popular logistics

Fire Engineering reports that DHS has adopted NFPA standards for emergency responders. If you don’t know what this means - it means moving towards common equipment standards that’ll keep everyone safer.

It’s my understanding that NFPA - the National Fire Prevention Association - generally promulgates useful  and rigorous standards. (It should also be noted that, despite having some government support, their work isn’t free to the public; as a consequence, some people have referred to the organization as “No Free Publications Available”). But that, I think, is another topic for another day.

From  “Department of Homeland Security adopts NFPA standards for responders,”

The National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) announced the adoption of 11 NFPA standards for emergency responders by DHS. The newly adopted standards will set requirements to assist federal agencies and state and local officials responsible for procuring equipment and services used by emergency responders.

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The documents adopted will provide direction and allow officials to make better procurement decisions in the following areas: professional qualifications, occupational safety and health, fire apparatus, personal protective clothing, powered rescue tools, and other equipment.

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The 11 newly adopted standards are:

* NFPA 1000, Standard for Fire Service Professional Qualifications Accreditation and Certification Systems
* NFPA 1001, Standard for Fire Fighter Professional Qualifications
* NFPA 1002, Standard for Fire Apparatus Driver/Operator Professional Qualifications
* NFPA 1006, Standard for Rescue Technician Professional Qualifications
* NFPA 1021, Standard for Fire Officer Professional Qualifications
* NFPA 1500, Standard on Fire Department Occupational Safety and Health Program
* NFPA 1582, Standard on Comprehensive Occupational Medical Program for Fire Departments
* NFPA 1901, Standard for Automotive Fire Apparatus
* NFPA 1906, Standard for Wildland Fire Apparatus
* NFPA 1912, Standard for Fire Apparatus Refurbishing
* NFPA 1936, Standard on Powered Rescue Tools

Transmaterial reports that

The Concrete Canvas Shelter is a rapidly deployable hardened shelter that requires only water and air for erection. It can be deployed by two people without any training in approximately thirty minutes and is ready to use in twelve hours. The shelter consists of a cement-impregnated fabric (Concrete Cloth) bonded to the outer surface of an inflatable plastic inner structure.

Prior to construction, the shelter is delivered folded in a sealed plastic sack. Once the sack is positioned and filled with water, the fiber matrix wicks water into the cement, naturally controlling the water-to-cement ratio. The sack is cut open after hydration, and a battery-driven fan inflates the inner plastic lining, causing the structure to lift. After a duration of twelve hours, the concrete will have set sufficiently for use.

The fibers of the Concrete Canvas fabric form a coherent matrix within the concrete, providing tensile reinforcement and helping prevent crack propagation. If desired, the shelter can be buried with over 0.5 meters of sand on the roof in order to provide increased insulation and protection.

This system comes from Peter Brown at Concrete Canvas in Northampton, UK.

Thanks to Ryan Lanham at Identity Unknown for this.

According to the San Francisco Sentinel,

San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom, Oakland Mayor Ron Dellums and other local officials came together at Treasure Island today to unveil an initiative aimed at making it easier for public safety agencies in the region to communicate with one another during emergencies.

Newsom said, “Today, as we mark the sixth anniversary of 9/11, the best way we can pay tribute to the fallen is by giving our local first responders the tools to handle a major disaster.”

Newsom said, “By making our emergency communications interoperable among all disciplines and jurisdictions, we are ensuring that we are prepared for any future disasters, either natural or man-made.”

Newsom said the so-called Bay Area Public Safety Interoperable Communications Initiative is the largest urban area interoperable communications collaboration in the nation.

Laura Phillips, the executive director of San Francisco’s Department of Emergency Management, said the idea is to make it easier for cities and counties throughout the Bay Area to address and develop strategies to communicate, respond and recover in the event of human-generated and
natural disasters.

Dellums said, “This initiative provides our first responders with the ability to communicate with other cities and counties across the Bay Area, further improving upon the way our emergency officials can respond.”

Phillips said the problem known as “interoperability” developed over the past several decades and involves a scarcity of radio frequencies or spectrum that hinders the ability of public safety agencies throughout the nation to communicate with one another.

Newsom said the Bay Area initiative will cost about $200 million, of which San Francisco will contribute more than $72 million.

Phillips said the project will be funded by federal grants, including the Public Safety Interoperable Communications Grant, known as PSIC, and the Community Oriented Policing Services, known as COPS.

