Emergency Exercises: The neglected tabletop
Download Tabletop Exercises Oct 2011
Remembering the Oakland Hills Fire
Today is the 20th anniversary of the Oakland Hills Fire that destroyed over 3000 private dwellings and claimed the lives of 25 people. This particular disaster has always had a special meaning for me as I was part of the FEMA team sent to provide relief to the survivors. The smoke was so thick in […]
Negotiating with terrorists and moral courage
The recent decision by the State of Israel to release over a thousand prisoners in exchange for a kidnapped soldier raises some interesting issues that may well have implications for future policy. The decision raises questions about the generally-accepted policy about negotiating with terrorists. The official line from most governments has always been that there would be no […]
Social media as a preparedness tool
Online gaming is a phenomena that is a bit hard to understand at times. People will spend hours doing repetitive tasks to garner an "achievement" that offers nothing more than bragging rights with other gamers. But there's no denying the attraction. With the advent of social media and smart phones, smartphone gaming has exploded into a […]
Communicating risk: lessons from the L’Aquila trial
As I mentioned in a recent blog, six seismologists and a government official are on trail for manslaughter in Italy for failing to provide warning about an earthquake that killed several hundred people in the village of L'Aquila. An article in today's New York Times offers an interesting commentary on how crisis communications can go wrong. […]
Earthquake warnings: whose responsibility is it?
There's an interesting court case going on in Italy. Seven seismologists are charged with manslaughter for failing to provide adequate warning about an earthquake that killed 308 people in 2009. At issue here is not the inability to predict the earthquake but rather a failure to warn the residents that minor tremors leading up to […]
Crisis Communications: Don’t shift the blame!
Thanks to the good folks over at the Consumerist for providing an excellent example of how not to respond to a crisis. During the recent flooding in Johnson City, NY, the folks at PETCO were taken unawares by the rising flood waters and lost 100 animals. The staff did manage to save an equal number, […]
TSA does it right on occasion
Regular readers of my blog know that I'm sometimes a bit hard on our friends at TSA or at least the managers responsible for some really dumb decisions. However, one of the things that you can do to overcome a negative image is to educate the public on what you do well. In today's TSA […]
Emergency Management: Measuring ROI
How do you measure the effectiveness of an emergency management program? More specifically, how do you show that the money you invest in preparedness has been well-spent? Traditionally, we have used quantitative measures because "things" are easy to measure. So we count "things" like the number of plans written, the number of exercises held, the […]