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IAEM
Due to the time constraints COVID-19 has imposed upon the emergency management profession, IAEM is providing more time to submit speaker proposals for EMvision Talks and the Poster Showcase. The new deadline is June 1, 2020. The Poster Showcase is an information-sharing event. Participants have an opportunity to convey to a wide audience the significance of their research project, practice, or general findings to practitioners and scholars in the emergency management community. The EMvision Talks, modeled on the TED™ Talk format, provide a forum for people to share a personal connection to an idea, experience or passion related to emergency management, leadership, communication, community engagement, or other related topics. The talks and posters will be presented at the IAEM 68th Annual Conference & EMEX in Long Beach, California, Nov. 13-18, 2020. Learn how to apply on the conference website.
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CBC News
Without long-term financial assistance, many people in Fort McMurray whose homes and businesses were devastated by spring flooding will face financial ruin, says the region's mayor. Scott is calling on the federal and provincial governments to extend disaster relief funding to the nearly 13,000 people forced from their homes last week.
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Everbridge
With Everbridge's Community Engagement, governments are able to expand outreach through mobile keyword opt-ins. With Resident Connection, agencies are able to obtain verified mobile, landline and VoIP telephone records to use for emergency notifications and are uploaded into the Everbridge system.
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Emergency Management
Many rural parts of the country have avoided the toll of cases and deaths that have haunted cities such as New York — but it may not stay that way.
These areas tend to have an older population that typically has higher rates of chronic illnesses and is concentrated in close living institutions, according to federal data.
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IAEM
Organizations across the nation are determining when and how to resume operations while protecting the well-being and safety of their employees and communities. As guidance, FEMA has released: “Planning Considerations for Organizations in Reconstituting Operations During the COVID-19 Pandemic.” An organization may need to adapt and adopt new processes, address physical and psychological impacts to personnel, recover records and files, reestablish communications and IT equipment or acquire specialized equipment to regain full functionality. Planning requires expertise and coordination from the entire organization and coordination with partners and stakeholders throughout the community. This new resource builds upon the White House guidelines for Opening Up America.
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BCG is committed to helping you respond to the current COVID-19 pandemic. Our years of experience in the disaster and emergency management field make us a great partner for providing solutions to the ongoing COVID-19 outbreak and the challenges it presents.
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IAEM
FEMA announced that the Emergency Food and Shelter Program (EFSP) National Board will allocate $200 million to communities across the country to assist organizations providing critical resources to people with economic emergencies, including our nation's hungry and homeless populations.
These funds were appropriated in the Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security (CARES) Act to ease financial hardship caused by the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. Funding will go to organizations dedicated to feeding, sheltering, and providing critical resources to people experiencing, or at risk of experiencing, hunger and homelessness. In addition to the $200 million supplemental funding from the CARES Act, Congress also appropriated $120 million in FY 2019 annual funding to the EFSP. The funding, totaling $320 million, will be distributed beginning in early June 2020 to human service organizations assisting those in need throughout the country. EFSP funding is allocated to qualifying local jurisdictions (counties and cities) based on a formula using the most recent national population, unemployment, and poverty data. Each funded jurisdiction establishes a local board that awards the grant funds to local social service organizations, both nonprofit and governmental, that can best address the identified needs of the community. A state-by-state list of the eligible jurisdictions and allocation amounts is available on the EFSP website.
NexGov
The coming months are critical for the Federal Emergency Management Agency, a former administrator said.
FEMA, which has taken a lead role in the nation’s whole of government response to the coronavirus pandemic, will soon face what forecasters expect to be an above-average hurricane season beginning in June.
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Emergency management specialists across the world keep our communities safe and help them rebuild when disaster strikes. With UCF’s online Master of Emergency and Crisis Management, you’ll advance your skills in managing disaster preparedness, response, recovery, and mitigation - all from the comfort of your home. Learn more here.
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Government Executive
The federal government’s disaster response workforce is often unprepared and underqualified when deployed to regions in need of immediate assistance, according to a new report, which found the employees were often designated as maintaining skills they lacked in reality.
The qualification issues were exacerbated by severe staffing shortfalls at the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the Government Accountability Office found in a new report.
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New York Post
The Federal Emergency Management Agency is preparing for hurricane season amid the challenges posed by social distancing guidelines in place to combat the spread of the coronavirus pandemic. The agency is drafting a document in advance of the June 1 start of hurricane season to prepare for evacuations while maintaining social distancing guidelines and house people in schools and community centers without creating unsafe crowding conditions.
