Emergency Preparedness

Dangers of home fires for wheelchair bound

What seems to be a simple thing to do, get out of the house before the fire gets too bad isn’t so simple. Many fires start and and stay small for some time but crank out all kinds of gases that can force you to lose consciousness before you knew that there was a problem. [...]


Cyber-Shockwave underscored disabled issues during emergency

A war game was played out about a week ago where the United States was attacked through the Internet and the electrical grid crashed causing immeasureable problems across the country. The game was re-broadcast by CNN and it was a chilling realization that not only were the able bodied in big trouble, but the disabled [...]


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Changing drugs can increase their effectiveness

As we move up the ladder of drugs to ever more powerful pills we need to make sure we use them wisely. It is easy for pain doctors to keep writing prescriptions to the same pain killers that work for you over time. That may sound like a good idea, but over time drugs tend [...]


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Gov’t plans to get rid of disabled in “emergencies”

State governments are making plans on how to deal with disabled people during emergency situations. New York State has devised a set of triage standards that are to be followed by doctors during times of emergency. Originally public views were to be put into these standards, but that quickly fell by the way side as [...]


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Virus outbreak simulated event in N. Florida – Oct 17th

There are very few times where the disabled can help the first helpers on a scene to understand the best way to help those that are in trouble – this is one of them. Pandemic Pandemonium is an exercise for North Florida neighborhood and community leaders. The idea is to use real residents as a [...]


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The deaf community and emergency responders

SCRN has spent a tremendous amount of time trying to get the disabled on the same standing as those with no disabilities. To be honest we did not get very far because most of the folks in power were not disabled and higher management didn’t care what happened as long as bad press wasn’t generated. [...]


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States adding disabled to list of those to help in emergencies

For the first time in California, a disaster drill that was held in Riverside included disabled people. Up to this point, the state assumed that disabled people would either be helped by their caregivers, sent to hospitals or somehow make it out of the area before the disaster overwhelmed state and federal officials. The Riverside [...]


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In emergencies, the disabled still forgotten

Spinal Cord Resources Network has been reporting on the total inability of counties, states and federal agencies to help the disabled in times of emergencies for years. After working closely with Florida officials we had made some headway but much work had to be done. We had hoped that other groups working with other states [...]


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Deaf community needs emergency broadcast information

As we move into tornado season for many in the Midwest and south, we are once again running into problems getting emergency broadcasters to display weather emergencies for the hard of hearing. Most of the alerts that are sent by weather reporting bureaus is on the form of an audible alert explaining what to do [...]


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Disabled trapped in apartment

A woman in Canadian woman is trapped in her apartment for three days and counting because the elevator is broken. Her apartment is on the third floor and she has no way of using the stairs to go to the grocery store or even collect her mail. Man calls have gone to the building management [...]