A smart phone (iPhone, Droid, Pilot, etc) could be a great place to store emergency preparedness information.  This information could be used before and during an actual disaster.  During and after a disaster there's a good chance you and your family/friends will have their smart phone with them.  In addition, it may have a substantial amount of battery life remaining and even though there may not be cell phone service available, the smart phone could provide you with very timely information dealing specifically with the type of disaster that you're experiencing.   In preparation for a disaster, the user would have earlier gone to the FEMA website, provided their zip code, list of family/friends they either need to find or stay in touch with during an emergency, and aswered specific questions relating to the type(s) of disaster they might face based on their zip code.  For instance, in preparing for a possible earthquake in California, the user would have provided the following information:
1) Place to meet local family/friends after an earthquake (everyone would have access to this information from their smart phones) 
2) List of emergency items on hand (thus creating a list of items still needed)
3) List of medications and important medical information such as doctors, insurance, etc.
4) Emails and phone numbers of family/friends that will want to be notified of your status.  For instance, if you experience an earthquake in California, you want to let your family in New York know that you are OK.  Then, assuming you have 3G or 4G network available during/after the disaster, you can simply tell the application on your smart phone that your status (for instance, "I'm OK!") and the application will send emails to your list of family/friends to let them know your status.
5) Other important information can be added at the FEMA website.
The information from the FEMA website is automatically updated on your smartphone.    In addition, FEMA loads concise information dealing with specific types of disasters that could occur in your area.  Then before a disaster, you can review this information on your smart phone.  You can even access your list of emergency items still needed.  This can be userful when you're out shopping at the grocery and hardware store.  You can go back to the FEMA website and modify the information.  You can also ask the website to share the information with your family/friends list.  
Then during/after a disaster, this information is already stored on your smart phone and you can access it even if wireless networks are not available or overloaded.  If wireless network is available, FEMA can update the application on your smart phone with news and information.  FEMA could make further messaging available from state and local goverments for update to the smart phone app.  During the emergency, user could enter their own messages which would then be broadcast, via email or others Smart Phone App their situation, location and status.  For a serious situation, the users with the app could easily let local authorities know that they are in some sort of trouble (trapped in earthquake rubble, etc).  

I would hope that the major carriers (Verizon, Sprint, AT&T, etc) would be willing to participate in the development of this app and then provide the necessary infrastructure to allow user's to download the app on their smart phone.  FEMA could head up the design of the application and then ask the carriers to help test and then distribute the application.   Essentially, organizing emergency preparedness information on a smart phone makes sense!  The smart phone may be the only device that have with you during/after a disaster.  Let's put it to use.