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IAEM
The IAEM Editorial Committee seeks article submissions on "Black Swan Event: Pandemics" for the April 2020 issue of the IAEM Bulletin. The deadline for article submissions is Mar. 20, 2020. As emergency managers, we learn from what has happened in the past to help us plan for the future. When it comes to a pandemic, we can look at what we have learned in order to be prepared. Articles could look at past incidents that offer lessons in how to best prepare, such as H1N1, SARS, MERS, or Spanish flu. Are travel bans effective in slowing the spread of a pandemic in our global environment? What lessons did we learn from previous infectious disease outbreaks that should/could be applied today? What do we advise citizens who want to be prepared? How do we prepare? How do we respond without destroying our economy and our social structure? Consider the improvements you have experienced and witnessed, as well as the failures. There is no more logical time to think about this kind of event, since the coronavirus (COVID-19) continues to spread. Article length is 750-1,500 words, and author guidelines are online. A full list of 2020 special focus issue topics is posted here. Direct questions to Bulletin Editor Karen Thompson.
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IAEM
Join the leaders of the Poster Showcase Working Group for a free webinar on all the requirements and tips for success in the IAEM Poster Showcase at the 68th Annual Conference & EMEX in Long Beach, California, Nov. 13-18, 2020. In this webinar, all your questions will be answered. You will learn:
- how to submit your abstract;
- what you need to know about the competitive and non-competitive divisions;
- about available coaching and mentoring;
- how to receive gold, silver or bronze recognition from IAEM; and
- about presenting at the conference.
Register today for this informative webinar on Monday, Mar. 16, 2020, at 2:00 p.m. EDT. For more information about the IAEM Annual Conference, visit the conference website.
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Everbridge
With severe weather season intensifying, counties and cities across Florida share their perspective on hurricane preparedness and the benefits of leveraging Everbridge as their statewide mass notification platform, including improved situational intelligence, communication, and mutual aid. Watch Now.
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IAEM
The IAEM Scholarship Program 2020 Spring Online Auction will be accepting online bids until 10:00 p.m. EDT, Mar. 24. Please bid and tell your friends about the auction to support the IAEM Scholarship Program and help further the education of students studying the field of emergency management, disaster management or a related program. New items added to the auction include: Life Magazine — "Khrushchev Remembers World War II" issue; 2019 and 2020 IAEM Annual Conference challenge coins; EMAC jacket; IAEM beach towel; local EM challenge coins; and more! Bid in the auction or give a donation by visiting www.biddingforgood.com/IAEMScholarshipProgram.
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We have all the products needed to stop the bleed! Shop our bleeding control kits today to be prepared for tomorrow’s need. Our kits are designed to provide an user with immediate access to products intended to stop a traumatic hemorrhaging.
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Castanet
The provincial government has come through with $5 million worth of funding to help mitigate wildfires in British Columbia this summer.
The money will be divided up amongst the province's volunteer and composite fire departments across B.C., to be used for equipment and training through the Province's Community Emergency Preparedness Fund (CEPF).
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Toronto Sun
Ontario's new flooding strategy is focusing on increasing public awareness and preparedness, but it's not clear if it will come with any new funding.
Natural Resources Minister John Yakabuski announced in Minden that the strategy builds on the recommendations from a report last year on spring flooding that saw 23 municipalities and one First Nation declare a state of emergency.
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| | IAEM-OCEANIA COUNCIL NEWS |
Clayton News
The devastating wildfires that burned across Australia last year and into 2020 were made far more likely and intense by the climate crisis, a new analysis shows.
Scientists found that the chances of the kind of extreme weather that triggered the blazes have increased by more than 30% since 1900, and that fire conditions like this are at least four times more likely than they were at the start of the 20th century.
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The Hill
State and local governments are taking drastic and unprecedented measures aimed at slowing the spread of the coronavirus, an acknowledgment that parts of the country are past the point of containment.
Several cities are prohibiting large gatherings and events, big businesses are telling their workers to stay at home, and more classes are getting canceled at schools and universities.
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The Hill
President Trump on Friday signed a bill providing $8.3 billion in emergency funding to combat the coronavirus outbreak.
The bill provides $7.76 billion to federal, state and local agencies to combat the coronavirus and authorizes an additional $500 million in waivers for Medicare telehealth restrictions.
