In Case Of Emergency, Read Blog

On the six-month anniversary of the earthquake in Haiti, the Disaster Accountability Project (DAP) released a report today criticizing the lack of transparency by groups raising relief funds from the public.

The “Report On The Transparency of Relief Organizations Responding to the 2010 Haiti Earthquake”, according to DAP, is the result of an investigation aimed at determining whether those non-profit and non-governmental organizations that solicited donations for Haiti disaster relief produced situation reports on their activities, and if so, how comprehensive and publicly accessible such situation reports were.

According to its press release, DAP found that of the 197 organizations identified as soliciting money for their activities in Haiti following the earthquake:

• Only 6 had publicly available, regularly updated, factual situation reports detailing their activities.

• The vast majority, 128, did not have factual situation reports available on their websites, relying instead upon anecdotal descriptions of activities or emotional appeals.

• Only approximately ten percent, 21, were responsive to a survey requesting more information, and of those, a number provided incomplete answers.

“It is infuriating that so many groups continue to violate the public trust with so much cash-on-hand donated to alleviate suffering on the ground. Shouldn’t we expect more from groups that are raising hundreds of millions of dollars from a public asked to generously donate, immediately after the earthquake?” said Ben Smilowitz, Executive Director, Disaster Accountability Project (and a friend of this blog.)

The full report can be found here. It was released at the Natural Hazards Workshop.

In a story on the website, ednewscolorado.org, “From Terrorism To Tornadoes, Kids Learn To Be Prepared,” Rebecca Jones writes about Disaster READY Training, a collaboration of READYColorado, the Governor’s Office of Homeland Security and the City and County of Denver.

Last week, nearly 40 middle school students took part in the day long class in first aid, CPR, family and pet preparedness, weather spotting and team building — as well as terrorism awareness. An expanded four-day training will be offered July 20-23 to interested high school students at the Denver Police Academy. The training is free, though enrollment is limited. According to the article:

“These are lifelong skills that we’re empowering them with,” said Cathy Prudhomme, Community Preparedness Program Manager for the Governor’s Office of Homeland Security. “The first aid and the safety training is stuff they can use on a day-to-day basis.”

“I think middle schoolers are wonderfully impressionable,” said Deborah Collburn, director of the Animal Emergency Management Program for the Colorado Veterinary Medical Foundation. Collburn was there to teach the youngsters how to prepare their pets in case their families were forced to evacuate from their home. “They bring things home with them and share them with their parents. Reaching out to kids is a great way to change behaviors. Kids will nag you to death,” she said.

Disaster READY Training participants in team building activity

Some readers might be surprised that terrorism awareness is part of a middle school curriculum. But as the article explains:

[Read more →]

The 35th Annual Natural Hazards Research and Applications Workshop began this weekend. The conference, organized by the University of Colorado’s esteemed Natural Hazards Center, is held outside of Denver. According to the Center’s website, the Workshop is:

designed to bring hazards researchers and practitioners from many disciplines together for face-to-face discussions on issues and trends that affect how society deals with hazards and disasters.

The schedule (here) is chock full of interesting panels and speeches, including a keynote from the New York Times’s Andrew Revkin.

I had the pleasure of attending last year’s Workshop and wish I could be there this week. However, I am not yet recovered enough to do so. As a result, I am following the proceedings through the event’s Twitter feed, @HazWS, and the Twitter tag #Haz which are providing coverage. I also recommend that anyone interested in these issues should follow the Center’s normal feed, @HazCenter.

In his blog Alerts & Notifications, Rick Wimberly has a short post about a company called Pets Guardian:

There’s a new emergency notification service for pets. Well, it’s not for notifying pets, but for notifications regarding pets when an emergency occurs…

Here’s how it works. If, say, emergency medical technicians respond to a call and residents are taken away, the EMTs will have a number to call to activate the notification system. It will then call friends or family pre-designated by the pet owners, instructing them to come get the pets. Signs would be posted around the house, providing the number and instruction to responders.

Or, if a subscriber wants, it can receive a daily check-in from Pets Guardian to confirm that the pet is OK.

Soon after this week’s 5.2 earthquake near San Diego, the Twitter feed of the Great California Shakeout asked their followers to visit the United States Geological Survey’s (USGS) “Did You Feel It?” website. “Did You Feel It?” collects reports from citizens after temblors from around the world.