Newsom said parts of the project will be brought in gradually over the next year, additional parts will be in service by 2009 and it will be fully integrated by early 2010.

Phillips said the project currently includes the cities of San Francisco, Oakland and San Jose and the core counties of Alameda, Contra Costa, San Mateo, Marin and Santa Clara.

She said other cities and counties also have expressed interest.

In New York City, we’ll remind our readers:

1. transit police (assigned to the subways, formerly a separate department) have spotty communications underground;
2. the police and fire departments don’t often drill together, don’t yet have substantial interoperability;
3. Radios long known to have been malfunctioning - especially inside the World Trade Center complex - led to the deaths of firefighters, other responders, and others on September 11th, 2001.
4. Interoperability with the Port Authority Police Department - a separate government entity which manages the three largest local airports, owns the World Trade Center site, and at least two bus terminals is  reputed to exist, according to one source, only between a few designated NYPD units and a few Port Authority facilities.

Interoperability  with adjacent authorities seems, given our perspective, quite an accomplishment.

But how are they going to pronounce BAPSIC?

Paul Greenberg writes at Beyond Katrina:

This past weekend, the post-Katrina malaise that has swept the nation took an ugly turn towards full-on insensitivity. Representative Tom Tancredo (R-CO) had this to say about New Orleans: “It is time the taxpayer gravy train left the New Orleans station.”

Specifically, he urged an end to the federal aid to a city largely still in ruins. “The amount of money that has been wasted on these so-called ‘recovery’ efforts has been mind-boggling,” said the Congressman who is running a long-shot presidential campaign. “Enough is enough.”

And just to be absolutely certain that you and I understood what he was trying to say, he added this: “At some point, state and local officials and individuals have got to step up to the plate and take some initiative. The mentality that people can wait around indefinitely for the federal taxpayer to solve all their worldly problems has got to come to an end.”

Tancredo (just as gentle reminder) is the legislator who voted against the renewal of the historic Voting Rights Act in 2006.

RFERL reports that Christine Levinson is awaiting a response to her application for a visa to travel to Iran to search for her husband, Bobby Levinson, who has been missing since March 8, last seen on the Iranian island Kish.

The wife of a former FBI agent who disappeared in March while on a business trip to Iran told Radio Farda today that she has traveled to New York to try to meet with Iranian President Mahmud Ahmadinejad, who is expected to speak at the UN General Assembly. Christine Levinson told Radio Farda that she has not been able yet to get an appointment with the Iranian president.

[photo of Robert Levinson via RadioFarda.com, credited "public domain']

“I keep trying to get an appointment, I know he’s a very busy man but I hope he will be able to find even 10 minutes to see me,” she said. “I want to ask him for his help in finding my husband, I know that he has the ability to find him.”

Robert Levinson was last seen on March 8 on Kish Island off the southern coast of Iran, where according to his family he had gone to seek information on cigarette smuggling.

His wife told Radio Farda that she has applied for an Iranian visa to travel to Iran and seek information on her missing husband. She said Iranian authorities are reviewing her visa request.

Effect Measure reports and comments on cholera in Iraq. One of the main weapons against cholera is chlorine; chlorine is also usable as, and has in Iraq been used as, a weapon.

Cholera is expected to make its way to the capital by late September or early October. There is a shortage of chlorine because insurgents have used it as a weapon. Chlorine is extremely toxic and was used in World War I. as a poison gas. Since even rudimentary protection of water supplies doesn’t seem possible, the solution was to curtail chlorine imports. Instead we have cholera.

Cholera is primarily a waterborne disease that kills by sudden dehydration of its victims from a profuse, watery diarrhea. It can be prevented by simple disinfection of the water supply with chlorine and treated with oral rehydration. That neither of these can be readily accomplished in US occupied Iraq, where the occupiers expend $300 million a day to kill people, speaks volumes.

Link to post.

Effect Measure blog.

Noah Schactman on the cycles of innovation and counter-innovation between insurgent-placed IEDs and coalition forces, in Danger Room:

Radio-controlled bombs used to be the biggest killer of American troops in Iraq. Now, they’ve been rendered all-but-useless. Good news, right? Like so much else in Iraq, it’s not quite that simple.

