Jeff Braun - Emergency Management Coordinator [contact]

Alan Spears - Deputy Emergency Management Coordinator [contact]

Janette Walker - Senior Planning Coordinator [contact]

Bob Stone - Planning Coordinator - Homeland Security [contact]

April Redix - Administrative Manager [contact]

Shauna Evans - Planning Coordinator - Volunteers [contact]

Doug Barnes - GIS Coordinator [contact]

Lach Mullen - Public Information System Administrator [contact]

Valerie Regalado - Clerk 1 [contact]

Anna Hermann - Planning Coordinator - CERT [contact]

Terrance Harris - Technical Support Specialist [contact]

The Fort Bend County Office of Emergency Management (OEM) plans and prepares for emergencies, educates the public about preparedness, coordinates emergency response and recovery, and collects and disseminates emergency information. To accomplish this mission, OEM maintains a disciplined unit of emergency management personnel, including responders, planners, watch commanders, and administrative and support staff, to identify and respond to various hazards.

Our role of educating the public and disseminating emergency information means we want to be sending information in ways that the public wants to receive, as much as it makes sense. Increasingly, people are using Social Media to receive information on a daily basis. Fort Bend County recognizes this trend and wants to have a presence on Social Media sites where you, the public, can interact freely with us. for more information on social Media, and it's increasing importance in our community and the world, view the slide show prepared by OEM staffer Lach Mullen.

The necessary disclaimer

We are not endorsing any of the services listed below. We find them extremely useful for communicating with our community, but only use them because our community already is. If you want emergency information from us, there is no reason to sign-up for any of these services. They all exist to enhance our existing offerings, not to replace them. Any time you want true emergency alerts from us, you can register to receive updates on our website. Additionally, you can bookmark our site and it's RSS feeds to receive up-to-the-minute updates any time. You do not need to sign up for YouTube, Twitter, SlideShare or Facebook to receive emergency updates from our office.

These third party services do not constitute an official emergency broadcast system, nor are they official ways to contact us in a true emergency. If you have an urgent emergency, dial 911. Do not attempt to request medical or police assistance via social media. There have been numerous report of this happening, and in every case the person was endangered by neglecting to simply dial 911 for assistance.

Twitter

Twitter is an online short messaging service. It works much like text-messages, updates are limited for 140 characters, and can be SMS'd (Text messaged) to and from your mobile phone. It can also be updated via the web, an instant messenger program, and numerous desktop applications.

The OEM has a Twitter account here: http://twitter.com/fbcoem, and we use it to post emergency information, updates and alerts to the public, in addition to promoting preparedness and community awareness. Most of our updates are very short (like this H1N1 update).

In addition to posting information, we use an application called TweetDeck to monitor what's going on in the community. During the Pecan Grove Gas Well Blowout we tweeted updates, and replied to community members who mentioned us in their Tweets. The same thing was done during the recent snowstorm

How can you use Twitter to communicate with us?

For starters, follow us on Twitter. After that, let us know you're here by sending us a message. If you'd like, you can turn on Device Updates on your mobile phone and our updates will come to you as text messages.

After that, please feel free to reply to our tweets to ask us a question, and re-tweet our messages to your followers. If you find something you think we should know about, send us an @reply and we'll see it (see disclaimer above about real emergencies).

Finally, take a look at the folks we follow. We get a lot of good information from FEMA and other local response partners through Twitter, so there may be some interesting people and agencies there for you too.

Of course, in an emergency situation, always dial 911 for help!

Facebook

Facebook is an online yearbook of sorts where you can update your profile, chat with friends and share information.

The OEM has a Facebook page here: http://facebook.com/fbcoem/, where we post a link to everything we post on our website, in addition to replying to comments from you, our "Fans."

How can you use Facebook to communicate with us?

First, click on the FBC OEM Facebook page (or in the fan box to the right).

Watch for our updates, and feel free to comment on them or click  to share them with friends.

Click on "Subscribe via SMS" to receive our updates on your mobile phone from Facebook.

Click on "Suggest to Friends" to share our page with your Friends who may be interested in the Fort Bend County Office of Emergency Management.

Of course, in an emergency situation, always dial 911 for help!

