Over six months ago, Hurricane Irma made history as one of the most devastating storms to strike the state of Florida. From Cudjoe Key to Jacksonville, millions of Floridians felt the impact of last year’s disaster, not only from the damage and loss of life it left behind, but with the massive evacuation of people […]
In the 1970s, devastating wildfires in California revealed several major faults in the command structure and gave rise to the Incident Command System (ICS), which later evolved into the National Incident Management System (NIMS). Today, the National Response Framework (NRF) builds upon those systems and defines a common operating picture (COP) as “a continuously updated […]
In the disaster business, our focus for the last several months has been on the recovery from the unprecedented series of hurricanes and wildfires in 2017. But if you live in the U.S. Midwest and the South, you know that springtime brings with it another focus: tornados. Since it is difficult to predict the severity […]
Disasters have cost taxpayers over $104 billion in nine years. That is, according to the U.S. Government Accountability Office, the amount that the Disaster Relief Fund has paid out from fiscal years 2005 to 2014 for disaster response, recovery, and mitigation.[1] Just in the last eight years, there have been over 900 Presidentially declared disasters, […]
New Ideas and Old Problems Innovation and maintenance are terms tossed around a lot when it comes to emergency planning, and plenty of other fields and professions for that matter. An emergency plan might be considered innovative if it uses a new approach, promotes the use of new technology, or borrows ideas from other fields. […]
At IEM, saving lives is the most important thing we help our customers do. Over the past several weeks, IEM Air™ (IEM’s air division) has been on the ground in Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands to support the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) response to Hurricanes Irma and Maria. Reliable air operations are […]
I’m sure most people do not think of renters as an especially vulnerable population, from an emergency management or any other perspective. However, south Louisiana’s (particularly the New Orleans area’s) recovery from Hurricane Katrina, and now the state of Louisiana’s recovery from the 2016 floods, makes it clear that without particular attention to renters who […]
While many Americans were recovering from their holiday feasts last week, the Emergency Committee of the World Health Organization (WHO) was deliberating on whether Zika virus is still a Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC).[1] Although the decision was made to move Zika from PHEIC to endemic status,[2] this post aims to discuss why […]
On the November 6th edition of CBS’s 60 Minutes, Dr. Jon LaPook spoke with the country’s top scientists about the fight against Zika and the U.S. government’s efforts to control it. I can’t speak for others in the public health field, but I was happy to see some national coverage of the current Zika epidemic. […]
Unlike other vector-borne diseases such as dengue, yellow fever, and chikungunya, Zika can be spread through the traditional mosquito bite and through sexual transmission. To help stop the spread of Zika through sexual transmission, it is important to understand the risks of Zika as a sexually transmitted disease (STD) and to take proactive measures to […]
