How do we survive surviving? By Ann SanCartier for Firestorm
Imagine. You head to pick up your child from school and abruptly, the only thing separating you, your daughter and your sister from 200 mile per hour winds are two collapsed walls supporting each other in a triangular formation. You hold your daughter with adrenaline-induced strength while you scream and pray as the realistic fear of being sucked up into a monster overwhelms you. That’s what happened to a family I spoke with who survived the Moore, Oklahoma Tornado. As they cowered for protection at Briarwood Elementary, what we now know to be an E5 tornado, whipped them with flying debris leaving their feet, arms, and heads lacerated by its ferocity. As this mother shared her traumatic experience with me, she related that her sister was waiting in their van parked outside the school. When the school advised her that a...To Full Article
Fiscal Compliance - Knight Capital
By Gary W. Patterson - Gary has more than 30 years of senior management experience with high growth technology, wireless, manufacturing and service companies. He has worked with more than 200 companies — from start-ups to Inc 500 to Fortune 500 — providing high level strategic guidance and expertise. His webinar, Find Your Million Dollar Blind Spots is on 8/15/2012 at 2- 3 PM EDT Jim Satterfield & Harry Rhulen will present a webinar on The ROI of a Crisis: $10 Million a Minute??? 8/14 2-3 PM EDT
$10 Million a Minute – The Cost of What You Don’t Know Can Be the Company
Knight Capital disclosed losing $440 MILLION from a computer software glitch, supposedly in less than an hour. Its survival in the prior form or even survival seems as risk. Just the day before, this appeared to be a prominent public company. (See Faster, Knight Capita...
Hurricane Season
Hurricane Preparedness from Firestorm
If you are a Business: What is your plan for this season's Hurricane threat?
How will you deal with employee shortages due to a storm?
Will suppliers be affected? Do you have a backup Supply Chain plan?
Do you have an Employee Crisis Communication channel?
Have you communicated to Customers?
Remember the 48 hour "YOYO" rule: You're On Your Own the first 48 hours immediately after a disaster
General Preparedness: NOW
Create a written emergency preparedness and action plan for your family and business. Review it, distribute it, be available to answer questions and concerns.
Call your insurance agent and/or carefully review your policy. Review insurance coverage for your home and business, and the contents. Determine your flood insurance eligibility - homeowners insurance...
Disaster Preparedness for Small Business Owners
Sponsored by Verizon Small Business Webinars
Hurry! Today May 23, 2012 at 2PM! Register now!
Sponsored by Verizon Small Business Webinars: Disaster Preparedness for Small Business Owners
Natural Disaster
Report: Nursing homes unprepared for natural disasters
SUMMARY: Tornado, hurricane, or flood, nursing homes are woefully unprepared to protect frail residents in a natural disaster. Investigators from the inspector general’s office of the Department of Health and Human Services noted that nearly 7 years after Hurricane Katrina’s devastation exposed the vulnerability of nursing homes, shortcomings still persist. Emergency plans required by the government often lack specific steps such as coordinating with local authorities, notifying relatives, or even pinning name tags and medication lists to residents during an evacuation, according to findings. The report recommended that Medicare and Medicaid add specific emergency planning and training steps to the existing federal requirement that nursing homes have a disaster plan. Many such steps are in nonb...
To Prep or Not to Prep
FEMA's PS-Prep
A recent conversation on the DRJ LinkedIn Group caused Firestorm’s Ken O’Dell to reflect on the importance of FEMA’s PS-Prep program; By Firestorm Partner Ken O'Dell Following the tragic events of 9-11, the US government convened numerous panels and bodies of experts to understand the impacts and potential solutions to mitigate the effects of future events. Out of those committees came the development of PS-Prep and, more importantly, the understanding that...Preparedness is NOT a Luxury, but rather a Required Expense of doing business in today’s social, political, and economic environment.I don’t think the question is so much what has happened to PS-Prep, a voluntary program, so much as what has happened to common sense? While I know that we often need a gun pointing at our heads before we respond, it seems counter-intuitive for ...
Risk Analysis
Infrastructure Safety
HEADLINE: Virginia quake highlights overlooked danger: decrepit dams SUMMARY: In the wake of last week’s Virginia-centered earthquake, which shook most of the East Coast, Scientific American points to concerns about the integrity of thousands of dams, many built before seismic engineering came of age. Some of these dams have the potential to release tsunami-like flash floods in the event of a seismic breach. In 2009 the American Society of Civil Engineers released a survey of the state of infrastructure in the United States. The group found that of the more than 85,000 dams in the United States, more than 4,000 are unsafe or deficient, and nearly 1,800 of those are located in areas where a breach would cause serious damage to life and property. STORY LINK Analysis by --Kenneth O’Dell, S.E. M.ASCE, Principal, Firestorm MHP As with mu...
Disaster Planning HEADLINE: Fukushima tsunami safety plan: a single page SUMMARY: In a one-page document from 2001, Tokyo Electric Power Co. ruled out the possibility of a tsunami large enough to knock its Fukushima Dai-ichi plant offline and gave scant details to justify this conclusion, which proved to be wildly optimistic. The memo has text, boxes, numbers and a tiny map of Japan indicating where historical earthquakes are believed to have struck. TEPCO considered five quakes, ranging from 8.0 to 8.6 magnitude, in northeastern Japan, and a 9.5 magnitude across the Pacific near Chile, as examples of possible tsunami-causing temblors. Over the next nine years, despite advances in earthquake and tsunami science, the document was never updated. STORY LINK Analysis by Jim Satterfield, Firestorm President/COO You are in an earthquake zone. You are subject to tsunamis. You...
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Firestorm founders Harry Rhulen and Jim Satterfield wrote Disaster Ready People for a Disaster Ready America specifically to address the need for crisis and disaster preparedness at home, and the book has become a cornerstone of many personal and corporate preparedness programs.
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