The Diva was one of the participants in the focus group effort, sponsored by FEMA’s Emergency Management Institute, that produced this document. A copy is provided here: DRAFT Research Standards for the Academic Discipline of Emergency Management.

New:  The standards and some related documents are now available on a page titled EM Theory and Research, on FEMA’s Higher Education website.  Note that it is it considered a review draft.

So far, a few people have commented to me offline that the standards are useful and welcomed.

See details of the latest version of this annual report, done by the Save The Children organizations:
Unaccounted for: A National Report Card on Protecting Children in Disasters

Related articles

• Parents: Get Ready, Get Safe with Save the Children (worldmomsblog.com)

FEMA works to draw line on high-cost disaster consultants five years after flood. From news article about Cedar Rapids, Iowa:

Weathered consultants with Hurricane Katrina on their resumes showed up here almost instantly as city, county and school district leaders new to giant natural disasters picked themselves up and began the work to recover from the city’s historic flood of 2008.

More than five years later, the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the local governmental entities are still tussling over consultant pay, which at one point early on here had one consultant referred to as Mr. $425-an-hour.

The ongoing pay dispute is about more than it seems, and it centers on the issue of just how thoughtful — or how aggressive and street-wise — local jurisdictions need to be in using outside consultants to help FEMA decide the size of a local community’s federal disaster relief.
And in the end, taxpayers are left to wonder if some disputes might be worthy ones, and to ask if they are for the home team or for the federal government.

Japan to Spend Almost $500 Million on Water Crisis at Fukushima Nuclear Plant

Japan pledged nearly $500 million (321.4 million pounds) to contain leaks and decontaminate radioactive water from the tsunami-crippled Fukushima nuclear plant, stepping up government efforts to cope with the legacy of the worst atomic disaster in a quarter of a century.

NYT article of Sept. 4 underscores how serious the problems are.

See this recent article from the Canadian insurance industry: Disaster events and costs are on the rise in Canada. Many of us in the U.S. tend to think of our neighbors to the north as fortunate to experience fewer large to catastrophic disasters than we do.  But lately, events and costs are on the rise.

Thanks to Franklin McDonald of York Univ. for calling this article to my attention.

For mental health needs, the National Institute of Health now has a Disaster Distress Helpline. NIH is a fine federally funded institution, and I am glad they offer this service.

Post Script: one reader used the service and said it was worthwhile.

I got the following information from the Red Cross, but as you will see FEMA is the originator or sponsor.  For info re content or access, please get in touch with the person named at the bottom of this posting:

There are now 386 disaster mitigation, preparedness, response and recovery training videos embedded in the Just In Time Disaster Training Video Library with new videos being added on a daily basis. The purpose of this FREE on-line library is to provide a single, easy to search source in which individuals, agencies and organizations can access Just In Time Disaster Training Videos.

The library can be accessed at the following web site: http://www.JustInTimeDisasterTraining.org   Share access to this unique disaster training resource with others by linking your web site to the library today.

Miriam M. Gelo

Voluntary Agency Liaison

Federal Emergency Management Agency HQ

Recovery Directorate

500 “C” St. SW, (605-5), Washington, DC 20472

O: 202-212-1103 / C: 337-302-0991 / F: 202-212-1001

Miriam.Gelo@fema.dhs.gov

Three Cities that Revitalized After a Disaster is the title of a recent article and it’s worth reading.

Thanks to Eric Holdeman who wrote about the article in his blog recently.

In case you thought the sequester was not causing any harm, here is an article with some alarming data.

I assume that many of the scientists in the fields of emergency management and related sciences, basic and applied, also are affected.  But I cannot think of how the effects could be measured.