After Oklahoma tornado: Five steps to prepare for a natural disaster

In the wake of the May 20 tornado in Moore, Okla., it's important to review how best to be prepared for a natural disaster. Here are five action steps for personal preparedness from the National Center for Disaster Preparedness at Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health. 

5. Engage with your community

Government officials tell us "Plan to be on your own for 72 hours." You and your neighbors may not have access to emergency services immediately after a disaster. Know your neighbors before an emergency, especially those who may need special assistance.

Volunteer with Community Emergency Response Teams, the Medical Reserve CorpsRed Cross, or your local Emergency Management Office.

This list originally appeared on the website of the National Center for Disaster Preparedness at Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health.

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Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

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