By John Cornelison on
2/12/2013 3:04 AM
Every spring in Tacoma there is a great conference for meeting and sharing ideas with a wide range of disaster experts. Early Bird Registration closes at the end of the month! Why Attend Successful management of emergencies can only be accomplished through effective and pre-established partnerships. This conference offers you the opportunity to develop those relationships; gain the necessary information to develop your response, recovery, and mitigation plans; create your preparedness messaging to those you serve; and gain valuable insight into lessons learned and established best practices. This is the largest and most successful regional emergency management preparedness conference in the Pacific Northwest – attracting attendees from: Emergency...
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By John Cornelison on
1/24/2013 9:26 AM
The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) National Earthquake Hazards Reduction Program (NEHRP) is pleased to announce a 1 ½ hour webinar on Reducing the Risks of Nonstructural Earthquake Damage (FEMA E-74). Please join and share this opportunity with other individuals and organizations who might be interested. See details below and in the attachment. Webinar Description Nonstructural components of buildings include all elements that are not part of the structural...
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By John Cornelison on
1/19/2013 4:53 PM
Congratulations to Vashon islander Daniel Luechtefeld for Training to support his community, Volunteering (with VashonBePrepared, VIFR, VMIRC, ARES and other community organizations), Responding and actually saving a neighbor’s life, and Volunteering to help make a video of that dramatic rescue. Daniel has served on the VashonBePrepared Board for a couple years now as the Vashon Maury Island Radio Club (VMIRC)’s...
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By John Cornelison on
1/3/2013 8:32 AM
The Main Himalayan Thrust has historically been responsible for a magnitude 8 to 9 earthquake every several hundred years. (Illustration: Warren Caldwell) Will a megathrust earthquake strike the NW in 2013? New Years brings out speculators, and this time it is the Seattle PI, which quotes the Pacific Northwest Seismic Network’s director John Vidale and Stanford University geophysics professor Paul Segall whose studies indicate some potential links between "episodic tremor and slip,"or ETS activity and subsequent quakes. According to the Stanford release: ...
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By John Cornelison on
12/7/2012 10:22 AM
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By John Cornelison on
10/30/2012 7:44 AM
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By John Cornelison on
10/30/2012 7:16 AM
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By John Cornelison on
10/8/2012 9:40 AM
Congrats to the variety of people (but especially Randall Bardwell with assistance by Tim Hardy) for huge new progress on getting a second repeater up and (soon) operational for Vashon’s amateur radio community. While it will be able to serve as a backup to the existing W7VMI club repeater, it also is vastly more modern with a super flexible architecture that will allow a much broader array of services and modes in the future. This likely will play a role in enhancing emergency communications in coming years. Rick Wallace was instrumental in coordinating the Sun rise Ridge board, Voice of Vashon PSE and Potelco to obtain permission and actually get the new antennas installed as shown to the right. See all his photos, a video, and read more...
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By John Cornelison on
10/8/2012 8:57 AM
On Saturday October 13, from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Vashon Island Fire & Rescue will open its doors to the public for their annual Open House at the end of Fire Prevention Week. There will be a flu shot clinic from getaflushot.com, training demonstrations at the Penny Farcy Training Center across the street, "hands on" the fire hose, as well as displays by VashonBePrepared, CERT and the Red Cross. The following items will be for sale: WHAT'S COOKIN' AT VIFR cookbook; bike, skating, equestrian and ski helmets; "blue" address signs and registration for upcoming CPR classes. ...
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By John Cornelison on
9/28/2012 6:48 AM
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By John Cornelison on
9/25/2012 8:55 AM
Be ready for an earthquake with Earthquake by American Red Cross. Get notified when an earthquake occurs, prepare your family and home, find help and let others know you are safe even if the power is out – a must have for anyone who lives in an earthquake-prone area or has loved ones who do. FEATURES: •Step-by-step instructions let you know what to do even before/during/after an earthquake, even if no data connectivity. •Get notified when an earthquake occurs; see the intensity impact to your area or those of loved-ones with notifications generated by the United States Geological Survey (USGS). •Let family and friends know you are okay with the customizable “I’m Safe” alert for Facebook, Twitter, email and text. •Find open Red...