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NPR
The coronavirus funding bill signed into law by the president Friday puts much more money toward treating and preventing the spread of COVID-19 than his administration requested from Congress last week.
The Trump administration's initial request — in the form of a two-page letter to Congress on Feb. 24 — was for $1.25 billion in new funds, with additional money moved from other parts of the federal budget to get to a total of $2.5 billion. The amount authorized Friday is more than three times that.
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Optimum Seismic
California just experienced its deadliest and most destructive wildfire, ever. Nearly 14,000 homes, 530 commercial structures and 4,300 other buildings were destroyed in November when the Cal Fire ravaged the Butte County landscape, incinerating entire communities like the town of Paradise in its wake.
The devastation of lives and livelihoods lost is unfathomable. So too is the sheer scope of work needed to clear the charred debris before recovery can ever start.
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Homeland Preparedness News
Resolute in the face of equipment shortages, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services announced last week that it intends to purchase 500 million N95 respirators for the Strategic National Stockpile over the next 18 months.
N95 respirators are close-fitting, efficient systems that filter out airborne particles. They, unlike many masks, can help block things like the virus, which causes COVID-19.
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Route Fifty
As they seek to curb the spread of the new coronavirus, state and local authorities around the U.S. are having to establish guidelines for what people should do if they have been exposed to the respiratory illness but are not showing any symptoms of it.
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NPR
The COVID-19 viral disease that has swept into at least 114 countries and killed more than 4,000 people is now officially a pandemic, the World Health Organization announced Wednesday. It's the first time the WHO has called an outbreak a pandemic since the H1N1 "swine flu" in 2009.
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Homeland Security Today
Ben-Gurion University of the Negev (BGU) researchers, who exposed vulnerabilities in 911 systems due to distributed denial of service attacks (DDoS) back in 2016, say the next generation of 911 systems that now accommodate text, images and video still have the same or more severe issues.
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| | UNIVERSITY/COLLEGE EM ISSUES |
IAEM
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) released "Interim Guidance for Administrators of US Institutions of Higher Education: Plan, Prepare and Respond to Coronavirus Disease 2019." This interim guidance is intended to help administrators of public and private institutions of higher education (IHE) prevent the spread of COVID-19 among students, staff, and faculty. IHE include a diverse set of American colleges and universities: 2- or 4-year; public, private non-profit, or private for-profit; and comprehensive, research-focused, or special mission. The CDC will update this guidance as needed and as additional information becomes available. Visit the CDC COVID-19 website periodically for the updated interim guidance.
Route Fifty
In Washington state, which as of Tuesday led the country in coronavirus cases, schools in one district outside Seattle are closed for two weeks in response to the outbreak. Elsewhere in the United States, schools are announcing one-day cancellations for deep cleanings after learning of students or staff who’ve come in contact with Covid-19 patients.
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The Conversation
The World Health Organization has declared COVID-19 a pandemic. This is a landmark event.
As an epidemiologist listening to the steady stream of conversation around the coronavirus, I’m hearing newscasters and neighbors alike mixing up three important words my colleagues and I use in our work every day: outbreak, epidemic and pandemic.
Simply put, the difference between these three scenarios of disease spread is a matter of scale.
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| | CLIMATE/WATER/WEATHER UPDATES |
The Conversation
Hurricanes and tropical storms are estimated to cost the U.S. economy more than U.S. $50 billion yearly in damage from winds and flooding. And as these storms travel across the Atlantic, they also ravage many Caribbean nations.
We study coastal ecosystems and how to value the natural coastal defenses provided by mangroves, marshes and coral reefs. In a new study, we map flood risks along more than 435,000 miles (700,000 kilometers) of subtropical shoreline in 59 countries around the world.
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Chinese Academy of Sciences via Phys.org
In numerical weather forecasting research, how to improve short-term forecasts of tropical cyclone intensity is a challenging problem that has long plagued meteorologists and operational forecasters, despite that meteorologists have increased the accuracy of the initial field through increasing observations in either quantity or quality. So, what else are we missing?
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WWNO-FM
Rather than keep building bigger levees, the Dutch decided to make several strategic retreats. At more than 30 locations around the country, a program known as Room for the River has removed human-built barriers and reshaped landscapes to give rivers more space to spread out safely when they’re running high.
