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What's New Jersey Doing?

Region II Administrator Stephen Kempf (left) presents Sean Waters with the agency’s first 'Employee of the Year Award.'They're at it again.

Public Information Officers (PIOs) from New Jersey 's 21 counties met in West Trenton this month for their first meeting of 2009. County PIO Summits have been held quarterly over the past year, hosted by the New Jersey Office of Emergency Management (NJOEM). They are designed to both share ‘best practices' for public information during emergencies, and to develop new ones. And they're already showing results.

Last year the group found that many common emergencies in New Jersey – flash flooding; hazard materials release; evacuations and shelter in place instructions – did not have the necessary codes to interrupt regular programming. This oversight delays public notification of an emergency, as well as potentially life-saving instructions.

Led by NJOEM PIO Nick Morici, the group identified six emergencies common in New Jersey and a priority code for each. Next month, they will be ask the State Emergency Coordinating Center (SECC) to adopt these codes, giving them "auto pass-through” status within New Jersey 's Emergency Alert System.

"Tailoring the codes to reflect the risks our residents actually face will speed notification and outreach efforts in all future emergencies,” Morici said.

This month's meeting featured a presentation by Howard Butt, a NJOEM training officer who is also the state's coordinator for the Community Emergency Response Teams (CERT). New Jersey leads the nation with 15,000 trained CERT volunteers operating on 450 teams. Yet Butt used the forum to enlist support on augmenting those numbers.

"We need every resident to know there are a lot of ways to be involved in protecting their communities,” Butt said.

CERT operates under the umbrella of Citizens Corp., which was launched in January 2002 to coordinate volunteer activities that make communities safer, stronger and better prepared. Citizens Corp also includes the Medical Reserve Corp, Fire Corp, Volunteers in Police Service and Neighborhood Watch.

Last Modified: Wednesday, 11-Aug-2010 14:34:00 EDT