When safe room designers implement FEMA's safe room guidance in their projects, they can be confident they are using the best available information to guide the design and construction of a residential safe room. FEMA safe rooms provide near-absolute protection from the deadly winds and wind-borne debris associated with extreme-wind events.

When in doubt, throw it out. Don't risk injury or infection. 2: Ask for help. Many people can do a lot of the cleanup and repairs discussed in this book. But if you have technical questions or do not feel comfortable doing something, get professional help. If there is a federal disaster declaration, a telephone "hotline" will often be publicized to provide information about public, private, and voluntary agency programs to help you recover from the flood. Government disaster programs are there to help you, the taxpayer. You're paying for them; check them out. 3: Floodproof. It is very likely that your home will be flooded again someday. Floodproofing means using materials and practices that will prevent or minimize flood damage in the future. Many floodproofing techniques are inexpensive or can be easily incorporated into your rebuilding program. You can save a lot of money by floodproofing as you repair and rebuild (see Step 8).

Preparedness takes action! Learn more about hazards which can affect your community and ways you can take action to prepare and participate: Earthquakes can occur suddenly and be deadly. Most earthquake-related casualties result from collapsing walls, flying glass, and falling objects. Flooding is the most common natural disaster in the United States and can happen anywhere. Hurricanes have the power to cause widespread devastation, and can affect both coastal and inland areas. Tornadoes are one of nature's most violent storms, and can cause death, injury, and destruction within seconds. Wildfires can occur anywhere and can destroy homes, businesses, infrastructure, natural resources, and agriculture. Winter storms can occur anywhere and bring freezing rain, ice, snow, high winds or a combination of all these conditions. They can cause power outages that last for days or weeks; making it hard to keep warm and making travel very dangerous. Recent national tragedies remind us that the risk is real: an active shooter incident can happen in any place at any time. The best way to make sure you and your loved ones stay safe is to prepare ahead of time. Content: How to Prepare for an Earthquake How to Prepare for a Flood How to Prepare for a Hurricane How to Prepare for a Tornado How to Prepare for a Wildfire How to Prepare for a Winter Storm How to Provide Emergency Medical Help: First Aid Case and Kits Emergency Rescue and Transportation Procedures First Aid Handbook in Case of Injury: Specific Injuries Fractures Climatic Injuries

Introduction to Homeland Security: Principles of All-Hazards Risk Management, Fifth Edition, provides users with a substantially updated version of previous versions, clearly delineating the bedrock principles of preparing for, mitigating, managing, and recovering from emergencies and disasters, while also offering a balanced account of all aspects of homeland security. This new edition features coverage of the Boston Marathon bombing, analysis of the NIST Cybersecurity Framework for critical infrastructure protection, and examines the DHS "Blue Campaign to stop human trafficking. To provide added perspective, this edition features additional "another voice sections and examines the emergence of social media as a tool for reporting on homeland security issues. - Provides users with a comprehensive understanding of the bedrock principles of preparing for, mitigating, managing, and recovering from emergencies and disasters - Features coverage of the Boston Marathon bombing and analysis of the NIST Cybersecurity Framework for critical infrastructure protection - Examines the emergence of social media as a tool for reporting on homeland security issues

Disaster Risk Reduction for the Built Environment provides a multi-facetted introduction to how a wide range of risk reduction options can be mainstreamed into formal and informal construction decision making processes, so that Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR) can become part of the ‘developmental DNA’. The contents highlight the positive roles that practitioners such as civil and structural engineers, urban planners and designers, and architects (to name just a few) can undertake to ensure that disaster risk is addressed when (re)developing the built environment. The book does not set out prescriptive (‘context blind’) solutions to complex problems because such solutions can invariably generate new problems. Instead it raises awareness, and in doing so, inspires a broad range of people to consider DRR in their work or everyday practices. This highly-illustrated text book provides a broad range of examples, case studies and thinking points that can help the reader to consider how DRR approaches might be adapted for differing contexts.

"Wind storms impact human lives, their built as well as natural habitat. During the last century, society's vulnerability to wind storms has been reduced by enhanced knowledge of their impact and by controlling exposure through better design. However, only two of the wind systems have so far been considered in the design of buildings and structures, i.e., synoptic winds resulting from macroscale weather systems spanning thousands of kilometers, e.g., extratropical storms, and mesoscale tropical storms spanning hundreds of kilometers and traveling fast, e.g., hurricanes/typhoons/cyclones. During the last two decades, enough evidence has surfaced to support that a third type of very localized wind storms, the non-synoptic winds, are the most damaging in some regions of the world. Thus far there are no design provisions established for the codification of these wind storms. Their characterization in terms of climatology, wind field and intensity, frequency and occurrence, as well as their impact on the built environment, is slowly developing. This handbook presents the state-of-the-art of knowledge related to all these features including their risk, insurance issues, and economics. The research in this area is on the one hand more arduous given the reduced scale, the three-dimensionality, and nonstationary aspects of these non-synoptic winds while, at the same time, its understanding and modeling are being aided by the emergence of novel modeling and simulation techniques which are addressed in this handbook. This will serve as a guiding resource for those interested in learning about and contributing to the advancement of the field"--