Monthly Archives: June 2007

Redlener connects the dots –

From Irwin Redlener’s Americans at Risk:

Even if the nation’s intelligence capacity is substantially strengthened and homeland security better assured, these systems will never be perfect. An American city could conceivably experience the nightmare of a nuclear detonation. The essential point is that the quality and extent of survival and recovery, even from a nuclear bomb, are affected by the success of our preparedness and mitigation programs.

The current presidential administration is, of course, now well-known for its argument that it “didn’t want the smoking gun to become a mushroom cloud.” Implicit – by omission – was that the strategy of pre-empting the (hypothetical or fictional) threat of nuclear attack by Iraq would so likely to succeed that it wasn’t necessary to take steps to mitigate or prepare for the effects of a nuclear attack. Continue reading →

Thomas the Child Killer, I mean Tank Engine.

I’m shocked, Shocked, to find the Chinese using lead paints on toys for toddlers.

They put Etheylene Glyclol as a substitute for Glycerin in toothpaste and a few years ago in medications. Ethylene glycol works great as antifreeze, but it’s poisonous in small doses.

In The River Runs Black: The Environmental Challenge to China’s Future, available from Amazon, Elizabeth C. Economy describes “In late July 2001, the fertile Huai River Valley – China’s breadbasket – was the site of an environmental disaster. Heavy rains flooded the river’s tributaries, flushing more than 38 billion gallons of highly polluted water into the Huai. Downstream, in Anhui province, the river water was thick with garbage, yellow foam, and dead fish. … Only seven months earlier, the government had proclaimed its success in cleaning up the Huai. A six-year campaign to rid the region of polluting factories that dumped their wastewater into the river had ostensibly raised the quality of the water in the river and its more than one hundred tributaries to the point that people could once again fish, irrigate their crops, and even drink from the river.”

They lied and their people die.

In Deep Economy, also available on Amazon

, Bill McKibben describes “a trip to China, where I met a twelve-year-old girl named Zhao Lin Tao, who was the same age as my daughter and who lived in a poor rural village in Sichuan province – that is she’s about the most statistically average person on earth. Zhao was the one person in her village I could talk to without an interpreter: she was proudly speaking the pretty good English she’d learned in the overcrowded village school. When I asked her about her life though, she was soon in tears: her mother had gone to the city to work in a factory and never returned, abandoning her and her sister to her father, who beat them regularly because they were not boys. Because Zhao’s mother was away the authorities were taking care of her school fees until ninth grade, but after that there would be no money to pay. Her sister had already given up and dropped out.”

What’s one or two girls in a population of one billion three hundred million?

Unofficially HIV Aids follows trade and prostitution. January, 2006, the Chinese government, (www.avert.org/aidschina.htm) reported 650,000 people living with AIDS, down from the 2003 estimate of 840,000, and up from 1989, when AIDS was known as “aizibing,” the “Loving Capitalism Disease” and it was reported at 153 Chinese and 41 foreigners.

If they are correct in their characterization of HIV Aids as the disease of loving capitalism, boy are they in trouble.

Skybuilt Power receives patent for its “MPS” (mobile power station)

We first learned about these from Haninah Levine’s piece in Defense Tech, which had reported that they were under consideration for field use in Iraq

.

skybuilt-power-mps-schematic.jpg

From the firm’s press release:

This is a revolutionary, plug-and play, rapidly deployable, mobile, hybrid solar and wind power system. It can provide power in hours and run for years with very low maintenance and minimal operating costs. It is ideal for disaster relief, Homeland Security, commercial, military, and intelligence applications in any climate worldwide.

Continue reading →

citizens: a problem to be managed or an asset to be utilized?

Christian Science Monitor, by Alexandra Marks, July 14, 2005:

As planning for terrorism becomes a part of daily life in the Western World, a growing number of disaster experts are calling for a dramatic reassessment in the way the nation plans for emergencies.

