Category Archives: Planning and Preparedness

The Celestial Shooting Gallery, Part Four: “You Have Nothing to Worry About (click) Worry About (click) Worry About (click)…”

Stability Model of an experimental distribution grid

A stability map of a simple power grid. Each point on this image represents an operating state of a simple power grid consisting of a few generators. Bluish regions constitute stable working states, red unstable and ‘salt-and-pepper’ represent chaotic behavior. One can tune a grid for stability by controlling the phasing of generators and transformers on the grid and such settings suffice for day-to-day operations. It is difficult to decide where, or by how much, abnormalities such as geomagnetic storms might push a system into red, unstable regions, or, worse, salt-and-pepper regions where the system oscillates between states. It is easy to find cases on the map where chaotic regions lie very close to stable regions, indicating that the destabilizing push need not be large at all. James Thorp, Cornell University, published in IEEE Spectrum

People paid to worry about the North American power grid regard geomagnetic storms as “high impact, low-frequency” events, spawning the inevitable acronym: HILF. Low frequency, in that a geomagnetic storm as intense as May 1921, at 5,000 nano-Teslas/minute, or the 1859 Carrington Event, best guess: 7,500 nano-Teslas/minute, might not happen in our lifetimes, the lifetimes of our children, or even our grand children. If signature traces in Arctic ice core samples are correct, these are ‘500 year events.’ When it comes to deciding where to put that preventative maintenance dollar, storm-proofing Oklahoma elementary schools against EF 5 tornadoes seems a far more practical spend than the hardening of electrical grids against a half-theoretical event that might not even happen in 500 years.

What pulls planners up short is the high impact part: the utter god-awfulness of a power grid that crashes and which then can’t boot itself up. There is a self-referential dependency: fixing a dysfunctional power grid requires it to be functional, as key aspects of the manufacturing of transformers need electricity.

Nor can one expect the cavalry to ride in anytime soon, as the vast geographic reach of geomagnetic storms means that one strong enough to take down the North American grid may very likely take down Eurasian grids as well – entire hemispheres could wind up in the toilet, and we only have two hemispheres. That and the statistical variableness to it all: the Carrington 1859 and May 1921 storms, nominally two ‘500 year events’ were, in fact, separated by only sixty-two years.

Where does the buck stop? Continue reading →

Celestial Shooting Gallery, Part Three: When a CME Hits the Atmosphere

Failed GSU transformer at Salem River, NJ

A Generator Step Up (GSU) transformer failed at the Salem River Nuclear Plant during the March 1989 geomagnetic storm. The unit is depicted on the left; some of the burned 22kV primary windings are shown on the right. Though immersed in cooling oil, the windings became hot enough to melt copper, at about 2000 degrees F. John Kappenman, Metatech

Coronal Mass Ejections are mainly charged particles, protons and electrons. When a CME arrives at Earth, the charged protons and electrons come under the influence of the Earth’s own magnetic field, the magnetosphere. Charged particles spin around the lines of magnetic force that comprise the magnetosphere, which diverts most of CME harmlessly around the planet, keeping Earth’s surface tranquil.

If the ejection is large enough, however, it can distort the shape of the magnetosphere, occasionally causing magnetic flux lines to snap and reconnect. When this happens, charged particles leak in and follow the magnetosphere’s flux lines down to the Earth’s ionosphere. There, they strike oxygen and nitrogen molecules and strip them of electrons. These ionized gases glow, giving rise to the ethereal beauty of the auroras around the north and south poles. Unfortunately, these excess charged particles also produce immense electrojets.

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Celestial Shooting Gallery, Part Two: The Physics of Geomagnetic Storms

On August 31, 2012 a long filament of solar material that had been hovering in the sun’s atmosphere, the corona, erupted out into space at 4:36 p.m. EDT. The coronal mass ejection, or CME, traveled at over 900 miles per second. The CME did not travel directly toward Earth, but did connect with Earth’s magnetic environment, or magnetosphere, causing aurora to appear on the night of Monday, September 3. The image above includes an image of Earth to show the size of the CME compared to the size of Earth. NASA Goddard Spaceflight Center

Thursday, May 2nd, 2013, a coronal mass ejection (CME) hurled nearly one billion tons of charged particles from the sun’s corona at an outward velocity of one million miles per hour – 270 miles per second.

