In Case Of Emergency, Read Blog

I was just sent an interesting new book, Safeguarding Homeland Security: Governors And Mayors Speak Out (Springer), edited by Simon Hakim and Erwin A. Blackstone. The book is comprised of individual chapters written, as the title indicates, primarily by state and local officials about their own experiences with some aspect of homeland security.
Several of the [...]

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Today, October 14th, is “International Day For Disaster Reduction.” According to a press release:
Today, the UN International Strategy for Disaster Reduction (UNISDR) dedicates its annual International Day for Disaster Reduction to the urgent need to make “Hospitals Safe from Disasters.” Dozens of hospitals and heath facilities each year are themselves impacted by floods, hurricanes, cyclones, earthquakes and [...]

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Just weeks after the release of a Department of Homeland Security report indicating that the U.S. could learn from Israel about citizen preparedness,  the Mideast nation last week undertook its largest civil defense drill ever,  a five-day exercise called “Turning Point 3″. 
As has been mentioned regularly on the blog, Israel offers a helpful model for the U.S. [...]

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I just read about a good idea that the government of Singapore has had about briefing members of the blogsphere in advance of emergencies. According to an article in Channel News Asia headlined “Bloggers, moderators can help ease public fears in crisis”:
The Internet has made possible the rapid spread of fear in a crisis, said Deputy Prime Minister [...]

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That’s the provocative question asked by the headline of an ABCNews.com article written by Leonard Marcus, Isaac Ashkenazi, and Barry Dorn from Harvard’s National Preparedness Leadership Initiative with advice for the new Administration. The piece came out in December when this blog was on hiatus but I wanted to post it because the authors point out the [...]

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On Friday, the British government released to the public the National Risk Register, which according to the British government website, ”sets out our assessment of the likelihood and potential impact of a range of different risks that may directly affect the UK” and is:
“designed to increase awareness of the kinds of risks the UK faces, and encourage individuals [...]

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An email from a new reader, Jo from London reminded me that I had meant to post the 2006 Report of the London Assembly’s 7 July Review Committee, which was set up to examine the lessons to be learned from the authorities’ response to the London bombings on July 7th, 2005.  
Though it is now two years old, the Report [...]

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I wanted to bring to your attention two news stories from this week that highlight the significant role the Chinese public is having in the nation’s response to their major earthquake and how this may have a major impact on citizen involvement in their government generally. 

The lead story by Maureen Fan on the Washington Post’s front page Thursday, “Citizen Groups Step Up In [...]

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