Author Archives: recoverydiva

Large Entities Need a Living Will

Posted on by
Reply

In today’s Wall St. Journal there is an article about the big banks, the ones that are too large to fail, needing a Living Will. For some time I have been thinking that large municipalities, or perhaps regions, need a Living Will.  So, if it is a good ideal for a big business, it would probably be appropriate for a large public entity.

I think if we talked about cities needing a Living Will, rather than a recovery plan, more people might understand that and do something about it.

Your comments are invited.

New GAO report on Disaster Recovery

Posted on by
2

A short (13 page) new report by the GAO titled Disaster Recovery: Selected themes for Effective Long Term Recovery, provides an excellent summary of several GAO studies on the topic.  It highlights 3 themes, providing useful details about problems we have long known about, including two of my pet peeves — lack of implementation and lack of assessments and evaluations of recovery progress. [GAO-12-813T]

 

Higher Education in Emergency Management

Posted on by
Reply
English: Emmitsburg, MD, March 10, 2003 -- The...

FEMA News Photo

The Diva just returned from the 3 day annual Higher Ed Conference, sponsored by FEMA at their training facility in Emmitsburg, MD. For more details about the conference content and attendees, go to this link.  More than 220 institutions in the U.S. teach courses on emergency management and homeland security.  Plus, there were attendees from Canada and a few other countries.

There are many changes occurring and and concerns abound about higher ed in EM, some of which I hope to blog about in future postings.  The year attendance was at an all time high, with more than 400 participants. Copies of many presentations were collected on a CD rather than an oversized loose-leaf notebook.  Presently, the content materials are not on the Higher Ed website. I suggest you write the staff to check on availability of the CD.

Italy – serious loss of cultural heritage as a result of underestimating risk

Posted on by
Reply
Emilia-Romagna

Emilia-Romagna

As was true in Japan, for the Sendai earthquake, uneven attention to seismic risk in a region of a risky country results in irreparable damage from earthquakes. See Quakes Deal Irreparable Blow to an Italian Region’s Cultural Heritage; NYT June 3,

Indeed, Emilia-Romagna was considered a low-risk area for earthquakes. For hundreds of years, buildings were constructed “with a total absence of a seismic culture,” which is why so many, including churches, succumbed, said Gian Michele Calvi, a professor of seismic engineering at the University of Pavia.

Related articles

What Keeps Me Up at Night? – issues and problems that persist in emergency management

Posted on by
7

Update:  This posting is out of date. For newer info go to this November posting.

************************************************************

Dated info:

In July, I will be the moderator of a conference session titled “What Keeps Me Up at Night.”  The panelists are senior researchers and practitioners, all of whom have at least 25 years of experience in emergency management.  The intent is not a high-class gripe session, but a thoughtful attempt to identify those aspects of emergency management that remain a concern because they have not been adequately addressed.

I welcome comments from readers of this blog; please comment here or write me offline. I intend to collect input from experienced people and write up the results in a yet-to-be -determined format.  I will share the results here at a later date.

The comments so far are excellent and provide quite an array of issues. Keep the comments coming.