Fugate usually does not speak from a prepared text, so blogger Eric Holdeman is the best source of information about Fugate’s remarks to the recent NEMA conference.
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Some of the press clips re this meeting now going on in Japan:
World Bank Meeting on Sendai Disaster, October 10, 2012.
Lessons from Sendai Disaster- WSJ Oct. 10
Planning for Disaster Can cut Costs. World Bank, Oct. 10
A new, in-depth report on the response to the major earthquake in Christchurch, NZ is now available. The circumstances and issues noted should be of interest to other countries with seismic risk.
Titled Review of the Civil Defense Emergency Management Response to the 22 February Christchurch Earthquake, it was produced by Ian McLean Consultancy Services Ltd., under a contract from the Director of Civil Defence and Emergency Management, NZ.
Completed in June 2012 and released to the public on October 4, this 243 report provides a detailed account of the 2011 earthquake event and its impacts, focusing on the response phase. (There is an 8 page Executive Summary in the report.)
The assessment was done by a team of experienced, independent experts: three team members are from N.Z., one from Australia, and one from the U.S. (Disclosure, Claire Rubin is the American member of the team.)
Because I think the issues are important and should be of interest to other countries, I have mounted a new page, named NZ (see top right-hand button on this homepage) to this blog site to provide additional commentary.
From Earthquake Magazine, an interesting description of risk modeling — Risky business: Modeling catastrophes, Oct. 2012. Some excerpts:
Natural hazards — earthquakes, tropical cyclones and thunderstorms, for example — occur with considerable frequency around the world. Fortunately, most events are either not intense enough or too remote to cause damage. But the probability that a given natural hazard could become a natural disaster is higher today than at any previous point in history.
This rise in the probability of catastrophes is primarily a result of population growth, as opposed to changes in the frequency or intensity of natural hazards. As the number of people grows — currently about 7 billion — so does the infrastructure associated with the population, such as houses, bridges and cars. Thus, if a natural hazard strikes, there are simply more people and more things in harm’s way. Additionally, people are continuing to move to areas of high hazard, including wildland-urban interfaces such as in the canyons of Southern California and the hills of Boulder and Colorado Springs, Colo., and coastlines. Nearly 67 percent of the world’s population currently lives within 160 kilometers of a coastline, and that number is expected to reach 75 percent in the next couple of decades, according to the U.S. National Academies of Science.
DHS has issued a new document (22 pp.) that provides guidance on the use of social media for community engagement; Sept. 2012. Basic information provided in a document with a dull title and a less-than-exciting format.
NOTE: the URL is rather peculiar and is giving some readers trouble. To be helpful, I have loaded a text file to this site, so you can Virtual Social Media Working Group Community Engagement
If anyone from DHS reads this, please take note of the problems identified.
The Center for Disease Prevention and Control ( CDC) has just released its newest version of this manual, which has a public health orientation. Full download is here. At 478 pages, you had better be serious about this subject to print off a copy!
Hurricane experts have known for decades that NYC is a vulnerable place. In fact H. Irene gave people in NYC a good scare. New article from Homeland Security Newswires provides some new details about the risk and vulnerability of the Big Apple: New York unprepared for flooding, sea level rise; 24 September 2012. The article starts with:
New York City may be a fast paced city of bright lights, sleek attitudes, fashion trends, and some of the best sports teams in the country, but underneath the glitz and glamour is a city which is not prepared for an act of God and which is being threatened by rising sea levels and severe storm flooding; “It’s a million small changes that need to happen,” one expert says
The National Report Card on Protecting Children During a Disaster, the 2012 report from the Save the Children Foundation. A short report ( 12 pp) on protecting vulnerable children after a disaster.
Last week I wrote about the new FEMA Corps. It appears that the European Union is creating a new corps, somewhat like the FEMA Corps and also the Peace Corps, since it is intended to provide humanitarian assistance after a disaster to other countries. Some details provided by Reuters are here.
Another report report, this one from the Congressional Research Service, may be of interest. See Stafford Act Declarations 1953-2011:Trends and Analyses, and Implications for Congress. Aug. 2012. (R42702)
As is true of the recent GAO report, noted in the posting below, there is a great deal of useful data presented in this report.
Researchers take note: these two reports could be the basis of a useful analysis.
Recovery Diva 