These public reporting can be very helpful according to the USGS:

This web site is intended to tap the abundant information available about earthquakes from the people who actually experience them. By taking advantage of the vast numbers of Internet users, we can get a more complete description of what people experienced, the effects of the earthquake, and the extent of damage, than traditional ways of gathering felt information. And best of all, with your help we can do so almost instantly.

By contributing your experience of the earthquake, either immediately afterward, or whenever it is possible for you to do so, you will have made a contribution to the scientific body of information about this earthquake. You will also ensure that your area has been represented in the compilation of the shaking map. This is a two-way street. Not only will you add valuable information on the extent of ground shaking and damage, but in the process we hope you will learn more about how other communities fared and gain a greater understanding of the effects of earthquakes.

For more information on the “Did You Feel?” program or on reporting an earthquake, you can find the web site here.

On the San Francisco Department of Emergency Management Facebook page, I read a nice story about some local high school students who organized an effort to pay for, assemble and help distribute disaster kits for 500 of the city’s most needy citizens.

According to an article on the website Neighborhood Empowerment Network, the school’s involvement came after the San Francisco Disaster Feeding Task Force had developed a plan for the project but was having trouble funding it:

Just when the project was about to be shelved for lack of funds, the Lick Wilmerding High School junior class president, Jody Fu, contacted SF CARD (San Francisco Community Agencies Responding to Disaster) asking how the High School could help make San Francisco residents better prepared for an emergency, such as a natural disaster. The students had seen the devastation in Haiti and had contributed to the relief effort but wanted to make their own home in San Francisco a safer place as well. After just a few months of planning, fundraising, and coordination with the Task Force, the school volunteers made the program a reality.

On Saturday May 8th, class volunteers assembled food and water supplies donated by the San Francisco Food Bank into kits to be delivered to the homes of Meals On Wheels’s and Project Open Hand’s most vulnerable clients. Delivery drivers also briefed clients about disaster preparedness, gave them emergency information pamphlets and whistles from the SF Department of Emergency Management, and continue to inventory the supplies at designated intervals. The monies the students raised over many class fundraisers will go to the Food Bank to offset some of the costs of supplies and packaging.

For more information on the high school’s initiative, you can find it on the SF Emergency Department’s Facebook page here.

High school students packing emergency kits for vulnerable San Franciscans

As much of the nation (particularly the northeast) is experiencing extremely high temperatures, I thought would post the American Red Cross’ safety checklist for dealing with aheat wave. The tips include:

*Listen to a NOAA Weather Radio for critical updates from the National Weather Service (NWS).

*Never leave children or pets alone in enclosed vehicles.

*Stay hydrated by drinking plenty of fluids even if you do not feel thirsty. Avoid drinks with caffeine or alcohol.

*Eat small meals and eat more often.

*Avoid extreme temperature changes.

*Wear loose-fitting, lightweight, light-colored clothing. Avoid dark colors because they absorb the sun’s rays.

*Slow down, stay indoors and avoid strenuous exercise during the hottest part of the day.

*Postpone outdoor games and activities.

*Use a buddy system when working in excessive heat.

*Take frequent breaks if you must work outdoors.

*Check on family, friends and neighbors who do not have air conditioning, who spend much of their time alone or who are more likely to be affected by the heat.

*Check on your animals frequently to ensure that they are not suffering from the heat.

Children sprayed down with water at a cooling station on the National Mall near the Washington Monument in Washington (UPI Photo)

I wanted to post an interesting report released today summarizing the Center for Biosecurity of UPMC’s conference, “Preparing to Save Lives and Recover After a Nuclear Detonation: Implications for U.S. Policy”.

The Center “convened the invitational meeting to examine critical issues associated with response to and recovery from a nuclear detonation and to consider the policy implications of those issues.” It took place in late April in Washington, D.C., and I had intended to attend but was not fully recovered from treatment.

An important aspect of the gathering was examining the role of the public before and after a nuclear incident. And, in fact, according to the report, White House aide, Dr. Tammy Taylor (Senior Policy Analyst, National Security and International Affairs Division, Office of Science and Technology Policy, Executive Office of the President, The White House) “noted that it is essential to educate people in advance because officials will not have accurate information immediately, and protective action will be effective only if people know what to do directly following the detonation.”