In less than a half hour, 2,700 virtual Empire State Buildings, 340,000 tons apiece – give or take a few gorillas – erupted from an active region of the Sun’s surface called AR1748, a northern latitude sunspot. AR1748 had just become visible on the western limb of the Sun’s surface when it ejected this mass, so the vast bulk of it hurled outward, not toward us in Libra, but more or less toward Cancer, at right-angles to us. In practical terms, it shot wide of its mark. Still an impressive shot. The CME had been triggered by an M class solar flare, the second largest in a five step scheme (An, Bn, Cn, Mn, Xn; for n a relative magnitude). It had been the largest coronal mass ejection observed thus far in 2013.

And it was still early in the day for AR1748.

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Celestial Shooting Gallery, Part One: The Day We Lost Quebec

John Kappenman reconstructed the electrojets which formed in the ionosphere late in the March 13, 1989 geomagnetic storm which compromised the Hydro-Quebec power grid in Canada. Concurrently, the eastward jet induced ground currents that severely strained the electrical distribution grid of northern continental United States, resulting in a transformer failure at the Salem Nuclear Power Plant, in New Jersey. Courtesy of Metatech

Nearly a quarter century ago, on March 13, 1989, a geomagnetic storm led to the collapse of the Hydro-Quebec electrical grid system, which furnishes power to much of the province of Quebec, Canada. So pervasive were abnormal currents, that protective circuit breakers tripped throughout the system, bringing the entire grid to a halt in about one and a half minutes. The grid’s self-protective systems were geared toward local abnormalities happening in particular places. In contrast, ground induced currents created abnormalities everywhere. The good news was that most of the hardware protected itself. The bad news was that six million customers were without power for as long as nine hours, and where transformer damage did occur, outages continued for another week.

Further south, the United States experienced a close shave. A second surge in the March 13 storm generated similar ground induced currents in the northern United States, with large current spikes observed from the Pacific Northwest to the mid-Atlantic states, one spike destroying a large GSU transformer at the Salem Nuclear Power Plant in New Jersey. According to John Kappenman, of the Metatech Corporation “It was probably at this time that we came uncomfortably close to triggering a blackout that could have literally extended clear across the country.”

Continue reading →

Vizicities: Rich Geo Data Visualization Tool

Vizicities, now in development, may be the richest and most layered geographic information tool ever, which might make it the ideal urban planning, risk management and disaster response management tool ever. Based explicitly on the data layers in the game SimCity, it’s being developed by Pete Smart and Rob Hawkes.

Here’s a screenshot from SimCity:

SimCity Screenshot

And here are screenshots of Vizicities, still in early days:

[imagebrowser id=107]

Sequestration illuminates absence of long-term, coherent risk policies

Our national policy for disaster recovery and rebuilding – putting aside, for the moment, risk assessment, mitigation, planning, and response – is effectively no policy. We make it up as we go along. Did victims of terrorism on September 10, 2001, or beforehand receive compensation? Did airlines before 9/11 get special legislation absolving them of liability? Even assuming that there is a legitimate question about the etiology of Ground Zero responders’ illnesses, wouldn’t a reasonable and compassionate country willingly support dying and seriously ill responders and their families – rather than stalling, essentially starving them out? James Zadroga, The James Zadroga 9/11 Health and Compensation Act allocated $4.2 billion to create the World Trade Center Health Program; the legislation was signed in January 2011; Zadroga died in January, 2006. Then, as now, partisan legislative politics delayed the matter.

Colorado movie theater attack: first reports

Mark Memmott. an NPR journalist who is one of the hosts of the NPR blog “The Two-Way,” and his colleagues at NPR have done an outstanding job reporting this story. We’ll be checking back with NPR and other sources; it’s our hope to provide some context for these events, and what inferences and implications should be made and understood given the relative sophistication of the attack (we’ll explain why we think, in relative terms, this incident shows some signs of planning and sophistication) and the relatively low frequency of attacks in theaters, movie theaters,restaurants, arenas – places where the are large numbers of relatively relaxed people.

In other words, a target-rich environment.

Some of what’s known at present :

At least 14 people are dead, police say.
50 or so were reportedly injured.
One suspect is in custody.
The suspect has told police that there are explosives at his restaurant.
Some witness accounts report smoke bombs being used by the gunman, and at least one witness reported the use of tear gas.

from Mark Memmott, Real-Life Horror: Many Killed, Dozens Wounded At Colorado Movie Theater, on The Two-Way blog, a project of National Public Radio (NPR).

Aside from the horror which the survivors, victims and their families must wrestle for the rest of their lives; there are law-enforcement and societal challenges. The theater and the mall in which it is located has become a crime scene. Law enforcement must get the victims and the survivors out of the theater; they must get the wounded to hospitals. Law enforcement must also interview the witnesses. The largest, most flexible government-owned space is a local public school.

