FULCRUM SOFTWARE FREE TO AID OFFICIALS FACING CATASTROPHES

Spring Branch, Texas

There's a new powerful tool on the street to help protect the public during catastrophes…and it is free! TAO Emergency Management Consulting of Spring Branch, Texas, and Idealsoft, Inc – Asvaco of Simi Valley, California, announced the launching of FULCRUM, a free tool to help locally elected officials in the United States. FULCRUM software provides quick guidance for local elected officials who are faced with making timely decisions in catastrophic situations. Rick Tobin, TAO’s President and CEO, developed FULCRUM with Idealsoft as a volunteer project without public funding. TAO recently collaborated with the National Association of Counties (NACo) to release FULCRUM to county elected officials whose counties are members of NACo.

Rick Tobin stated, “TAO and Idealsoft are both in the business of making the U.S. a safer place. Both of our companies were convinced after Hurricane Katrina that elected officials needed better tools for complicated catastrophic decision making that went beyond the current paradigms used during emergencies and disasters. There simply wasn’t a tool like FULCRUM available for elected officials. We wanted to make a product that any official could use in a few minutes to find straightforward guidance when the worst imaginable things happened.”

Tobin understood that the needs for elected officials required a different approach because, besides his decades in emergency management, he was once also an elected local official faced with major losses to public infrastructure after disastrous flooding. “That’s why I named the tool FULCRUM,” Tobin said. “It gives local officials some added leverage. By combining my experience, along with Idealsoft’s famous software design strategies, we were able to make FULCRUM easy to use, fast, and compact for portability on flash drives.”

“However,” Tobin stated, “Fulcrum was not designed for use by emergency managers or field responders, or for corporate operations. It is designed solely for local elected officials in the United States.”

Although there is no charge for FULCRUM software, it is only available for distribution through approved associations, like NACo, which represent the needs of locally elected officials. For further information about FULCRUM contact Rick Tobin of TAO Emergency Management Consulting at (830)-885-7057.

TAO and Idealsoft are offering FULCRUM through NACo at no cost to local government. Rocky Lopes, NACo’s Homeland Security Project Manager, stated that, “NACo is now distributing the FULCRUM software to its membership at no additional charge as part of its Disaster and Terrorism Toolkit.”

NACo will feature FULCRUM during breakout sessions at the NACo annual conference to be held in Richmond, Virginia from July 13 to 17, 2007. Rick Tobin will be available at the conference to discuss FULCRUM with county leaders. For more information about NACo, its national conference, and its distribution of FULCRUM, contact Rocky Lopes at (202)-661-8841 or visit www.naco.org.