Latest Updates

As part of the Integrated Public Alert and Warning System (IPAWS) program, the Wireless Emergency WEA) service is starting up this month. Consumers do not sign up for the free, location-based 90 character text messaging service - but if they wish can opt out of weather and AMBER alerts – but not presidential alerts. Alerts will be issued for tsunamis, extreme winds, ice storms,...

Hazus is a nationally applicable standardized methodology that contains models for estimating potential losses from earthquakes, floods, and hurricanes. Hazus uses Geographic Information Systems (GIS) technology to estimate physical, economic, and social impacts of disasters.

HAZUS-MH is software developed by FEMA that analyzes risk from natural hazards in communities. Although Hazus-MH itself is free, it requires the users to have ArcGIS with ArcView license level.

Existing HAZUS-MH runs for Vashon (i.e. those for our 2005 Earthquake Study,...

Prepare. Plan. Stay Informed.

 

The first ever nationwide test of the Emergency Alert System will occur on Nov 9 at 2 pm ET and last for about 3 minutes, according to Damon Penn, of National...

The Associated Press came to this week’s 5th Annual Hazus conference held at the federal building and wrote up a nice piece citing (yet again) that we are not ready for the huge quakes possible from any number of faults, but especially the Seattle and Cascadia faults:

   Of particular worry to government agencies - and emergency planners like Schelling - is the 680-mile long Cascadia fault line, which runs just 50 miles off Washington's shore. Scientists have found that a big 8.0 to 9.0 earthquake has hit that fault line about every 500 years. The last one struck in 1700.    According to a 2005 study that used Hazus data, such a strong earthquake would level parts of the region, bringing landslides,...

Yet another post on the value of cash – versus unsolicited donations of (often inappropriate) goods and supplies comes from the UPS Foundation’s Humanitarian Relief Program Manager. Just back from the annual meeting of NVOAD, held in Kansas City – hours from Joplin, he had the following take-homes:

Donate Money If Donating Goods, Verify Items Will be Accepted and Used For Volunteers, Take Advantage of Disaster Assistance Training He recommends helpful web tools: Aidmatrix Network and HandsOnNetwork.org....

Mark your calendars!  The Annual Hazus Conference will be held in Seattle, Washington, August 10 – 12, 2011, at the Henry M. Jackson Federal Building. 

HAZUS-MH is software developed by FEMA that analyzes risk from natural hazards in communities. To register for this FREE conference, please visit www.hazus.net. From their site:

HAZUS-MH is a powerful risk assessment methodology used to analyze potential losses from natural hazards including floods, hurricane winds and earthquakes. HAZUS uses state-of-the-art Geographic Information Systems (GIS) software combined with science, engineering and mathematical modeling to map and display hazard data and the results of damage and economic loss estimates for buildings and infrastructure. ...

Scientists now can track the minuscule motions of shifting plates as they happen, thanks to an expanded network of GPS sensors that covers the region like a blanket and beams back data almost instantly.



"If the Pacific Coast or Mount Rainier moves a couple of centimeters, we'll see it within five seconds," said Tim Melbourne, director of the Pacific Northwest Geodetic Array, or PANGA. Once the network's "real-time" functions are fully operational, PANGA will be able to pinpoint some earthquakes more quickly and accurately than traditional seismometers — and eventually issue warnings before destructive shaking hits cities or tsunami waves slam the shore.

Scientists use the GPS data to calculate the gradual buildup of strain on faults and identify the places most likely...

Personal Localized Alerting Network (PLAN) is a new public safety system, announced May 10th, to send free text alerts to cell phones. Geographically-targeted Presidential, emergency and AMBER alerts will use unique vibrations and tones to send alerts of imminent threats to safety. PLAN complements the existing Emergency Alert System (prior to 1998 known as the Emergency Broadcast System) and will be implemented by the FCC and FEMA. While the Commercial Mobile Alert System (CMAS) Is apparently voluntary, the Warning, Alert and Response Network (WARN) Act requires those wireless carriers to activate PLAN technology by April 2012.  AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile, and Verizon have pledged earlier support.

The...

A few handy videos are available on this topic courtesy of TechSoup. While oriented to nonprofits, many of the lessons also apply to small businesses:

After the Crash: Minimize your Downtime Disaster Planning: Backup, Backup, Backup! Disaster Planning: What Organizations Need to Know to Protect Their Tech ...