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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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IAEM
The U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) on May 4 released “National Preparedness: Additional Actions Needed to Address Gaps in the Nation’s Emergency Management Capabilities (GAO-20-297),” with complete report and highlights summary posted online. GAO was asked to examine national preparedness. The report examines the extent to which the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s (FEMA’s) National Preparedness System (NPS) and associated preparedness grants have assisted jurisdictions in preparing for disaster. It also addresses FEMA’s actions to strengthen the NPS, as well as FEMA’s use of after-action reports to identified lessons learned. GAO made four recommendations to FEMA: (1) determine what steps are needed to address EM capability gaps and communicate it to key stakeholders; (2) prioritize completion of after-action reviews; (3) track corrective actions; and (4) develop guidance on sharing findings externally. The Department of Homeland Security concurred, and FEMA is taking actions in response.
IAEM
The U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) on May 5 released “National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP): Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) Can Improve Community Oversight and Data Sharing (GAO-20-396),” with complete report and highlights summary posted online. The NFIP's effectiveness depends in part on communities implementing FEMA requirements on floodplain management and post-disaster rebuilding efforts. GAO was asked to undertake a comprehensive evaluation of federal disaster preparedness, response, and recovery efforts. This report examines the requirements that NFIP communities must meet and challenges they face; community visits by FEMA to ensure compliance; and FEMA’s oversight of community implementation of NFIP requirements for conducting substantial damage assessments. In its report, GAO made four recommendations to FEMA: (1) assess different approaches for ensuring compliance with NFIP requirements; (2) ensure that community visit data is up-to-date and complete; (3) ensure that communities collect data on substantial damage assessments; and (4) clarify policies on data sharing between FEMA and NFIP communities. FEMA concurred with the recommendations.
IAEM
The IAEM Editorial Committee will publish the second 2020 special focus issue in June, on the topic of “Black Swan Events: Cybersecurity.” Cyber incidents are happening and will continue to occur. Our world is unique, and we have to embrace the reality of where we are and be ready to manage any emergency that arises. To survive and thrive, we must think in new ways, share resources, and work with new partners to forge new successes. We need to be ready to consider “non-traditional” solutions. Technology is vulnerable to cyber hacks, and the damage could be a whole lot more than the incidents we have already experienced. What have we learned from events that have already occurred to prepare our communities to face future cyber incidents? How will the challenges of cyber incidents become opportunities? The deadline for article submissions on cybersecurity is May 20, 2020. Details are posted online. Note: The April 2020 Bulletin was a special focus on pandemics, and it has been offered as a free download here. We will continue to consider article submissions on pandemics. Direct questions to Bulletin Editor Karen Thompson.
Homeland Security Today
Many components of our national critical infrastructure, including surface transportation such as railroads, increasingly depend on the internet to carry out operations. Meanwhile, no threat confronting the nation has grown as quickly as the danger from cyber threats and protecting the country’s rail transportation networks from them is vital.
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Homeland Security Today
Emergency managers should prepare for the possibility of COVID-19 transmission in shelters where people with breathing difficulties may congregate for relief from smoky air during the upcoming peak wildfire season, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said.
According to Cal Fire, warmer spring and summer temperatures along with earlier snowmelt and reduced snowpack have been creating more fuel in forests as the wildfire season begins earlier in the year and ends later than usual.
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Palm Beach Post via USA Today
Emergency managers pleaded with willful Floridians in 2016 to flee as Hurricane Matthew hurtled toward the East Coast with one infamous entreaty querying the supply of body bags to motivate stalwarts.
If a hurricane threatens this season, some evacuation requests may be replaced by stay-at-home orders as officials struggle to minimize the spread of coronavirus.
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Campus Safety
America is now taking steps to reopen the economy and ease the restrictions that were implemented to stem the spread of the coronavirus. This means that schools, colleges and the healthcare sector can start preparing for the post-COVID-19 world, whatever it might look like.
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Capital Public Radio
Officials at Butte College gathered one fall Wednesday in 2018 for a tabletop exercise in disaster planning.
As California’s fire seasons had become more deadly, utilities were threatening to shut off power as a way of preventing downed lines from igniting blazes. Other catastrophes, such as school shootings, were also on officials’ minds.
Administrators at the rural community college wanted to be prepared.
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Campus Safety
As states continue to lay out plans for reopening amid the coronavirus pandemic, colleges and universities are doing the same.
Campuses are announcing their “phased” reopening approaches, carefully curating messages to their communities that stress any proposed plan can change based on the trajectory of the virus and continuously evolving state mandates.
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| | CLIMATE/WATER/WEATHER UPDATES |
Cosmos Magazine
Global warming is shifting patterns in the distribution of tropical cyclones, according to an analysis of four decades of data published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
These extreme weather events are becoming more common and severe in the Arabian Sea, central Pacific – impacting on Hawaii – and the North Atlantic, which laps the coasts of Europe and the U.S.
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Bloomberg
Since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, highly taxed emergency management agencies have scrambled to make plans for handling a major natural disaster in addition to the virus. A confluence of disasters in Tennessee give insight to how agencies can manage responses to both.