Should we harden schools for use in emergencies? If so, we must install emergency generators on each of the 93,000 K-12 public schools in the USA. If so, should those generating systems be a mix of solar, wind, hydro, and battery systems or should they be diesel. Diesel generators are cheaper but diesel fuel costs money. Solar, wind, hydro and battery systems are more expensive but use no fuel, and can be used all the time. If we use hybrid or electric school buses, then can we use the bus batteries to power the schools during a power failure?

Don’t wealthy Americans need emergency rooms, too?

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9H4u-trTvNk

New York City politics is often about real estate value, and distance is often measured in travel time. A hospital three miles away in suburban or rural Arizona might be reachable, on a flat straight road with no traffic, in an ambulance with lights and sirens running, in well under three minutes. Not in New York City.

In 2010, in financial trouble after serving the sick and dying for 161 years, a deal was brokered – the details don’t matter – in which the overwhelming majority of the hospital’s grounds would be replaced by luxury housing, plus the fig leaf of an “urgent care center,” which, it was implied, was the functional equivalent of a hospital emergency department. St. Vincent’s did have, while it was in operation, a full-on top tier emergency department, with specialists, operating rooms – like, in fact, a fully accredited emergency department designated as a trauma center in a major American city. The replacement “urgent care center” – to be frank, this phrase as used is more deceptive than illustrative – would not, is not, and will not be able to treat gunshot wounds, heart attacks – those patients will have to be transported to the nearing hospital designated, accredited, equipped and trained as a trauma center.

So the people buying this “luxury” housing will be buying housing without one of the characteristic amenities of modern big cities: outstanding hospitals with emergency departments. Unless, of course, they’re lucky in avoiding traffic, or in good enough shape to withstand a long ride in an ambulance. It is not without some shame that we note that New Yorkers, whatever their other virtues, are inured to the signals of emergency vehicles: we don’t rapidly pull over to make way for ambulances, police vehicles, or fire trucks. Our chronic housing shortage being what it is, people will undoubtedly buy or rent apartments on the former St.Vincent’s site anyway, but we wonder if the lack of a readily available emergency room will affect prices. From http://healthcarevote2013.com:

Few healthcare issues are as urgent in New York City as hospital closures. The Year Of The Healthcare Vote 2013 was created in response to the closure of St. Vincent’s Hospital in 2010. St. Vincent’s had served New York for 161 years, and will be replaced by luxury condominiums. Since that time hospitals have been closing at an alarming rate throughout New York City – in particular those that serve working and middle class New Yorkers.

In 2013 New Yorkers will choose a new Mayor, 51 members of City Council, a Comptroller, a Public Advocate and five Borough Presidents. Access to quality healthcare is a life and death concern for New Yorkers; Healthcare Vote 2013 will bring awareness and accountability to healthcare issues in New York City’s upcoming elections.

Healthcare Vote 2013 will work to advance discussions on all healthcare issues important in our communities and ask candidates to pledge to preserve publicly accessible hospitals and expand public healthcare in the neighborhoods they represent including restoring a hospital to the Lower West Side of Manhattan.

Please get involved.

WWII-era fire apparatus, Australia (image by Kristarella)

WWII-era ladder truck. Image by Kristarella/Kristarella.com

We’ve got a few reasons for publishing this image: Kristarella, an outstanding web designer and software developer, is also a fabulous photographer, and we encourage you to check out her Photoblog for page after page of images which will capture your curiousity, imagination and awe. But that’s not, strictly speaking, on-topic. These reasons are:

We’re about to run a series of posts about firefighting apparatus – which is to say vehicles, mobile firefighting equipment, as opposed to infrastructure (fire water mains, sprinklers, hand-held gear and, as important as the rest, prevention), and thought this mid-20th century piece would be a good reference point;
Note the following screenshot: Kristarella is a leader in managing the metadata – EXIF (Exchangeable image file format, Wikipedia entry; see alsoEXIF.org) which accompanies digital images. We hope to explore the ways in which EXIF data and images might be used to crowd source risk assessment, disaster planning, and disaster response. So we’ll be exploring Kristarella’s Thesography Plugin, and more tools that will exploit EXIF and other usable meta-data.

Social Networks Reduce Disaster Risk

Ben Franklin is reputed to have said “we shall hang together, or we shall hang separately.” Long-time readers know that it is our firmly-held conviction that social networks matter more than any single type of preparation or cached equipment. Here is an excerpt from The Key To Disaster Survival? Pals, Neighbors broadcast on the July 4, 2011 edition of All Things Considered:

A researcher’s data suggest that ambulances, firetrucks and government aid aren’t the principal ways most people survive during and recover after a disaster. Instead, it’s the personal ties between members of a community that really matter.

