As manager of the Governor’s Emergency Information Bilingual Hotline, I can proudly say that state employees and community volunteers always step up to the plate to help when severe weather roars through our state.
This year marks the 10th anniversary of the Hurricane Floyd disaster in North Carolina. Just 13 hours before landfall, the Governor’s Emergency Information Bilingual Hotline was activated for the first time. For the next five weeks, more than 380 dedicated state employees and bilingual community volunteers donated more than 4,000 hours serving as hotline operators providing callers with valuable emergency information at a time when it was most needed. More than 25,000 calls were answered during the first two weeks of operation.
Last week, the N.C. Commission on Volunteerism and Community Service, housed in the Governor’s Office, conducted a hotline briefing for more than 80 state employees. These employees, representing nine cabinet-level agencies, will serve as operators if the hotline is activated during the 2009 hurricane season. They are prepared to share important emergency information with callers such as the location of the nearest shelter and whether it is pet friendly, if evacuation orders have been issued in their county or which highways may be closed. They also will provide callers with information about what supplies might be needed by the survivors and if volunteers are needed in the clean-up efforts. And they will provide recovery information that can help survivors begin to gain a degree of normalcy in their lives.
The dedication and spirit of volunteerism displayed by the 2009 “class” of hotline operators are just as strong as that of the very first “class” in 1999. They are prepared and stand ready to respond by providing accurate, up-to-date, and often life-saving, information to people in our state who may be in harm’s way.
This is an important week for volunteerism and preparedness across the nation. Preparing for disasters is this week’s focus for President Obama’s summer volunteer initiative, United We Serve. There are many ways people in North Carolina that can volunteer in disaster preparedness activities that can result in better prepared families, communities, schools, houses of worship, senior centers and workplaces. Visit www.citizencorps.gov to learn about the more than 200 N.C. Citizen Corps community preparedness volunteer programs and teams in the state. Visit www.serve.gov to see if there is an existing preparedness project in your community where you might volunteer. If you don’t see a project, why not create your own project and register it on the Web site – the “how to” toolkit is right there for you on the Web site.
Also, learn how to prepare yourself and your family for disasters and learn what to do when disasters occur by visiting www.readync.org. I hope as you are traveling in our beautiful state you will see one of our ReadyNC billboards and be reminded that everyone should be prepared for disasters.