the intersection of emergency preparedness, public health and environmental policy
The L.A. Times has excellent coverage and a brilliant infographic by Lorraine Wang, explaining how aging drainage pipes caused the sinkhole. Article by Francisco Vara-Orta and Andrew Blankstein; Lorraine Wang’s infographic.
Ben at MagnetBox - a keen observer of information arrays and streams - reports on Everyblock.com and its new special reports about more complex geographically-related data:
We’ve launched our first EveryBlock “special report” — an analysis of Chicago addresses mentioned in the recent federal investigation “Operation Crooked Code.”
As explained on our about page, an overall goal of EveryBlock is to point you to news near your block. We’ve been working hard to do a good job of this so far by accumulating public records, cataloging newspaper stories and pulling together various other geographic information from the Web. However, over the past few months as we’ve been building the site, we’ve come across a number of types of information that don’t exactly fit the EveryBlock mold.
We’ll interrupt this excerpt here to point out that this tool might be of particular use to groups like the Disaster Accountability Project - particularly with decentralized efforts like its Disaster Accountability Monitor and Blogger network.
For example, an architectural group named “Chicago 7 Most Endangered Buildings” in January. That’s geographically relevant news (i.e., if you live near one of those endangered buildings, you’d likely be interested in knowing about it), but because it’s such a “one-off” type of information, we haven’t done anything with it on EveryBlock. It didn’t make much sense to add such a relatively obscure type of information to our list of news types.
Via Magnetbox.
The Disaster Accountability Project Blog reports that an investigation has been called for into allegations that the Corps of Engineers and contractors knowingly installed defective pumps in New Orleans.
In September of 2007 the U.S. Office of Special Counsel (OSC) ordered Secretary of Defense, Robert Gates, to conduct an investigation into the allegation that defective pumping equipment was delivered and installed at the three new gated closure structures in New Orleans. These are the main pumps protecting the city of New Orleans in the event of a major hurricane or flood. OSC said in its letter to Gates that they concluded the allegations made by this whistleblower had a substantial likelihood of validity and that these pumps are “inherently flawed” due to poor design and have still not been properly tested.
Also, the OSC went on to state this same pumping equipment had previously malfunctioned under favorable contractor testing conditions and was subsequently shown to be defective, yet was knowingly installed by the Corps of Engineers.
In addition, the OSC went on further to state the whistleblower, a veteran Corps engineer who was the Team Leader of Pumping Systems Installation for New Orleans, alleged USACE employees and MWI (the pump manufacturer) circumvented contract requirements in an effort to complete the task, all at the expense of public safety. It was reported that key safeguards were circumvented and “there is an erroneous assumption that…hydraulic pumps are fully operational, and hence, the risk to the public remains high,” in the words of the U.S. Office of Special Counsel.
New Orleans Pumps Still Questionable at The Disaster Accountability Project Blog.
Image by Alex Brandon of the Associated Press on DayLife.Com
Jen Chung at Gothamist and Al Baker of the Times have good coverage of the new, much-increased Department of Homeland Security grant to provide security for New York City subways, including the 16 underwater tunnels that link the boroughs to each other, and to the mainland (the Bronx, of course, is actually on the mainland). From Gothamist:
NYSERDA (the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority) and the federal government have been testing a remote sensing system on Bridge 1027260. Like Jean Valjean, this bridge has no name. [photopress:kerop.jpg,thumb,alignright] And you can tell that it’s not in New York City, because if it were here, the City Council, whose power is limited to the power to name public objects and thoroughfares - might have already named each lane and approach ramp.
Professor Kerop Janoyan and a team of graduate students from Clarkson University have been monitoring their equipment from a work barge near the bridge. (Since they seem to be working on an exposed, unheated barge, perhaps the bridge and its appurtenances should be named for them. Popular Logistics will send a correspondent in person to any naming ceremony).
We learned about this from Matthew Wald’s piece in the Times:
James Glanz has another good piece about the Iraqi power grid:
BAGHDAD, Oct. 17 — Iraq has agreed to award $1.1 billion in contracts to Iranian and Chinese companies to build a pair of enormous power plants, the Iraqi electricity minister said Tuesday. Word of the project prompted serious concerns among American military officials, who fear that Iranian commercial investments can mask military activities at a time of heightened tension with Iran.
- snip -
The Iraqi Electricity Ministry, which Mr. Wahid heads, is one of the few in the central government that has received praise for successfully spending much of the money allocated to it in the Iraqi budget for reconstruction projects. Because of security problems, a shortage of officials who are skilled at writing and executing contracts, and endemic corruption, many of the ministries have either left their rebuilding money unspent or poured it into projects that have had a marginal impact on the quality of life for Iraqi citizens.
