watch the brightly colored fireworks over your town, remember the bright lights of bursting transformers lighting up the Joplin sky just over one month ago. Remember the families in Southern Missouri that are sitting on a blanket with THEIR families because that blanket is one of the few things they have left.

It may not be the headline news story, but it should still be the heartline story...

How to make a dangerous world safer with a few million dollars

2011-06-01T21:35:00.002-05:00

Do you have a few million dollars? Know someone who does? Want to leave a legacy? Are you heartsick about the pain and suffering in Tuscaloosa, Joplin, New Orleans and southern Louisiana, Port-au-Prince, Sendai, Christchurch, Sichuan province, and so many other towns and cities across the United States and around the world?

Would you like to put a stop to such catastrophes? Or at least bring the rate of disaster way down? Would you like to make communities like these (and many others) more disaster resilient?

You can do this! Here’s how.

But before we dive in…two stories.

The first is present-day. Talk to hazards experts – whether seismologists or meteorologists; or sociologists, risk-management academics or policy analysts; or engineers – and you’ll find they’re dismayed. They see the trends, and the trends are not good. Losses to natural hazards average billions of dollars each week, and are growing rapidly, decade upon decade. The vulnerability in high-risk areas – coasts, seismic fault lines, etc. – represents a huge bill now coming due. To turn this around is going to take hundreds of billions if not trillions of dollars of investment. Money we don’t have. Worse yet? It’s not just the money. We have to reconfigure our land use, adjust our building codes and their enforcement, change our dependence on critical infrastructure, improve our warnings and their communication, even as the world’s peoples are beset by social injustice, lack of trust, and preoccupation with dozens more urgent concerns, from jobs to education to poverty to health care.

The second story concerns the past…a miracle that has occurred over just the past thirty years or so. All those dire projections of population explosion of a few decades back? They’re failing to verify. Population growth looks to be at the very low end of all the forecasts.

What happened? Well, it wasn’t the result of any draconian social engineering. [There’s been some of that, but it hasn’t turned out well. Take the Chinese one-child policy. It’s had unintended consequences, accelerating the aging of the Chinese demographic and producing a stunning shortage of girls and young women.] Instead, the decline in population growth rate arrived from a different direction. It came from educating women, giving them information about and access to birth control, and improving children’s health to the point where mothers can expect their children to live to adulthood. In countries where these conditions have been met, birth rates have dropped to replacement levels or a little below. Problem solved…or at least under control.

Here’s the analog for community resilience in the face of hazards.

First – and nature has served up the necessary wake-up call here – make sure that people in every community understand with clarity that no town or city or region is immune to natural hazards. The Earth does its business through extreme events: floods and drought, winter storms, hurricanes and tornadoes, earthquakes and volcanic eruptions, and on and on. These threats are everywhere. There’s no escape.

Second – and recent experience has borne this out – when disaster hits your town, or mine, no one from outside is going to make us whole. Our families and friends can’t restore the loss. Strangers from across the country away, however well-meaning, will provide no more than the briefest bit of sympathy, or the most temporary bit of concrete help. Those folks in other countries? They’ve got problems of their own. So the problem is inherently a local one, place-based. You and I have to step up and take ownership of our local problem. It’s our responsibility; we can’t duck it.

Third – national and international agencies have resources that can help any local effort we choose to make effective. This is key. Suppose this were not the case, what then? We could only be depressed by the impossibility of our task. We’d simply have to hope we’d be lucky. Who are those agencies? In the United States, this information, these assets, tools, products and services are distributed across virtually every federal agency: the obvious ones, like NOAA and USGS, and FEMA, but also others like USDA and NSF, and EPA and DoT and the military and on down the list. Information on the likelihood of all sorts of hazards. Information on hard (engineering) and soft (social science) approaches to reducing the risk of hazards, building community resilience. Cookbooks like the recent NAS/NRC reports on private-public collaborations to build community disaster resilience.

Fourth and finally – here’s the best part. We don’t have to guess that this might work. We don’t have to hope that it might work. We know from experience that it has worked. When? Where? Project Impact, back in the 1990’s. This FEMA-based project never had a budget of more than $25M. The agency parceled the money out in small grants to a relative handful of communities. But when the money ran out, do you know what happened? Other communities stepped forward and said, “We know there’s no money left. We’re not asking for any. But if we organize ourselves in our community along these lines, will you let us call ourselves a Project Impact community?” Then- FEMA-director James Lee Witt said, “yes,” and the rest was history. Communities found the money to plan for a more resilient future, and then they found, locally, and from other sources, the wherewithal to make those plans a reality.

At the beginning, I asked if you had a few million dollars. Where does that come into the picture? It’s needed to build and maintain web-based and other tools for helping communities sort through and gain access to federal and other resources. To give the notion some visibility. To build a network of cooperating individuals and communities. To spread the word about success stories. In short, to jump-start this catalytic, viral process. The American Meteorological Society, many of its members, and especially those of us on staff of the Policy Program would be happy to help out here. But if you’d rather work through or collaborate with someone else, that’s okay too. Many other organizations stand ready to help, and/or are already moving out. And after all, it’s your few million dollars. It’s your legacy!

by Dr. William Hooke

Visit "Living On The Real World"

Sophies Choice

2011-05-17T08:08:00.003-05:00

From Guest-Blogger, Dr. William H. Hooke, Ph.D.

The 1982 movie by this name may be unfamiliar to younger blog readers, but bears on events unfolding in Louisiana as this year’s Mississippi-River floodwaters continue to rise.

Here is the background.

First – the movie. Sophie’s Choice was a truly extraordinary film on every level. Based on a novel by William Styron, the picture won Meryl Streep an Academy Award for her performance in the title role and cemented her justly deserved reputation as one of the greatest actresses of any time.

The full story is complex and tragic; there is no way to do it justice in a few sentences. Here’s the bit that you and I need to know for today’s purposes. Sophie, living in post-World-War-II New York, is tormented by a decision she had been forced to make, on the fly, in a Nazi concentration camp, a few years earlier, during the war. A Nazi guard made her choose which of her two children would go to a children’s camp, and thereby have at least a chance to live; and which would go directly to the crematorium. The only alternative the Nazi offered? That both children could die, then and there. At the end, this memory helps drive Sophie to suicide.

Second – Louisiana today. News media have been covering this breaking story in recent weeks. Faced with record spring runoff throughout the Mississippi watershed, the US Army Corps of Engineers, other federal agencies and state and local officials, have been assessing the inundation likely under a range of scenarios. Under the first, they open the Morganza Floodway above New Orleans. Under the second, they allow the full volume of water to head south uncontrolled. Under the last, they divert excess water through the Old River Control structure. Officials are essentially making a trade: certain flooding of about 3000 square miles of small towns and countryside in rural Louisiana in order to prevent a potentially worse disaster – levee failures in Baton Rouge and New Orleans, and flooding exceeding that of Katrina, wiping out whole neighborhoods as well as countless chemical facilities and oil refineries. Those responsible have made the decision – to open the Floodway. They may be implementing that choice even as I write this. Thousands of people are evacuating the areas of likely flooding, sandbagging in an effort to minimize their local loss, and grieving.

Psychologists and social scientists, most notably Paul Slovic, a psychologist at the University of Oregon, tell us that when we hear about disasters of this magnitude, we experience numbing. We’re incapable of grasping the enormity of such events as the aggregated sum of immense, overwhelming personal tragedies. Instead, we allow them to become empty statistics. So when we learn of starving millions, when we study the Holocaust, or Stalin’s execution of millions as he cemented his power in the former Soviet Union, or the fact that a third of the population between Iceland and India died of the Black Death in the winter of 1347-1348, we quickly consign that to some compartment in our brain where we store other factoids (how many ounces in a pound? How many games in Joe DiMaggio’s hitting streak? How many calories in a Big Mac? etc.).

Just this once, let’s try consciously to override this universal tendency. Let’s use this occasion to see if we can make ourselves a bit less calloused about the tragedy that is unfolding.

How to do this?

Here are a few ideas.

First, let’s put ourselves in the place of people packing up, preparing to leave the only homes they’ve ever known. Picture the decisions we’re trying to make. Which paltry few things are we going to take? Where are we going to go? What resources can we draw on, given that we’re losing our jobs as well as our homes? What do we tell the kids, who know something terrible is happening but can’t comprehend it? For that matter, how can we explain to grandma, who’s in advanced stage of Alzheimers, who’s being asked to move out of her room? What do we do about the one child who picked today to be sick? Maybe the car broke down last night. Any chance to get that fixed? How do we get our heads around the idea that this has happened after hurricanes Katrina and Rita, and last year’s oil spill, have already drained our resilience and our energies?

Or…put yourself in the shoes of people in New Orleans or Baton Rouge. There’s relief…and right behind it there’s guilt. You’ve been saved from the worst – maybe. And only at the price of immense suffering – distress and misery for thousands of folks no better or worse, no less deserving, than you, all across the surrounding area. Some of them are family. How can you look them in the eye next time you see them? What can you possibly do to make them whole? To show your gratitude for the sacrifice they made? To demonstrate that you all really were in this together?

Don’t move quickly on. Dwell on these realities. Let them sink in. Expand this short list, which doesn’t begin to do justice to the state of things. Come up with your better set of thoughts. Remember…this is how it felt to be Sophie’s kids. “What’s happening to my sister? Why is she going that way?” “Why am I being separated from my brother and mother? Mommy!”

Second, let’s now put ourselves in the shoes of those who are making the decision to open the Morganza Floodway. Is there any joy here? Any self-congratulation? Of course not. None of these men and women, from Army Corps of Engineers generals and Governor Bobby Jindal on down, can find any reason for satisfaction. They didn’t sign on for this…destruction. They’re builders. Rejuvenators! Givers of hope! This is wrong! They’re today’s Sophie. They were forced to choose.

And here’s a key point. Like Sophie, they simply found themselves in this role. Few of these people played any part in creating the conditions that made this choice necessary. For that, we have to look back to their predecessors – the long line of thousands and thousands of state and local officials, and those serving in the Corps of Engineers over the past 150 years. And none of those people deliberately set out to sabotage cities and towns. Each day out of those 60,000 days, they made small decisions and infinitesimal compromises needed to get through the day. On this scale, it was impossible to see how that ratcheted up the risk, bit by bit.

And they weren’t the only ones. Land developers and business leaders made the decision to snuggle up more and more resources right behind the levees all up and down the Mississippi. And all those who are being flooded out get annual notices from the Corps to the effect that flooding would be a distinct possibility.

Third, we don’t have to put ourselves in others’ shoes. Instead, we need to honestly take stock of our own lives. No quarter of the United States is free from risk from natural hazards, industrial accidents, or willful acts of terror. And every action we take throughout our lives – where to set down roots and start a family, what jobs to accept, whether to be active in community affairs or sit on the sidelines – each decision and its sequelae set into motion a local ratcheting up of risk. Each day, we’re thoughtlessly, opportunistically, setting up a problem for either ourselves or our children.

What’s happening in Louisiana is not just happening to someone else, someone faceless. It’s our destiny unless we consciously make decisions to get off this cycle of inevitable disaster and repetitive loss. Across the nation, each of us has played a small part in what’s unfolding today. And we’re playing a bigger part in similar tragedies lining up to happen tomorrow. We can and should do better. The starting point? Building-in community resilience into every aspect of our thinking, rather than just treating it as an afterthought.

It’s not just Sophie’s choice.

To follow Dr. Hookes blog, "Living on the real world, CLICK HERE.

Time for you to respond...

