by Mark Hubbard

Director of the Baltimore County Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Management

On Monday June 4, County Executive Kamenetz reminded citizens of additional tools to help county emergency managers reach you with critical information in the event of an emergency.  And on the Baltimore County web page for emergency preparedness , http://www.baltimorecountymd.gov/Agencies/emergency_prep/index.html, you will find information to help you prepare for community emergencies.  Please take a look because in the world of today, information is power and society is on the go.   

To stay in touch, first, sign up to follow our Twitter feed to get updates about evolving events and actions taken by first responders.  If you live in Baltimore County and have a Verizon telephone number, we can call your home telephone to send critical time sensitive warnings.  If you want these messages sent to your mobile phone, and if you have an e-mail address, you can register that number by following the instructions on the emergency preparedness web page.   Finally, we always encourage you to sign up for messages and text alerts from local news and weather stations because today, news is published and distributed much faster than ever, meaning you can often follow events as they develop.  

So when are you likely to get a call or e-mail directly from your emergency managers?  We promise to avoid unnecessary interruptions to your day and generally only send very specific messages to very specific areas of the county.  And these messages are sent only for urgent safety advice.  In other words, if it is likely you already know about the event from other news sources, you probably will not get a call from us.   So please join us as public safety partners in being ready for unpredictable events.