Emicus.com Launches to Provide Real Time Information as Hurricane Ida Nears

MIAMI--(BUSINESS WIRE)--As Hurricane Ida approaches land, a new website, Emicus.com is available to help people prepare, react and recover from the storm. Emicus.com is an easy-to-use website that combines official government information and news coverage with user-generated images, videos and reports to provide a wealth of helpful information. Emicus.com provides real time, accurate information about Hurricane Ida including preparedness tips, Red Cross shelter locations, gas availability, water and sandbag distribution points, storm tracking and more.

What makes Emicus.com unique is the combination of information from government, private businesses and the public. “You can’t look at the public as a liability, you have to look at them as a resource,” stated FEMA director Craig Fugate at the Annual Natural Hazards Research and Applications Workshop in Broomfield, Co., earlier this year. Emicus.com is the nation’s first independent site that empowers the public to share vital information and harness this information to help the entire community.

On Emicus.com people can find information from resources such as FEMA, NOAA, the State of Florida, the Red Cross and more. Emicus also aggregates Ida news and reports from sites such as Twitter, YouTube and Flickr.

The most powerful feature of Emicus is the technology which offers users the ability to easily access and share information directly on the site, through a mobile phone or an iPhone application. For example, people can share gas station wait times and availability, ATMs that have money or supermarkets that still have water, batteries, ice, etc. “User generated information has the ability to help entire communities in disasters,” stated Merrill Brown, a former Editor-In-Chief of MSNBC and an advisor to Emicus. “By sharing information on Emicus people help their entire community.” He continued.

“Our goal was to create technology that would help people face disasters such as Hurricane Ida,” stated Paul Berger, the co-founder and Chief Strategic Officer of Emicus. “For example, our I’M O.K. notification system allows individuals to quickly notify their family and loved ones that they are O.K. by sending a simple text message to Emicus. Best of all, the site and our features are free to the public.”

About Emicus

Based in Seattle, WA, Emicus.com is the initial product of U.S. Emergency Operations Center, a privately held technology company, whose mission is to fill a critical gap in providing disaster-related information. The company maintains an east-coast office in Coral Springs, FL that specializes in hurricane preparedness, response and recovery. More information on the company and website are available at www.emicus.com. Emicus is a trademark of the U.S. Emergency Operations Center, Inc.

Twitter is a registered trademark of Twitter, Inc. You Tube is a registered trademark of Google, Inc. Flickr is a registered trademark of Yahoo!, Inc.