Wow! What a week! One of the most important events in many of our lifetimes just occurred this past week. After 30 years of inarguably a corrupt and repressive government, the Egyptian President received a strong boot in the pants by the country’s own people. And what impressed me the most was that 1) relatively few people died and 2) it happened in large part by the power of the country’s youth!
OK, Sue, this seems a LARGE stretch to emergency preparedness, right? Au contraire! The youth of Egypt and the world are a much different breed from those of us from an earlier generation. Today, they communicate FAR more than we did at that age. They text, they tweet, they Facebook, they blog. And when Mubarak’s regime decided to pull the plug on the Internet for Egyptians, that was apparently “it!”
So, the point is that communication has changed drastically and it is really up to us to use it. Many people who felt lost in New Orleans after Katrina “found” their family via Facebook. Blogs gave a voice to those who wanted to let others know that they were broken a bit, but not beaten, and gave people a reason to hope. Text messages reached places that normal voice messages could not.
Communication will probably be the thing that will mean the successful survival after a major disaster. Yes, some services will be disrupted and possibly out for a while, but when we have so many ways of communicating, one will eventually be our way to life and recovery.
So, tweet, blog or log on to that Facebook now and start your own revolution to be prepared.
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