Since the Iraq insurgency began, mobile phones, garage-door openers, and remotely-driven kids’ toys have all been used to trigger improvised explosive devices from afar. In response, the U.S. military has cobbled together an arsenal of radio-frequency jammers, to interrupt the deadly signals before they can set off the bombs. At first, the jammers had all kinds of troubles. Each type of jammer would only cover a relatively small slice of the spectrum. And they’d drive friendly radio and robots haywire.

But those problems have largely been fixed, troops across Iraq report.  The newer jammers have effectively killed off radio-controlled IEDs in major chunks of the country.

The explosive cat-and-mouse game continues, though. The American have built up high-tech bomb-stoppers. So the insurgents have gone ever lower-tech than before. They’ve largely turned towards so-called “command wire” IEDs to attack U.S. targets.

Pairs of insulated copper threads, some not much thicker than a hair, are buried under the Iraqi dust, and strung out for as long as a kilometer. At the end, an insurgent triggerman waits – sometimes in a buried bunker. It’s a more crude approach to killing, of course.  But, barring a lucky find of wires, “there’s no way for us to defeat it,” says one bomb technician.  And those wires are getting attached to bigger and bigger bombs.

[picture above, of a  cement-mixer-turned-shaped-charge. From Danger Room]

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Do away with one problem, and you now have to cope with the blowback from your success.
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Anyway, command-wire bombs aren’t the only IED threat over here. “Pressure plate” weapons, triggered by the smallest stress, are also in vogue here. Some are even shoved into brown ration packets, and left by the side of the road. Insurgents continue to use passive infrared sensors — like those used in burglar alarms – to sense changes in heat, and trigger a bomb accordingly. Many Humvees here are equipped with a flash-type device that can prematurely set the trigger off. But there will surely be a counter to our countermeasure.

Schachtman is on the money. The relative positions of the two forces don’t appear to make it likely that either side will have a distinct advantage with any longevity.

There is one way to deal with a problem of this sort: it’s to make a majority of the local population identify with soldiers, make them believe that the soldiers are acting out of a desire to protect them. That delicate opportunity slipped out of our hand in 2003, and it’s been moving away from us since.

According to an article on the website of The New York Times, Congressman Henry Waxman has Howard J. Krongard in his sights. David Stout and Brian Knowlton (for whom the Times doesn’t have an index page) report that Waxman

sent the inspector general, Howard J. Krongard, a 14-page letter spelling out accusations that he said came from several current and former employees of that office, who documented their charges with e-mails.

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Some of the accusers have sought “whistleblower” status, which protects government employees who report malfeasance from being punished for doing so, Mr. Waxman said. The accusations are serious and far-reaching, and included assertions that Mr. Krongard has effectively become a political defender of the administration rather than, as his job is meant to be, a studiedly neutral overseer of its spending and practices.

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Mr. Waxman invited Mr. Krongard to respond to the accusations at a committee hearing on Oct. 16.

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Since Democrats gained control of the House in the 2006 elections, Mr. Waxman has made no secret of his relish in probing activities of the Bush administration. One of the more serious accusations against Mr. Krongard is that he interfered with an investigation into the conduct of Kenneth Tomlinson, the head of Voice of America and a close associate of Karl Rove, President Bush’s former political adviser, by passing information about the inquiry to Mr. Tomlinson.

Mr. Waxman wrote that Mr. Krongard’s detractors have described “a dysfunctional office environment” in which he routinely bullies and berates employees and shows contempt for the work of career professionals. As a result, turnover has been so high that the inspector general’s office has been severely compromised, Mr. Waxman wrote.

David Axe reports that the navy is considering reducing the number of helicopter models in service from at least seven to two. (Our minimum number was derived by carefully reading Axe’s piece). This, of course, is very sensible in terms of procurement policy - and, things being what they are - sometimes not politically possible.

Axe makes the case that the two proposed pieces might not suffice, but would if a third, higher-capacity and longer-range model were added.

For those not familiar with his work - I read Axe’s work in Danger Room and his personal blog, War is Boring - Axe is routinely insightful and original on matters military; and making connections that I find quite helpful and illuminating. (And an excellent cartoonist and artist).

Like crossing S.L.A. Marshall (I’m thinking here of The Soldier’s Load, rather than his more controversial work) with Malcolm Gladwell and Scott McCloud.

