The Diva works hard, through the weekend and holidays, to provide the latest in useful news and reports. This effort is going into its 8th year and the site has a significant archive. To make a donation just use the Donate Now button to the right of this posting.
Update: There is still time to help out. With the money received to date about 400 URLs that no longer work have been deleted.
Article re recent work by Canadian academics: Algorithm helps first responders identify vulnerable people during natural disasters
Article the Verve (a tech source I am not familiar with): How Trump’s 2019 budget would leave us vulnerable to natural disasters. ‘This admin’s approach to science is ass-backwards.’
The tone is strident, but the details about the science contribution of USGS is worth considering.
Report on a study from TX A&M, as reported in HSWire: The Hidden Traumas of Disaster
From Governing: How the New Tax Law Could Slow Disaster Recovery in Small Towns. A lesser-known provision in the GOP tax overhaul ends the benefits for victims of small-scale disasters.
From the NY Times: Floods Are Getting Worse, and 2,500 Chemical Sites Lie in the Water’s Path.
Anchored in flood-prone areas in every American state are more than 2,500 sites that handle toxic chemicals, a New York Times analysis of federal floodplain and industrial data shows. About 1,400 are located in areas at highest risk of flooding.
From the HSWire: Comparing pollution levels before and after Hurricane Harvey
Hurricane Harvey, which made landfall in late August 2017, brought more than 64 inches of rain to the Houston area, flooding 200,000 homes, 13 Superfund sites, and more than 800 wastewater treatment facilities. As disasters become more frequent and populations living in vulnerable areas increase, interest in the health effects of exposure to the combination of natural and technological disasters has grown.
The NYTimes featured an article today titled How to Prepare Your Community for a Disaster. This article focuses on personal and community preparedness. Generally the advice is good although many of the steps and info sources listed can readily be found as part of the Community Emergency Response Team (CERT) training and manual. That source is not noted until the list of references at the end of the article.
Mitch Stripling has also written a useful handbook for emergency management practitioners: Managing Chaos.
The Diva wants to remind you that there are seven years of information stored on this site. If you are researching a topic, use the search function in the right-hand column of the homepage to enter the descriptor term. It usually works quite well.
For those of you interested in details about the most recent hurricanes (Harvey, Irma, and Maria) and their effects on Houston, cities in FL, Puerto Rico, and the US Virgin Islands, search the name of the hurricane rather than the place impacted for best results.
From the NY Times: Puerto Rico Needs More Than Bandages.
Puerto Rico needs more than bandages. It needs to rethink and redesign its electric, water and wastewater systems, both to protect them against the next big storm and to provide the dependable service they were failing to give residents before Hurricane Maria. To accomplish that and other rebuilding needs, Puerto Rico had sought $94.4 billion in total disaster aid in November. That included nearly $18 billion to rebuild the power grid — nine times what Congress has provided.
Achieving resiliency in the face of powerful storms will require the wholesale rebuilding of the island’s utilities. Simply patching them up will not be enough. If that’s the extent of the fix, the island is likely to find itself back in the same place after the next big storm, with taxpayers asked to spend new billions on more life preservers.
Recovery Diva 