My Plans for “August is National Emergency Management Awareness Month”
Preparing, Educating, and Engaging for Safer Communities Everywhere (with some verbosity from CoPilot)
August each year in the United States will now be known as National Emergency Management Awareness Month—a critical opportunity to both educate the public about what the heck Emergency Management really represents, and to renew our professional field’s commitment to whole-of-community preparedness, resilience, and life safety in the face of adverse impacts from all types of threats and hazards.
As the month approaches, here is what I am doing: a) as an individual, b) through my Emergency Management consulting firm, c) through the CEMIR, and finally d) as an elected national board member of the International Association of Emergency Managers. All of this should dovetail together into a comprehensive plan to raise awareness, foster community engagement, and equip individuals and organizations with the knowledge and tools necessary to better manage incidents which become emergencies, disasters, catastrophes, and beyond. The ultimate goal: to cultivate a community culture where preparedness is second nature, and our collective response is swift, organized, and humanely effective.
First and Foremost: I do a ton of Writing
I will be promoting both existing and new work, in both short and long form:
I wrote a very comprehensive book on the elemental aspect of water, as it related to Emergency Management. This book is pracademic – meaning it is for both practitioners (local EMs in communities, hospitals, universities, water treatment plants, just about everywhere) and academics (lots of case studies from around the world, tons of academic research and analysis). There is a free-to-read online chapter which introduces Emergency Management. I will be promoting this during August.
I wrote a kid’s book about how a family prepares for, responds to, and recovers from a small-scale disaster – one where they have to evacuate to a shelter. That book is also translated into Spanish, at this point.
I published in July of 2025 a free e-book on leadership, mostly from an EM perspective.
I continue to write a monthly blog post for the EMNetwork, as well as one for the CEMIR. Both include topical and timely intelligence for EMs.
I am starting to get much deeper into creating short-form videos. This awareness month is a good place to get some experience and maybe generate a few laughs along the way.
Much of this work promotes the importance of personal, family, and workplace preparedness. I strive to enhance collaboration between emergency management agencies, local organizations, and the general public. I want to encourage the adoption of resilience-building practices across communities. Finally, I believe it is critical to empower individuals to take proactive steps in preparing for and responding to emergencies.
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Next: The Consulting Firm
My firm is called Barton Dunant – Emergency Management Training and Consulting. Barton Dunant for short. I have a couple of focus areas, some pay me; others are pro bono.
1. Health Care/Public Health Emergency Management
My firm consults with healthcare providers on their Joint Commission needs, as they relate to Emergency Management. We also created a free-to-use open-water safety program for families to use at home pools, small lakes and rivers, etc. – places where there are no lifeguards present.
2. Children in Disaster Concerns
We teach a Pediatric Disaster course and promote family choice for feeding of infants and toddlers, through webinars, speaking engagements, research, and written advocacy work.
3. Water-related Threats and Hazards
Capitalizing on the work in the book, we now teach a 15-week online course which goes through the chapters of Emergency Management Threats and Hazards: Water, with a copy of the e-book included in the tuition fee
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4. Knowledge – our WordPress site
Search our site for free – you will find a list of Open-Source AAR/IPs from some of the biggest disasters, FAQs about Emergency Action Plans, some paid training options, and a whole lot of well, knowledge.
5. Volatile Communiques
We get a bit more political – still maintaining our professional standards though – over at Medium, where we write op-eds mostly with an Emergency Management twist. Much of this is paywalled for revenue generation, but it is free if you are a Medium subscriber.
6. HSEEP-Compliant Exercise Templates
We have a small library of - now free to download - HSEEP-Compliant Exercise Templates. At one point our business model was to charge for these, but no one bought them. So now we give them away for free. If you need help with virtually running your exercise (or you will pay us to come help you, on top of our consulting fees), we can help you facilitate and evaluate just about any exercise, including all of ours.
The trick here is how to pay the bills, even the costs to maintain websites and software needed for daily work. Too many folks in our profession are cheap, and in many cases it’s our own fault that we volunteer, donate, and undercharge others for our expertise.
Which side of this argument are you on?
Next: The CEMIR
The Center for Emergency Management Intelligence Research or CEMIR, has an overall focus on promoting the concept of including Emergency Management Intelligence (EMINT) into the mix for all phases and aspects of Emergency Management. This is actionable intelligence needed to support life safety, incident stabilization, property/asset protection, economic/environmental restoration, and recovery. The LIPER, in other words. In addition, we operate
– which includes podcasts - currently with these areas of EMINT focus:Crisis Communications, including the idea of teams in support of organizational crisis communications
K-12 School Safety, including anti-swatting research, advocacy for Behavioral Threat Assessment/Action Management teams, and more
Organizational Continuity (both of operations and governance)
A greater sense of Belonging, through Inclusion, Diversity, Equity, and Accessibility. What we have trademarked as IDEA=B™.
Last: The IAEM®-USA
As a Certified Emergency Manager™ or CEM®, and as an elected national board member of the IAEM®-USA, I have a code of ethics (two of them, actually) to uphold. You will always see me pointing out that relationship, when we talk about the IAEM-USA here at
. We don’t promote the EM Network through our positions at the IAEM-USA, but rather the opposite. This work of promoting the National Emergency Management Awareness Month, is a good example. Lots of what I do on LinkedIn follows this line as well. I even wrote a ‘here’s how I am going to do social media now’ article, over there. Trying to be kinder and gentler. Just don’t try to challenge me on any of the stuff I noted above.
As National Emergency Management Awareness Month draws near, all of this work I am doing can be repeated, duplicated, amplified, or even countermanded by others in our profession. The more the merrier, I say. However, by working collaboratively together, we can transform awareness into action, empowering every member of our community to be informed, prepared, and ready for whatever challenges may come.
August is not just a month to remember emergencies—but a time to build a safer, stronger future for all.
And if you don’t know where to start – right here at
is as good a place as any. Tell all your friends to subscribe. Heck, tell all the people who don’t really like you to check us out, as well. If they won’t listen to you, maybe they will find something of interest from one of us.Because we do Emergency Management awareness 24/7 - and we are always open for business.
