Risk Management Articles List View

As the Cumberland River recedes after widespread flooding this week in and around Nashville, residents and businesses are left to face a long recovery process. At least 27 deaths were blamed on flooding in the Southeast, 18 of them in Tennessee. Many of Nashville's iconic music institutions were hit hard, including the Country Music Hall of Fame and Grand Ole Opry. The city is also a trucking hub, with several major freight lines headquartered there.

Officials say if efforts fail to close the undersea valve allowing more than 200,000 gallons of oil a day to spill into the Gulf of Mexico, the next-best plans will take weeks more to stop the flow. Parts of the Gulf Coast were bracing for oil slick to reach shore Friday, creating an environmental and financial disaster that could last years.

The volcanic ash cloud that grounded European air traffic for days has taken a toll on U.S. businesses outside of airlines. While most imports and exports move by sea, the trade of perishable goods such as produce, seafood and pharmaceuticals -- flown between buyers and sellers – has been grounded by flight cancellations. Some manufacturers use air delivery when they encounter a glitch in their normal supply chain. BMW was flying transmissions from Germany to an assembly plant in South Carolina

The surge in natural disasters may cost insurers as much as $110 billion worldwide in 2010, five times more than last year, Swiss Reinsurance Co. said. “We have already seen significant events in 2010,” Thomas Hess, chief economist of Zurich-based Swiss Re, said. “The industry is therefore well-advised to prepare for much higher losses.” Munich Re, the world’s largest reinsurer, has said losses from natural catastrophes caused by climate change -- including the long-term trend toward severe flo

Lacking the El Niño conditions that tamped down tropical activity in the past two seasons, university forecasters predict the 2010 Atlantic hurricane season will be above average, with 15 named storms and eight of those becoming hurricanes. In the report, Colorado State forecasters said that unusually warm tropical Atlantic sea surface temperatures will persist, leading to favorable conditions for hurricanes to develop and intensify. The forecast said the probability of a major hurricane making

The suicide bombing of Moscow's subway this week highlights a potential danger that millions of people face on a daily basis on mass transportation systems. Security experts say little can be done to prevent future attacks without disrupting the infrastructures of the world's major cities. "Subway attacks are ideal for a terrorist," Will Geddes, CEO of International Corporate Protection, told CNN. "They are bringing the whole city to a halt and they not only create the disruption on that parti

A study by a business continuity communications provider showed a shift in corporate planning toward communicable illness and natural disasters preparedness. Among the findings: respondents ranked pandemic as the top threat to organizations in 2009 (55 percent); and natural disaster threat jumped from 39 percent in 2008 to 52 percent. For the first time, IT and data threats were not highest ranked.

AccuWeather.com is predicting an active hurricane season, with the chance that it could be “extreme.’’ Among the factors contributing to the forecast: a rapidly weakening El Nino weather phenomenon; warmer temperatures in the ocean region where storms typically form; weakening trade winds; and higher humidity levels.

An unrelated e-mail alert passed from department to department at Oklahoma City Community College eventually caused panic among students over a nonexistent “active shooter’’ on campus. The domino-like series of misinformation, miscommunications and management gaffes included the campus police mistakenly setting off a fire alarm, a security guard accidentally discharging his gun and a campus-wide lockdown.

In the wake of the Deer Creek Middle School shootings, CEO Harry Rhulen discusses how identifying and predicting risk is the key to responding.

Most experts agree that we will see more frequent, severe and costly natural disasters – such as the recent earthquakes in Haiti and Chile -- in the coming years. Factors include climate change, the world's quickly growing population, a larger concentration of assets in high-risk areas, and its increasing social and economic interdependency. However, best mitigating the human and financial toll requires overcoming persistent disaster denial.

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In a study published in the Archives of Internal Medicine, researchers estimate that in 2006 there were 290,000 cases of hospital-acquired sepsis and 200,000 cases of hospital-acquired pneumonia. According to the study, 48,000 deaths could have been prevented and $8.1 billion dollars could have been saved in the United States if patients hadn't gotten infections after being admitted to a hospital.

A Texas businessman upset with the Internal Revenue Service deliberately crashed his private plane into a multistory office building that houses federal tax employees, authorities said. The pilot was presumed to have died in the crash though his body had not been recovered. At least two people were seriously injured and a third person — a federal employee who worked in the building — was unaccounted for, fire officials said. Joseph Stack, 53, left a message on his company’s web site railing agai

Regulations set to take effect in July will require institutions of higher learning to change the way they develop and publish their emergency plans, as well as how they report incidents. Schools will now be required to have an official, written emergency plan disclosed in their annual security report, including the procedures used to notify the campus community during an emergency. The new regulations also mandate that schools conduct at least one yearly drill designed to assess and evaluate th

The Obama administration's top intelligence officials this week termed the likelihood of an attempted al-Qaeda attack on the United States in the next six months as “certain,’’ and also warned of the increased sophistication and frequency of cyber-attacks from Chinese hackers. "Al-Qaeda maintains its intent to attack the homeland -- preferably with a large-scale operation that would cause mass casualties, harm the U.S. economy or both," said Director of National Intelligence, Dennis C. Blair.

The Council of Europe's Committee on Social, Health and Family Affairs questioned World Health Organization officials this week about allegations from some European politicians that they exaggerated the H1N1 pandemic threat to benefit drug companies. Dr Keiji Fukuda, WHO special advisor on pandemic influenza, defended vaccine stockpiling as a prudent public health response, saying the novel influenza virus quickly sweeping the globe required unprecedented cooperation from a broad range of group

WHO officials this week dismissed charges that the H1N1 pandemic was manufactured or overblown to benefit the pharmaceutical industry as “absurd.’’ Outbreaks of the flu virus continue to erupt in parts of the world and a potential third wave could involve a more virulent strain. “Inestimable lives have been saved because of the vaccines,” one top official said, downplaying the naysayers as being “out of touch with reality … even science.”

Some experts are concerned that diseases once thought eradicated such as tuberculosis, mumps, whooping cough, smallpox and scarlet fever have the potential to re-emerge. Factors cited for this possibility include increased world travel, immigration and homelessness, fear of potential vaccination side effects and the threat of bioterrorism.

Decisions by the nation’s medical leadership and some good fortune are playing integral roles in the containment of the H1N1 pandemic, pending the expected third wave. Vaccine supply and dosage, combined with consumer education by health officials have helped control the spread of the virus and disruption to the economy.