The problem, they argue, is that the current top-down approach views the public as a problem to be managed rather than an asset to be utilized. Officials don’t take into account people’s natural willingness to help or address their most basic needs — like concern about the safety of their spouses and kids.

This upstart group of sociologists, physicians, and terrorism experts contends that the use of ordinary citizens during a large-scale emergency could save hundreds if not thousands of lives. And they are determined to ensure the public is properly prepared before the next catastrophic event.

“It’s critical that we readjust our thinking. If you look at the 9/11 commission report they talked about first responders versus what they called ‘civilians,’ as if all of the civilians did was just stand at the sidelines,” says Kathleen Tierney, the director of the Natural Hazards Center at the University of Colorado in Boulder. “That is so radically at variance with what actually happened that day.”

— snip —

A major study done by the Center for the Advancement of Collaborative Strategies in Health at the New York Academy of Medicine found what many experts call an alarming disconnect between those official plans and the needs of the public. Researchers did an extensive review of the current plans to deal with a dirtybomb explosion and a smallpox attack at an airport. Then they did in-depth interviews with citizens at 14 different locations around the country, and a national telephone survey to find out how people would actually react.

In the case of a smallpox outbreak, they found the official plans expect everyone to go to a vaccination site. But the study found that only 40 percent of the public would actually go. The reasons are twofold: 40 percent of the people surveyed said they basically didn’t trust their government in such a case, and 60 percent were concerned about impact of the vaccine. That’s twice as many as were worried about catching the virus.

The official plans have another vulnerability. Currently, medical experts estimate that 50 million people are at risk of developing life-threatening complications if they get the smallpox vaccine. In the case of an outbreak, the official plans expect even those people to go to public vaccination sites which could unnecessarily put them at risk.

And in the case of a dirty bomb, the study found only 60 percent would “shelter in place” for as long as officials tell them to, primarily because they’d be worried about their families. On the upside, the study found that if people knew that their workplaces were organized and safe, and their children’s schools were safe and prepared, and that they could communicate with family members, they’d be much more likely to follow official instructions.

“Because we haven’t looked at these issues from the perspective of the public, we’re missing some very important information in developing strategies that would work best for them and also would be much more effective in terms of protecting people,” says Roz Lasker, the study’s principal researcher. “There’s been no planning that starts with asking, ‘What would make you feel safe?’”

That’s why researchers contend it’s crucial to involve whole communities in disaster planning from the start.

“If we really truly want to prepare for a disaster, we need to do it on a local level, where local means down to the level of the workplace and the level of schools,” says Lee Clarke, a disaster planning expert at Rutgers University In New Jersey. “Too many of the usual ways of looking at disaster planning looks at command and control, as if we’re all children and we need the generals to organize us otherwise the world will fall apart.”

Via Jonas Landgren

Information Technology and Emergency Response Reflections Comments Thinking Speculations In Swedish and English

Con Edison takes five weeks to repair steam pipe; historic church organ damaged

From “Church Sues Con Ed Over Damage to Pipe Organ,” The New York Times, June 13, 2007 (Associated Press Dispatch).

 A historic church has sued Consolidated Edison for $1 million, claiming that its 89-year-old pipe organ, one of the largest in the Western Hemisphere, was damaged by steam escaping from beneath the adjacent street and sidewalk.

In court papers filed Monday in State Supreme Court, the church, St. Bartholomew’s Episcopal Church in Manhattan, says that it told the utility on June 30, 2004, about an “extraordinary amount of steam” coming from Park Avenue into the church. But, the papers say, the utility did not take any action until five weeks later, when it repaired components that were causing steam to enter the church, which is on Park Avenue between 50th and 51st Streets.

The church’s lawsuit claims that soon after the initial complaint, the pipe organ, an Aeolian-Skinner, began to malfunction. The problems were caused by moisture being drawn into the organ’s pipe system through its blowers and pumps in the church basement, the court papers say.

