Floods, tornadoes and other severe weather can cause chaos in a community. As Harvest Public Media’s Amy Mayer reports, the Federal Emergency Management Agency hopes its smartphone app can help people prepare and recover.
The FEMA app lets you upload photos from a disaster, find a shelter and check on conditions for up to five different locations. Brenda Gustafson of the Kansas City FEMA office says the app also has checklists for preparations and details specific to each kind of event.
"You can actually identify what type of disaster, and it gives you the information for before, during and after; all the information for a specific disaster," she says.
Gustafson says the app will even remind you what’s left to do if you’ve started preparing but haven’t finished. The agency hopes to get a half million users for the app, which is available for Apple and Android phones.