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Domestic Preparedness
Emergency management is everything to everybody, but it often lacks the glue that is so desperately needed to manage catastrophic events. This is likely the result of two common pitfalls that the profession has long suffered from, pitfalls that can begin as soon as one walks out of the meeting or training room door: apathy and atrophy.
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Emergency Management
Infectious disease physicians across the country are protecting themselves and hospital staff and patients from the coronavirus, not necessarily with absolute measures but with the best available guidelines based largely on observations from the experiences with other viruses.
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Government Technology
Nationwide, contact tracing — which more than 2,000 public health workers across the country perform on a regular basis — is the key to reopening businesses and resuming some form of normal life as the coronavirus pandemic begins to subside, epidemiologists say. But with no national plan and scant federal dollars on the horizon, states are funding their own initiatives for what experts predict will be a massive undertaking lasting 18 months to two years, until a vaccine is developed.
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Homeland Security Today
Writes Wyatt Reed, Co-Chairman on the Arkansas Youth Preparedness Council, the FEMA Region VI YPC, and an appointed members of FEMA's National YPC: "A good emergency manager will invest in every possible area of the community as possible. Through my limited time as an observer of the emergency management field, I have seen my fair share of exceptional and quite poor emergency management skills. To me, it all goes back to what your high school coach told you over and over: fundamentals."
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IAEM
There has been an update regarding the number of teaching hours that may be submitted in the Training section for certification and recertification applications. Teaching may be substituted for attending courses for Continuing Education/Training credit. Candidates cannot use the same teaching experience under the Professional Contributions section. Courses taught may not exceed 25% of total hours submitted in each Emergency Management Training or General Management Training category. Contact Kate McClimans with any questions.
IAEM
The Center for Homeland Defense and Security (CHDS) is working with experts from around the globe to provide real-time educational opportunities, identify emergent practices, and develop resources to support executives, practitioners, and educators during the pandemic. To determine topics of interest as you navigate the current environment in your organization, jurisdiction or community, CHDS requests participation in this short survey. CHDS is committed to supporting you, and will use the feedback provided to develop materials to meet current and evolving needs.
IAEM
The IAEM-USA Disaster Recovery & Finance Caucus scheduled four additional offerings of the “COVID-19 Cost Recovery Webinar.” Caucus members will discuss the public assistance aspects of the COVID-19 pandemic. These webinars will focus exclusively on FEMA’s Public Assisting funding for Category B, Emergency Protective measures. We will not be discussing any of the medical aspects, except as they may be eligible for FEMA funding. We also will not be discussing DHHS or CDC funding. The Apr. 28 webinar has already taken place, and the recording has been posted here. The remaining three webinars will take place at 1:00-2:00 p.m. EDT on these dates: May 12, May 26, and June 9. Register online, and select which of the sessions you wish to attend. Download the webinar handout here.
IAEM
The Center for Homeland Defense and Security (CHDS) will host a webinar today, Thursday, May 7, at 2:00 p.m. EST on “Public Policy and Legal Issues During the Pandemic: What Have We Learned, and What Is on the Horizon?” The webinar, featuring a panel of attorneys representing public health departments and the private healthcare industry, will center on the challenges that have confronted policymakers, public health and emergency management leaders during the COVID-19 response. The panel also will discuss legal issues on the horizon and policy considerations for lawmakers in upcoming legislative sessions. Panelists are: Gerard Giuliano, director, Office of Public Health Legal Affairs, Nassau County (New York) Department of Health; Darrell D. Klein, deputy director, Public Health Licensure, Nebraska Department of Health and Human Services; and Sarah E. Swank, counsel, Nixon Peabody LLP. Moderator is John Wheeler, CHDS legal subject matter expert. Register online.
Homeland Security News Wire
A “traffic light” system advising the public about the risks of different activities could be used to ease lockdown, the Government’s scientific advisors have said.
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The Japan Times
As Japan struggles to get a handle on the coronavirus, disaster response experts have urged governments nationwide to refurbish evacuation centers and beef up emergency measures so they can better respond in the event of natural and other disasters — especially during pandemics.
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The Weather Channel
Powerful storms blowing across middle Tennessee killed a firefighter, felled hundreds of trees and left tens of thousands without electricity.
Nashville Electric Service said the outage was one of the largest on record. At one point Sunday night, more than 130,000 homes and businesses were without power, according to The Tennessean.
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Anadolu Agency
Ongoing flooding in Kenya has claimed the lives of another 164 people, a Kenyan government official said.
Heavy downpours, during the rainy season, which lasts from March to May, have wreaked havoc all across the nation marked with flash floods, landslides and sinkholes that have left thousands displaced, livestock dead and crops destroyed.
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