“The moist, humid and damp air,” the papers say, caused “a general, overall breakdown of the organ system.”

A Con Ed spokesman, Chris Olert, said yesterday that the utility would not comment on pending litigation.

The church’s pipe organ, as described on its Web site, was built in 1918 by the Ernest M. Skinner Company of Boston, has 12,422 pipes and uses temperature-controlled air pressure.

It was once played by Leopold Stokowski, who came from England in 1905 to be St. Bartholomew’s organist and choirmaster and later became a world-renowned conductor.

What can we learn from this?

1. At least some of Con Edison’s steam pipes fail some of the time.

2. Even if it’s damaging a well-connected landmark church (you don’t need to be Episcopalian in New York to know where St. Bart’s is – or to have visited – it’s a stunning building, and they have had (and may still have) wonderful music programs,  Con Edison is either

(A) unconcerned about powerful institutions and bad publicity

(B) So overwhelmed with even more serious repairs and problems that it couldn’t get to this for five weeks

Or so badly managed they didn’t promptly route the information internally and make a decision.

via Gothamist.  

Rice pressures Iran on Iranian-Americans wrongly held; Iran continues to deny knowledge of Levinson whereabouts

 From Nasser Karimi of the Associated Press, dated June 10th:

In an interview with The Associated Press this week, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said the detentions of the Iranian-Americans were unwarranted but would not stop the United States from trying to engage Iran on other matters, including its disputed nuclear program and alleged support of insurgents in Iraq.

“We take seriously the holding of any American anywhere in the world where they are being wrongly held and where they are being accused of things that clearly are untrue,” Rice said. “It just shows again what kind of regime this is.”

– snip –

The U.S. also has expressed concern about Robert Levinson, a former FBI agent who the United States says has been missing since March after traveling to an Iranian resort island on private business.

[Mohammad Ali]  Hosseini [the spokesman for Iran’s foreign ministry]  reiterated Sunday that Iran has no information about Levinson.

Via Washington Post. 

Blast-resistant coating mitigates explosion risk – can be retrofitted, added to existing structure

Paxcon , according to its website, is a polymer coating which can be added to wood, metal, brick, mortar – most building materials. Paxcon

remains flexible from -40º to 160ºC, is abrasion-resistant, chemical-resistant, fire retardant, and meets all EPA emission levels for V.O.C’s. Tests performed by the company using 200 pounds of TNT detonated at a 30-foot distance were shown to substantially reduce disintegration of building materials. In a separate test, a wall coated with the LINE-X industrial product remained intact up to a detonation equivalent of 1,000 pounds of TNT.

bomb-proof-new-0207.jpg

Illustration by Brian Basher for Popular Mechanics. 

Here’s a photograph showing a wall subjected to an explosion with and without the coating:

split-screen.jpg

This is intended to minimize fragmentation – the cause of much of the morbidity and mortality associated with explosions – and might, because of that effect, delay building collapse. In circumstances under which an extra minute or two can make a life-or-death difference, that’s no small benefit.

The company which makes Paxcon, Line-X, is apparently a well-known brand name among pickup truck aficionados – they make pickup truck bed liners – and this technology is an outgrowth of that. They’ve got some impressive video clips here.  The Defense Department is already buying and using it.

 Via Popular Mechanics. 

Former mining town, thoroughly polluted, also at risk of cave-in; entire town offered federal buyout

In January,  BLDG Blog   (“Building Blog”) reported on Matthew C. Wright’s Washington Post coverage of the situation in Picher, Oklahoma. Picher had lead and zinc mines operated until the 1970’s, and it’s been on the Superfund List – part of the Tar Creek SuperFund Site.

picherlocmap.jpg

Map via United States Geological Survey.