2011-05-13T20:05:00.001-05:00

Over the years, Chasing4Life volunteers have been there in disasters. From severe weather monitoring for hundreds of fire departments and other agencies to debris removal after a tornado, the list is long of the situations these volunteers have been there as Good Samaritans.
With the disasters that have struck the United States and abroad over the last 6 months, we have seen in influx of more volunteers; folks just wanting to be a part of the C4LDRT (Chasing4Life Disaster Response Team).
At this time, we have several new teams being formed. These are teams of at least 8 people in a geographic location that have chosen to train, learn and respond. These folks are just like you. They have full-time jobs, families, bills and responsibilities, but they have made themselves available to give of their time, skills and energy.
We have some great sponsors like FoxFury Lights and HiViz, Inc, but the needs are great and we need your help.
Almost every day we are approached by people at our events that say they want to help or be involved, and now we would like to see those people step up. We know that not everyone can take off for four days or fourteen. We know that not everyone can handle the load of post disaster recovery or response work. That’s okay. Perhaps, if you are one of those people, you could do more than you think.
Each of our volunteers are responsible to purchase a response bag. This is a backpack that allows each C4LDRT member to respond with the same basic gear and apparel. The cost of each of these bags is approximately $150.
While we have encountered many new volunteers with big hearts and a passion for helping, one thing many of them do not have is the finances to outfit themselves to do so.
If you would like to sponsor one of these volunteers, please contact us at drt @ chasing4life.org. Time is of the essence, so please consider this seriously.
Chasing4Life is also always looking for partnerships and sponsorships that will help us to sustain this side of our organization. A corporate sponsorship is just as valuable as a single donated chainsaw or gas card. Every little bit helps for a very long time.
You can assist those that have been effected by disaster from where you sit by making that connection we need, introducing us to that potential sponsor, or by sponsoring one of our volunteers.
We want to thank all of you that have aided us in making new contacts for our educational programming and want you to know that this year’s tours are better than ever.
Won’t you help us respond now too?

Thank you.
The Chasing4Life Staff.

Time to prepare, train and volunteer

2011-04-30T07:17:00.003-05:00

At the time I write this on the morning of April 30th, the death toll has risen to almost 350 down south in the wake of this recent tornado outbreak. It is a sad day in America's history, but alongside this overwhelming sense of loss is a feeling of warmth when one looks at the outpouring of help that is now flooding the southern states.
Today is the day for you to think about your family's plans for disaster. Do you have a plan? Where is your weather radio? Have you considered what you might do if it happened where you live? What would you do in the aftermath? Would you be available to assist your neighbors?
We have several of our Chasing4Life family that are dealing with the horrendous aftermath of this outbreak. The reports are staggering. The events of the last week have caused us to encourage others to prepare for disaster more than ever before, and we want to encourage each of you to connect with an organization now that can train you, teach you, ready you for what could happen in YOUR community next.
Our C4LDRT (Chasing4Life Disaster Response Team) could use you. Right now, churches, civic groups and even schools are assembling groups to respond to communities down south to assist with everything from providing food service to debris removal.
The C4LDRT is an opportunity for those interested in helping their neighbors. In the past, our teams have deployed in both great and small numbers. You are never required to deploy to an area, never expected to operate outside of your comfort zone or beyond your skill level. There is no required skill, nor an age limit. In 2009, a C4LDRT deployed to a community of 3500 people to assist local emergency management in debris removal, boarding up of homes and operations of an EOC. That group consisted of senior citizens and young teens.The concept of recruiting team members is to find passionate people that would be interested in readying themselves to deploy by taking online courses (free courses!), to occasionally take part in a training in their area, to assist in recruiting new members, and of course, in deploying when help is needed.
Aside from C4L's DRT, you might look into your local Community Emergency Response Team (CERT), another opportunity for you to not only become ready for disaster but an opportunity to become a responder.
Education is power, and preparing to respond is as important as preparing for the disaster itself. Right now, trained volunteers are needed in the south...not sure where the next ones will be needed but the numbers of trained volunteers is already quickly being drained this Spring...
For for more information about the C4LDRT, visit our site at www.chasing4life.org.

Battles

2011-04-26T10:52:00.008-05:00

It has been a while since we posted on the blog and for that we are sorry. We have been on a "whirlwind" tour with very little time off and more opportunities presenting themselves every day! The tours are taking us to the East Coast, the Southeast and all across the Midwest right now with no signs of stopping!
Amidst the tour dates, of course, our trackers have been extremely busy with a record number of tornadoes and flooding across the U.S. which simply tells us that we need to stay out on the road and we need to keep bringing these educational programs to communities.
While Chasing4Life is experiencing more demand than ever before and the response has been better than we ever imagined to the new programs, the team is struggling right now as well...while we are enjoying the daily excitement of meeting new friends every day, we cannot forget our old friends...the ones that have been struck by this year's severe weather; the ones that are suffering through the rebuilding process, and the ones that have experienced staggering personal losses.
Loss is something we have thought a lot about these last few months. Many of you have had the pleasure of meeting and getting to know long-time Chasing4Life member Dan Bocklund. For many, many years, Dan has been a part of not only our personal lives, but a part of the team. His expertise in mechanics and science brought Chasing4Life to new levels many times. Today, Dan is fighting for his life against a cancer that is threatening to take him away from all of us.
We want to ask you all to pray for Dan, his family and our team as we are being crushed right now under the weight of this threat. Pray that Dan soon gets encouragement from the doctors; some kind of affirmation that the treatments have started to work.
For years Dan has fought hardship in his personal life as illnesses and even heart problems have tried to stop him, and now, Dan is fighting the toughest battle of his life.
Over the years we have seen team members come and go, but none have remained like Dan, none brought as much dedication and perseverance to the table.
We appreciate those of you that have asked about Dan over the last several months and have tried to stay informed as to his progress.
Corrie Ten Boom once said that If God sends us on difficult paths that he also gives us strong shoes for it...
We pray for strong shoes right now.

Are YOU ready to SHAKEOUT?

2011-03-15T11:22:00.001-05:00

With more the 40 million people living and working in the central U.S., a major earthquake could cause unprecedented devastation. What we do now, before a big earthquake, will determine what our lives will be like afterwards. With earthquakes an inevitable part of this region’s future, we must act quickly to ensure that disasters do not become catastrophes.
The Great Central U.S. ShakeOut in April 2011 will involve more than one million people through a broad-based outreach program, partnership with media, and public advocacy by hundreds of partners. This event is being organized by the Central United States Earthquake Consortium (http://www.cusec.org) and the states of: Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Kentucky, Illinois, Indiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Oklahoma, South Carolina, and Tennessee. The 2011 Great Central U.S. ShakeOut earthquake drill will be held at 10:15 AM local time on April 28, 2011 (April 19 in Indiana)
A key aspect of the ShakeOut is the integration of comprehensive science-based earthquake research and the lessons learned from decades of social science research about why people get prepared. The result is a “teachable moment” on par with having an actual earthquake (often followed by increased interest in getting ready for earthquakes). ShakeOut creates the sense of urgency that is needed for people, organizations, and communities to get prepared, to practice what to do to be safe, and to learn what plans need to be improved.
Not just any drill will accomplish this; it needs to be big. It must inspire communities to come together. It must involve children at school and parents at work, prompting conversations at home. It must allow every organization, city, etc., to make it their own event.
The 2011 ShakeOut drill will be the largest preparedness event in central U.S. history. To participate, go to www.ShakeOut.org/centralus and pledge your family, school, business, or organization’s participation in the drill. Registered participants will receive information on how to plan their drill and how to create a dialogue with others about earthquake preparedness. All organizers ask is that participants register (so they can be counted and receive communications), and at the minimum practice "drop, cover, and hold on" at the specified time. It is only a five minute commitment for something that can save your life. It all begins with registering, which is free and open to everyone.
For more information, visit www.ShakeOut.org/centralus.

2011-02-25T15:52:00.001-06:00

End of winter...

2011-02-25T15:49:00.002-06:00

The tour has taken its toll on our available time to write and keep you all updated. Hopefully you have been watching us on Twitter and FaceBook as that has been our main media for tour updates. The last month took us from the blizzard in Chicago to the earthquake swarm in Arkansas and then through the warmth of an early spring thaw in Missouri to the thunderstorms and back to wintry Nebraska where we enjoyed a few inches of snow before leaving again.

With all this travel, we have also been busy getting ready to release the new Chasing4Life i-app. Please take some time to visit the website and download the app. This is a very small support you can give to Chasing4Life, but it is a HUGE step you can take toward protecting your family!

We'll keep you informed and updated as we travel. Hope to see you all soon!

2011-01-15T19:42:00.000-06:00

Happy New Year

2011-01-04T08:09:00.004-06:00

And so, as it is with every January... we have reached the beginning of a new year and new tours. The team is set to tour more than ever before and we have big plans for 2011.
Efficiency. The office staff will be handling much more this year, allowing the instructors the time needed to create programming and concentrate on touring itself. Starting in 2011 we will be adding more resource pages to the website so that contracts, itinerary templates and marketing materials will all be downloadable.
Technology. With the addition of STORMPULSE to our featured product list, you will see that we are attempting to venture into more technologies that will allow families and communities to become more prepared. In mid-winter we will release our Chasing4Life Application as well; another exciting addition! ThreatNet will become a HUGE focus this year as we have arranged to feature it at over a dozen large conferences this year.
Marketing. If you are sponsoring any events this year and have sponsored events in the past, you will notice that we have changed our paperwork and have added new guidelines that coincide with the new marketing strategy we created in mid-2010. All of you will notice new marketing materials, new pictures and even new staff this year on the website. We have added a "Girl Scouts Only" page to the site, but a newer addition is our "Boy Scouts Only" page as we will be providing a program series for Boy Scouts this year due to the incredible demand we received.
You'll see that we are investing in larger shows. Watch our FaceBook and website for the conventions, conferences and showcases coming up.
Social Media. More than ever before we are using social media to stay connected to you. If you have not checked us out on FaceBook, simply go to our home page and head there today!
Sponsors. You will see new sponsors this year. Chasing4Life is already signing with companies and organizations that have made a commitment to stay with us all year, maintaining involvement throughout the touring seasons so that we can see greater things happen like scholarships for small groups and schools.
Instructors. In anticipation of the New Year, we added new instructors. While we are not finished, we feel we have an experienced team that can meet the needs of more and more communities and organizations as the year progresses. Go meet them on the site!
Focus. We feel like we have more focus than ever before. You are going to see larger programs, more subjects, more involvement and a fresh new focus on simple disaster preparedness for the family.
It is going to be a good year. Let's create a more resilient America together!

2010-12-17T09:49:00.000-06:00

If Gophers Were Terrorists

2010-12-13T10:18:00.002-06:00

by Eric Holdeman

I’ve recently read several stories about burrowing animals weakening levee systems to the point of failure both in the United States and abroad. I thought about this new hazard I hadn’t previously considered. As with any new “threat,” it must be addressed, so envision what would happen if we discovered that these animals were, in fact, trained terrorist operatives attacking one element of our critical infrastructure.

First, there would be the predictable congressional hearings by multiple committees in both the U.S. House of Representatives and Senate. Since there isn’t a designated Gopher Committee, these legislative bodies would have many committees that viewed this issue as part of their legislative domain. Testimony would come from newly minted gopher experts.

We’d learn that gopher issues exist in Europe and the U.S. This then makes it a classic, international terrorist threat. As an international and domestic issue, the FBI and CIA would each claim jurisdictional authority. Self-appointed experts would point out that there’s not one central figure directing all gopher activity, but “bands of rodent terrorists” classified as moles, beavers and the like that have a history of attacking critical infrastructure.

