When disasters threaten or strike, emergency managers and the citizens they serve are turning – in ever-increasing numbers – to America’s Emergency Network.

A pioneering Internet and satellite-based network, America's Emergency Network was designed by Bryan Norcross, former hurricane analyst for the CBS network, and Max Mayfield, former director of the National Hurricane Center, to fill critical gaps in the nation’s emergency management system.

AEN's goal: To be sure that every emergency manager – at the state level, in large counties or in small towns – has a reliable means to share vital information with the public, the media and other government officials. The satellite-based AEN system is designed to continue to work after a disaster when power lines, phone lines, cell phone towers and terrestrial Internet systems are knocked out.

This information is transmitted directly from emergency operations centers through the Internet to media outlets and, eventually, via cable and satellite television to anyone with conventional, battery or backup generator power.

Working in conjunction with AEN is AlertFM (powered by GSSNet), a comprehensive alerting system that employs an unused portion of local FM stations’ signals to instantly send text messages to an entire community or to specific neighborhoods or individuals. Alerts also are sent to FM-enabled mobile phones. AlertFM’s system is deployed in 9 states plus the District of Columbia and growing.

Rapidly expanding through Florida and eventually the nation, AEN already has helped countless citizens and won widespread praise for its service during Tropical Storm Fay’s assault on Florida and the threats from Hurricanes Gustav, Hanna and Ike.

AEN opened its then-in-development system in urgent response to those threats and successfully streamed real-time news briefings from numerous state and local operations centers.

Some of Florida’s largest newspapers, including The Miami Herald, The South Florida Sun-Sentinel, the Florida Times-Union in Jacksonville and the News-Press in Fort Myers provided convenient, free public access to the streams over their websites.

For the first time, Floridians and others had direct, easy and full access to news updates and to preparedness and recovery advisories from Florida’s governor and other state officials. Many Floridians also had complete access to crucial updates from local emergency management officials.