One of the “challenges” the conference examined was: Advance Education and Post-event Communication. And, according to the report:

The public needs advance knowledge and information: With advance information about nuclear fallout and ways to protect themselves from dangerous exposure, the public could take action after a nuclear detonation that would save tens of thousands of lives. The first and best protective action is to find adequate shelter and stay there until officials provide additional information and instructions.

However, as Mr. [Brooke] Buddemeier [from the Global Security Directorate of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories] emphasized, the decisions with the biggest lifesaving effect will be those made in the first minutes or hours following a nuclear attack, but they often are not technically informed decisions and may, in fact, be counterintuitive. For example, people may think first of fleeing when it would be safer to stay put in adequate shelter.

Effective communication will be critical: To save lives, U.S. government (USG) policies and programs should focus on rapid, straightforward delivery of 3 key messages for survivors: A nuclear detonation has occurred nearby; Immediately seek adequate shelter, such as a basement or a room in the interior of a building; and Wait for more information and instruction before evacuating. Sheltered individuals should stay put for at least 24 hours following the detonation unless authorities provide different instructions.

At the end of the report, the Center offers several steps that the U.S. federal government should take now to prepare for effective response and efficient recovery following nuclear detonation:

[Read more →]

Orange County California officials have an interesting new strategy to get the word out to the public about preparing for disasters — ask the public to give them their word they will prepare.

ReadyOC is launching the “Promise to Prepare” campaign requesting local residents publicly commit on its web site that they will take at least one preparedness step. On the site, users can click on the “Promise To Prepare” button where they will be asked to pledge to do one or more readiness activities: create an emergency supply kit (or update existing kit), develop an emergency plan (or update existing plan), volunteer, attend preparedness training, or sign up for AlertOC. Once the resident makes the pledge, a ticker registers it on the site, and the user is offered resources to help fulfill the commitment.

This creative new initiative comes in response to the frustration officials have had making inroads on citizen readiness, highlighted by a study that found while more than 90% of Orange County residents are aware that emergency preparedness is important, 93% have made little or no preparations.

ReadyOC will be officially kicking off the “Promise to Prepare” campaign pegged to National Preparedness Month in September. It is seeking to achieve at least 32,000 promises in 2010 which would be approximately 1% of Orange County’s total population, according to spokesperson Jhovanna Midencey. (”Promise to Prepare” is currently in a soft launch and has not been publicized; nevertheless, 408 pledges have been made to date.) Midencey says the County is optimistic about the campaign based on experience in the field: “We have had individuals make a promise at an event, go buy an emergency supply kit and come back to show us they had followed through on their promise.”

I very much like the “Promise to Prepare” approach: it asks the citizens to take responsibility (and make a public commitment to ReadyOC and their fellow OC residents) but in a helpful and fun way. And guilt is not the only lever being used, ReadyOC is offering some incentives. Every pledger is automatically entered for a chance to win prizes (including deluxe emergency supply kits).

I ‘promise’ to provide follow up coverage about the campaign on the blog.

Theatlantic.com’s Marc Ambinder had a post this week about “Inspire,” the first English-language propaganda magazine from Al Qaeda on the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP).

According to Ambinder:

The table of contents teases an interview with the leader of AQAP who promises to “answer various questions pertaining to the jihad in the Arabian Peninsula.” It includes a feature about how to “make a bomb in the kitchen of your mom.”

AQAP’s first effort to post the magazine to jihadist websites failed Wednesday, as many of the pages were contaminated with a virus. (I half seriously believe that U.S. cyber warriors might have had a hand in that little surprise.)

The U.S. is quite worried about Al Qaeda’s new publishing ambitions, which mark a more sophisticated effort to engage the English-language world and to recruit English-speaking Muslims to join the cause.

The copy was obtained from a private researcher. AQAP had advertised for days that the magazine would appear with the interviews specified in the table of contents. It is possible, although not likely, that the magazine is a fabrication, a production of a Western intelligence agency that wants to undermine Al Qaeda by eroding confidence in its production and distribution networks. The U.S. is engaged in direct net-based warfare with jihadis; this sort of operation would not be too difficult to pull off.

Below is a screenshot of the cover: