(TNS) -- U.S. Rep. Lou Barletta, R-Hazleton, recently examined how well prepared the United States is for a cyber-attack on the electrical grid.

The sub-committee heard testimony that states and localities should be prepared to face weeks, rather than days, of power outages following such an assault.

Barletta chaired a subcommittee hearing for the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee titled: “Blackout! Are We Prepared to Manage the Aftermath of a Cyber-Attack or Other Failure of the Electrical Grid?”

Filming is underway for the ReadyNova.org Call-to-Action video. Take a look at some of the pictures from the 522 Productions set!

Tokyo -- Southern Japan was hit by a magnitude 7.0 earthquake early Saturday morning, just one day after a quake killed nine people in the region.
Japan has issued a tsunami advisory for the nearby coast.

The quake's epicentre was near Kyushu, 1 kilometre south-west of Kumamoto and 12 kilometres north-east of Uto, according to the US Geological Survey.

Please join on June 25, 2016.  Attached you will find information on how to register your 4 person team, how to sponsor the event, and information on all the great prizes, food, drinks, and fun.  We hope to have every department and agency represented!  One individual will win a free spot in any of AEC's paramedic class of your choosing.

I look forward to it being a great day and hope to see you there!  Limited space so reserve your team's soon!

(TNS) - The City Council has discussed paying a contractor to help the city prepare natural disaster response plans.
Such preparation services could cost the city as much as $19,000, but the contractor would bring valuable experience navigating FEMA regulations, officials said.

The contractor’s services could also help the city obtain more reimbursement money from FEMA in the event of a natural disaster, a council member noted.

(TNS) - Individuals from the business community and the public sector came together Wednesday to discuss potential threats to the territory and disaster preparedness strategies.
“This was just the starting point. Now we’ve got to really keep the momentum going and move forward and do more of these types of things,” said Todd Patton, deputy director for planning and preparedness for the V.I. Territorial Emergency Management Agency.

New identification tags used locally and statewide should aid in tracking by simply scanning ID badges and using key ring tags to organize where responders should go.

Elisa Sand, American News, Aberdeen, S.D. | April 4, 2016

While the DC metro area is more than two weeks into official spring, Mother Nature has other plans.

The flood maps determine a property’s relationship to the established base-flood elevation of that area.
Green will become the favorite color for thousands of New Orleans property owners when the new FEMA flood maps finally become official at the end of the month.

That’s because green is the code for areas that will move out of flood zones and into areas with no insurance requirements – and the new map shows it washing over large sections of the city.

President Obama to host world leaders for a Nuclear Security Summit in an effort to stop potential attackers from using radioactive material to outdo the 9/11 attacks on New York and Washington.

James Reinl, Al Jazeera, Doha, Qatar | March 31, 2016