NYC hosts Ready New Yorker of the Month contest

January 15 '08: New York City has begun a contest to encourage individual residents to increase their preparedness. Through the Ready New Yorker of the Month contest, city emergency management officials pick one resident to showcase. Winners of the contest receive a go-bag containing supplies like batteries, emergency radio, flashlight and bottled water.

There was a similar contest in Colorado called What if Colorado? which pitted contestants' preparedness akin to a reality show such as Survivor or Big Brother. The winner of What if Colorado received $2,500. Organizers and participants of the televised event included King Soopers Groceries, City Market Food Stores and El Dorado bottled water.

John Solomon, the Ready New Yorker winner for November, and who is working on a book about homeland security and public preparedness said since the attacks on 9/11, he and his wife have been asking "what should we be doing to prepare for another emergency?"

Since then, Solomon said he has taken his area's CERT training, and then subsequently helped during a power failure on 1st Avenue, staffed a shelter at a Red Cross shelter after a plane crashed near the East River, "passed out Ready New York guides in Union Square during National Preparedness Month, and played a shelteree in a Hurricane Evacuation drill in Brooklyn."

January 2008's Ready New Yorker of the Month is V Grimes from Manhattan.