Glenn Thomas WB6W has refreshed the website of the Western Washington Section of the Amateur Radio Relay League (ARRL). Check it out at: http://wwa.arrl.org

Also of interest is the joint Amateur Radio Emergency Services (ARES) and Radio Amateur Civil Emergency Service (RACES) of King County website: www.AresOfKingCounty.org

1) Installed latest version of the Document Repository software: Bring2mind.DMX_05.03.07_Install Release Notes for 05.03.07

Fix: Notifications not attaching document to email DMX-395

Fix: Notifications sent to all users DMX-402

Enhancement: Double check correct file transfer to storage DMX-400

Fix: WebDAV editing of entry in absolute root not possible DMX-397

New Feature: Add a script to analyze the state of the file storage rather than take immediate action DMX-396

2) Installed a photo gallery extension for the document exchange (Bring2mind.DMX.NewGallery_01.03.04_Install):

The gallery addon allows you to show DMX content as an image gallery. In the module's settings you specify where in the document tree you want the gallery to start. Folders...

New features are detailed at http://dotnetnuke.codeplex.com/releases/view/63026. I’ve also updated the Wiki module to 4.3.0 (alpha), and the Links module to 6.0.0 beta, and Forum module to 5.0.1. Lightbox Gallery has is a new install allowing FancyBox display of images. Unfortunately I’ve had to uninstall the effority.UserDirectory for now due to this issue, but a reinstall may solve this. To provide support for IE9, the Telerik controls have been updated to their Q1 2011 release, per Joe Brinkman’s guidance.  The wiki upgrade in particular should allow us to finally clear up those extraneous pages with funky characters – that prevented their deletion or even editing – but actually completely broke functionality for now. I anticipate the...

The Pacific Northwest is exploring solutions that can provide officials an overview of a regional event.

The existing situation is very fragmented:

WA State is currently using ESI’s WebEOC (for which Vashon has an account) & ESiWebFUSION but this has an older architecture & cumbersome user interface and doesn’t readily allow integration with other technologies in use elsewhere.

The state has a wrapper or GIS based viewer for WebEOC, known as the Washington Information Sharing Environment (WISE) that also aggregates additional data (including from the military, as it was developed by the National Guard)

I’m not aware of what FEMA or DHS uses, but I suspect it is something else.

Neighboring states use WebEOC and other custom solutions. (Oregon is adopting – with some trouble- a more regional system: Virtual Emergency Network of Multnomah, for instance.)

King County has an independent...

U.S. Geological Survey: Twitter Earthquake Detector (TED) reports that “the USGS is developing 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. This approach provides rapid first-impression narratives and, potentially, photos from people at the hazard’s location.” http://fcw.com/articles/2010/07/19/web-app-usgs-twitter.aspx indicates that the USGS will supplement their official data with photographs and...

The Sound Shake 2010 Incident Log entries have been removed from the Incident Log so they won’t get confused with whatever new records might eventually get put in next. An Excel file of these is available for download by EOC members from the document repository (under Planning | Msg Ctr | Incident Specific Docs). Note that the spreadsheet includes lots of additional columns and hasn't yet been formatted nicely, but all the data is there.

 

 





";" alt="">





...

FEMA offers a great set of coursework you can take over the Internet. Now they’ve announced some new courses: The Emergency Management Institute (EMI) offers self-paced courses designed for people who have emergency management responsibilities and the general public. All are offered free-of-charge to those who qualify for enrollment. To get a complete listing of courses, click on Course List link above.

FEMA’s Independent Study Program offers courses that support the nine mission areas identified by the National Preparedness Goal.

Incident Management

Operational Planning

Disaster Logistics

Emergency Communications

Service to Disaster Victims

Continuity Programs

Public Disaster Communications

Integrated Preparedness

Hazard Mitigation

New Courses Launched IS-18.11 - FEMA EEO Employee Course 2011...

The WA State Emergency Managers Association annual conference was held this last week and some of the materials from that are now available online for any of us who were unable to make the conference.

Presentation slides and photos from the conference are available at the WSEMA website at www.wsema.org .  See "2010 Conference Presentations" on the left side menu.

The videos embedded in Claire Bonilla's Microsoft presentation were too large to load onto the WSEMA website. For more information,...

If you want to disaster proof yourself, consider putting your critical (but non-private) files on a server. Unless you are the trusting type, use this as a backup – or keep a backup on a hard drive that you control. I’ve used www.DropBox.com, but here is a listing of many more options:

www.webdesignbooth.com/file-hosting-websites-for-you-to-upload-and-share-files-with-your-friends

We now have limited access to the evolving King County SharePoint web site that they will be using for situational awareness. Details on this will be maintained in the wiki, but let John know if you are interested in finding out more as it expands.