Site to check out

I came across a site that might be helpful background info for a lot of people, The Safety Library

The site has information on:
Disasters (disaster safety, emergency management, terrorism)
Hazards and controls (biological safety, chemical safety, environmental safety, fire safety, physical hazards, etc.)
Industry Safety
Laws and Regulations
Safety Management

In addition to compiling research, the site also has a great number of links updated constantly on the issues listed above and others (the list is pretty long, but I selected the most relevant ones for the list above).

Handicapped Evacuation

I spoke to someone who told me there is a "Mayor's Office of Disabilities", so this would probably be a good place to start on evacuation procedures. After this, would be the Office of Emergency Management (OEM) which is responsible for coordinating the activities of all city agencies during an evacutation - which means their responsibility is to get an agency to tell citizens where to go (and their responsiblity ends right there).

This slack, though, is picked up by the New York office of the American Red Cross - which has a much better handle on the fact that during an emergency there will be actual people that need to be dealt with. They give talks around the city a few times a month on emergency preparedness and the head public communications there is a very nice person (at least when I spoke to her two months ago). When I told her I didn't know that anyone in the city was actually working with the public on what to do in an emergency, she paused and said, "in that case, we need to be doing a better job." and she was sincere about it, so I took it in a good way.

I should get her name out of my files and then either Molly or me can go after her, and possibly go to one of her public presentations to ask her specifically about Handicapped Evac.