With a deep exhale and as we look forward to a new year, the DEM Community Engagement Team is taking a look back upon this energetic, dynamic, and FUN fall season of preparedness. And without further ado, the DEM 2012 fall preparedness lineup!

So, we have this great app. It's called SF Heroes and it's on iPhone and Android smart phone platforms. If you haven't already, we hope you'll download it and join the fun.

A few months ago on the DEM Blog, we posted Coming Soon to a YouTube Channel Near You, a blog about filming the SF Heroes promotional video and its goal to to explain what the SF Heroes app is and how it promotes emergency preparedness--in a fun and campy way.

With September being National Preparedness Month and October being the 24^th anniversary of the Loma Prieta Earthquake, this fall the San Francisco Department of Emergency Management encourages you to take these reminders as incentives to build upon your preparedness and resilience.

Last April the San Francisco Neighborhood Emergency Response Team (NERT) conducted its annual citywide drill. For those of us who were there, wasn't it cool?! And for those of us who were not, join the Neighborhood Empowerment Network (NEN) Director Daniel Homsey, NERT Program Coordinator Lt. Erica Arteseros and Advisory Board Member Lynn Jacklevich and experience the camaraderie of this social preparedness activity. Want to feel the camaraderie first-hand?

As we close this year’s National Emergency Medical Services (EMS) week, DEM wants to highlight the recipients of the 14th Annual EMS Agency and SF Paramedic Association Award Program. Aligning with this year’s National EMS Week theme, EMS: more than a job. It’s a calling, the recipients of this year’s EMS Awards were honored for their dedication and commitment to the field of emergency medical services and those they aid.

During last week’s San Francisco Board of Supervisors meeting at City Hall, 9-1-1 Dispatcher Stephen Golden received a commendation for being DEM’s Dispatcher of the Year. Stephen was selected for this honor based on his outstanding work during a 9-1-1 call from a visitor to San Francisco, who needed to send medical aid to her family residence in Columbia, Maryland. The caller explained she was visiting San Francisco to speak at a symposium and that when she called home, her three year old son answered the phone and told her his father was lying on the floor in the closet.