Congress would do what it does best: appropriate large quantities of money to address this emerging threat. The amount of appropriated funds would have a direct correlation to the media coverage of the precipitating critical infrastructure failure — since we’re not motivated to do anything before an event actually occurs.

There’d be lots of lobbying during the process; rural and urban states would compete for funding. Cities and counties would proclaim that, “All gophers are local.” Fire, law enforcement, public health, hospitals and other disciplines would lobby for funding for their field. They’d argue that animal control should not be getting all of the funds. For years, each would make the case that they should have dedicated funds for equipment.

Gopher Centers of Excellence would be established at numerous universities to study the social dynamics of gophers and their cousins. We’d learn that gophers live in colonies, and indoctrination in the technique of burrowing is passed down from parents to their pups. The culture of burrowing would be recognized as one that will take decades to eliminate. The nation’s borders would become areas of concern. There would be calls for underground fences along the Canadian and Mexican borders that need to be patrolled 24/7. The National Guard would receive another mission: augmenting civilian anti-gopher efforts.

Eventually someone would want to flush the burrowing creatures out of their dens. This water method would be compared to waterboarding and called inhumane. People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals would rise up in arms pointing out that not all gophers are terrorists. There would be accusation of gopher profiling. If you burrow, then you are a terrorist. Media coverage would be intense and a Southwest state would pass a law allowing Gopher Enforcement Officers to stop and detain unsuspecting gophers.

After years of intense spending, highlighted by federal civilian contractors raking in millions of dollars in consulting fees, the funding gravy train would trail off. Without another catastrophic infrastructure failure, the nation would tire of the energy and time it takes to maintain a high level of anti-gopher activity.

A new threat might capture our attention. Take pigeons for instance: Have you ever noticed how they seem to be everywhere, listening to our conversations and monitoring our movements?

This article was posted here courtesy of Emergency Management Magazine.
To read more articles by Eric Holdeman CLICK HERE.

THE WEATHER OUTSIDE IS FRIGHTFUL...

2010-11-25T22:25:00.002-06:00

It is a pretty safe bet that a majority of the United States has weather that could warrant lighting up the fireplace and creating a warmer (if not romantic) atmosphere over the holidays. With all the crazy weather, it is quite possible that we end up NEEDING it when the power goes out!

Like with every good thing comes a risk if you are not prepared and careful. Sparking up that fireplace is no different.

According to the United States Fire Administration, more than one-third of Americans use fireplaces, wood stoves and other fuel-fired appliances as primary heat sources in their homes.

Heating fires account for 36% of residential home fires in rural areas every year. Often these fires are due to creosote buildup in chimneys and stovepipes.

Before you light up the hearth or that wood stove, make sure you have done the proper maintenance on that chimney!

Here’s some Safety Tips for you…

Keep Fireplaces and Wood Stoves Clean

* Have your chimney or wood stove inspected and cleaned annually by a certified chimney specialist.
* Clear the area around the hearth of debris, decorations and flammable materials.
* Leave glass doors open while burning a fire. Leaving the doors open ensures that the fire receives enough air to ensure complete combustion and keeps creosote from building up in the chimney.
* Close glass doors when the fire is out to keep air from the chimney opening from getting into the room. Most glass fireplace doors have a metal mesh screen which should be closed when the glass doors are open. This mesh screen helps keep embers from getting out of the fireplace area.
* Always use a metal mesh screen with fireplaces that do not have a glass fireplace door.
* Install stovepipe thermometers to help monitor flue temperatures.
* Keep air inlets on wood stoves open, and never restrict air supply to fireplaces. Otherwise you may cause creosote buildup that could lead to a chimney fire.
* Use fire-resistant materials on walls around wood stoves.

Protect the Outside of Your Home

* Stack firewood outdoors at least 30 feet away from your home.
* Keep the roof clear of leaves, pine needles and other debris.
* Cover the chimney with a mesh screen spark arrester.
* Remove branches hanging above the chimney, flues or vents.

This is not all you need to know. For more information, CLICK HERE

2010-11-24T11:11:00.000-06:00

Pats and Thanksgiving

2010-11-18T09:06:00.002-06:00

“Don’t be giving that to the dog!”

I hear that a lot at Thanksgiving. After all, the kitchen is a frenzied mess and food is flying so it only makes sense to toss a few things to Mac who is lying on the floor right in the middle of it all. For the bigger chunks, we of course, have a St. Bernard just outside the door. The argument is always that “it is okay” because dogs can eat anything.

Turns out, that is not true; in fact, in an article I recently read put out by the ASPCA, I found out that there is A LOT of Thanksgiving food we probably should not be feeding our pets.

The article made a pretty good point: pets won’t be so thankful if they munch on undercooked turkey or a pet-unfriendly floral arrangement, or if they stumble upon an unattended alcoholic drink.

Here are some of the tips they had in the article…

Turkey
If you decide to feed your pet a little nibble of turkey, make sure it’s boneless and well-cooked. Don't offer her raw or undercooked turkey, which may contain salmonella bacteria.

Sage
Who would have guessed this one? Sage is used in a lot of dishes at Thanksgiving but it and many other herbs contain essential oils and resins that can cause gastrointestinal upset and central nervous system depression to pets if eaten in large quantities. Cats are especially sensitive to the effects of certain essential oils.

Bread Dough
Don’t feed your pets raw bread dough and if you drop some, pick it up right away. According to ASPCA experts, when raw bread dough is ingested, an animal's body heat causes the dough to rise in his stomach. As it expands, the pet may experience vomiting, severe abdominal pain and bloating, which could become a life-threatening emergency, requiring surgery.

Cake
If you’re baking up Thanksgiving cakes, be sure your pets keep their noses out of the batter, especially if it includes raw eggs—they could contain salmonella bacteria that may lead to food poisoning.

Too Much
A few small boneless pieces of cooked turkey, a taste of mashed potato or even a lick of pumpkin pie shouldn’t pose a problem. However, don't allow your pets to overindulge, as they could wind up with a case of stomach upset, diarrhea or even worse—an inflammatory condition of the pancreas known as pancreatitis. In fact, it’s best keep pets on their regular diets during the holidays.

After the new Year, we’ll be running a series on pet safety, pets in disasters and how to make an emergency plan that includes your pets but for now, let’s just get through the holiday without killing Fluffy and Spot with Thanksgiving food.

Stay safe while you travel, make sure you have that safety/preparedness kit in your car and enjoy your holiday!

Reality Check

2010-10-28T10:05:00.004-05:00

Sometimes reality can be elusive. We live in a world of so much gaming technology, blue ray discs and 3d movies flying around that when we see a glimpse of disaster aftermath on television, it's hard to tell if it's real. Well, this morning North Carolina residents woke up in the aftermath of an EF2 tornado in late October following historic storms that ripped across the country doing massive amounts of damage in several states.
It is real.
Our present tour has been an exciting one, filled with adventure and frustration but always holding the potential of meeting more people and educating more children about the importance of disaster preparedness.
Today, as the news teams surge throughout the country following up on the disasters of this week. take a look at your family's plan, check that home disaster kit, and take a moment for a reality check. It could happen to you tomorrow.

STOP. THINK. CONNECT.

2010-10-15T14:17:00.002-05:00

October is Cyber Security Awareness Month.

I have to admit, cyber-security was never a big deal to me until the day I went to the Chasing4Life website and it was all in Russian. A few hours later, I went to check my Chasing4Life email and a skull appeared on the screen and it was all gone...4 years gone.

I started paying attention to cyber security after that, but have to admit I have a long way to go. I try to watch my kids, I try to monitor their activities, I try to back up files...

Cyber Security is a tough subject!

This week, we wanted to bring you some simple education regarding cyber-security. The following comes from StaySafeOnline.org, a website we recommend you go and spend some time on with your family. The site is amazing, very educational and easy to navigate.

When you cross the street, you look both ways so make sure it’s safe. Staying safe on the Internet is similar. It takes some common sense steps -- Stop. Think. Connect.

Stop: Before you use the Internet, take time to understand the risks and learn how to spot potential problems.

Think: Take a moment to be certain the path is clear ahead. Watch for warning signs and consider how your actions online could impact your safety, or your family’s.

Connect: Enjoy the Internet with greater confidence, knowing you’ve taken the right steps to safeguard yourself and your computer.

STOP. THINK. CONNECT. Protect yourself and help keep the web a safer place for everyone.

TIPS AND ADVICE

Tip: Keep a Clean Machine.

Advice:

Keep security software current: Having the latest security software, web browser, and operating system are the best defenses against viruses, malware, and other online threats.
Automate software updates: Many software programs will automatically connect and update to defend against known risks. Turn on automatic updates if that’s an available option..
Protect all devices that connect to the Internet: Along with computers, smart phones, gaming systems, and other web-enabled devices also need protection from viruses and malware.
Plug & scan: “USBs” and other external devices can be infected by viruses and malware. Use your security software to scan them.

Tip: Protect Your Personal Information.

Advice:

Secure your accounts: Ask for protection beyond passwords. Many account providers now offer additional ways for you verify who you are before you conduct business on that site.
Make passwords long and strong: Combine capital and lowercase letters with numbers and symbols to create a more secure password.
Unique account, unique password: Separate passwords for every account helps to thwart cybercriminals.
Write it down and keep it safe: Everyone can forget a password. Keep a list that’s stored in a safe, secure place away from your computer.
Own your online presence: When available, set the privacy and security settings on websites to your comfort level for information sharing. It’s ok to limit who you share information with.

Tip: Connect with Care.

Advice:

When in doubt, throw it out: Links in email, tweets, posts, and online advertising are often the way cybercriminals compromise your computer. If it looks suspicious, even if you know the source, it’s best to delete or if appropriate, mark as junk email.
Get savvy about Wi-Fi hotspots: Limit the type of business you conduct and adjust the security settings on your device to limit who can access your machine.
Protect your $$: When banking and shopping, check to be sure the sites is security enabled. Look for web addresses with “https://” or “shttp://”, which means the site takes extra measures to help secure your information. “Http://” is not secure.

Tip: Be Web Wise.

Advice:

Stay current. Keep pace with new ways to stay safe online. Check trusted websites for the latest information, and share with friends, family, and colleagues and encourage them to be web wise.
Think before you act: Be wary of communications that implores you to act immediately, offers something that sounds too good to be true, or asks for personal information.
Back it up: Protect your valuable work, music, photos, and other digital information by making an electronic copy and storing it safely.

Tip: Be a Good Online Citizen.

Advice:

Safer for me more secure for all: What you do online has the potential to affect everyone – at home, at work and around the world. Practicing good online habits benefits the global digital community.
Post only about others as you have them post about you.
Help the authorities fight cyber crime: Report stolen finances or identities and other cybercrime to www.ic3.gov (Internet Crime Complaint Center), the Federal Trade Commission at http://www.onguardonline.gov/file-complaint.aspx (if it's fraud), and to your local law enforcement or state attorney general as appropriate.

Practice Stop. Think. Connect. and encourage others to do it as well.

Don't fix what IS NOT broken!

2010-10-06T09:39:00.003-05:00

One nice thing about having a blog of your own is that it is YOURS and you can pretty much write what you want. We rarely use this blog as a political platform as Chasing4Life has stayed neutral and practical in most situations that involved politics, but we have some opinions every now and then that we want to share.

