September is National Preparedness Month (NPM), a time of year to assess how effectively your community is properly planning for a disaster. This year’s theme is “Don’t Wait. Communicate. Make Your Emergency Plan Today.” To help you communicate and celebrate NPM, ready.gov offers this useful NPM Social Media Kit.

Emergencies & Disasters is a key topic for ICMA and its community. Here are 8 of the best ICMA resources on different aspects of emergency planning:

1. Strategic Disaster Planning:  A Karen Johnson and Avery Share authored PM article that focuses on the big picture planning that goes into disaster preparedness.  

2. Integrating 311 into Disaster Response & Recovery-A Toolkit for Local Governments: During emergencies, local 911 systems can be overrun with calls and inquiries. This toolkit describes how to use a 311 system to take the burden off 911.
3. Wildfire Preparation and Response: Continuing droughts in the western part of the country raise growing concerns among local governments about wildfires. This blog post has some useful resources to help you develop a wildfire response and recovery plan.
4. Flood Mitigation and Management: Similar to the wildfire blog post, this one has 5 resources to help mitigate the impacts of floods.
5. Innovative Approaches to Planning for Public Health Emergencies: As highlighted recently with the spread of the Zika virus, local governments should regularly review and update their public health emergency response plans, and this article can help.
6. Engaging the Whole Community in Disaster Preparedness: This article covers the importance of involving everyone in your community when developing an emergency plan.
7. This resource is a 2007 ICMA e-book entitled Emergency Management Principles and Practice for Local Government (2nd edition). It offers a comprehensive approach to building sustainable, disaster-resilient communities while presenting the legal, social, and political context of disaster preparedness.