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Emergency Management

Heat Waves Could Be Predicted Weeks in Advance, Study Finds

Sun, 2014-03-09 23:30 — Kathy Gilbeaux

      

A pedestrian walks along Vanowen Street in Canoga Park during a heat wave. (Anne Cusack / Los Angeles Times)

latimes.com - by Tony Barboza - October 28, 2013

Scientists have discovered a weather pattern that foreshadows heat waves and could be used to predict them more than two weeks in advance, well beyond the 10-day range of weather forecasts, a new study reports.

Researchers at the National Center for Atmospheric Research wondered if the prolonged and often deadly heat waves that hit the United States and other Northern Hemisphere countries during the summer could be triggered by large-scale atmospheric circulation patterns.

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CLICK HERE - STUDY - Probability of US heat waves affected by a subseasonal planetary wave pattern

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United States
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Emergency Management
Extreme Weather
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Situation Report

New Government Report Warns of Cascading System Failures Caused By Climate Change

Fri, 2014-03-07 18:58 — Kathy Gilbeaux

         

submitted by Margery Schab

(PLEASE SEE LINKS TO REPORTS WITHIN THIS POST)

huffingtonpost.com - by Kate Sheppard - March 6, 2014

WASHINGTON -- From roads and bridges to power plants and gas pipelines, American infrastructure is vulnerable to the effects of climate change, according to a pair of government reports released Thursday.

The reports are technical documents supporting the National Climate Assessment, a major review compiled by 13 government agencies that the U.S. Global Change Research Program is expected to release in April. Scientists at the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory put together the reports, which warn that climate-fueled storms, flooding and droughts could cause "cascading system failures" unless there are changes made to minimize those effects.

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United States
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Climate
Emergency Management
Energy
Infrastructure
Vulnerability
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Problem
Situation Report

Governor of New York Launches Massive Training Program for Citizen Preparedness

Wed, 2014-01-29 16:25 — debbiefook

Governor of New York Launches Massive Training Program for Citizen Preparedness

On Feb. 1 New York’s Governor Cuomo will launch the Citizen Preparedness Corps Training Program.

According to an article from longisland.com, the program is designed to give 100,000 New Yorkers the training they need to be better prepared for emergencies and disasters. Not only will this training enable them to help themselves in a crisis, it will also teach them how to help their families and neighbors.

“Severe weather events are becoming more frequent and extreme and to make sure that our communities are safe, we need more New Yorkers than ever to be prepared and trained to respond,” said Cuomo in the article.

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Training
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Canarsie
Rockaway
Staten Island
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Disaster Response
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Solutions
Situation Report

What Everybody From The North Needs To Understand About The Traffic Disaster In Atlanta

Wed, 2014-01-29 14:18 — Kathy Gilbeaux

      

businessinsider.com - by Conor Sen - January 29, 2014

. . . “How can 2 inches of snow shut down Atlanta?” . . .

The issue is that you have three layers of government — city, county, state — and none of them really trust the other. And why should they?

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United States
General Topic Tags: 
Climate
Emergency Management
Transportation
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Problem

City Council Approves Pre-Disaster Agreements

Tue, 2014-01-28 22:34 — Kathy Gilbeaux

orangeleader.com - by Erik Onstott - May 8, 2007 - Orange, Texas

. . . Disaster agreements were among the items discussed at Tuesday’s meeting of the Orange City Council.

Discussed and approved was a motion to extend pre-disaster agreements the city had entered into with Grubbs Emergency Services, LLC, Garner Environmental Services and Old Orange Cafe and Catering Company. Grubbs Emergency Services helped to open the roads after Hurricane Rita, while Garner provided temporary housing, generators and food stocks and the Old Orange Cafe provided boxed lunches for workers.

“This is one of the lessons we learned from Hurricane Rita,” Mayor Brown Claybar said. . .

