Breaking News

Tell us your needs and let us help you add that special polish for your kits  Emergency Operations Center, Disaster Drill or some special recognition for your staff and volunteers. 

9/11/2006:

On this five-year anniversary of the terrorist attacks, our thoughts remain on the rescuers, survivors, victims and ensuing military personnel. This event has changed the lives of all front line responders and citizens.  While no one can mount a completely flawless response to events of this magnitude, America now realizes the necessity of fully funding and revamping emergency response. Five years later money and most importantly training is being infused at all levels of business and government.  While we have never advocated a militant survivalist approach to disaster preparedness and response our country and citizen now realize preparedness for emergencies is a basic requirement for our modern society.  

With 9/11 and Katrina fresh in everyone's minds America's citizens should now know what emergency preparedness is required and expected in every family:

At Home:

• A fully stocked and useful first aid kit at home and in your car.
• Learn first aid and basic safety from a class, flyers and or the Internet.
• ,Food and water for three to five days minimum (minimum 1200ca/day and 1 gallon per person)
• Flashlights and a radio with extra batteries, phone list and plan to evacuate.
• Blankets, medicine, important papers. etc. if you needed to go to a shelter.
• Tarp, plastic and heavy duty tapes, cord and rope

In the Car:

• First Aid Kit
• Flashlight with extra batteries
• Blankets, extra water and food bars
• Tools, jumper cables, cell phone charger,
• Extra Shoes, Spare clothes.
• tow or sturdy rope

At Work:

• A small penlight and whistle on your person in your pocket and or purse. Light sticks (or similar) throughout your business.
• Spare tennis shoes at your desk or car.
• Old pair of your prescription, glasses if not spare contact lens and solution (plan to not come home the same day.)
• A fully stocked and emergency first aid kit (not the small white box on the wall) and extra emergency supplies that can be taken out of the building as you evacuate.
• Clear emergency plan and minimum employee training for: evacuation and relocation, shelter in place, first aid emergencies, workplace violence and fire safety .
• Emergency contact numbers. Communication plans besides cell phones (megaphone, FRS or company radio, internet etc.)
• A clear company plan for running the business and communicating with employees remotely (from another office, a hotel room, the boss's house etc.)
• A dust mask (N-95 or N100 is best). Dust masks are used to increase your comfort walking through dusty or smoky areas only. Not intended to provide you with oxygen or eliminate inhaling toxic gases. (Note: High-efficiency and military-grade gas masks cost $350-$800 each and most are unnecessary of average citizens.) Do not get scammed buying cheap defective surplus units. Again having a few dust masks in a disaster (natural or medical) is more productive. 

Whether you buy any of these products from us or our competitors, please make sure that more and more people are prepared each year so this becomes a normal way of life.

Just one example of hundreds of improvements to national preparedness and response is in the area Health Departments to response to disasters.  In my experience, health department responders arriving at emergencies, while highly educated, rarely were equipped with more than a clipboard and a pager. Many times the health official could do little more than light consulting with dizzying questions ranging from sanitation, to health care, to hazardous materials, to infectious diseases.   After 9/11 many of today's health officials have or are receiving disaster management training, testing equipment, reference materials, mobile internet and radio communications, and personal protective gear. Once trained, an official can, for instance, identify a possible problem, transmit a possible health concern, receive consulting and coordinated from a national vantage point within minutes instead of days.  Correct information and procedures can be relayed back to the scene as it happens.

Much work still needs to be done, but with the cooperation of the public doing the minimum amount of disaster preparedness and revitalized systems for training, staffing and equipping America's First Responders we will be far better prepared for whatever natural or manmade disasters await us.

 The Christmas Tsunami, Hurricane Katrina, the Iraq war, and of course September 11th, our customers call and we respond. We have skipped holidays, weekends and worked many long nights when other suppliers have gone home.  

4/18/2006

Charlottesville, VA
We are very pleased to announce that we have signed lease on our new space.  Located near the Charlottesville airport, we are moving into a 5,000 s.f. light-industrial space. While the facility won't have a retail showroom, it will house our offices, kit assembly,  graphics and fulfillment operations.  Since moving to Virginia in 2001, we have been operating in less than 2,000 square feet. Moving to this larger space will allow us to add staff, improve our production efficiency and reduce ship-out times to our customers.  