Over the course of the last six months, we have had the honor of working with many of the Illinois Township Road Commissioners. These men and women are the people that maintain the roads our team travels everyday as we traverse backroads and small highways from event to event educating tens of thousands each year. We appreciate the work they do. Often times, they are the ones that, despite hours and regulations, schedules and lack of personnel, are out there when we have seen few others.

Now, looming in the news almost every week is an effort to do away with Townships altogether if not, at least, the road work.

The goal of quite a few is to take townships out of the road business in Illinois and have counties take over township roads.

That's one of several new recommendations being offered by business-backed Chicago Metropolis 2020 after the nonprofit group looked at ways to boost the state's economy through transportation. Chicago Metropolis 2020 was created in 1999 by The Commercial Club of Chicago, an organization of business and civic leaders promoting regional growth.

According to its executive director, Frank Beal, $12 billion is spent on public transportation by 2,859 units of government in Illinois. Nearly half of those units - 1,403 - are townships that collect nearly $90 million in gasoline tax revenue each year. The $90 million is 16 percent of local governments' share of gasoline taxes. Each township has its own equipment, staff and buildings.

"It would be more efficient and effective if this was taken over by the county," Beal said in a recent interview.

The recommendation in the organization's report was that counties be given the revenue that townships now receive for roadwork, beginning with township roads in urban areas.

Townships maintain 71,187 miles of roads in Illinois.

71,187 miles. And it is done well.

I am not sure why we feel the need to destroy infrastructure that DOES work while we sit idly by and ignore gross oversights elsewhere. On our recent trip just this past weekend, we traveled over a total of 1600 miles for one event in Illinois. As we traveled, we could not wait to get onto the Township roads for a break from the construction zones with no workers, the poorly maintained roads, and of course, just the roads that ran through highly populated areas of traffic. It was nice to get out onto a Township Road and roll down the windows, enjoying the scenic beauty of the Illinois I remembered as a child; to enjoy the well-maintained roadway, to notice the lack of litter and debris along the roadside.

I do not claim to know all of the ins and outs of the finances of Illinois, but I do know that I speak at dozens of libraries still awaiting their checks from the State from before last year. I know that the State has little if not any money, but why would you do away with one of the ONLY things that IS working?

Many years ago, I attended a church that I was happy attending. The pastor and his wife were always there for you, volunteers filled the lot every Saturday to maintain the church. There was not a moment when SOMEONE was not available. Two years ago, I called the church because of a family emergency hoping to reach the pastor and was greeted by an answering system…

“If you are calling for directions to the church…press one…if you are a youth and wishing to know the times of the next youth meeting…press three…if you are in need of counseling and in need of an English-speaking counselor…press four….if you are calling about our upcoming revival services…press five…”

Seriously? We need to take a look at what we are doing to our country before we make decisions that are strictly based on the financial. Yes, we are growing. Yes we are busier. Yes we have made bad decisions in the past, but now more than ever we need to remember what kept this country together for the longest time and maybe try to preserve some of it. The Township structure is that last connection the local people have to their local government; these Township officials are available, they understand the area and the people, and they care about it.

Would we save money? I bet we would, but before we swallow this hook, someone had better call the Dell Service Center and try to get help rebooting their computer so they are reminded of what happens when we make decisions purely based on finances. Sure it saves a lot of money having customer service outsourced to another country, but I still have that stupid laptop sitting in my office under the desk and it still doesn’t work.

Illinois is still a beautiful state and a great place to travel. The Township roads attract people from all over the world because of what they are and who has taken such great care of them all these decades. The strength of this country is still found on the smallest of highways and now more than ever, we need to stop trying to fix what already works and take a look elsewhere.

If you can't stand the heat...HAVE A DRILL

2010-10-05T08:22:00.002-05:00

It really is not that cold yet, but some of the recent nights have been a great excuse to throw a small log in that wood burner and sit in front of the television enujoying that wonderful smell of a fire. Chimneys will soon all be in use throughout the homes across our country shortly, fire wood piles we have worked on all summer will soon be utilized, and fire in general will become a part of everyday life for the next few months. Personally I cannot wait.

I love the sound of crackling logs and the smell of a wood fire, but with all of this comes risk and danger.

October is Fire Prevention Month, and now is the time to begin thinking through evacuation plans, fire safety, smoke alarm maintenance and maybe the process of having a fire drill in your home.

Don't let your family become a statistic this year. A fire drill in your home with your children can save lives. Take a few minutes this month to fire-proof your home and get your family prepared.

Here's some facts from the NFPA:

Smoke alarms

Smoke alarms cut the risk of dying in a reported fire in half.
Most homes (96%) have at least one smoke alarm (according to a 2008 telephone survey.)
Overall, three-quarters of all U.S. homes have at least one working smoke alarm.
Each year, nearly 3,000 people die in U.S. home fires.
In 2003-2006, roughly two-thirds of home fire deaths resulted from home fires in homes with no smoke alarms or no working smoke alarms.
- No smoke alarms were present in 40% of the home fire deaths.
- In 23% of the home fire deaths, smoke alarms were present but did not sound.
In more than half of the reported home fires in which the smoke alarms were present but did not operate even though the fire was large enough, batteries were missing or disconnected. Nuisance alarms were the leading reason for disconnected alarms.
More than half of the smoke alarms found in reported fires and two-thirds of the alarms found in homes with fire deaths were powered by battery only.
Most homes still have smoke alarms powered by battery only. In a 2007 American Housing Survey (AHS), 67% of the respondents who reported having smoke alarms said they were powered by battery only.
In a 2008 telephone survey, only 12% knew that smoke alarms should be replaced every 10 years.
In fires considered large enough to activate a smoke alarm, hard-wired alarms operated 91% of the time; battery-powered smoke alarms operated 75% of the time.
Interconnected smoke alarms on all floors increase safety.
- In a U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) survey of households with any fires, interconnected smoke alarms were more likely to operate and alert occupants to a fire. (This includes fires in which the fire department was not called.)

Fire

Cooking is the #1 cause of home fires and injuries.
Smoking is the leading cause of fire deaths.
Heating is the second leading cause of home fires, fire deaths and fire injuries.
Electrical failures or malfunctions are factors in roughly 50,000 reported fires each year.
Roughly 30, 000 intentionally set home structure fires are reported each year.

In 2008

U.S. fire departments responded to 386,500 home fires.
Home fires killed 2,755 people and injured 13,160.
Someone was injured in a reported home fire every 40 minutes.
Roughly eight people died in home fires every day.
A fire department responded to a home fire every 82 seconds.
83% of all fire deaths and 79% of fire injuries resulted from home fires.

WORK SMART. RIDE SAFE.

2010-09-20T08:42:00.002-05:00

If you have been following the Chasing4Life blogs, you know we are still out on the road touring the country and presenting educational programs to every age group in every corner of the country. Ithas been a busy year and while we have had the pleasure of meeting a lot of great people, we have also had the opportunity to see a lot of tragedy. Amidst the things we have seen on tour, perhaps the most horrific have been the ATV accidents.

We are excited that this week is finally here...

It is National Farm Safety and Health Week!

Each year, the National Center For Educational Safety determines a theme for this special week and the 2010 theme is "ATV's: Work Smart, Ride Safe."

Each year, about 800 deaths are reported nationally associated with ATV accidents. In Missouri, 68 deaths were recorded from 2006 through 2008, according to the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission. According to government statistics, four out of 10 people treated in emergency rooms for ATV injuries are under the age of 16. The exact number is not known because many ATV injuries are treated at home and not reported.

We have been so encouraged by the response and the results of this year's tour and we know that there is power in communicating. Make this week the week you and your family sit down and discuss new guidelines for ATV use and make sure that you check your ATV for excessive wear and the warning signs of a breakdown.

As always, we want you to have a safe and prosperous harvest season, so Work Smart. (and Ride Safe!)

For more information about Farm Safety and Health Week, see www.necasag.org/nfsnhw.php.

Girl Scout Update

2010-09-18T23:10:00.003-05:00

From Severe Weather Safety programs with the girl Scouts to risk assessment meetings at their camps, this tour is awesome! We are looking forward to the next tour already! What an honor to have a Chasing4Life badge! I will post one shortly so you can all see!
The Girl Scouts have made a very real commitment to becoming an integral part of educating their communities regarding disaster preparedness and it is honor to be a part of that commitment.
(Picture above: Camp Ranger Andrew and his homemade "all-purpose" vehicle that he uses to navigate around the camp's narrow roads. What an awesome ride! Andrew, we totally enjoyed meeting with you!

A time to remember

2010-09-10T19:49:00.000-05:00

Bill Sears

2010-09-07T22:49:00.002-05:00

We lost a friend today and he will be missed but remembered fondly.

2010-08-29T09:00:00.001-05:00

For several years Chasing4Life has been a member of National Preparedness Month. The Department of Homeland Security's Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) is reminding everyone that September is National Preparedness Month. Throughout National Preparedness Month, which is sponsored by FEMA's Ready Campaign, FEMA is encouraging all Americans to visit Ready.gov to learn how they can better prepare themselves and their families for the next emergency or disaster.

"Disaster can strike any time, anywhere. By taking a few simple steps now, you can ensure that your family and your community are prepared before the next emergency arises," said FEMA's Acting Regional Administrator Doug Gore. "We urge everyone to take steps necessary to keep their family safe, which includes getting a kit, making a plan, being informed and getting involved."

National Preparedness Month focuses on changing perceptions about emergency preparedness and helping Americans understand what it means to "Be Ready." National Preparedness Month coalition members have agreed to distribute emergency preparedness information and sponsor activities across the country that will promote emergency preparedness. Membership is open to all public and private sector organizations.

FEMA's Citizen Corps is also an important partner in this campaign. Citizen Corps is FEMA's grassroots strategy to bring together government and community leaders to involve citizens in all-hazards emergency preparedness and resilience.

To see a list of national, regional, tribal, state, local businesses and organizations that have pledged their support and joined the 2009 National Preparedness Month Coalition, please visit www.ready.gov/america/npm09/members.html.

Why we promote over 400 library events each year

2010-08-20T16:32:00.001-05:00

“During tough economic times, people turn to libraries for their incredible array of free resources, from computers to books, DVDs and CDs, for help with a job hunt or health information. The average annual cost to the taxpayer for access to this wide range of resources is about $31, the cost of one hardcover book. In good times or bad, libraries are a great value!”

2008-2009 American Library Association President Jim Rettig

Why Support your Local Library?

In a world where knowledge is power, libraries make everyone more powerful.
Libraries bring people and ideas together. Think of the library as the living room of your community.
Libraries are unique. Where else can you have access to nearly anything on CD, DVD, the Web or in print – as well as personal service and assistance in finding it?
Libraries help bridge the divide between those who have access to information and those who do not. Families making less than $15,000 annually are two to three times more likely to rely on library computers than those earning more than $75,000.
Nearly 73% of libraries are their communities' only source of free computer and Internet access- which rises to 82% in rural areas.
Libraries don’t just offer the hardware, but also offer the expertise of librarians in helping teach people how to use the Internet and find the information they need quickly. While Google can give you 50,000 responses to your inquiry, your librarian can help you find the one answer you need.
Libraries are part of the American Dream. They offer free access to all. They bring opportunity to all.
Libraries and librarians provide free and equal access to information for people of all ages and backgrounds – in schools, on college and university campuses and in communities large and small.
Libraries are for everyone, everywhere.

Back to school safety

2010-08-16T07:57:00.002-05:00

An article I read recently said that an estimated 2.2 million children under the age of 14 are injured in school-related accidents each year. Accidents while on the way to school, on the way home from school and while playing at school can be avoided much like other disasters; by simply making a plan.