YouTube

YouTube is a video sharing service which allows us to load and share videos with our community. Fort Bend County OEM has a YouTube Channel (http://youtube.com/fbcoem) we use to load and share interesting videos, and to favorite videos from other response partners, from storm information to tips for preparing for each of the major disasters we face in Fort Bend County. During an incident, we may use our YouTube Channel to update citizens using short video clips.

How can you use YouTube to communicate with us?

On our YouTube Channel page click on to subscribe to our videos.

You can also click on the "favorites" button on our Channel page to view some of our other favorite videos from our response partners.

You can always comment on our videos as well, but if you have an urgent question for us please call our office or submit a question using our online form at http://contact.fbcoem.org.

Of course, in an emergency situation, always dial 911 for help!

SlideShare

Slideshare is a site which allows FBC OEM to share slide shows with our community. Slideshare can be viewed as a YouTube for slide shows, it allows you to follow OEM, comment on slide shows, and favorite and share our presentations.

For our revently loaded slideshows, visit the Fort Bend county OEM's Slideshare account.

We pretty much only use SlideShare to display presentations on our site, so if you want to get a hold of us you're better off using our online form at http://contact.fbcoem.org.

We are committed to protecting the privacy and security of your visits to this website. Outlined below is our online privacy policy. If you have questions about this policy, please let us know.

Open Records Act and Legal Disclosure

All information collected from this site is subject to the provisions of the Texas Public Information Act.

Information about the Texas Public Information Act is available from the Office of the Texas Attorney General. We may be legally required to provide personally identifiable information to the appropriate governmental authorities. We will cooperate with law enforcement agencies in identifying those who use our services for illegal activities, and reserve the right to report any activities deemed to be illegal to the appropriate law enforcement agencies.

Collection and disclosure of information

To ensure we are able to communicate effectively with visitors to our web site, we collect some information that can be directly associated with a specific person. We call this "Personal Information," and it includes, by way of illustration, names, addresses, telephone numbers and e-mail addresses.

We collect Personal Information from eligible individuals who affirmatively request to receive e-mail or other services from us. We collect this Personal Information in order to provide these eligible individuals with timely information via e-mail regarding events, resources and issues.

It is our general policy not to make Personal Information available to anyone other than our employees, staff, and agents.

Online Comments and Personal Information

We treat your name, city, state, and any comments you provide as public information. We may, for example, provide compilations of your comments to county, city, state or federal leaders and other individuals participating in our efforts, without disclosing email addresses. We may also make comments along with your city and state available to the press and public online.

Opting out and modifying information

Subscribers to our e-mail list may terminate their subscriptions via a link at the bottom of each email sent from the Fort Bend County Office of Emergency Management. This is not a commercial site, and we do not send unsolicited commercial e-mail (SPAM).

Browser information collected on the web site

We log IP addresses, which are the locations of computers or networks on the Internet, and analyze them along with information about your web browser, computing platform, and internet connection in order to improve the value of our site. We also collect aggregate numbers of page hits in order to track the popularity of certain pages and improve the value of our site. We do not gather, request, record, require, collect or track any Internet users' Personal Information through these processes.

Privacy of our email lists

As noted above, we maintain e-mail lists to keep interested, eligible individuals informed about important topics, and individuals must affirmatively request to join them. We configure our contact management software to refuse to divulge the email addresses of our list subscribers to anyone other than those whom we authorize. However, we are not the author of this software, and are not responsible for any failures in the software to preserve subscriber anonymity.

Children's privacy

Because we care about the safety and privacy of children online, we comply with the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act of 1998 (COPPA). COPPA and its accompanying FTC regulation establish United States federal law that protects the privacy of children using the Internet. We do not knowingly contact or collect personal information from children under 13. Our site is not intended to solicit information of any kind from children under 13.

It is possible that by fraud or deception we may receive information pertaining to children under 13. If we are notified of this, as soon as we verify the information, we will immediately obtain parental consent or otherwise delete the information from our servers. If you want to notify us of our receipt of information by children under 13, please do so by contacting us.

Security

We maintain a variety of physical, electronic and procedural safeguards to protect your personal information. For example, we use commercially reasonable tools and techniques to protect against unauthorized access to our systems. Also, we restrict access to Personal Information to those who need such access in the course of their duties for us.

Your own efforts to protect against unauthorized access play an important role in protecting the security of your personal information. You should be sure to sign off when finished using a shared computer, and always log out of any site when viewing personal information.

