When it comes to “official” sources for emergency preparedness information, the more normal people see it, the better. The Oklahoma Office of Homeland Security is the single state agency responsible for the delivery of federal homeland security training, equipment funding and technical assistance. They have developed a website called Red Dirt Ready which is designed to inform and educate the public.
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Superbowl weekend wasn’t so good for some people in the US. On Friday, the worst snowstorm in decades hit Washington D.C. and several states including – Virginia, West Virginia, Maryland, and Pennsylvania. More than a hundred thousand homes have lost electricity, and mobility is limited with airports shut down and public transport systems crippled.
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Glenn Reynolds from Popular Mechanics magazine has an interesting article about what the US can learn from the earthquake disaster in Haiti. He warns that while the US has greater wealth and better infrastructure than Haiti, it doesn’t mean that disaster relief will necessarily arrive quickly.
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The New York Times reports that there’s been widespread panic and looting, in the aftermath of a major earthquake in Haiti. The 7.2 magnitude earthquake left a lot of collapsed buildings — hospitals, schools, churches, ramshackle homes, even the gleaming national palace.
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I wasn’t aware that you needed to be called something cool to prepare for emergencies. Thanks to Newsweek, being prepared gets you a label : Prepper. I’m not sure I like the name — never needed one since we started this blog over four years ago. The good news : at least we’re getting another round of public awareness for the need for emergency preparedness.
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Twitter has been the media darling for 2009 — it looks like there’s no stopping it in 2010. In one of the more unusual (and definitely innovative) uses of Twitter, the USGS (United States Geological Survey) is using the social media tool to detect earthquakes. Called Twitter Earthquake Detection (USGSted), it is a system that gathers real-time, earthquake-related messages from the social networking site Twitter and applies place, time, and key word filtering to gather geo-located accounts of shaking.
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Trust for America’s Health and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation released the seventh annual Ready or Not? Protecting the Public’s Health from Diseases, Disasters, and Bioterrorism report. The report finds that the H1N1 flu outbreak has exposed serious underlying gaps in the nation’s ability to respond to public health emergencies and that the economic crisis is straining an already fragile public health system.
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I don’t normally read Popular Mechanics, but the October 2009 issue is an interesting one.
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The previous weekend was a long weekend, with Monday being a public holiday. However, instead of a relaxing time, the weekend started badly with a landslide near Bukit Antarabangsa, Ampang. The landslide claimed the lives of 4 people, destroyed many homes, and left thousands of people stranded when a road was blocked. To make matters worse, the rain never stopped over the weekend. Both electricity and water supply was disrupted until Monday.
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There are drills, and then there are drills. At 10 a.m. on November 13th 2008, more than 5 million people throughout Southern California participated in the ShakeOut Drill, the largest earthquake preparedness activity in U.S. history. The Great Southern California ShakeOut is based on a potential magnitude 7.8 earthquake on the southern San Andreas Fault. This is approximately 5,000 times larger than the magnitude 5.4 earthquake that shook southern California on July 29.
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