With schools starting across the country, now is the time to make those plans.

-Plan a walking route to school or to the bus stop. Make sure you have a direct route with the least amount of crossings your children will have to encounter. If you are in a rural area, make sure weeds and plants are trimmed from the end of the driveway so your child will be more than visible while waiting for the bus.

-Walk the route with your children and make sure you teach them to stay away from areas where they will be alone and unprotected such as parks, vacant lots, etc.

-Set rules for accepting rides NOW. As my children get older, the number of rides available increases. Make sure your children know not to take rides from strangers and not to take rides from under age drivers you are not sure about.

-Teach your kids to obey traffic laws and rules.

-Don’t forget that bad weather can become a part of your child’s travel to school and teach them the severe weather safety rules.

-Make sure if your child is riding his/her bike to school that they wear a helmet!

-Be sure that your child knows his or her home phone number and address, your work number, the number of another trusted adult and how to call 911 for emergencies.

-Check the playground equipment at your child’s school. Look for hazards such as rusted or broken equipment and dangerous surfaces. Report any hazards to the school.

-Make sure you are familiar with the school’s disaster and safety plans.

As the school year starts, traffic increases, daylight changes and the number of children on the roads increases. Make sure that this year’s back-to-school time is one of excitement and learning and tragedy.

Be alert and PLAN

2010-07-20T10:25:00.004-05:00

A tropical wave (Invest 97L) near the east coast of Puerto Rico has became more organized overnight last night but was hardly noticed as storm reports flew into the tracking center from Nebraska, Kentucky, Iowa, Missouri and Illinois. We estimated that we spent over 4 hours on the phones with firefighters and spotters during the storms that inundated Central Illinois yesterday.

That’s a lot of activity all at once, and we often times become victims of what we call “radar fatigue”. This is not a medical term, but rather a term we created a few years ago during the hurricanes of 2005. What we are referring to is that complacency that is caused by storms that just seem to never go away. After hours of watching these storms and having them pound your town, the next one causes you to become weary and eventually many just stop watching.

It is a dangerous situation.

Last night, several folks that had been tracking and chasing these storms all day reached a point where they just wanted rest. Residents in areas already hit three or four times were simply turning off the computer and television assuming that there could not possibly be more.

With a stationary front in place in the Midwest and the systems presently working the country, it is important that despite the poundings, we stay alert. Storms kept us awake all night here in Illinois and we eventually woke to more warnings and watches already being issued for parts of the country.

Now, with that said, let’s talk about something else…

Summer is a time for beach parties, camping and Vacation Bible Schools. Last night, we received a call from a volunteer at a Vacation Bible School that was getting ready to release the children to go home. Rotation had been spotted by trained spotters, hail was over 1” in surrounding communities and the rain was torrential.
The town was in a Thunderstorm Warning.

Despite our advice to keep the children a bit longer and add one more indoor activity to the night’s events rather then sending them home, the church released the children.
Now, we realize that most of the children had rides and the parents were waiting, but what of the children that did not have rides? What of the folks now driving home?

We spoke to the leadership at the church and found that there was no written plan, no policy that had ever been communicated to volunteers and staff before the event began.
We need to have plans.

Whether you are a church or civic organization, a library or a restaurant, nothing will protect you, your property, your employees and your future like a written disaster plan.

Think of the possibilities last night held for anyone on the road…there were tornadoes, large hail, extreme flooding and high winds.

Folks, last night two people were struck by lightning during these storms.

As the severe weather continues to sweep the country, and more could be on its way as the Gulf lights up again, let’s talk plans.

REFERENCE POINT:
(From National Weather Service)
THUNDERSTORM WARNING
This is issued when either a severe thunderstorm is indicated by the WSR-88D radar or a spotter reports a thunderstorm producing hail 3/4 inch or larger in diameter and/or winds equal or exceed 58 miles an hour; therefore, people in the affected area should seek safe shelter immediately. Severe thunderstorms can produce tornadoes with little or no advance warning. Lightning frequency is not a criteria for issuing a severe thunderstorm warning. They are usually issued for a duration of one hour. They can be issued without a Severe Thunderstorm Watch being already in effect.
The National Weather Service advises that when you hear thunder or see lightning to quickly move indoors or into a hard topped vehicle and remain there until well after the storm has passed.

July 19th Tour Update

2010-07-19T09:07:00.005-05:00

Last week's tour ended in Tipton, Iowa where we had the BEST time talking about climate change, severe weather safety and what life can be like in a smaller town. The town itself was wonderfully charming and the visit was truly enjoyable.
Saturday found the educational team rolling into Barrington, Illinois for events at the public library followed by a visit with former C4L Team member Dan Bocklund who underwent heart surgery this week.
This week the road will take us to visit Dorothy at the SciTech Children's Museum in Aurora, Illinois followed by stops in River Forest, Oak Park, Bensenville, Niles, Evanston and ElPaso!
Are you on our schedule for the back-to-school tour? If not, you cannot wait too much longer! Write us an email from your church, school or library as soon as possible because the way it looks, we are not going to get much of a break between the end of this tour and the beginning of the next!

2010-07-12T21:35:00.003-05:00

With storms back home in Nebraska, the summer tour continues with a few storms of our own as this week we hit some more cities in Iowa like Hull, Sioux Center, Hawarden, Sheldon, Alton, Boyden, Hospers, Orange City, Ely, Tipton and a few more. Above is a picture of a storm we encountered in Orange City Sunday night!

Dubuque...

2010-07-10T23:11:00.004-05:00

The week has come to an end...another week of the tour is over. As we hang out in Fort Dodge tracking storms back in Nebraska, we're sitting here with our new friends from Texas eating homemade Mexican food and looking over the pics from yesterday. What a day it was! We spent the entire day in beautiful downtown Dubuque with Danielle at the Carnegie Stout Library. The building was beautiful but we enjoyed our personal tour of not only the library, but the city and the shoreline of the Mississippi and dinner at the Star Brewery!

HURRICANE WINDS IN IOWA?

2010-07-10T23:08:00.002-05:00

Yep, you'd better believe it. Here is a pic of Ethan standing in a Hurricane Wind Simulator in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. The week has been filled with new experiences and new faces and we have had a great time! Flooding in Iowa is extensive and closed roads with detours are becoming a part of the tour too often, but the reception at libraries has been amazing!

On the road again...

2010-07-05T08:30:00.002-05:00

Back on the road today heading to rain-soaked Iowa! The second half of the Summer Reading Tour takes us throughout Iowa libraries with a few special stops in Illinois until mid-August! Keep watching here for updates and pics from the tour- we will try our best to keep things as updated as possible.
Back home, the office is working on the fall and winter dates. There are not many left, so if you think you have the right venue to fill one of these open dates, contact us via email right away. Scheduling for Spring and Summer of 2011 is happening NOW!

Connections...

2010-06-26T18:17:00.003-05:00

Every once in a while, you run into people on tour that you "click" with. Chris, from Chris' Computer Connection was just one of those people that we met on this leg of the tour. A sponsor of the event in Rocky Ford, Colorado, Chris showed up early, setting up the projection system in the beautiful Rocky Ford Grand Theatre the other morning. What a morning! A packed house learned about severe weather safety, lightning safety, climate change and even a few tornado facts! We could not have done it without Chris' assistance.
Pictured is the exodus of the young people from the theatre as Chris and Brandi hand out books and arcade tickets.

Storm Addicts

2010-06-26T18:13:00.004-05:00

Yep, we met a lot of storm addicts in Fort Morgan, and actually, quite a few in Fort Collins, Rocky Ford, Loveland, Watkins, Centennial, Englewood, Denver, Fowler, LaJunta, Limon and Aurora! One of our favorites was this young man in Fort Morgan, Colorado who actually had a STORM ADDICT shirt on!

Lightning Safety in Colorado!

2010-06-26T18:13:00.001-05:00

The tour through Colorado has had a special twist added by Lightning Safety Awareness Week! With no storms in sight, the Chasing4Life Educational Team had fun in the sun with hundreds of youngsters in Fort Collins at the beginning of the week! See pictures from our day in the sun below:

2010-06-26T18:10:00.001-05:00

2010-06-26T18:08:00.004-05:00

2010 SUMMER TOUR BEGINS

2010-06-13T21:32:00.002-05:00

It is hard to believe it has only been a week. Our tour began with a lot of severe weather both at home and as we left. We have put alot of photos here for you, so all you have to do is scroll through and click to enlarge.
We'll begin with pictures from the storm we tracked at the beginning of the tour which resulted in tornadoes across Illinois. Below you will see pictures from Elmwood, Illinois, a small town west of Peoria. The damage was amazing. The tornado struck in the middle of the town's festival which was being held on these streets:

2010-06-13T21:26:00.009-05:00

2010-06-13T21:25:00.003-05:00

Alannah at the Region 10 Homeland Security Mobile EOC Unit in Elmwood

2010-06-13T21:24:00.002-05:00

Look at the sign on the theatre in Elmwood!

2010-06-13T21:20:00.007-05:00

"How do we reduce response burdens BEFORE it happens". Eddy was the keynote at the Illinois Association of Fire Protection Districts Conference. We did a lot of interviews, took in some classes and made some great new friends!

2010-06-13T21:20:00.002-05:00

Eddy and Ethan in a midnight stormchase in Central Iowa

2010-06-13T21:19:00.002-05:00

The farm safety roll-over rescue training

2010-06-13T21:18:00.002-05:00

This is all that is left of a dog training facility hit by the Washington, Illinois tornado

2010-06-13T21:17:00.002-05:00

An interview after the Washington County, Illinois tornado

2010-06-13T21:16:00.001-05:00

Alannah in front of a REAL fire truck in Peoria, Illinois

2010-06-13T21:15:00.001-05:00

Below are pictures of the farm destroyed by a tornado we were tracking in Washington County, Illinois.

2010-06-13T21:13:00.006-05:00

2010-06-13T21:12:00.004-05:00

Training Tazewell County, Illinois Firefighter Jared Cook

2010-06-13T21:12:00.002-05:00

Eddy and Alannah present in Central Iowa

2010-06-13T21:10:00.001-05:00

Filmmaker James Buffin arrived in Washington, Illinois to travel with the team.

Ethan teaches severe weather safety

2010-06-13T21:08:00.002-05:00

All set up for first day of the tour

2010-06-13T21:07:00.000-05:00

Elmwood, Illinois

2010-06-06T09:25:00.003-05:00

UPDATE: After a long night in Washington, Peoria and South Pekin Illinois, we now have some of our team in Elmwood, Illinois assisting in disaster recovery as of 1 Am, Sunday June 6. We will attempt to post updates here as we can.

The Summer Tour has begun with three members of the team embarking on a 62 day educational tour today as well!

BIG NEWS

2010-05-25T21:58:00.000-05:00

2010-05-25T21:45:00.005-05:00

Over the course of the last several weeks, we have been working on some pretty big things here at Chasing4Life. As the team members have changed some, Chasing4Life has narrowed its focus more than ever and we are looking at a year of more powerful educational events than our fans and followers have ever seen before. In a partnership with Fedhealth, Chasing4Life is now a part of a fantastic program featuring the "It's A Disaster" books (see previous blog entry). Chasing4Life members will be presenting special programs with this partnership across the country and will be assisting communities in acquiring these comprehensive books for entire populations. We are working with more EMA's, chambers, libraries, health departments, churches and non-profits than ever before!

In a partnership with several Girl Scout Councils, Eddy and Alannah will be touring the United States beginning in September of 2010 for 12 months presenting new programs on animals in disaster, severe weather science, severe weather safety, earthquakes, disaster preparedness and more as Girl Scouts are now being given the opportunity to actually earn a CHASING4LIFE merit badge! This is huge for us and we want to thank Courtney in Vernon Hills, Illinois for her efforts in making all this possible! Watch our online calendar for Girl Scout dates and make sure if your GS Council has not booked yet, that they do it soon! Dates have filled into mid 2011 pretty quick!

Chasing4Life will now be offering special programs and training presentation/workshops featuring depiction, a mapping software for planning disaster mitigation and response. Check back for more details.

It's A Disaster!

2010-05-25T21:41:00.002-05:00

Make sure you pick up your personal copy of "It's A Disaster...And What Are YOU Gonna Do About IT?" from our online store or grab a copy from us while we are on tour this summer. If you represent a community organization, church, fire department or emergency management agency, email us about how you can place a copy of this fantastic book into the hands of EVERYONE in your community!
See video below.

2010-05-25T21:40:00.002-05:00

BIG NEWS

2010-05-06T11:11:00.003-05:00

Next week is big news week. Right here in our blog you'll find out how to see a piece of the movie "Chasing With Heart" from Veritus Pictures featuring your Chasing4Life Team and you can find out about the brand new 24 month National Tour that starts in September of THIS YEAR! That's right, a brand new tour begins soon as Chasing4Life has partnered with a national organization to bring new programs and new new educational adventure opportunities to literally tens of thousands across the United States!
A whole new Chasing4Life emerges NEXT WEEK!
In the meantime, we're in Central Illinois presenting our new program : "Forecasting And Spotter Safety In A Changing Climate" to fire departments.
See you all next week with the big news!

AFTER THE STORM

2010-04-20T10:21:00.002-05:00

I’ve been through quite a few tornadoes, hurricanes too for that matter. While a tornado can be a horrific experience, what is more frightening is the potential for injury and death during the “Let’s go out and look” phase of a tornado. That phase comes right after the debris stops flying.
I am reminded of the HUGE numbers of folks that wandered about after the Kearney tornado. I remember seeing girls in flip-flops and shorts, folks in bare feet and even children walking around gawking at the damage.
While injuries and deaths occur from tornadoes all the time, a study of injuries after a tornado in Marion, Illinois, showed that 50 percent of the tornado-related injuries were suffered during rescue attempts, cleanup, and other post-tornado activities.
Wanna know the big reasons why people are hurt AFTER a tornado? Believe it or not, one third of the injuries are from stepping on nails!
As you can imagine, other injuries come from falling objects, tree limbs and even vehicles. Don’t rule out the great dangers from fallen power lines, exposed wiring and fire or explosions.
We are groomed every day by the media to get excited about tornadoes. Nightly we watch shows about storm chasing and the power of weather. This incites a very real and very dangerous curiosity in each of us that, when mixed with adrenaline, can overcome any common sense.
Today we are spending time in our tracking center assessing the possibilities of tornadoes later this week. They may come and they may not, but one thing is for certain; if not this week, they’ll be here soon. Should a tornado strike your farm or home, your town or city, make sure you use common sense and remember that the dangers do not end when the storm is over.
Make sure you have a COMPLETE disaster kit and that if you venture outdoors, you dress appropriately, stay out of the way of response vehicles, and keep your family from becoming yet another reason why rescuers are shorthanded.
Check for injuries. Do not attempt to move seriously injured people unless they are in immediate danger of further injury. Get medical assistance immediately. If someone has stopped breathing, begin CPR if you are trained to do so. Stop a bleeding injury by applying direct pressure to the wound. Have any puncture wound evaluated by a physician. If you are trapped, try to attract attention to your location.
Here are some safety precautions that could help you avoid injury after a tornado:
· Continue to monitor your battery-powered radio or television for emergency information. Here at KRVN, we will do our best to stay on the air and keep you updated as to when it is safe to go out, where the damage is, and where to find help.
· Be careful when entering any structure that has been damaged.
· Wear sturdy shoes or boots, long sleeves, and gloves when handling or walking on or near debris.
· Be aware of hazards from exposed nails and broken glass.
· Do not touch downed power lines or objects in contact with downed lines. Report electrical hazards to the police and the utility company.
· Use battery-powered lanterns, if possible, rather than candles to light homes without electrical power. If you use candles, make sure they are in safe holders away from curtains, paper, wood, or other flammable items. Never leave a candle burning when you are out of the room.
· Never use generators, pressure washers, grills, camp stoves, or other gasoline, propane, natural gas, or charcoal-burning devices inside your home, basement, garage, or camper—or even outside near an open window, door, or vent. Carbon monoxide (CO)—an odorless, colorless gas that can cause sudden illness and death if you breathe it—from these sources can build up in your home, garage, or camper and poison the people and animals inside. Seek prompt medical attention if you suspect CO poisoning and are feeling dizzy, light-headed, or nauseated.
· Hang up displaced telephone receivers that may have been knocked off by the tornado, but stay off the telephone, except to report an emergency.
· Cooperate fully with public safety officials.
· Respond to requests for volunteer assistance by police, fire fighters, emergency management, and relief organizations, but do not go into damaged areas unless assistance has been requested. Your presence could hamper relief efforts, and you could endanger yourself.
· After a tornado, be aware of possible structural, electrical, or gas-leak hazards in your home. Contact your local city or county building inspectors for information on structural safety codes and standards. They may also offer suggestions on finding a qualified contractor to do work for you.
· In general, if you suspect any damage to your home, shut off electrical power, natural gas, and propane tanks to avoid fire, electrocution, or explosions.
· If it is dark when you are inspecting your home, use a flashlight rather than a candle or torch to avoid the risk of fire or explosion in a damaged home.
· If you see frayed wiring or sparks, or if there is an odor of something burning, you should immediately shut off the electrical system at the main circuit breaker if you have not done so already.
· If you smell gas or suspect a leak, turn off the main gas valve, open all windows, and leave the house immediately. Notify the gas company, the police or fire departments, or State Fire Marshal’s office, and do not turn on the lights, light matches, smoke, or do anything that could cause a spark. Do not return to your house until you are told it is safe to do so.
· During clean up, wear sturdy shoes or boots, long sleeves, and gloves.
· Learn proper safety procedures and operating instructions before operating any gas-powered or electric-powered saws or tools.
· Clean up spilled medicines, drugs, flammable liquids, and other potentially hazardous materials.
Don’t forget that the storm can last for a long time in the minds and hearts of little ones. Trauma is handled differently by different people and our most vulnerable population is our children. After a tornado, children may be afraid the storm will come back again and they will be injured or left alone. Children may even interpret disasters as punishment for real or imagined misdeeds. Use your time with your children to teach them the science behind tornadoes and make sure they understand its power and the dangers, but also that it is a natural event.
Children will be less likely to experience prolonged fear or anxiety if they know what to expect after a tornado. Here are some suggestions:
· Talk about your own experiences with severe storms, or read aloud a book about tornadoes.
· Encourage your child to express feelings of fear. Listen carefully and show understanding.
· Offer reassurance. Tell your child that the situation is not permanent, and provide physical reassurance through time spent together and displays of affection.
· Include your child in clean-up activities. Make sure this is done SAFELY. It is comforting to children to watch the household begin to return to normal and to have a job to do.
We’re hoping that this week’s storms will bring nothing but rain and misty mornings, but as you know…it’s Nebraska and when we go, we go BIG. Be careful, use common sense and keep listening to KRVN Radio for the lastest updates on your weather situation.

Do you have a Dorothy?

2010-03-22T16:25:00.004-05:00

Many years ago I came across a black Chevy Blazer. It was by no means new. She had rust, her rear compartment was wet and moldy, and the seats were showing signs of wear. She had one thing going for her; she was affordable. The price I paid was very little, but almost more than I had.
Once I got her home, I began to do what I could...first some paint, then some decals and graphics. The equipment came next as I outfitted her with a weather station, then radios. The project grew.
Over the years, "Dorothy" became one of the best known vehicles in the country. Literally hundreds of thousands of children saw her, learned from her and grew to love her.
Dorothy, my lead chase vehicle had become a celebrity with purpose and ignited passion in the hearts of so many. To look at her originally, you would have thought she was just an old Chevy Blazer.
This past week, I was reunited with Dorothy who now sits proudly as the main exhibit in the Sci-tech Children's Museum in Aurora, Illinois. She still teaches children about severe weather safety and preparedness.
I tell you all about this because there is a very real lesson in Dorothy. You see, I had very little money and few supporters. I saw a need for serious storm monitoring, severe weather research and reporting and knew that I could save lives if I only had a vehicle. Not having much, I used what I had. Not being able to afford much, I used what Dorothy was.
In the end, Dorothy had over $30,000 in repairs. TWELVE TIMES HER PURCHASE PRICE.
Was it worth it? You bet it was.
See, you don't have to have much to do great things. It may cost you dearly as the years progress and it may not, but if you wait until you can afford it all, you'll never accomplish anything. It is all about doing whatever you can and chasing that dream with WHAT YOU HAVE ALREADY.
There's a group of kids that do this. You can find them at www.KidsAreHeroes.com. These are kids that, many, with nothing at all, have chosen to change their world and make a difference.
Each of us has a Dorothy. Something that may not even look like much, but if fueled by passion, could change the world. These kids prove it.
Is your Dorothy a talent? A savings account? A connection? A specialty? Are you using your Dorothy to change the world and make it a better place?
Check out www.KidsAreHeroes.com. Make it a regular stop when you're browsing the web. Maybe you know a kid already doing something great, and maybe, just maybe, you're supposed to use your Dorothy to help the kids featured on that site.
(By the way, to see a larger pic of Dorothy in her new home, click the picture above).

Tour was awesome!

2010-03-21T12:08:00.000-05:00

The last two weeks was amazing! Our Illinois tour went so well and we cannot wait to get back there! Alannah Raven spent a lot of time in front of the camera lens on this trip with two photo shoots and we will soon have some of the new pics up on the website and available online as well! Robert Pears of Robert Pears Photography (www.robertpears.com) did an awesome job and we had so much fun.
After Alannah's photo shoot, we visited with NFL star Levar Fisher and Alannah once again was in front of the camera in a shared shoot with Levar. He is an incredible man and his beautiful wife Jacinta is an unbelievable woman!
The tour was full of schools, libraries and even the special event at the Sci-Tech Children's Museum in Aurora where we were re-united with Dorothy! We got to go back to my old school, Fenton High School too!
Watch for pictures here on the blog, on Alannah's site (www.alannahraven.com) and make sure you stay tuned to our Twitter! We have some pics posted below for you!

Tour Pics

2010-03-21T11:53:00.003-05:00

Prepare your kids for severe weather awareness week!

2010-02-22T09:59:00.002-06:00

Several times in recent years, schools have been hit by tornadoes. In most instances, fortunately, classes were not in session. In some other instances, where students were present, school officials made fantastic choices and saved many lives.

Over the course of the next month or so, schools around the country will encounter their own “Severe Weather Awareness” weeks. Each state has its own scheduled week, and during this week, schools will have their tornado drills.

For me, growing up, tornado drills were nothing more than an opportunity to get out of class, sit in the hallway next to a friend and have a conversation. This behavior usually netted me a detention, but hey, at least I was not in the classroom!

With Nebraska’s Severe Weather Week coming up soon, I want to encourage you to talk to your kids about severe weather awareness issues. Scrolling back through all of the blog entries here, you can find a vast resource of information or you can visit the local National Weather Service websites.

Why should you talk to your kids now? Because I know kids. When the day arrives for tornado drills at your child’s school, they will already have been warned. The drill will be held with the lights on in the hallways and probably in the middle of the day. While the drill is important to teach your children the LOGISTICAL aspects of what they should do, it will in no way prepare them for the real thing psychologically. When the real thing happens, there will be no lights in the hallways except for those “spooky” little emergency lights. It won’t be quiet in the hallway and it certainly will not be quiet outside. The kid next to them will not be talking about X-Box or Justin Bieber either, chances are, that kid will be crying or scared speechless.

When we tour schools and libraries and churches around the country, we encourage families to have two tornado drills at home. The first should be mid-day with the lights on at a pre-arranged time. If that goes well, the second should be at a time only you know, should be at night, in the dark with the lights off. You'’ be shocked to find how much longer it takes you to get to your "“afe place” when the conditions are changed.

The same applies to the school drill, only we know the school is not going to be able to simulate the real-deal, so by spending 10 or 15 minutes with your child before Severe Weather Awareness Week, you can make them aware that this upcoming drill is important, that you expect them to pay attention and take it seriously, and to imagine a different environment when they are practicing the procedure.

Lately I have fielded some questions about how young is too young to discuss this all with children…make no mistake. Even the youngest children know what a tornado is and what it does. They watch it on television, they learn about them in school. There is no reason to traumatize your child, but don’t whitewash the important facts! Tornadoes are dangerous and kids need to take them a lot more seriously than they see folks doing on television!

I remember that poor teacher of mine, yelling at me to shut up during drills… If my parents had sat me down for a few minutes, perhaps I would have taken the whole thing a lot more seriously.

2010-02-18T12:47:00.000-06:00

President’s budget freezes library funding

2010-02-01T19:21:00.001-06:00

President Obama today released his FY2011 Budget Proposal to Congress, calling for a freeze to federal library funding under the Library Services and Technology Act (LSTA), the primary source of federal funding for libraries.

Under the President’s plan, LSTA would be level-funded at $214 million.

As Americans deal with the weakened economy, they are using their libraries more than ever before, visiting them over 119 million times each month. American Library Association (ALA) President Camila Alire said freezing federal funding for libraries at this time of increased demand will hinder libraries from serving job-seekers, who are flocking to the library for help with online job searching and applications, resume writing, computer classes and much more.

“During this time of hoped-for economic recovery, public libraries are one of the greatest tools our nation has, and a lack of federal support jeopardizes this critical institution,” Alire said.

“President Obama often speaks about helping America get back to work, and libraries are critical access points to information and resources that are helping job-seekers every day. Unfortunately, countless libraries in our country are suffering from state budget cuts that have resulted in staff loss, reduced hours, or even closures. Many libraries have managed to efficiently use what little resources they have, but they are hanging on by a thread.

Federal funding may be a small percentage of the funding America’s libraries receive, but it is critical. The ALA calls on Congress to support America’s libraries by not only restoring the funding lost to libraries in the President’s budget proposal but by increasing the funding, which is desperately needed.”

The President’s budget also included a $400 billion investment into education but did not include specific funds for school libraries. Alire said the federal government should invest in school libraries to ensure every student graduates from high school with 21st century skills.

“It is alarming that the President did not recognize the value of school libraries in today’s schools and include them in this effort to improve education,” Alire said.

“Research repeatedly shows that a well-funded and fully staffed school library program with a state-licensed school librarian is an integral component of a student’s education.”

American Library Association

National Library Week

2010-02-01T12:31:00.004-06:00

For the last several months we have heard it over and over again:

"Our library budget has been cut".

With that in mind, the Chasing4Life Team began to work on new programs and new program incentives that would fit library budgets so that we could become a part of the solution and not the problem. We know that events at the library are important, and in fact, we believe that the library has become an integral part of every community's infrastructure more than ever before so reaching out to the community with education is more important than ever!

This year, National Library Week is April 11-17 and I find it interesting that the theme for this year's National week is "Communities Thrive @ Your Library".

Now is that time to take advantage of a national marketing campaign, cross-marketing avenues, social media and the program incentives we have been offering. Communities really DO thrive at the library! During tough economic times, libraries see more and more folks coming in to educate themselves, learn how to write resumes, brush up on procedures and news, use the internet and generally just utilize every aspect of the library!

A thriving library makes for a thriving community and budget cuts cannot deter the library from boldly standing up and saying "HERE! WE FOUND SOMETHING YOU NEED!"

With hundreds of libraries booking events with us, we have seen the picture pretty clearly too often; libraries pay WAY too much for WAY too little. That's why we have created entire days of programming for age groups starting with pre-schoolers and ending with Senior Citizens to maximize the potential of each and every day.

No good book has one or two chapters; every librarian knows that, so why not contact us today and see just how many chapters a day at the library with Chasing4Life can have?
Imagine a day filled with severe weather, earthquake, hurricane, lightning, geology, paleontology, climate change, and more. Watch your community grow stronger before your very eyes as they are reintroduced to a library filled with life-changing education on every shelf!

Our country is wrought with disasters from natural to man-made. We believe that with more education we will need less response and that an educated community is a resilient one. It is our goal as we tour to help communities thrive.

You can contact us through the website at www.chasing4life.org and within 24 hours you'll be on the phone with a very passionate, very excited, pro-library team member.

We look forward to seeing you this year.

We are proud of our sponsors!

2010-01-28T16:48:00.001-06:00

Magnum Boots USA Steps in to Lend Support to Haiti

Modesto, CA (January 26, 2010) – Following the devastating 7.0 earth quake in Haiti earlier this month, Magnum Boots USA answers the appeal to fill the need of some basic human necessities-shoes. Recognizing that shoes are critical to help survivors locate others trapped in the rubble and safely begin the rebuilding process. Nine hundred pairs of boots and shoes were donated to soles4souls.org, which will be distributed to victims of the earthquake so they are able to safely reconstruct their lives.

“Our hearts go out to our Haitian neighbors as we struggle to comprehend the magnitude of this disaster, and we cannot forget how important basic necessities – such as shoes – will be in the ongoing rescue and rebuilding efforts,” said Bill Berta, CEO of Magnum Boots USA. “We deeply appreciate the work of Soles 4 Souls and encourage everyone to look into their own closets in support of this tragedy.”

For ways to help those in need, please donate your gently used shoes to Souls4Souls. For more information please log into www.soles4souls.org for details.

About MAGNUM
For over 15 years, Magnum has been the leader in offering unsurpassed comfort, technology and value in uniform footwear used by law enforcement, military, fire/rescue and emergency medical agencies around the world. The Work Collection offers safety footwear for construction, trade and industrial personnel. Distributed in over 100 countries, Magnum footwear is made to stand up to the most demanding situations while offering uncompromising comfort and performance. For more information, visit www.magnumboots.com.

9 Steps to Avoid Compassion Fatigue Without Failing to Care

2010-01-25T11:20:00.001-06:00

The term “Compassion Fatigue” has been used to describe the reluctance of donors to keep giving after the initial wave of appeals connected with large disasters such as the 2004 Tsunami, 2005 Hurricane season, 2008 Great Sichuan Earthquake and Myanmar Cyclone, or this month’s Haitian quake. Charities realize that the window of opportunity to solicit funds is typically only open for three to six weeks and so the pressure to bring even greater exposure and more insistent appeals is even stronger. However, the underlying cause of “Compassion Fatigue” is not just cynicism or stinginess on the part of donors but something more serious that those who work hands-on in humanitarian causes are more familiar with; Secondary Traumatic Stress.

Traumatic Stress is brought on when we experience events that are highly abnormal. Our organization, OperationSAFE is dedicated to helping children who have gone through trauma such as disasters, abuse, trafficking, and extreme poverty. These children have a difficult time functioning in normal life after what they have been through. Typically, they “handle” this inordinate stress by trying to block it out or withdrawing within themselves. Hopelessness and despair are common. However, traumatic stress is not limited to the children alone, but also to those who care for them, whether it is the family or humanitarian workers. As these caregivers hear their stories and witness their suffering, the very same responses naturally occur – a strong desire to withdraw and the loss of hope that anything will actually make a difference.

When we train volunteers and teach parents how to deal with trauma in children we also give them suggestions on how to keep themselves from developing Secondary Traumatic Stress Syndrome, in some degree the same suggestions are helpful for all of us as we struggle to keep a heart of compassion in the midst of unrelenting bad news from Haiti.

The Best Way to Care for Others is to Care for Yourself!

In the field we know that lives are depending on us so it is vital that we take care of ourselves so that we can care for them,

* Eat, Sleep and Relax as you normally would,
* Make sure to Exercise Physically to help relieve stress,
* Avoid the use of Chemicals to either enhance performance or induce rest.

Share the Care!

If there is only a one-way flow of stress coming in, it rapidly becomes too much to bear. One way to reduce the strain is to share it in part with others,

* Talk about the things that are heavy on your heart with friends and supporters,
* Journal, write a blog, send an e-mail to a friend, tweet,
* Pray, meditate, or have a small group discussion with others who care.

Look for Signs of Hope!

Unfortunately, bad news is news. Good news doesn’t often make the front page unless it is dramatic. However, there are less dramatic stories of hope that surround us every day. Be on the look-out for the signs of life returning to normal.

* Make a point of writing or sharing one good thing that happened each day,
* Look for lessons that can be learned even in the midst of the worst situations,
* Celebrate even the smallest victories and personal accomplishments.

I believe that one great contributor to compassion fatigue in the public is that the media overexposes the need and underexposes the great response and difference that is made in people’s lives. This is the nature of the media of course and it is much easier to report the thousands dead than to find each story of individual lives that recover. Another contributor to compassion fatigue is the vast scale of donations that are given to charities and the lack of communication of the results. Donors are given a full disclosure of the pain and suffering but are deprived of the hope and results needed to relieve the trauma they have been exposed to.

My recommendation for those who seek to be compassionate without fail is to become personally involved with a smaller charity – volunteer for hands-on work, give time to be on their board, lend them some of your passion and creativity and share in the reward of seeing lives changed for good.

Re-“printed” with permission
Copyright Operation Safe

To see original article CLICK HERE

Operation Safe

Here's the update!

2010-01-21T12:57:00.000-06:00

Between playing catch up after last week's work in Haiti and the demands of preparing for the launch of our upcoming tours, the blog will be a little quiet this week. Please make sure you visit the website at www.chasing4life.org and follow us on Twitter and become a fan on our new FaceBook page! This will keep you in the loop and will help pass some time until we get to you here in the blog with an update about all the changes, new sponsors and new tour dates!

Haiti Today

2010-01-13T19:59:00.004-06:00

Today was a day of sadness and fear once again in Haiti. Contact is still minimal, but there a some heroes there, walking the streets, feeding us information as they walk. The reports are staggering and heartbreaking. There is little to say and so much to do as we search for the missing, pray for the trapped and hope. Always hope.

Once again night has come to Haiti and the sounds of prayers being sung fills the air.

There is a man I want to meet someday, just to shake his hand; tirelessly he has kept us updated. We pray for strength for him and his family.

His last update as I write...

"Night has fallen..the night seems to take so long..I guess those that are buried alive in the rubble are feeling it the worst..Prayers."

The Lord is near to those who have a broken heart...(Ps 34.18)

2010-01-13T14:00:00.000-06:00

AP EARTHQUAKE VIDEO HERE

EARTHQUAKE IN HAITI

2010-01-13T02:48:00.001-06:00

Our prayers are with those affected by this earthquake in Haiti. We are attempting to reach several families in Haiti and passing along what we find on our Twitter (visit www.chasing4life.org).

Ps 46:1-2 God is our refuge and strength, an ever-present help in trouble... tho the earth give way and the mtns fall into the sea.

Failing an IQ Test

2010-01-07T13:30:00.004-06:00

You know what? I am about out of patience with a lot of people.

I have had several phone calls today, and had many more last night from people wanting to know what the weather was going to be like. Today I went and jump started cars for people that never thought to start their own vehicles on and off as the weather was getting worse.

I spent Christmas Eve rescuing people trapped in a car that had no boots on, no heavy coats, no scarves and no gloves with them.
Over the last couple of days I have tried my best to get one thing across to people about power outages...
THEY HAPPEN.

Listen, my team presents hundreds of programs each and every year all over the country on disaster preparedness. We blog it. We broadcast on television stations and through newspapers we are partnered with. If you are stuck in the cold with nothing in your car today or sitting in your house with no groceries and a drifted road? Do not call me today. You do not want to hear what I have to say.

I saw a news story over Christmas with the headline "Bad Weather Cause Of Interstate Fatality".

This was a gross mis-statement on the part of the newspaper. If they had done their research, they would have seen that NDOR had been advising people all day to not travel on that Interstate. STUPIDITY was the cause of the death.

Power companies used to be a big target of mine. After all, 6 guys in a single truck for a single downed pole? Gimme a break, right? How hard can it be? And to really tick you off, they ALWAYS hook up your neighbor first and save you for last!

Yep, that was my opinion for years.

Three years ago I was fortunate enough to travel to North Carolina and spend a day with a crew of linemen after a tornado. We started out early in the morning and I pretty much figured we'd stand around all day.

4 hours later I wanted to go home. I could not believe how hard they worked! It took FOREVER to get one pole up because of the people that kept stopping to ask us to go to their house FIRST!
I spent the day with these guys. Hardcore is the only way I could describe them. When the day ended, the foreman said everyone could go home and nobody stopped!
"I'm not going home until these families have lights" one of them said to the boss.

Folks, our government and organizations like Chasing4Life, The Red Cross and others have been telling you for years to put together a home disaster kit. We've been telling you to put together a plan. We have been telling you that your survival is ultimately in your hands. We have been telling you that responders cannot get to EVERY house FIRST. We have told you the same thing about electric companies.

You know what we have?

Folks with no plan.
Folks driving in severe weather to the store because they have no supplies.
People out today in nothing but coats with no boots or gloves or scarves or hats.
People complaining about their power being out.
People banging flashlights on tables because the batteries are dead.
Smoke alarms with no batteries.
Cars with no survival kits in them.

Next week, when the wind dies down and the weather is a bit warmer, be smart. Go get a kit together for your home. Buy some batteries. Put jumper cables, water, some snacks and some clothing in your car. Buy a weather radio.

I realize some of you are out there doing it right, and for that, I apologize for the ranting. For the rest of you...quit being stupid.

Now, if you have another minute or two, check out this blog from Dawson Public Power in Nebraska. CLICK HERE

Rural Life. The Good Samaritan Life.

2010-01-04T13:53:00.002-06:00

When we first founded Chasing4Life we decided to fight complacency, ignorance and apathy. We rarely jump on a bandwagon and fight for a cause or a campaign and we certainly never involve ourselves in political fights. It has been a pretty good decision so far and I have no intention of making Chasing4Life an organization that marches around buildings holding picket signs or rushing courthouse lawns to scream an opinion.

With that said, I am going to step out of a comfort zone a little and voice a concern that I believe is directly connected to Chasing4Life’s mission statement and purpose as a disaster preparedness education organization.

I believe we could be facing a very real disaster with consequences that go far beyond anything being considered right now here in our own backyard. If you are reading this blog from outsoide our Central, Nebraska area, bear with me; I don’t do this often.

One thing you learn living in a small town or rural area is who your friends are. Recently, a good friend ended up in the hospital due to a heart problem, so of course, concerned, I called to see how he was doing. I had waited two days, not wanting to interupt the time spent with family, and by the time I called, he shared how all of his neighbors had already made arrangements to get his corn in from the field while he was hospitalized.

That’s rural life. It is how we get things done, it is how we treat people.

I remember the first time I saw Kearney’s Good Samaritan Hospital. The walls of glass, the large buildings, the sprawiling campus... I was not only intimidated, but concerned. See, I grew up on the outskirts of Chicago and I knew how big hospitals treated you. I was pretty sure Good Samaritan was going to be the same way, for here was this progressive medical facility sitting in the middle of Nebraska, out of place.

Here is what I found out.

I found out that Good Samaritan is staffed by people that live, eat and play around it. They’re rural people, small town people, good people. My original fears quickly fled when I was treated as if I was family; as if I was a neighbor.

My family laughs and pokes fun at me, calling me the “Tim Taylor” of the family. I tend to utilize the hospital quite a bit. It is said that I could fall down in a room made of marshmellows and still break my leg. I guess it is true; I have come to know Good Samaritan pretty well.

It has been my experience that no matter where you are in the hospital, what floor you are on or who is on duty, you are going to be treated as if you are their only patient. you can walk into the ER and never wait to be seen. you can sit in the waiting room by radiology and watch the fish and chat with the intake nurses. You can be in the cardiac unit surrounded by family and feel as if you are at home, safe and secure.

I know...I’ve been there.

There is a difference between doing your job and being your job. With my track record for health and injury complications, I have been in and out of alot of hospitals, some of them ranking in the Nation’s top 5, but I have NEVER had the treatment I received at Good Samaritan right in Kearney, Nebraska. The folks at this hospital don’t just DO their job, they ARE their job. They BELIEVE in what they are doing, and as a patient, you feel that.

Good Samaritan Hospital has one of the highest level trauma centers and neonatal intensive care units in Nebraska. Their facilities and physicians treat bones and joints, cancer and heart disease, and are equal to any in hospital in a larger metropolitan area.

Almost two years ago, I was forced to begin talking about plans. You know what I mean; the ones nobody wants to talk about. You see, I was beginning to have heart problems and circulation problems. After several visits to the doctor, there seemed to be no solution nor a diagnosis. The last straw was to go to Good Samaritan.

I’ll admit, despite my high opinion for the facility, I was pretty sure I would get a brief exam and be sent home after more tests. I was wrong. The staff literally “assembled”. They acted as if I was their main priority, in fact, I felt like I was their only patient.

I am alive today because of the men and women that are Good Samaritan.

So why am I writing all of this in my blog?

Pretty much because I can. Also, because I think I need to.
See, talk of a second Kearney hospital has begun to gain momentum.

It seems that there is a group of Doctors and investors looking to build a second hospital in Kearney.

If Good Samaritan was in a state of disrepair and overcrowded to the point of providing poor service, I would set bricks myself for a new facility, but in this case, what is about to happen is going to divide the medical community, separate fantastic teams and threaten the continuity of trauma services! This isn’t about competition in a market, but to me, seems almost like having two U.S. Armies. Pay scales would steal better snipers to one, atmosphere would draw qualified infantry o the other, one would have the Jeeps, one would have the tanks...God help us when war breaks out and we count how many Generals there are!

Now I specialize in a few fields, and NONE of them are in Healthcare at this level, but I know what I know. This new hospital will be Doctor-owned, which seems to open the door for all kinds of manipulation and charges to the patients as Doctors determine their own financial destiny under the guise of “care”. Trust me, in many ways, a hospital is very much like a service garage.

What’s in a name? “Good Samaritan” might say it all. A non-profit entity serving its community with all its might and not only meeting requirements but exceeding all expectations is a rare thing. It is about neighbors. It is about family.

With new reports of low scores regarding health disasters being given to the State of Nebraska right now, (See This Story By Clicking Here), should we REALLY be dividing health care and trauma response right now?

We’ll continue to update you on the developments, and you can be sure we’ll journal the outcomes and effects.

Happy New Year

2009-12-29T16:26:00.002-06:00

Click to enlarge

2009-12-22T23:00:00.000-06:00

Happy Holidays!

2009-12-22T22:53:00.002-06:00

With 2009's final blast hitting the country, the Chasing4Life team will be busy navigating roads and reporting conditions throughout the holiday. We want to wish you and yours a very Merry Christmas and the very happiest of holidays. If you are in the path of all this weather, please do not let our efforts this year go to waste...stay prepared, stay alert and stay safe.

We want to thank all of you that supported us this year and we are looking forward to what looks to be an AMAZING new year.

As you spend some time with your families this next week, stay tuned to our Twitter and keep us in your prayers.

Happy Holidays!

Time's runnin out!

2009-12-17T19:02:00.002-06:00

Aside from transmission work now needed on one vehicle and the alternator going out on another, it was a pretty good day! The Iowa Library Tour for next year appears to be needing more dates as response is better than hoped for, so we'll be spending some serious time in the fields of dreams.
Colorado is a state we have not spent much time in, and now, with bookings filling up- in Colorado we are excited about the prospect of making new friends to the west!
Other tours coming together nicely include Tennessee, Kentucky, Illinois and Nebraska! Wow, what a busy year ahead!
If you have been THINKING about booking an event, you need to at least email us soon. Tour dates and open slots have filled VERY quickly this week and it is possible that you miss your chance if you wait much longer!

Tragic Loss-Henderson, TN

2009-12-13T21:03:00.003-06:00

As we tour, we make friends and those friends quickly become family. This Monday was to be the day that we touched base with our new friends and family in Tennessee to arrange for a return tour. It is tonight that we are truly saddened to find that one of the towns we grew to love has suffered a horrible, tragic loss.
Captain Dennis Cagle, a police officer in Henderson, Tennessee (Chester County) was shot on Thursday and passed away this morning. Alannah and I were shocked to hear of the loss and are truly saddened. Our prayers and thoughts are with the folks in Chester County as they deal with this horrible loss during what should be such a joyous season.

2009-12-11T15:57:00.001-06:00

Magnum Boots

2009-12-11T15:48:00.003-06:00

At the end of year, Chasing4Life trucks and equipment get new graphics, new looks and new equipment. With each new sponsor, our strength is renewed as we know that another company, another organization, another individual has chosen to see value in our effort. With massive goals ahead of us as a team, it is heartening to know that we have so many supporters behind us.
Today we want to thank Magnum Boots for joining the Chasing4Life team of sponsors.

For over 20 years, Magnum, a division of Hi-Tec Sports USA, Inc., has been the leader in offering unsurpassed comfort, technology, and value in uniform footwear used by law enforcement, military, fire/rescue, and emergency medical agencies around the world. These boots are distributed in over 70 countries!

Over the course of the last several years, the team has been in some pretty serious circumstances and the one piece of equipment that always fails is our boots. An old friend told me you don't always have to leg to stand on as long as you have good boots. Its true. While most people look for footwear with a fashion-sense, our world is a bit different. From tornado aftermath to hurricane recovery, from search & rescue to emergency response, from wildfires to floods to blizzards, we needed the right footwear that could hold up to Chasing4Life standards and needs.

We got 'em.

Watch for Magnum Boots and Hi-Tec Sports to appear on our home page within the week and check out their incredible line of products. We're gonna put these boots to the test, believe me.

For more info on Magnum Boots, CLICK HERE.

Nebraska Winter Storm Pictures

2009-12-09T12:54:00.001-06:00

Media: Please credit Chasing4Life

Wednesday December 9, 2007

2009-12-09T12:52:00.005-06:00