Insights

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

VMIRC Meets this Tuesday at 7 PM in the EOC

The Vashon Maury Island Radio Club’s May meeting will be this coming Tuesday, May 3rd. 7:00PM at Vashon Fire Station 55 in the EOC room. Our first Show & Tell "Topic - Randy Bardwell, K7RDB presents his home-brew, high tech "uber go-box" and also VMIRC Business Meeting.

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Disaster Grant Programs Hit Hard in 2011 Federal Budget

imageSeveral major source of funds for Vashon – as distributed from FEMA to the State and then to the King County OEM have taken a major hit. Future funding is going to be tighter:

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Compilation of FEMA Earthquake Publications

imageThe Department of Homeland Security and Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) are pleased to share the following compilations of FEMA earthquake publications, at no cost:

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WSEMA 2011 Conference “Preparedness-- It’s Not a Mystery” begins 27 Sep in Port Angeles

clip_image002Washington State Emergency Management Association (WSEMA) will hold their annual conference at the Red Lion Hotel in Port Angeles, Washington on September 27-29, 2011. The theme for the 2011 conference is “Preparedness: It’s Not a Mystery”.

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HazMat Spill at Port of Tacoma

4-26-2011 at 9.43.21 AMToday there is a 300 yard isolation zone set up around the Hyundai Oakland container ship in the Port of Tacoma after a ~4:30 AM leak from a 55 gallon container of chlorobenzotrifluoride solvent. See KIRO TV’s report for details.

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AT&T’s "Fly Away" Remote Mobility Zone–a VERY Mobile Cell Tower

AT&T has started selling portable cellular antennas so customers can provide their own wireless coverage in disaster-struck or remote areas. Typically cell phone companies deploy mobile trucks with larger mobile cell towers, but this gives responders control over their own deployments – albeit with fairly limited service:

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How Severe was that Quake Anyway?!

image King County OEM’s Pascal Schuback had a neat 138 character tweet today that took me well over an hour to digest:

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2011 Federal Disaster Funding-- Mitigation 1/50th as Important as Recovery

image As Eric Holdeman recently pointed out, federal disaster funding is all wrong in 2011:

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FEMA to Update National Incident Management System Training Plan

image The Five-Year NIMS Training Plan, originally released February 2008 is being revised. The comment period for the new National Incident Management System Training Plan ended February 22, several hundred comments have been adjudicated, and just last week the document was transmitted up to FEMA Deputy Administrator Manning, according to the Emergency Management Institute. Final release is likely just weeks away - without new obstacles. Access the The NIMS Training Plan (Draft) at www.regulations.gov, Docket # FEMA-2009-0012.

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Overflow crowd gets blunt message at VashonBePrepared 2011 Annual Meeting

ff_0413011916eTom Miner, head of the Northwest's  sole FEMA Urban Search & Rescue Incident Support Team, riveted an overflow audience with a clear message that after a major regional disaster, federal help is very unlikely to arrive on Vashon for well over 3 days and likely 10 – or more – days. With massive needs, emergency managers must assign their limited resources to the locations where they can do the most good for the most people. The government will clearly strive to save the most lives: to cities, to large buildings and schools where there are large numbers of people – not to rural homes. Having been at most major disasters in recent decades, he was blunt that the government does not have the resources to quickly rescue small localities like Vashon.

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Disasters generate 15 years worth of solid waste in just days

Disasters can typically generate up to fifteen years worth of a community's solid waste over a few days, with the potential to overwhelm day-to-day solid waste operations and to lead to years of disruption; FEMA estimates that debris removal accounted for 27 percent of their total disaster response costs for those U.S. disasters between 2002 and 2007; prolonged problems with the management of solid waste can lead to public and environmental health issues;  slow management of solid waste can also impede economic recovery by inhibiting rebuilding activities.

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Pimp Your Go Box

rack mounted go boxRandy’s got the hottest (communications, not survival) go-box on Vashon – at least that I’m aware of. I don’t see any straps on it to carry it around, but otherwise it looks pretty impressive. Check it out at NineByFive.com

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