David Axe has an excellent piece on the Wired blog Danger Room, summarizing reporting on recent Ebola and Marburg outbreaks in Congo  and Uganda, respectively. The Ebola is not only affecting humans - it’s hitting the gorilla population, already endangered. At the risk of starting an animal-rights discussion, or worse, one about evolution - one imagines that gorillas are sufficiently sentient to experience pain qua pain - and grief qua grief.

Link here.  I’m certain that I’ll do damage to this piece in summarizing it; what’s more, like all of Axe’s work, it’s well-written and concise.

Back in 2000 Nader said there ain’t no difference between George W. Bush and Al Gore. I disagreed back then, and disagree today. But let’s look at some of the Republicans and Democrats today.

The Republican candidates:

• Rudy Guiliani, like Bush and Cheney, believes it is “My way or the Highway” and “if you’re not with me you’re against me.” Guiliani was on the street on Sept 12, 2001 because he ignored his advisors and put New York’s Office of Emergency Management in the World Trade Center. Is this what how we want the President to make decisions?
• When asked if his sons are serving in Iraq, Mitt Romney, who supports the war, replied “They are doing the best thing they can do for America – working to get me elected President.” Shouldn’t he offer to bring all the soldiers home from Iraq and pay them what he is paying his sons?
• Fred Thompson promises a government of the lobbyists, by the lobbyists, and for the lobbyists.
• Mike Huckabee lists among his qualifications that he pardoned Keith Richards of the Rolling Stones for an old driving offense. While the offense may have been blown out of proportion; is pardoning a celebrity for no other reason than to curry favor with said celebrity is a qualification for the office of President of the United States? Or is it selling access? Inequality under the law.
• John McCain, when asked about his age, responded “Thanks for the question, you little jerk … you’re drafted.”

Contrast the Liberal Democrats. John Edwards and Barak Obama have put forth plans to provide health care for all Americans, including the 1 out of 6 who have no health insurance and therefore very limited access to health care. While she hasn’t discussed the details, Hillary Clinton says “We are all saying pretty much the same thing.”

The calendars may say “21st Century” but the Republicans are still fighting the Skopes trial. The Democrats want to fund stem cell research.

Greenspan says ‘We invaded Iraq for Oil!’

• Click Here For Fox News
• Here for FPIF,
• Here for Global Policy Forum,
• Here for Times Online UK,
• Here for BBC,
• Here for our friends Down Under,
• George Lakoff on the Huffington Post.

Well, now that the cat is out of the bag, lets do the math. Iraq, according to the Global Policy Forum, and the CIA , Iraq has 112.5 Billion Barrels of “proven reserves” of oil. At $80 per barrel … Iraq’s oil is worth $9.0 Trillion. We’re only spending $1 trillion, so it’s a pretty good return on investment. 900 percent return on investment for the 112.5 billion barrels of proven reserves.

And they said George W couldn’t do math.

And Iraq’s “probable reserves” are estimated to be another 200 billion barrels. If the “probable” reserves are only another 100 billion barrels - that’s 212.5 billion barrels of oil. Black Gold. Texas Tea. That ups the ante to 1,700% ROI. Why that’s better than Microsoft’s historic $3 thousand in 1986 worth $One Million in 1999.

Of course this is assuming we win the war. There are people who suggest that we have given Al Queda 9 to 17 Trillion Dollars worth of oil. Some people are just negative.

Under the category, “Note to Self: RTFM,” I hadn’t been able to make this work. The clever footnotes plugin¹ wasn’t working properly for me. I think it was because I hadn’t properly read the instructions - a space # where # represents a blank space - before the opening parentheses ((

Although this blog isn’t about WordPress - I’m fully unqualified to talk about that -I may leave this up - somewhere - for future reference. Probably mine.

1. By the exceptionally clever Simon Elvery ; instructions and links to download available here. [↩]

David Stephenson , who has done outstanding work on the issues which concern Popular Logistics, has noticed that in a report using 23 criterai to evaluate the Department of Homeland Security, GAO entirely omits the promotion and recruitment of citizen responders.

Here’s Stephenson’s post.  I’m now not sure if reading this particular GAO report is worth the candle.

I regret not earlier posting about Stephenson’s important piece, written with Eric Bonabeau, Expecting the Unexpected: : The Need for a Networked Terrorism and Disaster Response Strategy, published in the Homeland Security Affairs Journal.

Our position on citizen response is this - any plan that doesn’t regard citizen response as central might contain useful tactics - but we submit that no such plan conceivably constitutes a useful strategy.