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“Every System is Perfectly Designed to Get the System it Gets”
For IAEM R3 Book Club, we are currently reading Upstream: How to solve problems before they happen, by Dan Heath. It’s not the usual book that we read about disaster psychology or disaster issues. It’s more of a leadership development book, and improving EM ways of working. A passage on page 106 of Chapter 6,…
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Airborne Lead and Chlorine Levels Elevated by L.A. Wildfires
An article published in The New York Times reports that atmospheric concentrations of toxic ash containing lead, chlorine, and other chemicals, were extremely elevated above average due to the combustion or melting of cars, homes, and other structures. “For Los Angeles, the toxic smoke means that the eventual death toll from the fires, as well…
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DJI Removes Geofencing Feature
Sean Hollister, a senior editor at The Verge, published a news story announcing that Chinese drone-manufacturer, DJI, has decided to remove the automatic geofencing feature from its software. This was intended to assist operators from easily flying a DJI drone over restricted areas. The software would automatically stop the drone from flying over airport runways,…
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Mapping Your Neighborhood
New Year’s Resolution to try and post more in 2025 and make the website more functional and useful. Regarding the blog’s quest to walk through developing your neighborhood disaster plan, I wanted to revisit a previous post where the instruction in the Fairfax County Community Emergency Response Guide Appendix was to include a “map of…
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Terrorist Sympathizers Arrested and Home Raided
George Mason University is located in Fairfax County, Virginia. The main campus is not too far from where this author lives. It didn’t receive that much attention in the national news (as far as I can tell), but a story appeared in the Washington Free Beacon, regarding the arrest of two GMU students, Jena and…
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Step 2.3 Scout Your Neighborhood (cont.)
It’s been a while since I’ve been able to post. Our Civic Association had a quarterly meeting on Monday, October 28, where I sent our President my first draft. It was really crude and I haven’t had a chance to connect with her to get her first impressions and edits. I’m not a fan of…
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Emergency Preparedness on a Budget
I attended a webinar sponsored by the Fairfax County Department of Emergency Management & Security (DEMS). The head of community engagement and outreach must be sick of seeing me as one of the attendees at these things, but I help to spread the word and share what I know with anyone in the public, willing…
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Hazards Outside Your Area
The 2022 Northern Virginia (Natural) Hazard Mitigation Plan doesn’t include unintentional or intentional man-made hazards. In Section 5, it just goes over hazard profiles, risks, and vulnerability for: dam failure; drought; earthquake; extreme temperature (heat/cold); flood/flash flood (including erosion); high winds/severe storms (including thunderstorms, hurricanes, and tropical storms); karst/sinkhole/land subsistence; landslide; tornado; wildfire; winter weather….
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