Continue reading →

Infochart: recent macro trend in terrorist incidents

The Point-by-Point blog has this interesting chart:

global-terrorism.gif

Alice at Point-by-Point, in an update, notes that the hypothesis of Abu Ghraib knowledge as causal event is vulnerable. We agree that it can’t be proved – but anecdotal evidence suggests that the Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo (and “black site”) disclosures have strengthened the rhetorical positions of terrorist cheerleaders and recruiters.

Ask Umbra: a new source for advice about solar

has a new feature – “Ask Umbra” – in Q&A format giving advice about how to get solar working. From today’s post – in which a reader from Long Island, New York. Here’s Umbra’s response to “Rick”:

Don’t thank me until you’ve tried my recommendations in the marketplace.

Solar trailer

Solar power to the people. Photo credit: iStockphoto

 

Your county’s rating for solar is “good,” according to Findsolar.com, a private/public collaborative website that has various worksheets helping you figure out what solar can do in your area, what size array you might need, how much it will cost, etc.

Continue reading →

National Guard General to Congress: Guard short on equipment critical in domestic emergencies

From an Armed Forced Press Service article by Fred W. Baker III, published on the National Guard website,

Congress must either fund equipment for the National Guard or accept the risks of an under-equipped strategic reserve, the Guard’s top officer said today.

The Guard has only about half of the equipment it needs, Army National Guard Lt. Gen. H Steven Blum, chief of the National Guard Bureau, testified before the House of Representatives Committee on Homeland Security’s subcommittee on management, investigations and oversight.

Flanked by three states’ adjutants general, Blum told committee members that having the nation’s only strategic reserve equipped at 50 percent sends a message “that could be miscalculated by our adversaries overseas.”

“It’s really now the job of the Congress to fund the equipment or accept the risk,” Blum said.

The Defense Department has proposed spending $22 billion for National Guard equipment purchases over the next five years, Blum said.

Even so, that would equip the Guard to only 75 percent, its level before the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. Blum questioned whether that is enough.

“We are in a post-9/11 world, and I am not certain that those levels still apply,” Blum said.

Air National Guard Maj. Gen. Roger P. Lempke, the adjutant general of Nebraska and president of the Adjutants General Association, told committee members that there needs to be better accounting at the Defense Department level for states’ equipping needs.

Currently, equipping the Army and Air National Guard is managed by the respective services, and levels are based on units’ wartime missions. This causes problems when states respond to multiple requirements — state and federal — forcing them to cross-level equipment, or take it from one unit to give to another. In addition, much Guard equipment deployed overseas has not returned.

Army National Guard Maj. Gen. Robert P. French, deputy adjutant general for the Pennsylvania Army National Guard, said that leaves his state falling short. “What happens today because of the war effort … leaves us with substitute equipment at home or no equipment at home,” he said.

Blum conceded that the Guard does not need full equipping of its lethal systems, such as tanks and artillery systems. Units need only enough of those for training. But, he outlined an “essential 10” categories that list 342 dual-service items needed both to respond to U.S. disasters and tovsupport units’ wartime missions. The categories include maintenance, aviation, medical and power generation. States need more equipment such as trucks, helicopters and communications equipment, Blum said.

Link to article here.

Via War is Boring.

This makes us all the more curious about the status of pre-positioned FEMA caches – and concerned about local and regional government and NGO stockpiles of critical materiel.

Red Cross/Crescent helps Indonesians build emergency shelters from local materials

Subtopia reports on effective Red Cross/Red Crescent efforts to provide shelter to earthquake victims in Indonesia. Subtopia’s account is based on this report from Reliefweb:

“As part of the International Federation’s early recovery programme, more than 4,000 bamboo shelters have already been completed in the areas of Gantiwarno and Dlingo, and the programme is expanding into other districts, where up to 6,000 of the homes are expected to soon be built.”
After consulting survivors and enabling them to take direct responsibility for the distribution of funds and reconstruction materials, the program has resulted in a coordinated community activism to help survivors build shelters themselves out of local materials. [emphasis supplied]

And the shelters cost about $150 USD each.