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By John Cornelison on
9/14/2012 9:04 AM
President Obama has declared 20 more disasters than in 2010 and 2 times the numbers declared by President George W. Bush in his first two years in the White House. Are there really that many more disasters though? Despite all the severe weather this year and portent for much more ahead (partially due to massive declines in Artic Ice levels) and resultant economic losses (e.g., a huge downturn in salmon runs), there may also be some politics at play, with Obama being pressured to declare disasters according to this ABC News report.
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By John Cornelison on
9/1/2012 7:30 AM
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By John Cornelison on
9/1/2012 7:11 AM
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By John Cornelison on
8/31/2012 7:49 AM
You only have seconds. Do you know exactly what to do the moment the ground starts shaking? If it involves a doorway, a triangle, or running – these are not quake-safe actions. Register now at www.ShakeOut.org/washington/register to learn more and practice updated quake safety. Be a part of Washington’s ShakeOut drill.
You are invited to join thousands of people who will Drop, Cover, and Hold On on October 18th at 10:18 a.m. in the 2012 Great Washington ShakeOut!
More than 12.5 million people were registered...
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By John Cornelison on
8/27/2012 6:21 AM
The Vashon Beachcomber has just published a nice story about CERT’s new equestrian team which has been organized by Beth Kellner with help from Penni Symonds, Wanda Moore,...
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By John Cornelison on
8/27/2012 6:08 AM
After some 7 years in a conference room in VIFR’s main Station 55, the Vashon Emergency Operations Center (EOC) may be relocated next year to the VIFR Association Building across the street. Slightly larger, the room would be shared with King County...
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By John Cornelison on
8/2/2012 9:48 AM
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By John Cornelison on
7/28/2012 12:44 PM
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By John Cornelison on
7/27/2012 11:53 AM
Barb Graff, Director of Seattle’s Office of Emergency Management has just announced the hire of Tracy Connelly as Seattle Office of Emergency Management’s new Community Planning Coordinator. Tracy starts August 1st. Tracy Connelly has been a Public Outreach Specialist at OEM working with access and functional needs, immigrant and refugee, homeless, and multi-cultural populations. In...
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By John Cornelison on
7/27/2012 8:00 AM
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By John Cornelison on
7/26/2012 8:58 AM
As they indicate below, this appears to be a pretty basic course, but by clicking on one of the initial pages you can see much of the complete course outline and quickly skim it to see how much of it is applicable to your family or business. This outline serves as a great reminder of all the steps we should be taking – and a reminder for us to complete those missing action items that we’d not completed (or refreshed) recently! The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) is pleased to announce a new web-based, independent study training course, IS-325—Earthquake Basics: Science, Risk, and Mitigation. ...
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By John Cornelison on
7/26/2012 7:39 AM
According...
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By John Cornelison on
7/23/2012 10:38 AM
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By John Cornelison on
6/21/2012 5:43 AM
Cancel another innovative idea. According to a commentary published Monday in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, storing harmful carbon dioxide gas underground is not practical. Why? Because it would cause earthquakes! There is a long history of materials pumped underground causing earthquakes, and this report apparently finds this also likely in this situation. Although the quakes would likely be relatively small – they would be large enough to destroy the equipment used to pump the greenhouse gases down. Read more in the LA Times article, which ends up quoting experts encouraging putting development funds into renewable energy instead. That makes sense to me! ...
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By John Cornelison on
6/15/2012 10:31 AM
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By John Cornelison on
6/15/2012 9:46 AM
Chief Hank Lipe has announced the hiring of Ms. Nicole Trent of Gig Harbor, WA to serve as an Administrative Assistant at Vashon Island Fire & Rescue – King County Fire District 13. A nine year veteran with Pierce County Fire District #16 (Key Peninsula), Nicole brings a solid background in Fire District administrative services and is excited to become part of VIFR’s team. Mark your...
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By John Cornelison on
6/7/2012 2:35 PM
Drill includes delivering critical supplies to Vashon Island by boat
King County joined with federal, state, and local agencies this week to test its capacity to respond to and recover from a major earthquake. The exercise, dubbed “Evergreen Quake 2012,” gave participants a chance to assess their disaster response plans and emergency communication strategies. Six counties, including King County, participated in the drill, along with the state of...
