Video: California hit with earthquake of 6.0 magnitude

huffingtonpost.com - August 24th, 2014 - Ellen Knickmeyer

A large earthquake rolled through California's northern Bay Area early Sunday, damaging some buildings, igniting fires, knocking out power to tens of thousands and sending residents running out of their homes in the darkness.

Two major injuries have been reported, and hospitals have been very busy with moderate injuries, Napa Division Fire Chief John Callanan said. The 6.0-magnitude quake caused six significant fires, including at four mobile homes, Napa Division Fire Chief Darren Drake said.

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Here are some more examples of how I propose that structural adaptivity could be applied as a leading principle for resilient development in the US over the next 20-50-100 years.  These are intended to support my conviction that structural adaptivity is the only logical approach to advancing our built environment for a rapidly changing, uncertain, unpredictable future.  I am hoping that others will review these concepts and propose their own personal and team-researched applications of the principle.

In re-balancing our nation, do so by major watersheds.  I propose that the re-balancing of our nation’s urban development (as I discussed before) should be based on the locations and characteristics of our major watersheds.  All major urban development regions should have a long-term dependable natural source of fresh water. 

By Rebecca Tuhus-Dubrow | Next City | August 19, 2014

At one time, questionnaires about well-being were the province of mental health professionals. But in recent years, a growing number of city governments have been getting into the game. Last year, Santa Monica, California won a Bloomberg Philanthropies Mayors’ Challenge grant to create a “Local Well-Being Index,” based in part on a survey it plans to administer next month. Other cities, including Seattle and Nevada City, Calif., are at various stages of implementing the idea as well (with different levels of direct municipal involvement). All share a goal that some see as unsuitable for government and others consider its fundamental task: to make citizens happier.

http://nextcity.org/daily/entry/happiest-cities-well-being-survey-policy

submitted by Paul Reed

videocast.nih.gov - Office of the Assistant Secretary for Health - August 6, 2014

Description: This presentation will provide an overarching national perspective and regional snapshots on climate change, key health findings from the National Climate Assessment, and best practices to build health resilience in communities.

Author: Sponsored by the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Health. The presenters are from NOAA, CDC, and NIH.

http://videocast.nih.gov/launch.asp?18546

submitted by John Patten

rockinst.org - by James W. Fossett - July 2013

“We can surge troops and equipment, but you can’t surge trust.” - General Carter Ham

The American intergovernmental system needs to stop improvising the way it manages long-term recovery from major disasters such as Hurricanes Katrina and Sandy and the terrorist attacks of 9/11. From financing to decisions about the proper response to long-term climate change, the American system for disaster recovery is ad hoc, uncoordinated, and reinvented from scratch after every major disaster. As a result, recoveries have been lengthy and conflictual, imposed considerable welfare costs on families and businesses, and have resulted in only marginal improvement in the vulnerability of areas afflicted by these disasters.

(READ COMPLETE ARTICLE)

I have been proposing that, rather than trying to foresee the future, we consider accepting and conducting further research on a much more fundamental, all-encompassing and long-term-resilient approach to our built environment.  I have been proposing that such an elemental approach should be structural adaptivity.  I believe that our world must and will give maximum adaptivity to the basic elements of our built environment to adjust to and meet our needs for the unpredictable, rapidly changing world over the next 50-100 years. 

In working on this, I conducted an Exercise.  I experimented with a number of different future conditions, or scenarios, that I think are quite possible.  The first two that drew my strongest concern were the conflicting scenarios of: (1) how planners might address our urban areas after global warming has abated – and the problem is continuous hot weather and more storms – as opposed to (2) how planners are now addressing the need to stop or slow down global warming.  I also experimented with additional scenarios that I do not think we are able to, presently, forecast accurately.  Most of them, however, I believe will surface eventually, in one way or another, and cause huge problems.

cdc.gov - August 13, 2014

More than 50 CDC experts battling Ebola in Africa

Hundreds of public health professionals working 24/7 in support

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention now has more than 50 disease detectives and other highly trained experts battling Ebola on the ground in West Africa – successfully deploying in less than two weeks the surge of help it promised within 30 days.

CDC’s Emergency Operations Center is also at its highest level of alert.  This means more than 350 CDC U.S. staff are working on logistics, communications, analytics, management, and other support functions to support the response 24/7.

“We are fulfilling our promise to the people of West Africa, Americans, and the world, that CDC would quickly ramp up its efforts to help bring the worst Ebola outbreak in history under control,” said CDC Director Tom Frieden, M.D., M.P.H.  “We know how to stop Ebola.  It won’t be easy or fast, but working together with our U.S. and international partners and country leadership, together we are doing it.”

submitted by Samuel Bendett

homelandsecuritynewswire.com - by David Killick - August 15, 2014

You do not see it, but you certainly know when it is not there: infrastructure, the miles of underground pipes carrying drinking water, stormwater and wastewater, utilities such as gas and electricity, and fiber-optics and communications cables that spread likes veins and arteries under the streets of a city.

That calamity hit Christchurch, New Zealand, in a series of earthquakes that devastated the city in 2010 and 2011.

The organization created to manage Christchurch’s infrastructure rebuild – it is called SCIRT, for Stronger Christchurch Infrastructure Rebuild Team— has a vital role, and it has become something of a global model for how to put the guts of a city back together again quickly and efficiently after a disaster.

(READ COMPLETE ARTICLE)

SCIRT - http://strongerchristchurch.govt.nz/

Scientists rule out natural causes for rapid melting

CLICK HERE - STUDY - Attribution of global glacier mass loss to anthropogenic and natural causes

independent.co.uk - by Steve Connor - August 14, 2014

The dramatic melting of the world’s mountain glaciers – from the Alps to the Himalayas – is mostly the result of man-made global warming rather than natural variability in the climate, a study has found. . .

. . . An assessment of about 200,000 glaciers in the world, some of which have been monitored since the mid 19th century, has found that about two thirds of the current rate of glacial melting is due to human influences on the climate.

Scientists found that while much of the melting a century or more ago was most probably due to natural variability in the climate, it is now primarily caused by anthropogenic global warming resulting from industrial greenhouse gases.

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Press Statement

http://www.state.gov/r/pa/prs/ps/2014/230613.htm

reuters.com - By David Morgan and Sharon Begley - August 7, 2014

(Reuters) - The Obama administration is forming a special Ebola working group to consider setting policy for the potential use of experimental drugs to help the hundreds infected by the deadly disease in West Africa, U.S. officials said on Thursday.

The group is being formed under Dr. Nicole Lurie, Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response at the Department of Health and Human Services, an administration official said.

The action follows mounting international pressure as the death toll mounts to consider using untested treatments.

(READ COMPLETE ARTICLE)

When it comes to climate change, the facts are in. Watch as President Obama's Science Advisor Dr. John Holdren explains--in less than three minutes--how climate change is making America's wildfires more dangerous and why we must act now.

whitehouse.gov - August 5, 2014

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thinkprogress.org - by Jeff Spross - August 6, 2014

(THE GLOBAL RESILIENCE SYSTEM IS ASSISTING WITH THE ADMINISTRATION OF A FACEBOOK PAGE TITLED
"Ebola Virus Info".
CLICK HERE TO GO TO THE "Ebola Virus Info" FACEBOOK PAGE.)