Insights

Insights are temporal notices, reviews and notes - that "expire"

ShakeOut Finally Reaches Washington State

Logo for the Great Washington ShakeoutThe 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.

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WA Emergency Management Division–What’ve they done?

Emergency Management Division - Washington Military DepartmentQuite 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.

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WA a Top State in 8th “Ready or Not? Protecting the Public from Diseases, Disasters, and Bioterrorism” Report

Ready_or_Not_2010Arkansas, 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.

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2012 Partners in Emergency Preparedness Conference Presentations

2012 Partners in Emergency Preparedness Conference (Acct #2152)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:

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Vashon ARES Updates their Interface to the Sky

eoc-ant.800x1206The local ARES team worked on the antenna candelabra at VIFR Station 55 last spring as noted in this post:

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Natural Disasters loophole allows USAF drone spying on Vashon

An April 23rd Air Force intelligence brief allows unmanned drone surveillance of Americans to be used for up to 90 days if obtained in scenarios like natural disasters or environmental cases.

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Emergency Preparedness becoming a hobby - for Preppers

American Preppers NetworkThe 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. imageThey have a national group: the American Preppers Network – and even a Washington state presence – with only 2 likes so far…

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Wireless Emergency Alerts (WEA) service starting this month

Wireless Emergency Alerts Capable LogoAs 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, blizzards, and other life-threatening events – i.e., weather warnings – but not less severe weather watches.

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Store food & water–or secure your furniture? Maybe do both…

NPRNational 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.

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FEMA releases National Preparedness Report today

SNAGHTML674e522Today, 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.

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New Regional Preparedness Website-- MakeItThrough.org

MakeItThrough_logoThere’s a new Puget Sound regional disaster website up and live today, known as www.MakeitThrough.org.

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Would a Major Earthquake Sink Portland or Seattle in Liquefied Soil?

4-13-2012 at 2.52.53 PMPBS 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:

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