One point here seems to be that the Iraqis are ungrateful and unreliable, and are encouraging our our competitors (China) and enemies (Iran), and and giving them footholds in Iraq. This may be so, and it may come at the expense of American contractors like Bechtel. My observations:
Here’s our earlier post on “Solar Eagle:” One thing Texas has in common with Iraq - “Solar Eagle” - the Navy Plan to beat the insurgents and help Iraq go solar. (The Times doesn’t appear to have noticed the “Solar Eagle” proposal - not surprising, in an environment with to few people and not enought time - the proposal was to learn about except by accident).
Now back to our excerpt from James Glanz’s October 18th piece:
Asked how he had managed to make progress within the bureaucratic morass of much of the Iraqi government, Mr. Wahid said he had simply learned to go it alone. Aside from financing, his main need from the central government was guarantees that Iraqi security forces would protect his workers and the electricity infrastructure.
“Do not annoy me,” Mr. Wahid said was his main message to the government. “Let me do my work.”
According to a press release from Cygnus Business Media, which arranges the conference,
With the support and confidence of leading industry organizations, the highly regarded Damage Prevention Conference & Expo will celebrate its 10th anniversary this December 5 & 6 at the Las Vegas Hilton. The conference and exhibit floor responds to the demand for innovative products, services and training related to preventing damage to the nation’s underground infrastructure and serves professionals from municipalities; oil & gas facilities; telecom, CATV, and power companies; One-Call centers; excavation companies; utility contractors; and SUE firms. This year, show organizers are especially pleased to announce exclusive package pricing developed to offer the most productive and economical options available for companies sending teams of damage prevention professionals.
For those of you who aren’t following this - what you need to know is that the “one-call centers,” which are mandated by federal law, are
This is why the Times policy of limiting certain articles to Times Select subscribers is disturbing. I’m going to write now about an actual life-and- death issue for New Yorkers, but can’t link to it because of their restrictions. We regard the following excerpt as within the scope of the “fair use” doctrine of the copyright laws.
And here’s a link to Behind the Times (Subscripton Wall), and a link to the Dwyer piece. Here’s a piece:
At the corner of Hudson and Morton Streets, he called her from a pay phone.
“Hello,” she said.
Something jolted Mr. Vanaria’s elbow. Then it shot into his arm. Waves of pain ran along his arm. He nested the phone on his left shoulder, cranked his ear down.
“I said, ‘I think I’m having a heart attack,’ ” he recalled this week.
He was just about to turn 47, the hour of life when the body becomes a permanent suspect in acts of treachery. To calm himself, Mr. Vanaria reached for one of the posts next to the phone, and gripped it. He screamed. Someone was shooting him dead, a machine gun, it was the tail end of an era of drive-by killings, he was being riddled with bullets. He looked into the street to see his murderers.
No car. No gunmen. No one.
Then he realized that he could not let go of the post. Panic and pain ripped through his body. His arm fought with his fingers, which were locked onto the post by an invisible force. He unclenched his grip and pulled away.
A man stood nearby. “What’s happening?” he asked Mr. Vanaria.
“You don’t understand,” Mr. Vanaria said. “I was being electrocuted.”
- snip -
He had, he learned, suffered a brain injury. He had literally been fried.
“Those first five years were really, really dark,” Mr. Vanaria said. “I wouldn’t call it attention deficit. It was a collision of thoughts, like a car crash.”
He had to give up his job teaching third graders at a parochial school. He stopped dancing in clubs. He used to draw, but felt that his sense of shape and color had seeped away.
He sued Con Edison, which, it turned out, had installed a high-voltage vault beneath the pay phone at Hudson and Morton Streets. The utility had put a pump in the vault to clear water out; the pump burned out, but because it was not equipped with a circuit breaker or a fuse, electricity passed to the pump, then to a drain pipe, a metal grate, up to the telephone and into Philip Vanaria’s body and brain.
There was no question that Con Edison had been negligent, a judge found; only the amount of damages was at issue. The jury awarded Mr. Vanaria $1.9 million. The circuit breaker would have been a few dollars.
Here are some questions whose answers might be helpful:
- Who tracks these injuries and deaths?
- How do we detect this problem on our own?
- What’s our risk here? Is this a acceptable level?
This subject will bear some further inquiries. Please check back. [Cross-posted at www.catonavenue.com and www.catonstratford.com
Minnesota Bridge Blog Roundup at Boing Boing.
