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
services that allow construction workers to contact utility companies, who will then denote where underground utilities are located via color-coding those locations. As required by law and assigned by the FCC, the 8-1-1telephone number will soon be used for this purpose across the United States.
Failure to call such a number ahead of time may result in a fine or even a charge against the person or company, particularly if such negligence causes a major utility outage or serious accident, or an evacuation due to a gas leak. Hitting a water main may also trigger a boil-water advisory and local flooding.
A few utilities are permanently marked with short posts or bollards, mainly for lines carrying petroleum products. From Wikipedia entry on One-Call.
So this part of the utility industry is having a conference in December. Unquestionably a good thing. (I don’t know enough about utilities – this may be one of many conferences). However, examining the schedule of events
suggests that it’s all about safety – implicitly about disaster prevention – but not about disaster response – and not at all about liaison with first responders, for instance. There’s a great emphasis on tort claims, litigation of claims and damages, and GIS systems.
Please notice the absence of the logos for NIST, DHS, FEMA, Public Health Service, CDC – or any state or municipal OEM. These systems are regarded as so critical that we’ve essential removed maps of them from the public domain – accurate maps, anyway. See our earlier post: National Pipeline Mapping System (NPMS).
But no EMS, Fire Department, Public Safety, Law Enforcement, or civilian or military disaster preparedness speakers.
Disclosure of limitation of journalistic completeness and fairness: This isn’t a criticism of the conference organizers – or the utilities or utility contractors; and I stress that I came across this late Friday and am writing early on a Saturday and haven’t yet called for comment. I’m going to try to update later with comment, and information about sponsors – whose graphic design tastes are , to my eye, somewhat more sophisticated than I might have imagined (they’ve got pretty pictures).