We may have links to other, outside web sites that we do not control. We are not responsible for the content or privacy policies of these sites, and users should check those policies on such sites.

Changes to this policy

We will revise or update this policy if our practices change, or as we develop better ways to keep you informed about them. You should refer back to this page often for the latest information and the effective date of any changes. If we decide to change this policy, we will post a new policy on our site and change the date at the top. Changes to the policy shall not apply retroactively.

If you have any questions or concerns, please contact us.

Fort Bend County Office of Emergency Management uses Twitter to listen to you and see your tweets for up-to-the-minute information from citizen journalists during an incident. We also use it to engage you in conversation, answer your questions, and proactively push information when needed.

For more information on how Twitter works, view the informational video below:

For more information about Twitter's crisis applications, here are a few articles:

• Twitter and crisis communication–some thoughts from Neil Chapman
• Web 2.0 & The California Fire Crisis
• Twitter Communications in a Time of Crisis - The Great Peanut Recall
• Twitter proves invaluable in a crisis
• Firsthand Reports From California Wildfires Pour Through Twitter

Fort Bend County Office of Emergency Management

The Fort Bend County Office of Emergency Management (OEM) plans and prepares for emergencies, educates the public about preparedness, coordinates emergency response and recovery, and collects and disseminates emergency information. To accomplish this mission, OEM maintains a disciplined unit of emergency management personnel, including responders, planners, watch commanders, and administrative and support staff, to identify and respond to various hazards.

About Fort Bend County

Fort Bend County is a county located along the Gulf Coast region in the U.S. state of Texas within the Houston-Sugar Land-Baytown metropolitan area. In 2000 its population was 354,452; in 2007, the U.S. Census Bureau estimated its population to have reached 509,822, a 43% growth rate in seven years from the last U.S. Census. Since the 1970s Fort Bend County has been one of the fastest growing counties in the United States. It is named for a blockhouse positioned in a bend of the Brazos River, which was the center of life in the future county in early days. Its county seat is Richmond, while its largest city is Sugar Land.

About the Office of Emergency Management

An Office of Emergency Management (OEM) is an agency at the local, state or national level that holds responsibility of comprehensively planning for and responding to all manner of disasters, whether man-made or natural. An OEM may also be requested to provide consequence management for large special events such as major gatherings, visiting dignitaries, etc.

Emergency Management organizations often hold different names (such as "office of emergency preparedness" or "emergency management," but perform the same function. In the United States, FEMA is the agency responsible for emergency management on the national level. Examples of state and local agencies are listed below. Large federal and state agencies, such as the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) as well as private companies often maintain OEM's as discrete departments responsible for handling organizational emergency preparations and response plans.

About this site

This site exists to keep you informed on the happenings at the OEM and on current EM news throughout the region, state and country. Our goal is to provide a valuable online resource for other emergency responders, the public and the media.

Development of this site is funded by a grant from the US Department of Homeland Security, administered by the State of Texas Governor's Division of Emergency Management.

At Fort Bend County OEM, we are committed to ensure that our website's documents and features remain accessible to everyone, including people who use special assistive technology type devices and services. The technologies administered to build our website are based on and compliant with both the Section 508 (508) and Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) standards.

However, if you experience any difficulty accessing the information provided on this web site, need further technical assistance, or notice something on the site that is out of compliance with 508 or WAI, please contact us via the form on this site.

Thank you for visiting FBCOEM.com as we work towards an accessible county presence on the Internet.

For more information about 508 compliance, please visit Section508.gov.

For more information about WAI compliance, please visit W3.org/WAI.

RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication, and is a universal format for websites to use to syndicate content.

How does FBCOEM.org use RSS?

FBCOEM.org uses RSS feeds for Fort Bend County Emergency Alerts, Fort Bend County OEM News, Fort Bend County OEM Project Updates, and FBCOEM Recent Updates.

How do I use RSS?

As a web user, this is great news, since you can simply "subscribe" to the RSS feeds of sites you love and you will be notified of updates automatically.

A short video demonstration is below:

RSS Feed Readers

A list of feed readers can be found in the Wikipedia article, List of feed aggregators, but we recommend Google Reader, NewsFire (Mac), SharpReader (Windows), or Mozilla Thunderbird (All Platforms).