Canton on Emergency Management

September 2010 - Practical Emergency Preparedness

Here's the archive link for the September edition of Emergency Management Solutions:

 http://archive.constantcontact.com/fs027/1102615593725/archive/1103709886508.html

August 2010 Newsletter - Social Media for Emergency Managers

Here's the archive link for the August edition of Emergency Management Solutions:

http://archive.constantcontact.com/fs027/1102615593725/archive/1103591256491.html

Apologies for not sending it out last month!

Practical Emergency Preparedness

Download Practical Emergency Preparedness Sep 2010

Internet Security and the Paranoid Mindset

Ever give much thought to cyber-attack? A lot of us are at least familiar with the concept but would we know one if we experienced it?

As an emergency manager, one of the things I really worry about is the slow-onset disaster - the event that starts low key and progresses so slowly that by the time you recognize something is happening, you're already behind the power curve. Training yourself to anticipate this kind of disaster means you sometimes come across as a bit paranoid.

So what's this got to do with cyber-attack? Consider the following:

• On September 13, Chase bank experienced problems with it's website after software from a third–party database company corrupted information in its systems causing over two days of downtime and affecting millions of customers. Chase stated that this was a technical error.
• On September 17, American Express suffered a systems outage. This was nothing major and the system was soon restored.

So, was this just a coincidence that two major financial institutions suffer outages within days of each other? That's certainly possible. Or is something more insidious going on here?

I guess it really depends on your level of paranoia.

Pacific Gas and Electric another BP?

Many of you I know have been following the recent tragedy in San Bruno, California. This one is a bit personal for me as I frequently drove by the area damaged by the gas explosion, some of the dead were friends of friends, and many of my colleagues are working on the scene, either in their official capacity or as volunteers.

We've reached that stage in disaster response where the shock is wearing off and the finger-pointing is beginning. Pacific Gas and Electric is taking flak for its maintenance procedures and has just been ordered to inspect more than 5,700 miles of pipeline. At this point, they're probably wishing they'd spent more on maintenance.

PG&E is cooperating fully with investigators and has pledged $100 million to help rebuild San Bruno. The pipeline was inspected in March and passed and rumors of complaints about the smell of gas days prior to the explosion do not seem to be substantiated. A portion of the damaged line was scheduled for replacement. This is all good news for PG&E.

However, PG&E is also supporting a proposal before the California Public Utilities Commission that would require customers to pay the uninsured portion of catastrophic fires, such as the one in San Bruno. It doesn't help that a lot of locals recall that PG&E spent about $40 million in the last election to defeat a public power initiative. Both of these are decisions based on the business needs of the company and were in place before the explosion. However, they do not play well with the public and are already beginning to affect PG&E's reputation. If it also emerges that there were corners cut in maintenance or delays in replacing the pipeline because of cost, PG&E may well find it itself in the same position BP did - in the cross-hairs with no place to hide.

Emergency Preparedness - Shifting the focus for emergency management

September is National Preparedness Monthin the United States and Mother Nature is certainly doing her best to remind us of the importance of being prepared. Since September 1st we've seen a hurricane along the East Coast, a tropical storm in Texas that caused tornado watches, and a major wildfire in Colorado. As I write this, another tropical storm is building in the Atlantic. On the international scene, we've experienced a volcanic eruption in Indonesia, a tropical storm in Bermuda, and an earthquake in New Zealand. And the month isn't half over yet!

As an emergency manager, I'm a big supporter of anything that helps motivate people to prepare. However, I'm always a bit concerned when we launch one of these ad campaigns that we are not really making much of a difference. Dr. Dennis Mileti spoke at the International Association of Emergency Managers conference a few years ago and pointed out that a lot of how we try to influence behavior is not consistent with what social science research shows is really effective. Simply put, warnings and scare tactics don't work. People instead will do what everybody else is doing.

Part of the problem as I see it, is that we have made preparedness an end in itself and closely associated it with disasters. We focus on specific plans and kits and train in skills related to disaster. None of this is bad, of course, and I firmly support programs such as community emergency response teams (CERT). However, our approach tends to make preparedness something outside of every day life when it really should be part of how we live our lives. For example, most homes have a flashlight because it has multiple uses, not just because we need it in an earthquake. I'm also willing to bet that the flashlight you use daily works while the one in your emergency kit hasn't been checked since you bought it.

So let's try something a bit different for this National Preparedness Month. Rather than repeating a lot of the same material we always use, let's keep our preparedness advice grounded in the realities of day-to-day life. Let's encourage people to prepare because it helps us deal with daily life.

Preparedness - it's not just for disasters!