Yesterday, Molly and I had the immense pleasure of joining forces with American Red Cross, the Charlotte Fire Department, and the infamous Sara to tear up some pavement and bring fire safety knowledge to the masses and offer free smoke alarms to those who need them!
Haaaay, Molly!
Sara sharing all that preparedness information!
On our trek, we distributed door hanger bags off Harrisburg Road including information from various organizations, including not only American Red Cross and Charlotte Fire Department, but Piedmont Natural Gas, Emergency Management, and others. If you aren't one of the lucky ones who received our door hanger bags yesterday, I have some links here so you can have the information as well! Check it out!
It was truly a wonderful time, and to CFD and ARC, we cannot thank you enough for allowing us to join you for an afternoon of safety spreading in east Charlotte. Can't wait to do it again!
As always, stay safe, y'all, and enjoy your weekend!
In case you haven't noticed, Molly and I have had a pretty rad start to our week, and yesterday was absolutely no exception. In fact, we were so excited to be able to join one of our Charlotte-Mecklenburg Volunteer Emergency Support Team (CM-VEST) members, Tara, with her after-school group Girls on the Run at Tega Cay Elementary over in Tega Cay, South Carolina. We were even able to take a ten-minute pit stop on the side of Lake Wylie and soak up a few beautiful moments in nature before we arrived at the school. It was a beautiful day, if I do say so myself!
Perfect day for a quick stop by the lake!
At this presentation, we showed Tara's students a sample of a bag that we would want for everyone to have ready somewhere near where they sleep in case he or she wakes up in the middle of the night to a smoke alarm sounding and needs to escape within that two-minute (on average) window. It is a great idea to assemble one if you haven't already; you would be amazed what will fit into an average-sized backpack. Ours includes many of these items:
Bottle of water
Snacks
Book
Toilet paper
Soap
First aid kit
Tissues
Notebook and pen
Bag for trash
Flashlight
Batteries
Toothbrush
Toothpaste
Baby wipes
Blanket
This is certainly not an exhaustive list, and this is the main message of the presentation we were able to share with these girls. What you keep in your emergency go-bag is, essentially, completely up to you, and it should reflect what you will need in that immediate period of time, as well as some things that will provide comfort to you in a time of stress.
At the end of the presentation, we had the girls draw out some of the items that they would choose to keep in their emergency go-bags. Molly and I were quite impressed with the thought the girls put into their supply lists, especially with those who thought to include matches or a lighter (What if you need to heat something up with a fire?!), as well as those who brought chargers for electronics like cell phones which could lose battery life quickly during an emergency response. Of course, Molly and I had to draw out some items we would keep in our go-bags as well. Molly's comfort items included Cheese-Its, a kimono, her Kindle, cash (in case you can't make it to the bank!), and while they certainly wouldn't fit in her bag, she plans to carry out her cats and guitar with her as well. I decided to stow away some pretzels, dice, a can of kidney beans (my favorite comfort food) with a manual can opener, as well as my favorite shirt and sweater, and my trumpet!
Tara, thank you so much for letting us share our preparedness knowledge and admittedly wild and crazy spirits with your Girls on the Run session yesterday, and please know that we had the most amazing time and cannot stop telling hilarious stories from our shared afternoon!
We all have some great ideas for what to keep ready in case we need to get out fast!
If you have any questions about emergency go-bags or want some presentation ideas for this age group, feel free to e-mail me at rob@handsoncharlotte.org. We love to keep sharing preparedness ideas with as many people as we can, and we like to think everyone in this world is as excited about preparedness as we are.
Yesterday, Molly and I had the immense pleasure of joining organizations from all around Charlotte at Duke Energy's health fair uptown. We were able to represent the American Red Cross, and had a blast sharing preparedness information with hundreds of Duke Energy employees, who (if y'all are reading this, I'm totally serious) really might be some of the most entertaining people I've met uptown.
Max (another Red Cross volunteer) poses at our table with us!