If you want an easy template for doing this in your community, check out the 3 Steps Program.

Japan rebuilding failed breakwater

Norimitsu Onishi, writing in the Times, November 3, Japan Revives a Sea Barrier That Failed to Hold

KAMAISHI, Japan — After three decades and nearly $1.6 billion, work on Kamaishi’s great tsunami breakwater was completed three years ago. A mile long, 207 feet deep and jutting nearly 20 feet above the water, the quake-resistant structure made it into the Guinness World Records last year and rekindled fading hopes of revival in this rusting former steel town.

But when a giant tsunami hit Japan’s northeast on March 11, the breakwater largely crumpled under the first 30-foot-high wave, leaving Kamaishi defenseless. Waves deflected from the breakwater are also strongly suspected of having contributed to the 60-foot waves that engulfed communities north of it.

Its performance that day, coupled with its past failure to spur the growth of new businesses, suggested that the breakwater would be written off as yet another of the white elephant construction projects littering rural Japan. But Tokyo quickly and quietly decided to rebuild it as part of the reconstruction of the tsunami-ravaged zone, at a cost of at least $650 million.

Wikipedia’s entry “Seawall” is an excellent primer on this type of flood defense.

A seawall works by reflecting incident wave energy back into the sea, therefore reducing the energy and erosion which the coastline would otherwise be subjected to.In addition to their unsightly visual appearance, two specific weaknesses of seawalls exist. Firstly, wave reflection induced by the wall may result in scour and subsequent lowering of the sand level of the fronting beach Secondly, seawalls may accelerate ero . There are three main types of seawalls: vertical; curved or stepped; and mounds.

Planning for housing special populations: Vermont's state mental hospital made unusable by Tropical Storm Irene

Even though it only housed 51 patients, Vermont has been having difficulty replaced the state hospital which housed its most seriously mentally ill patients. Patients – medical, psychiatric, assisted living – all have more particularized needs: ramps for gurneys, power for medical equipment, adequate power and water – a complete list would be long. When we assess risk and plan, perhaps we need to start planning with the most difficult and the most vulnerable populations. Abby Goodnough, reporting in The New York Times, gives a clear picture of the difficulty of rapidly replacing specialized facilities. From Storm Has Vermont Scrambling to Find Beds for Mentally Ill

Among the casualties of the flooding that ravaged Vermont during Tropical Storm Irene was a faded brick hospital that housed the state’s most seriously ill psychiatric patients.

Eight feet of water from the Winooski River inundated the century-old building on Aug. 28, forcing the 51 residents, most of whom had been sent there involuntarily, to the upper floors. The next day, they were evacuated by bus to temporary placements around the state.

Two months later, the Vermont State Hospital remains closed — for good, Gov. Peter Shumlin says — and the state is grappling with how to care for acutely mentally ill residents.

“We really have kind of an unprecedented situation on our hands,” said Jill Olson, a vice president of the Vermont Association of Hospitals and Health Systems, an advocacy group, “where the highest level of care for a mental health situation in Vermont just washed away.”

In a strange way, the disaster presented an opportunity that many state officials and mental health advocates had been seeking in vain for years. The state hospital had so many problems that the federal government decertified it in 2003; state leaders had been vowing to close it ever since, but were stalled by indecision about what to build in its place. “All of us thought that it was so shabby and so old and so difficult to make safe that it was time to replace it,” said Dr. Robert Pierattini, chief of psychiatry at Fletcher Allen Health Care in Burlington, the state’s teaching hospital. “But I don’t see any evidence that we can get by without a state hospital.”

When "just-in-time" ordering is actually too late

HAZMAT Class 7 Radioactive U.S. DOT

Irwin Redlener has pointed out that, in the event of a serious influenza outbreak – “pandemic” – which means that the high incidence of a given illness is greater than normal not only in one community (an epidemic) – but in a wider area than would normally be expected – we would be in sudden need of many more mechanical ventilators ((These ventilators are descendants of the “Iron Lung” and the 1928 “Drinker respirator.” See Wikipedia entry for “Mechanical Ventilator.”)) than are normally needed.

For instance, one credible – but not worst-case – scenario of avian influenza would leave New York State short 50,000 ventilators, and another with a nationwide shortfall of 700,000. The International Business Times has reported that a physician on the faculty at Stanford has developed a high-quality, low-cost ventilator.

