I’m getting this out a little later than I’d planned due to getting hit hard with a nasty cold late last week. What follows is an important effort regarding the safety and welfare of people with disabilities (and other underserved folks) in areas where disaster strikes. I’m cutting and pasting the alert from Portlight Strategies directly below, with additional info about the organization below the alert. (Taken from this link)
R U READY?
Attention Blogger and Social Media Users,
Portlight Strategies, Inc wants to invade the internet with the importance of emergency preparedness and people with disabilities with the “R U Ready” media blitz. April 1st to April 7th. Portlight will use social media to spread awareness through blogs and status updates. Portlight is asking bloggers to blog about emergency preparedness and people with disabilities and then share your blog on Facebook and Twitter using the hashtag #ruready. Some examples of topics are:
– Families with children with disabilities
– Service animals and shelters
– How to shelter in place
– How to prepare for a disaster if you are dependent on equipment (vent, powerchair, etc..)
– Transportation during a disaster
– Alternative formats (braille, large print, ASL interpreter, etc..) in a disaster
During the week of the RUReady media blitz, we will all change our Facebook profile picture to the below graphic. We encourage everyone to do the same.
Contact us and let us know if you are interested in participating at holly@portlight.org or shari@portlight.org
Not Dead Yet is concerned with the life and death issues that affect disabled people of all ages. The dangers that disasters present were brought into sharp focus (and then deliberately obscured) during Hurricane Katrina. Some disabled people were abandoned to drown and die in a nursing home that was flooding – and never evacuated. During that same time, patients at Memorial Hospital in New Orleans were allegedly murdered so that medical staff could honestly leave no one alive behind (threw them off the lifeboat to save themselves).
While few stories are as stark and as outright dehumanizingly deadly as those, there’s still a clear pattern of neglect and abandonment of disabled people in disasters.
That’s one of the main reasons that Portlight Strategies exists. If you want to know more about the organization – and you should – read “about us” on their site and make sure to read through the “our story” section. You can also read this 2011 guest post by Paul Timmons (CEO of Portlight Strategies).
Watch this blog this week – we’ll be publishing a blog post by a member of our Board of Directors on the topic. And if you have stories to share – please share them with the good folks at Portlight and share the word!