During his National League of Cities (NLC) presidency, Mayor Anthony Williams has stressed the need for an innovative resource tool to provide information about cities and city issues. The result is the National City Network which is intended to serve city leaders, citizens, academia, public officials and the media.

With Washington serving as the host for the Multi-City Summit, November 19, 2005, the NLC identified city officials in Florida, Louisiana, North Dakota and Texas to participate. The representatives from the cities in each state were asked to address a specific issue as it relates to emergency preparedness such as working with evacuees, city-state partnerships and other areas related to overall emergency preparedness.

Louisiana mayors discussed how citizens were faring during the recovery process after Hurricane Katrina and the importance of established relationships with neighboring communities. Other topics included insight into how Baton Rouge has handled having its population double, Katrina's impact on day-to-day operations and the lessons learned about advance preparations.

Mayor Williams focused on what the District is doing to prepare its citizens for an emergency. Barbara Childs-Pair, Director of DC's Emergency Management Agency spoke about the Citizen Preparedness Guide, mailed to each home in the District. Millicent Williams, Deputy Director of DC Citizen Corps gave information about citizen emergency preparedness training available through Citizen Corps programs to include the Community Emergency Response Team and the Neighborhood Corps.

To find out more information about training or to register for a class, view the quarterly training schedule on the Neighborhood Corps training page.