April 18, 1906 – it's a date that holds special meaning for us here in San Francisco. This year is the 106th anniversary of the earthquake and fires that destroyed much of the city, killed thousands, and displaced over a quarter of a million people. But our our modest commemorations aren't concerned with the disaster […]
There's an interesting experiment being conducted by the National Weather Service. Five weather stations in Kansas and Missouri will be using plain terminology to warn people of impending hurricanes. One of the interesting phenomena we see in emergency management is that people do not respond to warnings immediately but seek verification before acting. They tend […]
"Pink slime" – sounds disgusting, doesn't it? And yet Americans have been eating it for some time. If you've been following the media buzz lately, you'll be aware that "pink slime" is a derogatory term coined by a USDA microbiologist in 2002 (that's right, 2002 – pink slime was approved for use in 2001) to […]
In my last blog, I spoke about the court of public opinion and how your constitutional rights tend to vanish when you're in the limelight. We're seeing another case study being played out in the recent shooting incident in Florida. The public concern here is that the shooting was racially motivated and that the local […]
"Your lawyers may be giving you sensible advice, to stay quiet and not make a move. That will work in court. But it will kill you with the public." This quote is from a recent article by my former boss, Willie L. Brown, Jr., who is, among his many other talents, a weekly columnist for the […]
We spend a lot of time trying to define the differences between emergencies, disasters and catastrophes and with good reason. We know that there are qualitative differences between events that influence how we respond. But that's the big picture – the strategic level. It's easy to forget that at the victim level, disasters are relative. […]
The San Jose Mercury News reports that the White House is proposing to hit the National National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) with a $4.6 million cut to tsunami programs put in place after the Indian Ocean tsunami in 2004. The cuts include a $1 million reduction to the system of buoys that provide early warning […]
We spend a lot of our time planning for the sudden, unexpected event. These are the events that leave you in little doubt that they are significant – major floods, earthquakes, fires, etc. But what about the slow-onset events that sneak up on you? These are less easy to identify. It's hard to recognize the […]