Our company has made many upgrades and improvements in 2005 and 2006 to prepare for growth including the following:

• Renovating our product selection and reevaluating our suppliers capabilities.
• Improving the capacity of our Internet systems to reduce web errors.
• Refining and increasing our nationally known capacity to supply response products and gear in major disasters.
• Streamlining our back-office systems.
• Rollout of our redesigned pioneering websites (5th generation since 1995) and incorporating 2006 technology.
• Introducing innovated new sites to meet pinpoint needs of our government and specialty customers.

Our scheduled move-in date is June 1.  Redesigning the space to meet our unique needs should be completed by the end of the year.  We feel all the pieces are coming together - innovative products, great service, caring staff and techkonwlogy that meets the needs of today's modern customer.

We will update our progress over the coming weeks. 

4/24/02

Improving our line of ICS vests and gear bags.

For the last 2 years we have exclusively featured, R&B Fabrications product for ICS vests,  medical and fire gear bags. Due you fluctuating performance and business models at R&B, we have decided to open up the product offering to include other manufactures. In the coming weeks you will see the following:

 We will still offer R&B Fabrications products as appropriate to there capacity and availability.  But to fill any future voids have sought some excellent new vendors with very competitive pricing structures. You should see products from like Hawk, Conterra, Sierra Search Gear and Ruiz Industries. We will also be introducing our own line of safety and ICS vests under our name. Should you have any questions or need any help in selecting the right products for your needs please feel free to call or E-Mail.

New Websites  2/01/02

CMS Inc. is pleased to announce the building of 2 new websites to help meet our customer needs. 
http://www.Medpins.com and http://www.Medpatches.com are the newest members to the CMS family. Due to the tremendous increase in orders from our customers for these products we have decided to build specific sites and expand our selection. 

Medpins.com will have medical, EMS, Fire and Search and Rescue Pins and Tacs available. We will start off by offering about 50 pins and tacs and that number will expand over time.

 Both sites will have added convenience in that the site will automatically figure quantity discounts, special coupons and many newer features. 

Shipping News 1/1/02

We completed a very successful year in shipping.  We had almost no shipping delays in the 2001 Christmas Season which is a great improvement over congested  year 2000.  We now use the following shipping companies the speed your orders:

• UPS
• FedEx
• US Postal Service
• DHL  

We constantly monitor each order to help lower shipping costs. We are happy to suggest the most cost efficient shipping method based on weight, size and distance. Our lowest price for shipping a $4.95 for a 1 pound item shipping across the county. On International shipments the prices between Shippers can vary greatly. (By as much as 80%) So give us a chance to help you find the best choice for your order.

9/01/01
Crisis Management Systems Inc. has now dropped FedEx "Ground Service" due to extremely poor delivery. "We had shipments only traveling 200 miles that took 11 days to be delivered. Packages traveling across country that took over 17 days and forced us to have to drive an hour to rescue the package because the drivers just could manage to get to our facility 3 days in a row". Steve Hull said" Our customers hold us responsible for quick deliveries even when the customer selects the shipper. Therefore we cannot afford to lose customers due to others poor performance. We had great hopes for FedEx Ground as a competitor for UPS, but no more.  Our company and all our websites will still use FedEx Express service (which is still working well across the state or across the world) when requested by the customer and we will continue to search for other economical shipping methods for our customers. .

10/19/2000
Crisis Management Systems Inc. SafetyStore signs agreement with FedEx to provide additional ground and air services.

Crisis Management Systems Inc. DBA: SafetyStore, signed an agreement with FedEx Ground to provide additional ground and air services for there customers. SafetyStore will be using FedEx ground extensively during the last three weeks of December to help insure customers will get their packages on time for the holiday season. 

We have proudly used US Priority Mail year-round for more than 90% of all our shipping for our sites. We found that  in 1999 December shipments with USPS were delayed as much as 2 weeks during the Holiday season. "While we can't control the package once its in the postal system, customers still place the blame when a delivery date is missed", said Steven Hull, Partner and co-founder.  Our company started our planning for the 2000 holiday in February. The agreement with FedEx should solve those seasonal shipping delays.  As our volume as almost doubled this year, our need to finish each order on time makes for happier customers.

Customers have really enjoyed our increased use of FedEx Saver ® FedEx's Three day service. This service represents only a slight increase in shipping cost  but adds also real-time tracking of the package in transit. When shipping to large corporations, Saver also reduces packages sitting lost in the "Mailroom" as employees don't sit on a FedEx package. 

All our sites will still continue to use US Priority Mail for the majority of small packages. We think our customers will welcome the increased variety and tracking options available.