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By John Cornelison on
6/7/2012 11:19 AM
Nearly a hundred islanders took part in the regional Evergreen Quake on June 5th & 6th at the Vashon Emergency Operations Center.
It was fairly historic for a number of reasons:
- Initial test of Operation Lifeline (King County’s redirecting their passenger ferry or hiring a barge – to support emergency needs on Vashon)
- The Planning Section has adopted the standard ICS Planning Clock - and had the 1st real run-though of this during a major exercise
- The Public Information Team...
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By John Cornelison on
6/7/2012 8:43 AM
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By John Cornelison on
6/7/2012 8:00 AM
Every 500-1000 years the slopes of Mount Rainier produce liquefied mud flows called lahars that can flow like rivers but have a density similar to liquid concrete. Based on the last Electron Mudflow ~550 years ago, and using HAZUS software, the DNR...
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By John Cornelison on
6/4/2012 8:52 PM
Washington Emergency Management Division is working with FEMA and a slew of local partners in the Puget Sound region to conduct the state's largest (i.e., most coordinated) earthquake exercise ever: Evergreen Quake 2012™. The exercise’s goal is to “improve the collective joint-operational readiness of emergency management and other...
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By John Cornelison on
6/4/2012 8:30 PM
A few months back I notices an exciting new source of disaster preparedness info: Sesame Street! Yep, FEMA apparently hired them to start educating tots early – in a variety of languages too. Fun! (I wish I had received that contract.) Today I noticed that Washington State has developed some tsunami and earthquake games too. Educating kids is certainly an exciting new genre...
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By John Cornelison on
6/4/2012 7:47 PM
The ShakeOut™ moniker started a couple years back in California I believe – which perhaps accounts for it’s subsequent adoption thought the galaxy, and soon in Washington too! I’m a bit jaded about such marketing obviously, but it has generated LOTS of publicity and made many aware that otherwise wouldn’t have a clue. So it is a good thing that Washington State will mount up to conduct our own version of this on October 18, 2012. Details and much more entertaining graphics should arrive soon, but you too can be in the know on this by going to our very own subsite at: www.shakeout.org/washington/ Register Now! ...
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By John Cornelison on
6/4/2012 7:37 PM
Quite a bit apparently! They don’t crow about it much, but they are fairly consistently busy apparently with some 4372 state-wide incidents to track last year! They only activated 14 times, but obviously spent a lot of time tracking activities throughout the state, but especially olde King County – with 865 of those 4372 incidents: 670 of our county’s incidents were Hazmat, 121 Search & Rescue, 73 Other & 1 Fire incident. The EMD also organizes training program state-wide, exercises & drills, business & citizen education and probably a bit of accounting/administration too. For more information go to their: April 2012 Report...
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By John Cornelison on
5/29/2012 7:22 AM
Arkansas, North Dakota & Washington all received perfect 10 out of 10 scores in the most recent “Ready or Not? Protecting the Public from Diseases, Disasters, and Bioterrorism” study, conducted by the Trust for America's Health (TFAH) and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. Key findings: Seven states cannot currently share data electronically with health care providers; 10 states do not have an electronic syndromic...
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By John Cornelison on
5/16/2012 9:41 PM
The Partners in Emergency Preparedness Conference is an annual meeting held in Tacoma that is an excellent way to network with others in the disaster preparedness field – and get an excellent overview of the state of the art. Though a good deal, it doesn’t always fit folks schedules and may be too big a time and financial commitment for others. Fortunately, they make many of the presentations available after the conference. Here they are: Visit www.cm.wsu.edu/ehome/piepc/68406 for live links to the following presentations: Keynote: Dr. Grady Bray Changes in the National Incident Management System and how it will affect Federal, State and Local...
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By John Cornelison on
5/15/2012 9:11 PM
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By John Cornelison on
5/14/2012 9:08 AM
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By John Cornelison on
5/14/2012 8:16 AM
The Seattle Times published an interesting look yesterday at a new hobby (as they call it) – Emergency Preparedness. Less than 1 in 1,000 might be members of this new group of “Preppers”. At times the similarities to survivalist mentality sound some personal warning bells – though much of what they do is working in communities – not isolating themselves. They...