It was really awesome to be able to share seasonally relevant information with so many bright personalities, and if you thought we were finished, you really need to think twice. All the information we shared on our table can be found on the Red Cross website in the links below. Be sure to click through the tabs about how to prepare, and how to respond during and after!
Duke Energy, thank you for hosting us yesterday; I really can't repeat enough how wonderful of a time it was (and Mary was the most awesome host in the hospitality room)! Red Cross, thanks as always for allowing us to help spread your message. And to all of you, enjoy your day, and as always,
So I know we have sang our praises for Do1Thing's amazing campaign quite a few times at this point, but they really only keep getting better, and we are thrilled to share their new campaign for emergency preparedness within businesses and organizations. With this new campaign, Do1Thing offers one action per month to take to assess your business or organization's ability to sustain a disaster.
This morning, I came to work to find a quite applicable and concerning article in an e-mail from my supervisor (Thanks, Marcel!). Apparently two-thirds of today's smartphones have their FM radio switch turned off by the provider.
While it makes sense from a financial standpoint for the provider to want for consumers to use data-dependent sources for their news, this raises a problem when power is lost and these data-searching apps suck up unnecessary battery life that could be used much more sparingly with FM radio waves. Further, Bowman notes that much of what she has found out is that mobile companies are doing this because there isn't a consumer demand for the FM ability to be switched back on. You may want to check and see if your provider allows for the use of FM radio on your phone, and if they do not, you may want to start asking for a switch. We never know how long we may be without power in the wrong situation, and the ability to find FM radio can be important if phone lines are bogged down like they were during Superstorm Sandy.
Also, Charlotte, you're on a tornado watch today so please be careful and be extra safe out there, y'all!
With our couple hours of clearly visible sunlight finally breaking through after these few rain-soaked days, we figured it was only appropriate to make a sun safety post with summer just around the corner and our having already felt some pretty warm temperatures here in the Queen City!
One of the niftiest videos (from 34 years ago, as fate would have it) regarding sun safety was put out by the Slip! Slop! Slap! campaign in Australia. As this article in the Sunshine Coast Daily reports, Australia has the highest percentage of skin cancer cases in the world, with the number of cases there having risen by 60 percent from 1982 (immediately after the start of the Slip! Slop! Slap! campaign) to 2010.
Enjoy the original ad from 1981 below:
The Slip! Slop! Slap! campaign's message was simple: slip on a tee shirt, slop on some sunscreen, and slap on a hat to gain protection. Since 1981, they have added to seek shade and slide on some sunglasses.
And not necessarily this type of shade.
Regardless, the Slip! Slop! Slap! campaign's message still rings clearly. It's always smart to cover skin if able, add sunscreen to whatever remains exposed, use a hat and sunglasses to protect our skin and eyes, and seek shade when able to cut down on exposure to UVA and UVB rays. But, if you're like me and Molly, you probably want to know a little more about the science behind and effects of sun exposure, so we have some pretty exciting resources below:
And since you know we have to add a crazy jam, and because the Madison Square Garden show was amazing back on March 30 and I'm not sure if life has been the same since, here's some alt-J for your afternoon!
However, last summer we were quite lucky with the way our temperatures never seemed to spiral out of control like I have seen in summers past. Who knows what this year may hold! And since it is the start of ozone season, I would love to pass along some great resources to help us all better understand the threats presented by high levels of ozone. Frankly, I didn't know all of the science behind it, and while it might the espresso talking (Thank you, Rhea, for your wonderful office gift to me and Molly!), it was pretty cool to see the effects of different levels of ground-level ozone.
Looking for an easy way to check the air quality in your area? Look no further! Another amazing resource I found this morning is AirNow.Gov, where you can see the air quality not only for the entire country, but also in further detail for your local area just by typing in your zip code. Click here to check it out!
As always, stay safe, Charlotte, and enjoy your wonderful cloudy Wednesday! And, since you know we can't go without sharing a corny song with minimal relevance, enjoy some Phil Collins. The video's pretty weird, and we're pretty into it.