The low-end model, called OneBreath, was designed by a team of researchers led by Matthew Callaghan, MD, at Stanford Biodesign, a training incubator in medical technology that brings together multidisciplinary teams of medical, engineering, law and business school students to address unmet medical needs with innovative approaches.

Callaghan says that the idea struck him first at a planning meeting at a hospital that was trying to formalize criteria to decide which type of patients would receive life support from the limited number of ventilators in the hospital should a scenario arise when emergency demand outstrips supply. Later, an alarming piece of statistics – that the United States would fall short of 700,000 ventilators in the event of a moderate-to-severe influenza pandemic – triggered the thought of commercialization of the innovation. Continue reading →

Ways to make sand tables "without sand" – and sometimes without a table

Uses of LEGO:

From The Brothers Brick (Recovering from BrickCon 2009, at the moment) ((From the blog’s “About” page.

The Brothers Brick is a LEGO blog for adult fans of LEGO. Though we started out back in 2005 featuring mainly minifigs, today we highlight the best LEGO creations of every type from builders around the world, including ever-popular LEGO Star Wars, steampunk, and mecha creations. You can also find the latest LEGO news, opinions, and reviews right here on The Brothers Brick.

When is a “Plate, Modified 1 x 1 with Clip Vertical” just a “clippy bit”?

With shared resources like Bricklink and Peeron, LEGO fans active on the Web today use fairly standard terminology for referring to individual LEGO elements. Whether you’re describing a building technique or drafting, shared language is a key to communication.

An interesting article by Giles Turnbull has been making the rounds among LEGO fans on the ‘net this past week. The article surveys four families who play with LEGO and how they talk about LEGO. In the absence of externally driven standards, it’s interesting to see how these families have developed their own LEGO language.

Read the full article, A Common Nomenclature for Lego Families, on The Morning News.

Report warns of gaps in Louisiana emergency plans

From The Associated Press: Report warns of gaps in Louisiana emergency plans

NEW ORLEANS-Hurricane season is just weeks away, but many south Louisiana parishes cannot show their disaster plans cover evacuation of at-risk populations such as the disabled, the homeless and the elderly, according to the Disaster Accountability Project, a student-led watchdog group.

The Connecticut-based group said it found gaps in planning by local officials in charge of working with the state to move more than 1 million people out of the coastal danger zone if a hurricane threatens.

The group also said many disaster managers were unwilling to allow inspection of their plans. Of the 22 parishes surveyed, 11 either refused to disclose their plans or did not respond to surveyors when contacted earlier this year, the report said. Only four of the 22 parishes had their plans available online when the surveyors checked.

Disclosure: Popular Logistics is affiliated with the Disaster Accountability Project, although the two organizations have no financial relationship. We are proud of the association, and hold its work in high regard. We make this disclosure as a matter of principle, and believe that the work of DAP speaks for itself. Copies of the report in question can be obtained via this link(Adobe Acrobat file).

Among the results released Tuesday, the survey found that only two parishes fully accounted for how they would evacuate day-care facilities; none had plans for evacuating the homeless; and six fully accounted for how they should evacuate the elderly. The 22 parishes were chosen by their proximity to the coast.

“I’m not sure what’s worse, the failure of numerous parishes to provide their emergency plans upon request, that some parish plans were dated before Hurricane Katrina, or a combination of the two,” said Ben Smilowitz, the group’s executive director.

Several emergency management officials were skeptical of the report.”How are law students qualified to evaluate emergency management?” said Deano Bonano, head of the Jefferson Parish homeland security office. “My concern is that they might cause fear among Jefferson Parish citizens. It’s not a legitimate or a Louisiana-based group. What are their qualifications to comment on hurricane plans?”

The surveyors, drawn from law schools across the country, sought to identify if the plans covered 23 areas of interest—from evacuation plans for vulnerable slices of the population to public outreach. The students did not have specific training in emergency planning, but DAP said every local government should be able to provide a clear and easy to understand plan to citizens.

A disaster planning expert not involved in the DAP survey agreed that an emergency plan should be easy for anyone to understand.

“There are certain sections of the plans that should be highly technical, maybe the communications and hazardous materials sections,” said Jay Wilson, the executive director of the Disaster Emergency Response Association International, based in Longmont, Colo. “But in general the plans should be understandable by anyone in the community.”

The report gave Jefferson’s emergency plans a mediocre review because it said the parish did not specify how schools, day care centers, the homeless and tourists would be evacuated. With more than 430,000 residents in the congested New Orleans suburbs, Jefferson is Louisiana’s most populous parish.

Bonano said the parish has an exemplary evacuation system. “The mere fact they couldn’t find it in our plans does not mean it does not exist.”

Continue reading →