DHS Case Study. Hurricane Irene

OEC Case Study:  Hurricane Irene Response in North Carolina

As part of our efforts to share the progress made by the Nation’s emergency response community in enhancing interoperable communications, the DHS Office of Emergency Communications is developing a series of case studies using real-world examples on how training and planning have made a difference in responding to natural disasters and other emergencies.  Attached is a case study about how emergency communications training helped North Carolina emergency responders keep communication systems operational during Hurricane Irene in August 2011. 

This is only one of several case studies under development, and we welcome your suggestions on other topics.  If you have a real-world example that you would like to share, please contact OEC External Affairs at: OECExternalAffairs@hq.dhs.gov.

We appreciate all of the work you do to ensure our emergency communications capabilities help keep our country safe.

DHS Office of Emergency Communications 

• Case Study_Hurricane Irene_Final-2012.pdf

How to Find Out If a Social Media Account is from the Government

Every day, the government uses social media services like Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube to communicate with you and provide easy access to government benefits and services.

But unlike most government websites, which are hosted on a .mil or a .gov domain, social media sites are hosted on commercial domains. Without the .gov or the .mil, it can be difficult to determine which social media accounts are official government sources of information and which are impersonators.

To help solve that problem, we recently launched a social media registry in English and Spanish, where you can confirm the validity of a variety of government social media accounts. Learn more about the social media registry.

Visit the social media registry to check the validity of government social media accounts.