Official insights from Public Health – Seattle & King County staff
We know you aren’t as prepared for an emergency as you could be. Don’t feel badly–it’s true for everyone, and even though we are the health department, we’re not going to wag our finger. But we aren’t above wagging some tails.(Go ahead and groan.) We’re here to help encourage you to take those next steps […]
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By Ashley Kelmore One of the challenges when you work on emergency response plans is that you don’t know when—or even if—your plans will be put into action. I work on plans for emergencies that involve large numbers of injuries or even fatalities, so on one hand, I hope we don’t have to activate them. […]
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On Tuesday, September 21, Public Health staff, along with partners from the Washington Department of Health, participated in a drill to help us practice emergency response. During a drill, we are given an initial scenario along with frequent “injects,” or new curve balls that require a reaction, to make the experience more true to life. […]
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As we say goodbye to September–which is also National Preparedness Month–we asked some staff about what they’ve done to be ready for a disaster or emergency. Click on the photos to learn more. And if you haven’t done much yet, don’t feel badly. But get started, perhaps taking a tip or two from these examples. […]
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Ali Jaffe-Doty is the Emergency Operations Manager for the Preparedness Section at Public Health – Seattle & King County. Last week, she deployed in response to a request from the state to assist the Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation.
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By Ashley Kelmore – Our hotter-than-usual summer in the Pacific Northwest likely won’t reach the extremes of the 1995 Chicago summer heat wave, which killed 733 people. But some of the issues from that catastrophe are relevant to us here and now, and Dr. Eric Klinenberg describes them in his fascinating book Heat Wave.
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