About 20% of the program's $2.6 billion budget went toward buying out and relocating 200 households in high-risk areas.
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CapRadio
We were flying about 200 nautical miles off the coast of California when a voice over the headset reported a strong smell of fuel in the back of the plane.
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IAEM
FEMA released a new publication, "Earthquake Safety at Home." This guide identifies why and where earthquakes might occur and how readers can "prepare, protect, survive, respond, recover and repair" from an earthquake. The guide discusses wide-ranging steps that readers can take to adequately prepare and protect themselves, their family, and their belongings. The guide emphasizes the importance of developing family response plans, assembling earthquake disaster supplies, securing heavy objects and furniture, retrofitting a home, and more. This publication also provides recommendations for post-earthquake recovery and repair that can help individuals and families resume regular activities as quickly as possible.
Government Technology
A new Online Community Emergency Response Team (CERT) training program will provide potential volunteers the opportunity to obtain a digital credential as part of their training to become CERT volunteers.
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The Hill
The growing COVID-19 outbreak (formerly known as 2019 Novel Coronavirus) has rattled people around the world. The effects have not been limited to the infected and their families. American businesses like Apple have lowered their sales expectations due to the inaccessibility of parts from China, the U.S. travel industry may lose up to 10 billion dollars from a drop in Chinese tourists, and the Dow Jones has lost nearly 2,000 points this week; its worst two-session stretch since February 2018 with back-to-back losses of at least 800 points for the first time ever.
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Politico
Daniel Kaniewski, a managing director at Marsh & McLennan Companies who served as a deputy administrator at the Federal Emergency Management Agency from 2017-20, writes: "With every passing day, it's becoming clear that the coronavirus epidemic is not just a health emergency but instead has the potential to become a major disaster. And that means it might be time to turn to the nation’s disaster response agency to assist."
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Homeland Security Today
Homeland Security officials at all levels of government would be wise to embrace the concept of human factors. As it relates to this article, human factors applies principles of psychology focused on designing products, plans and environments that enhance desired outcomes. That's a mouthful and academic-sounding. However, the application is real-world and accounts for what a human being may, and will do, in stressful situations.
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Homeland Security Today
Today we are facing a novel coronavirus (COVID-19) disease that has possible global pandemic possibilities and many of the same characteristics as the 1918 influenza pandemic, to include a case fatality rate (mortality rate) around 2-3 percent. While the causative agents of influenza and COVID-19 are different, the best-available information on the virus transmissibility, commonly referred to as the basic reproduction number (R0) — pronounced "R naught" — is similar to that of the 1918 influenza virus at that time, which resulted in a global pandemic.
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Route Fifty
A possible coronavirus pandemic could overwhelm the nation's hospitals and force doctors into difficult decisions about how to allocate limited resources. Yet, experts say, only a handful of states have done the work necessary to prepare for such worst-case scenarios.
How would hospitals handle overflowing emergency rooms? What would doctors do if they ran out of medicines or ventilators? How would they decide who gets prioritized if they can’t treat everyone?
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The Verge
The ongoing coronavirus outbreak has pushed more companies and organizations to transition to remote work, and now both Google and Microsoft have said they will grant access to their more robust teleconferencing and collaboration tools that are typically only available to enterprise customers to make it easier for people to work from home. Both companies are only offering free access for a limited time.
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Penn State University
As Hurricane Dorian made landfall on Grand Bahama Island in 2019 and bushfires engulfed Australia in 2020, emergency teams were busy creating plans to best respond and provide relief to those affected by the disasters.
Many homes in the Bahamas were destroyed, displacing tens of thousands of people, and extreme flooding washed out roadways, covered the coastlines and shut down a major airport. More than 11 million hectares of Australian land burned for days, destroying over 2,000 homes and forcing thousands of residents to evacuate as the bushfires quickly spread and suffocated areas in thick black smoke.
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Abacus
China has started tests on a new earthquake monitoring system that uses artificial intelligence (AI) to measure seismic activity in the southwest provinces of Yunnan and Sichuan.
The fully automated system, which is designed to process huge amounts of seismic data, is expected to fast-track earthquake prediction to within two seconds based on established source parameters, according to a report on Wednesday by Science and Technology Daily, the official newspaper of the Ministry of Science and Technology.
