From the WashPost: Return of the technocrats: Biden aims for ‘normal’ after four years of tumult

From the NYTimes: Hounded by Wildfires, Californians Rethink Their Willingness to Rebuild. In the aftermath, some people are deciding to just begin new lives elsewhere. The pandemic and longstanding housing problems haven’t made the choices any easier.

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The Biden Administration has nominated Deanne Criswell to be the new FEMA Director. From Scientific American: Biden Pick to Lead FEMA Signals Urgency on Pandemic and Climate Change.

She will be the first woman to hold that post since FEMA was formed in 1979.

From HSNW: Leaning into Uncertainty: A Life of Anticipating the Worst-Case Scenario

“In his recently published book on preparedness, Rethinking Readiness: A Brief Guide to Twenty-First-Century Megadisasters, Schlegelmilch guides the reader through the five major disaster scenarios: biothreats, climate change, critical infrastructure failure, cyberthreats, and nuclear conflict. The book is refreshingly direct in its dealing with global threats and vulnerabilities. Surprisingly, Schlegelmilch wrote Rethinking Readiness before the pandemic. Another indication on how he landed in one the most prestigious positions in his field—he was prepared.”

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From the NYTimes: One Year, 400,000 Coronavirus Deaths: How the U.S. Guaranteed Its Own Failure. “After the White House declined to pursue a unified national strategy, governors faced off against lobbyists, health experts and a restless public consumed by misinformation.”

The Diva was intrigued by this article. The topic is related to the current concern of our failure to understand and deal with domestic terrorism.

From the Wash Post: The far right embraces violence because it has no real political program. Theatrical brutality makes people believe they have power, even if they don’t.

FEMA has just released its “Coronavirus Disease (COVID-19) Initial Assessment Report” which assesses the agency’s initial response to the global pandemic. Highlighted items in the report show the challenges the agency faced, including needing to clarify roles and authorities between responding agencies and managing complex interagency coordination while still protecting its own workforce.

The report covers FEMA’s response from mid-March through Sept. 30, 2020 and provides 32 key findings and 57 recommendations in five areas. FEMA partnered with the private sector, non-governmental organizations and other federal agencies to better manage the complex logistical operations. To drastically speed up the arrival of medical supplies and personal protective equipment (PPE) to the domestic market, FEMA chartered privately owned planes for medical distributors, reducing the transit time between manufacturer and customer from 30–45 days via ocean freight to approximately five days via air freight. Project Airbridge chartered 249 flights over a span of 92 days and delivered roughly 1.73 billion units of personal protective equipment (PPE) and medical supplies to prioritized areas.

While coordinating the federal COVID-19 response, FEMA responded to multiple disasters. The year 2020 was the most active Atlantic hurricane season in history with 25 named Atlantic Ocean storms, three of which were declared major disasters across seven states.  

FEMA’s COVID-19 operations led to innovations for coordination with government and non-government partners on implementing national distribution networks and innovative solutions to data management and analysis and manufacturing and procuring scarce resources. The agency’s adaptive workforce enabled it to facilitate an effective operational response to the pandemic.

The report findings and recommendations will be used to inform FEMA and the emergency management community and improve existing and future responses to pandemics. The Initial Assessment Report represents part of FEMA’s continuous improvement process, helping the agency learn faster and to communicate to the emergency management community where there are opportunities to build greater capacity.

[Thanks to Dana Bres for this citation.]

Note that current TV news indicates that FEMA is scheduled to have a major role in the distribution of the vaccine during the Biden administration.

Disaster Social Services Research on Serving Vulnerable populations
Jan 22, 2021 12:00 PM in Eastern Time (US and Canada)
In the second seminar speakers will discuss the importance of disaster social science research for response and recovery efforts, especially social service delivery for vulnerable populations. A 15 minute Q&A session will follow the panel presentations.
Register here/

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Center for Homeland Defense and Security
Executive Education Program Lecture and Webinar Series
Building Trust in a Disinformation Age
Friday, January 29, 2021
2:00 PM EST / 11:00 AM PST– REGISTER HERE –

[Thanks for Dr. Lois Cohen for this citation.]

From The Conversation: After a Record 22 Billion disasters in 2020, its time to overhaul U.S. Disaster Policy. Here is how.