Guest Blogger Submissions

PortlandPrepares aims to engage our entire community in disaster preparedness. The website’s Blog seeks to provide content about topics that are relevant to everyone from community members with no prior preparedness background to active trained NETs. It’s usually not possible to appeal to everyone at once, but we try our best.

If you have knowledge about disaster preparedness, please share it. We need you to help keep the website vibrant and interesting. You don’t have to be a writer. Just provide the info, and we’ll whip it into shape for publishing. We may edit your post slightly to fit our style and tone. We are pleased to give you credit as the author of your post – just let us know how you’d like to be identified. We cannot pay for submissions. If you decide to submit a post, you do so with the knowledge that you will not be entitled to any compensation.

SUBMISSION REQUIREMENTS:

Your content must:
  • Be about disaster preparedness and relevant to the work of Neighborhood Emergency Teams.
  • Be of an inspiring, positive, or educational nature. Gloom and doom isn’t helpful.
  • Be your own original work. Plagiarism is not permitted. When quoting others, please cite your sources accordingly.
  • Be factual. You have done reasonable research to confirm its accuracy.
Your content cannot:
  • Be unlawful, harmful, threatening, abusive, harassing, defamatory, vulgar, profane, obscene, libelous, invasive of another’s privacy, hateful, embarrassing, harmful to minors, or racially, ethnically or otherwise objectionable to any other person or entity.
  • Contain religious, political, or social agendas.
  • Solicit readers in a way that may benefit you politically or financially.
It would be nice if your content:
  • Is approximately 200-1,000 words.
  • Includes at least one feature image. Two or three is even better. Images must be your own or you must have the right to use the images and allow us to use them. If you’re including pictures of people, you must ensure that you have their permission to use them. NET’s have all agreed to have their likeness used. We may add our own images if we feel they will help improve the post.

POTENTIAL TOPICS:

  • Tell an inspiring or informative story about your experience in a disaster. What was it like? What did you learn from your experience?
  • Provide a write-up of NET training events and drills. Feature people in your neighborhood, but provide anonymity when appropriate and follow photo guidelines above.
  • Interview a disaster preparedness or emergency management professional.
  • Tell us what we need to know about rivers. Which bridges are most earthquake resistant? What are some ways to cross the Willamette other than a bridge? Which parts of Columbia/Willamette are best to drink from? Etc.
  • How can we keep warm in the winter without power?
  • What do we need to know about fire suppression?
  • What do we need to know about fire starting?
  • Tell us about water purification and/or filtration. What’s the difference and which will we need to know how to do?
  • What are the best place(s) to store an emergency preparedness cache?
  • Provide a disaster medicine refresher (splints, stopping bleeding, carrying people, etc).
  • Tell us about Portland geology. What’s under the earth in different Portland neighborhoods (Tabor, airport, St John’s, Linnton, etc)?
  • Explain the importance of knowing how to manage Spontaneous Unaffiliated Volunteers, and provide examples from real disasters.
  • Explain the importance of documentation in a disaster, and provide examples from real disasters.
  • What do we need to know about getting out of town? How will we know if/when to go, and how will we do it?
  • How long until help arrives? When would FEMA arrive with food/water?
  • The Triangle of Life: Why is it controversial and what can we learn from it?
  • Earthquake insurance: To buy or not to buy, that is the question.

SUBMISSION PROCESS:

Email us at ArborLodgePrepares@gmail.com if you’d like to write a guest blog post. Feel free to run the idea by us before spending time writing the post. We reserve the right to reject any submissions that don’t meet our guidelines or we otherwise feel are not a good fit with our blog.