When You Need Them The Most, We Help You Reconnect! | WeAreSafeAndSound.com | 100% Free Emergency & Disaster Mass Notification and Communications Service.

The Belmont's Find Their Son

Greg and Marci Belmont's family of four heard about We Are Safe And Sound from a family friend and heeded advice about proactively signing up. Not giving it much thought, Marci registered all four family members as well as their two dogs.

Although their family had never been in a disaster of any type throughout their 20+ year union, Marci discussed the possibility of disaster striking with their two sons, Jeff and Bill, and how the family could keep a central point of communication using the We Are Safe and Sound service. Marci printed We Are Safe And Sound Wallet Cards, and directed the boys and her husband to keep the card in their wallet.

Six months later, the Belmont's found themselves trying to urgently contact their eldest son, Bill, while away at school in Florida due to a Category-3 Hurricane making landfall. They hadn't heard from Bill despite the Floridian local news asking locals to urgently evacuate. Unable to reach Bill by mobile phone, dorm phone, and mobile texting, the Belmont's worst nightmares had been realized not being able to communicate with Bill to know of his whereabouts and safety. Greg and Marci began phoning Bill's friends and their parents, the school, and anyone they could think of that may have come into contact with Bill. No luck.

Two hours later, the Belmont's youngest son, Brad, called home once he heard the news about the hurricane in North Carolina to inquire about his brother Bill. Little did the family know, Bill's cell phone had lost battery power and was unable to be recharged due to his friend's apartment complex encountering power loss from the hurricane. After endless attempts to reach Bill in his dorm and being greeted that his voicemail box could no longer accept messages, Brad remembered the We Are Safe And Sound service his mother spoke of months before.

Brad called the number to check to see if Bill had left a message, and sure enough, Bill had remembered the service. Shortly before losing his last bar of signal and battery, Bill recalled his mother's conversation about centralized communications in the time of disaster. With the cell phone service a hit and miss during the torrential downpour and high winds, Bill left a message to inform his family that he had food/water and clothing, and was okay in a friend's apartment.

Once the Belmont's heard the news from their youngest son about their eldest son, they rejoiced knowing that he was okay and would contact them at the first chance available.

And you too can have this same peace of mind when you register today!

Two Families Locate One Another Across States Using Web Search

We're not in Kansas anymore, Dorothy! Too bad little Dorothy McNorwood's family were not watching the movie, The Wizard of Oz, and had lived through one of Tornado Alley's worst twisters recorded in history. Losing their home and all person belongings, a search and rescue team found the McNorwood family digging themselves out of their storm shelter.

Due to massive winds and rains, the McNorwood family was taken to a local shelter 50 miles from their home and small town of Yota, Kansas. Upon arrival, the shelter staff began collecting their personal information and asking if they had family back in their hometown. The staff help the family register and notify themselves as Safe And Sound using a find lost family, persons, pets and loved ones web site: www.wearesafeandsound.com. Not having blood relatives near by, the McNorwood's made mention to the shelter staff that the closest of kin, the Johnson family, had been their neighbors for 30 years.

The Johnson family too had been rescued and was displaced with family members in another state. Worried that the forbidden had happened and that they would never see their lifelong friends and family, the McNorwood family, the Johnson's had remembered the search and rescue staff giving each member a packet geared to help and assist with re-establishing their lives. Reading through and completing each form, they came across a web site helping individuals and families to find evacuated or displaced family members and gave it shot. As a last effort to reconnect, this service stood a better chance than calling all the hospitals, shelters, and emergency centers within a 100 mile radius of Yota.

Long story short, the Johnson and McNorwood families did reconnect utilizing the web search feature. The Johnson's were able to search by name until they found an identifiable McNorwood with a Safe And Sound message and contact information of where the family had been displaced.

And you too can have this same peace of mind when you register today!

One of Mother Nature's least predictable disasters: The 1989 Loma Prieta Earthquake.

In the blink of an eye, it happened! Minutes before the scheduled start of the third game of the 1989 World Series in San Francisco, a magnitude 6.9 earthquake rocked the California coast from Monterey to San Francisco, originating near the Loma Prieta mountain peak just south of San Jose. In a matter of minutes and seconds, the world of the bay area "hustle and bustle" would never be the same for nearly 6 million residents.

Although some 20 years have passed since that hot, still weather day on October 17, 1989, everyone throughout the bay area has some sort of earthquake story. From animals acting strange just before the quake to anxious nerves for days and weeks due to tumultuous aftershocks, life was never the same after that day for millions of bay area citizens.

One of the most reported problems during this time was the lack of communications throughput to support the city's and surrounding areas large call volume over a maimed and overly-utilized communications infrastructure. Keep in mind this disaster happened some 10 years before the period of fast Internet usage and growth. Most of the communications difficulties stemmed from the following:

earthquake-induced power failures;
damage to buildings in which facilities where housed;
damage to critical communications equipment (i.e. computers);
disruptions in phone communications between the impacted area and the outside world;
damage to message-transmission facilities;
excessive radio traffic.

Because of the communication difficulties, media, EMS, hospitals, churches, shelters and citizens received inadequate information about the disaster from local governmental agencies. Forty-three percent of hospitals and shelters had inadequate back-up power configurations, and five hospitals sustained total back-up generator failures. Many hospitals performed partial evacuations to make-shift shelters at churches or gymnasiums across the bay area.

From people trapped on highways, under collapsed buildings, cars and highway infrastructure to gas-leaked fires of entire neighborhood blocks, Californians were left to fin for themselves, their families and friends. For the first couple of days, if one was separated from family and friends, there was no for sure way to identify anyone safely, or communicate/notify anyone of a non-injured/injured person's well-being and whereabouts.

Fast forward 20 years to the very anniversary date of the disaster, and the landscape of communications has changed quite a bit. With cell phones, texting, Twitter, Facebook, and the Internet in general, now people are able to keep up with family and friends in a matter of minutes. However, today's challenge is being able to mass communicate to everyone at once using their preferential medium of choice. Some want to be notified via a text or Twitter while others want Facebook, while our aging grandparents still prefer the news or even telephones. How does one communicate and notify all, and do it only once?

No matter the preference, We Are Safe And Sound provides everyone with a 100% free, easy-to-use communications tool to find and notify your family and friends at once. From the smallest emergency to the largest disaster, leverage our mass voicemail, email, and web search notifications and capabilities to reach immediate/extended family, friends, church members or colleagues who matter most, when it matters the most!

Let this be a wakeup call to prepare and register today!