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United States
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Solutions

Funding Problems Threaten US Disaster Preparedness

Thu, 2014-01-09 15:55 — Kathy Gilbeaux

eurekalert.org

A study by researchers at the George Washington University, the University of Southern California, and the Cabarrus Health Alliance lists seven recommendations to enhance preparedness for public health emergencies in the US

WASHINGTON (Jan. 9, 2013) –The Sept. 11, 2001 attacks in New York City prompted large increases in government funding to help communities respond and recover after man-made and natural disasters. But, this funding has fallen considerably since the economic crisis in 2008. Furthermore, disaster funding distribution is deeply inefficient: huge cash infusions are disbursed right after a disaster, only to fall abruptly after interest wanes. These issues have exposed significant problems with our nation's preparedness for public health emergencies.

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CLICK HERE - STUDY - Funding problems threaten US disaster preparedness (28 page .PDF report)

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United States
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Economics
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Situation Report

Historic Freeze - Polar Vortex Could Break Temperature Records

Sat, 2014-01-04 11:08 — Kathy Gilbeaux

      

Greg Mauch uses a shovel to clear several inches of snow from her sidewalk in Detroit, Jan. 2, 2014.
Joshua Lott/Reuters

abcnews.com - Associated Press - by Carson Walker - January 4, 2014

It has been decades since parts of the Midwest experienced a deep freeze like the one expected to arrive Sunday, with potential record-low temperatures heightening fears of frostbite and hypothermia even in a region where residents are accustomed to bundling up.

This "polar vortex," as one meteorologist calls it, is caused by a counterclockwise-rotating pool of cold, dense air. The frigid air, piled up at the North Pole, will be pushed down to the U.S., funneling it as far south as the Gulf Coast.

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United States
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Emergency Management
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Problem

Cheap Mobile Technology is Vital in Disaster Recovery

Sat, 2013-12-21 18:54 — Kathy Gilbeaux

submitted by Mike Kraft

      

Jason Hall of Stansell Electric, left, talks with project manager Daron Whitehead as Nashville Wire and other vendors help repair the electrical systems after floodwaters inundated the company in May 2010, destroying $1.2 million in inventory alone./ Dipti Vaidya / File / The Tennessean

tennessean.com - by J. J. Rosen - December 8, 2013

In May 2010, after 36 hours of continuous rain, Nashville was in serious trouble. The “Flood of 2010,” as it came to be known, created a disaster that affected almost everyone in the city. . .

. . . In 2010, the idea of servers and applications being remotely hosted in the cloud was relatively new, and mobile technology was not as prevalent as it is today. Combining mobile and cloud, small- and medium-size businesses can now afford to design and implement disaster-recovery and business-continuity plans that have the same features as their larger competitors.

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United States
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Communication
Disaster Response
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Technology
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Solutions
Problem

Fed Flood Maps Left NY Unprepared for Sandy — and FEMA Knew It

Mon, 2013-12-09 18:31 — Kathy Gilbeaux

Flooding in Red Hook, Brooklyn after Sandy (Flickr/gunnicool)

The agency ignored state and city officials' appeals to update the maps with better data until it was too late.

wnyc.org - December 6, 2013
by Al Shaw : ProPublica / Theodoric Meyer : ProPublica / Christie Thompson : ProPublica

When Patrice and Philip Morgan bought a house near the ocean in Brooklyn, they were not particularly worried about the threat of flooding.

Federal maps showed their home was outside the area at a high risk of flood damage. . .

. . . But the maps drawn up by the Federal Emergency Management Agency were wrong. And government officials knew it.

(READ COMPLETE ARTICLE)

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United States
US - NorthEast
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Emergency Management
Flood
Map
Visualization
Vulnerability
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Problem

These are the Humanitarian Decision Makers

Thu, 2013-09-05 19:05 — Kathy Gilbeaux

submitted by Albert Gomez

      

veritythink.com - by Andrej Verity - September 3, 2013

In my June post Who are the Humanitarian Decision Makers, I outlined why I have problems with how easily we use the phrase “for the decision makers” without really knowing who they are. Once you start investigating the problem, you quickly realize how large and diverse the range of decision makers are in humanitarian response.

Now, it is easy to complain but harder to do something. So rather than leaving this problem to fester within the community, a few of us decided to do something.

(READ COMPLETE ARTICLE)

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