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By John Cornelison on
5/14/2012 7:29 AM
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By John Cornelison on
5/10/2012 7:44 AM
National Public Radio’s Lucy Craft has a number of interesting posts about life in Japan post last year’s tsunami and earthquake. Today’s post, “After The Quake, Japanese Shop For Survival”, notes that local stores are selling lots of all-in-one emergency flashlights-radios-etc. – but concludes with the observation from one survivor of the 1995 Kobe earthquake, “city dwellers should focus on how to keep their furniture from crushing them alive” – not storing food as that will quickly arrive. While less true for isolated Vashon, it still makes me wonder if we’re doing enough to...
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By John Cornelison on
5/3/2012 11:03 AM
Today, FEMA and its partners released the National Preparedness Report (NPR). The Report identifies significant progress the nation has made in areas of prevention, protection, mitigation, response, and recovery. Overall the Report found that the nation has increased its collective preparedness, not only from external threats, but also for natural and technological hazards that face its communities. The Report was developed to meet the requirements of Presidential...
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By John Cornelison on
4/19/2012 6:06 AM
As mentioned at last night’s annual meeting, preparedness efforts on Vashon made strong strides over the past year. These successes are only partially due to VashonBePrepared’s efforts, and mainly by our various partners, including some independent accomplishments by others in our community. Here’s the listing presented:
Business Neighborhood Emergency Response Organization created, numerous meetings led by Vashon Chamber of Commerce
Enhanced relations with King County Office of Emergency Management:
Operation Lifeline - Plan & contract for hiring a barge or dedicated ferry to shuttle supplies if normal ferry operations are down
MOU with Vashon Island School District to serve as a Disaster Campus
MOU with Camp Burton to house disaster workers from off island
Vashon integration w/ county computer alerting/management systems
Enhanced integration of CERT & MRC & EOC Team with VIFR ops
Disaster Emergency Response Trailer...
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By John Cornelison on
4/19/2012 5:53 AM
A new board was seated last night at VashonBePrepared’s Annual Meeting.
As set out in our bylaws, we have two classes of directors – ex-officio directors as set out by our bylaws – primarily the chief representatives of our partners – and those elected by the membership at our annual meeting: our at-large directors.
VashonBePrepared 2012 Board of Directors
John Cornelison (past Prez)
Donna Donnelly (at-large)
Synthia Downs (at-large)
Jill Janow (EOC Team)
Tim Johnson (at-large)
Hank Lipe (VIFR)
Daniel Luechtefeld (ARES)
John “Oz” Osborne (at-large)
Scott Rice (CERT)
Debi Richards (NERO)
Catherine Rogers (VEPC)
Bob Smueles (at-large)
Ed Steyh (EOC Team)
Rex Stratton (VIEMA)
Rick Wallace (EOC Team)
The new board then unanimously elected the following directors to the Executive Committee, that subset of the board that meets monthly and tends to the daily business of our corporation:
VashonBePrepared...
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By John Cornelison on
4/16/2012 10:26 AM
There’s a new Puget Sound regional disaster website up and live today, known as www.MakeitThrough.org. It looks good and emphasizes having at least 7-10 days worth of supplies – not just the old message of 3 day, 3 ways. (I suspect this replaces the old www.3days3ways.org website, but don’t know for sure.) The list...
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By John Cornelison on
4/13/2012 1:54 PM
PBS Newshour just did a special segment about the risk to northwesterners of liquidification during quake tremblers. Thanks to Jill for noticing this. Read the transcript and see the video on their site here: www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/science/jan-june12/liquefaction_04-12.html ...
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By John Cornelison on
4/13/2012 12:33 PM
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By John Cornelison on
4/13/2012 12:24 PM
Earthquakes are one of the greatest natural hazards for Washington residents. Practicing what you should do when the ground begins to shake is an important part of being prepared. On April 25 state broadcasters will initiated the “Drop, Cover and Hold” earthquake drill through the Emergency Alert System. Tune into KIRO radio (97.3 FM) at 9:45 a.m. to join local residents and businesses as we “drop” to the floor, take “cover”...
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By John Cornelison on
4/13/2012 6:47 AM
With all the recent earthquakes around the ring of fire it isn’t too surprising we want to connect these occurrences as having some pattern. But we shouldn’t, according to Lucile Jones, Science Advisor for Risk Reduction at the USGS, in an interview with ABC News. She did note that yesterday’s 8.6M strike-slip...
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