Putting Down Roots in Earthquake Country Publications at FEMA Region IX

The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) is responsible for supporting earthquake-related education, outreach and awareness activities as part of its responsibilities under the National Earthquake Hazards Reduction Program (NEHRP), as authorized under Public Law 108-360. One of the most effective publications for meeting this need within the State of California has been the "Putting Down Roots in Earthquake Country" series, which has individual publications that target several regional portions of the State, including Southern California and the North Coast. This publication was originally developed with support from FEMA and the USGS, and it rapidly became one of the most effective outreach and awareness product for California. This series of publications was originally developed and continues to be updated, reproduced and distributed by the Southern California Earthquake Center (SCEC). FEMA has for several years funded SCEC through a purchase order to purchase these publications and fund their distribution. Several of them were recently updated using funds from NOAA to include tsunami information. SCEC has exhausted its current supply of several of these publications. For the southern California publications (both English and Spanish), these were distributed at higher than anticipated rates as part of the State-wide ShakeOut awareness exercise. For the North Coast publications, these were distributed at higher than anticipated rates following the magnitude 6.5 earthquake that struck there on January 10, 2010. FEMA has and continues to use these publications as part of its earthquake mitigation activities in California as directed under the NEHRP. FEMA needs to have access to an ongoing supply of the "Putting Down Roots in Earthquake Country" publications and the capability of storing and distributing these publications to support our earthquake mitigation and awareness outreach.