Archive for the 'Lessons Learned (or not)' Category

The Day After Three Mile Island

Published
by
Larry
on March 29, 2008
in Chernobyl, Energy, Environmental Issues, Lessons Learned (or not), Nuclear Power, Oyster Creek and Three Mile Island
. 0 Comments

March 28, 2008 was the 28th Anniversary of the Meltdown at Three Mile Island, which makes March 29 the 28th Anniversary of the Day After Three Mile Island.

Still, it’s hard to say ‘Happy Anniversary.’ The last nuclear power plant to come on line in the United States, the Watts Bar plant in Tennessee, took 23 years to complete. And no new nuclear power plants have been ordered or built.

This is in part because of Three Mile Island, and its sister-disaster, Chernobyl. While the American nuclear power industry says ‘We do it better’ the truth of the matter is that American reactors are safer because American anti-nuclear activists have forced the United States government to pay attention and American nuclear plant owners and operators to build in redundant safety systems. Continue reading ‘The Day After Three Mile Island’

The Wolf Inside

Published
by
Larry
on January 26, 2008
in Lessons Learned (or not)
. 0 Comments

This is not, strictly speaking, emergency preparedness, public health, or environmental policy.  But it’s in the intersection. Click Here.

An old Cherokee was teaching his grandchildren about life. He said to them, “A battle is raging inside me … it is a terrible fight between two wolves. One wolf represents fear, anger, envy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority and ego. The other stands for joy, peace, love, hope, sharing, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, friendship, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion and faith.”

The old man fixed the children with a firm stare. “This same fight is going on inside you, and inside every other person, too.”

They thought about it for a minute and then one child asked his grandfather,

“Which wolf will win?”

The old Cherokee replied: “The one you feed.”

Airport Security - A Work in Progress

Published
by
Larry
on January 7, 2008
in 9/11, Air Safety, Lessons Learned (or not), National Security, Terrorisim and Transportation
. 1 Comment

Harvard School of Public Health research concludes that airport security isn’t helping. Reuters, or Yahoo News.

The researchers could not find any studies showing whether the time-consuming process of X-raying carry-on luggage prevents hijackings or attacks.

They found no evidence to suggest that making passengers take off their shoes and confiscating small items prevented any incidents.

The researchers conclude that it would be “interesting” to apply medical standards to airport security. Screening programs for illnesses like cancer are usually not broadly instituted unless they have been shown to work.

The TSA response:

The Transportation Security Administration defended its measures by reporting that more than 13 million prohibited items were intercepted in one year. … Most of these illegal items were lighters.”

The TSA needs to think things through and implement security protocols that work to stop terrorists, rather than those that work to inconvenience passengers, confiscate lighters, water, homemade pies, and toothpaste.

Bruce Schneier, in his blog on Security and Security Technology, sums it up well:

The goal isn’t to confiscate prohibited items. The goal is to prevent terrorism on airplanes. When the TSA confiscates millions of lighters from innocent people, that’s a security failure. The TSA is reacting to non-threats. The TSA is reacting to false alarms. Now you can argue that this level of failures is necessary to make people safer, but it’s certainly not evidence that people are safer.

So today, 6 years after Sept. 11, Airport Security, to put it mildly, is a work in progress. Or, as Schneier puts it, “the TSA has it completely backwards.“

The Separation of Church and State

Published
by
Larry
on October 23, 2007
in 2008 Presidential Campaign, Lessons Learned (or not), Miscellaneous smart people, National Security, Terrorisim, Transparency, innovation and politics
. 0 Comments

Every sect, as far as reason will help them, make use of it gladly; and where it fails them, they cry out, “It is a matter of faith, and above reason.”
- John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1690) (Click Here) or (Here)

“A religious sect may degenerate into a political faction.”
- James Madison, the Federalist papers. (Click Here)

“With the radical Right, we have a political faction disguised as a religious sect and the president of the United States is heading it. Bush uses a religious blind faith to hide what is actually an extremist political philosophy with a disdain for social justice that is anything but pious by the standards of any respected faith tradition.”
- Al Gore, The Assault On Reason. (Click Here)

 

Hugh’s Katrina Timeline

Published
by
Jon
on October 11, 2007
in Katrina and Lessons Learned (or not)
. 0 Comments

Came across a well-detailed Katrina timeline  - the timeline speaks for itself. Here’s the introduction:

It is hoped that, by recording the events surrounding Hurricane Katrina’s destruction of New Orleans on August 29, 2005, some insight will be gained into the mechanism of disaster. We need to understand how Federal and local government, Republican and Democratic alike, could be so inadequate to a calamity that had been predicted for decades. What emerges from any attempt at doing so is no less than a damning account of corruption, indifference, racism, classism, oppression, ignorance, historical mistrust, and finally a near-total breakdown in all levels of American political and social institutions.

 From Ominous Valve. Which is mostly about cool technology, funny things, and good art.

DHS Responder Knowledge Base

Published
by
Jon
on September 22, 2007
in ANSI, Access to Tools, Best Practices, DHS, Gear, Grants, Lessons Learned (or not), NPS, Recommended reading, Responder Knowledge Base and procurement
. 0 Comments

Another outstanding resource from Brian Steckler from the Naval Postgraduate School and the Center for the Study of Hastily Formed Networks for Humantarian Assistance/Disaster Relief    -

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The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has been compiling a Responder Knowledge Base, much of which is non-classified,  has what appears to be an encyclopedic collection of information about:

  • equipment
  • equipment grants
  • standards
  • best practices

If you’re a registered user (first responder, paid or volunteer, planner - someone with a verifiable legitimate use), there’s an “ask an expert” submission form - and the staff promises to try to answer questions, via email, within a week. I’m going to submit a couple of questions that have been, of late, frustrating my attempts to do some communications planning and budgeting.

Lessons learned, lessons ignored

Published
by
Jon
on September 11, 2007
in Lessons Learned (or not), Miscellaneous smart people, NPS and Recommended reading
. 1 Comment

Donahue and Tuohy , in Lessons We Don’t Learn, identify recurring problems in emergency management which are identified – repeatedly – in “lessons learned” and “after-action” processes:

  • lack of commitment to plans
  • cached materials “often inadequate to meet actual need”
  • mutual aid assets being counted by different agencies as part of their resource bases, creating a net overstatement of capabilities
  • tracking systems for volunteers and donated resources are weak, causing assets to be underutilized
  • “short shrift to pre-incident public education”
  • inadequate followup on identified problems
  • the use of simulated “table-top” exercises to the detriment of inter-agency field exercises – “agencies fail to derive perhaps the most important benefit of the exercise process: relationships with other agencies, jurisdictions, and disciplines”

Donahue and Tuohy note that “[t]he wildland fire community uses a very effective nationwide resource ordering and deployment system, but this approach has not been replicated by other disciplines.”

Continue reading ‘Lessons learned, lessons ignored’

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