My limited understanding of the Twin Cities’ geography is that there wasn’t - even before the collapse - a lot of redundancy in river crossing. And considerations that make any quick fixes (Bailey bridges, pontoon bridges, and other military combat bridges) unusable - the need to keep the Mississippi passable.
Scrap metal prices - particularly for copper - have led to thieves stealing phone lines, plaques from public memorials, and all manner of farming infrastructure.
From Jennifer Steinhauer’s excellent piece in today’s Times :
The rampant thefts have left farmers without functioning water pumps for days and weeks at a time, creating financial loss and occasional crop devastation in a region still smarting from a spectacular freeze last winter.
Theft of scrap metal, mostly copper, has vexed many areas of American life and industry for the last 18 months, fueled largely by record-level prices for copper resulting from a building boom in Asia. Common in developing counties, metal theft is now committed in nearly every state, largely by methamphetamine users who hock the metal to buy drugs, the authorities say.
Thieves have stripped the wires out of phone lines, pulled plaques off cemetery plots, raided air-conditioning systems in schools and yanked catalytic converters from cars, all to be resold to scrap metal recyclers.
But perhaps no group has been as been as consistently singled out as California farmers, who provide roughly half of the nation’s fruits and vegetables. Irrigation systems, a treasure trove of copper, tend to be in remote places, out of the eyes of farmers and, until recently, law enforcement.
- snip -
Some sheriff’s departments in agricultural counties have rural crime units that investigate metal crimes almost exclusively these days, setting up sting operations in recycling shops and tagging copper bait with electronic tracking devices.Metal theft from California farmers rose 400 percent in 2006 over the previous year, according to the Agricultural Crime Technology Information and Operations Network, a regional law enforcement group headed by Mr. Yoshimoto [Bill Yoshimoto, an assistant district attorney in Tulare County]. The numbers this year are equally high. Through the end of June, there were nearly 1,000 incidents of scrap metal theft on farms, causing more than $2 billion in losses, the group’s figures show.
Here in Kern County, there were 213 incidents of copper theft, the greatest number in the state.
“They go out and take a farm pump in the middle of nowhere,” said Sgt. Walt Reed, head of [the] county’s rural crime task force. “And they can pull the copper wire strands from the electrical wire box and get 60 feet of wire, remove the insulation and take it to the scrap yard for $2 to $3 a pound.”
Alan Scroggs, an almond farm manager in Wasco, knows the story only too well. Over the course of three months this spring, his irrigation system was raided five times by copper thieves; his well was hit twice, and the booster system that helps pump the water underground to irrigate the almond trees three times.
Copper thieves cut the wires in the conduit that runs to the power source, tie the wires to the back of a pickup truck and drive away, pulling the wire behind them and generally making off with roughly 75 pounds of scrap metal.
“When the sheriff’s department came out here for the third time,” Mr. Scroggs said, “they said, ‘I can’t believe I am here again.’ ”
Over the last 18 months, copper prices have hovered over $3.50 a pound, hitting $4 at one point, the highest price the metal has reached in recent memory, said Patrick Chidley, a mining and metals analyst at Barnard Jacobs Mellet in Stamford, Conn. By comparison, copper fetched 65 cents a pound in 2001.
“It is really the law of supply and demand,” Mr. Chidley said. “You have a lot of demand in China, where there is a big infrastructure build-out. Every building, every car, every motor, every wind turbine needs copper, and there are not enough mines out there to keep up.”
From Hawaii, where an accused copper thief is about to go on trial for felony theft charges, to Maryland, where a 41-year-old man was electrocuted recently after trying to cut through a high-voltage line in an abandoned discount store, stolen metals have filled a market void. This summer in Oakland, Calif., a memorial to 25 people who were killed nearly 16 years ago in a fire was stripped of stainless steel memorial plaques, and metal scavengers were suspected.
Let’s leave aside the specious claim [2nd quoted graf above] that it’s all because of drugs and drug use - and please bear in mind that Steinhauer reported it as a claim - rather than endorsing the truth of the claim. Steinhauer has painted a very clear picture of how market forces drive illicit as well as licit markets. And she’s suggested - reasonably, I think - that at current record high prices - thieves are willing to undertake relatively low-risk larcenies and burglaries: unattended farm equipment.
Unattended infrastructure, of course, includes pipelines, water mains, power lines and lots of other things that we’d prefer to have where they are.
But what if prices go even higher? Is there a price at which it makes sense for thieves to start stealing copper from occupied buildings? Of course there is. Let’s just hope the market doesn’t supply it.