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IAEM
The Assistance to Firefighters Grant Program application deadline is 5:00 p.m. EDT on Mar. 13, 2020. Grant applicants can visit the FEMA website to review grant guidance materials. Applications can be submitted via FEMA GO Portal. The Assistance to Firefighters Grants assists first-responder organizations that need to improve capability to respond to fire and emergencies of all types. The program enhances public and firefighter safety and provides direct financial assistance to eligible fire departments, nonaffiliated Emergency Medical Services organizations, and State Fire Training Academies.
IAEM
Join IAEM-USA Region 1 for a webinar on “Threat Management Fundamentals,” set for Mar. 26, 2020, 2:00-3:00 p.m. EDT. Have you ever wondered if your company is prepared to prevent or respond to a workplace violence event? Scott Derby, CPP, will discuss model threat management programs and give you a road map for success. Derby runs the workplace violence risk management program at Takeda Pharmaceuticals, a 60,000-employee global bio-pharma company. Register online.
IAEM
The IAEM-USA Region 5 Conference scheduled for Apr. 3-4, 2020, in Akron, Ohio, has been canceled. All registrants who have paid the registration fee will receive a refund in the same method of payment. All registrants are encouraged to immediately contact the hotels and airlines regarding any reservations that may have been made. We are sorry for this inconvenience.
TheStreet
As the coronavirus that spread out of Wuhan, China, late last year has now infected nearly 110,000 people in 93 countries and is overwhelming nations as far away as Italy, there's one place where the infection rate has been minimal so far. Just over 80 miles away from China, Taiwan has logged only 45 known cases of Covid-19 as of Sunday. That's a small fraction of the more than 500 cases — and over 20 deaths — now discovered in the U.S. And yet Taiwan is close not only geographically to the mainland, but also historically, economically and politically.
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EUObserver
The European Parliament's committee on environment and public health stressed on Thursday the need to fund the EU Civil Protection Mechanism (CPM) through the EU's next 2021-2027 long-term budget with at least €1.4bn — as initially proposed by the European Commission. CPM has supported member states when a natural disaster occurred — and also evacuated EU nationals from China during the coronavirus outbreak.
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BBC News
There is anxiety and confusion on the ground as Italy implements its most restrictive measures since World War Two in its battle against the coronavirus.
Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte has called the outbreak the country's "darkest hour" as measures, which include travel restrictions and a ban on public gatherings, are enacted across Italy.
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BBC News
Building new homes on flood plains in Wales must stop, campaigners have said.
Figures show more than 2,000 houses were granted planning permission in flood risk areas in Wales between 2016 and 2019.
However, damage caused by storms Ciara and Dennis has left residents counting the cost of that policy and raised concerns over plans to build more.
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CNN
The novel coronavirus outbreak continues to spread globally, sparking a total lockdown across Italy and emergency measures worldwide, as markets recover from Monday's historic rout.
The virus, known as Covid-19, has now infected close to 113,000 people worldwide and resulted in more than 4,000 deaths. The majority of these cases are in mainland China, where the outbreak first emerged — but the rate of infection has been slowing in the country, and the situation stabilizing, even as the virus wreaks havoc elsewhere.
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PreventionWeb
As rural Namibians move to cities to escape the worst drought in nearly a century, many find themselves navigating a no-man's land between over-saturated slums and the parched farmland they hope to one day return to, say activists and aid officials.
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Route Fifty
New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced Tuesday that the state will create a one-mile "containment zone" in New Rochelle, closing down all public gathering places and sending in National Guard troops to help with cleaning and food distribution.
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WNBC-TV
At least four people were killed in the collapse of hotel in southeastern China that was being used for medical observation of people who had arrived from areas hit by the coronavirus outbreak, authorities said Sunday.
The sudden collapse of the building on Saturday evening trapped 71 people, the Ministry of Emergency Management said. Thirty-eight had been rescued as of 10:30 a.m. Sunday, including one person in critical condition and four others in serious condition, the ministry said.
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Trend
Rescue workers found the body of a 37-year-old man under piles of earth and debris on Sunday, bringing the death toll from the mudslides in southeast Brazil's Sao Paulo state to 42, Trend reports citing Xinhua.
Another 36 people remain missing since unusually heavy rains hit coastal towns on Tuesday, collapsing ramshackle hillside houses in the poorer neighborhoods, according to local firefighters.
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