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It seems like that place has much bigger problems than busted solar panels. All things considered, it looks like overall the solar panels did better than the buildings themselves. I think a better example is from Hurricane Maria.

The same emergency services that force volunteers to take mandatory certificate classes to do things like firefighting.

Nope. Running a radio gateway is nothing like firefighting. It requires a ham license, but if you think the FCC is going to force people to buy fully redundant hardware to run a radio gateway you're nuttier than a loon. If you think that buying fully redundant PC hardware is going to solve the problem, then sit back and watch as both systems choose to update at the same time, installing the same broken patch that makes the systems crash. Redundancy bought you nothing.

Well okay, but I don't know what that had to do with what I wrote. I was writing about the ARES, Ares level 2 and ARES level 1 certifications. Then there is the CERT classes https://www.ready.gov/communit... , and their 8 extra modules, SkyWarn http://www.cert-emcomm.net/sky... . Then we go down the FEMA rabbithole. https://training.fema.gov/is/c...

Emergency comms are no different. Certification after certification. Background checks, including financial.

Excuse my French, but you are full of shit.

Oh you poor poor sad man. Try to get into our center without a background check. Allow the evidence..... Here is a pdf from York County ARES Races emcomm group. It is typical of most. http://www.w3hzu.com/content/e....

Here is the relevant text

1. Applicants must undergo a Pennsylvania State Police Criminal Record check (no cost). This is Criminal Record only, not a financial check. Minimum age for this application is 18. YOU must request a background check via PATCH using the following link: You fail, you simply do not get in.

Next up the Red Cross, who do have a financial background check http://www.redcross.org/local/...

In this case, the relevant text is:

Background checks have been part of the American Red Cross volunteer process for many years. After the hurricanes of 2005, mandatory background checks for employees and volunteers were instituted. Red Cross continues to affirm our accountability to the American public. The background check initiative will help us achieve a more efficient and safer work environment for our employees and volunteers.

There are many more links if you care to Google.

You wrote with great assurance and authority:

There are no background checks of any kind, much less financial, and no certification other than a basic amateur radio license, required to operate the gateways I am talking about.

You are wrong. You are not even wrong. I have had many background checks in my situation as a technical advisor to an emergency communications group. Required even. Certifications likewise. It makes for a problem with volunteers with time, as well as many do not like the instant "thanks for volunteering, but we think you might be a criminal or a pedophile". The tests used to be sent in by the agency, but were changed to the individual being investigated to try to help with the falloff in volunteers. The idea was that if you flunked the background investigation, you could just keep it to yourself, instead of having the whole town hear about it through the grapevine. It isn't working, probably because volunteers don't like that in addition to all of the certifications..

Seriously Obscufant, do a little background searching before you embarass yourself, and compounding it witth scatological insults just makes you look pretty bad.

So, chill. If solar really is cheaper than coal, then anything short of mandating use of coal (which noone is proposing) won't even slow down the uptake of solar...

Actually, they have been crafting a plan to mandate the use of coal using the cold-war era Defense Production Act. Thankfully, so far, that have not actually done it but, they have seriously proposed it.

FEMA Report - The Crash of Two Subway Trains on the Williamsburg Bridge New York City, NY June 5, 1995
COLLISION INVOLVING TWO NEW YORK SUBWAY TRAINS ON THE WILLIAMSBURG BRIDGE JUNE 6 1995; RAR9603 - NTSB

A different incident
RAILROAD ACCIDENT REPORT COLLISION AND DERAILMENT OF TWO SUBWAY TRAINS METROPOLITAN TRANSPORTATION AUTHORITY NEW YORK CITY TRANSIT IN BROOKLYN, NEW YORK, ON FEBRUARY 9, 1995; PB96-916301 NTSB/RAR-96/01

Here's the thing: if you want people to understand "this is NOT a drill" to mean, not what the words plainly say, but to mean "this is time critical", you have to (a) have a policy that states this and (b) train people on that meaning.

They are.

In fact there apparently was no such training, so there was apparently no such policy.

No, not "in fact" there was no training. I've already pointed out that the operator did not claim there was ambiguity in the message, but that he didn't hear part of it. He was trained and knows what "this is not a drill" means. In fact, HE DID IT.

In any case if the word count is more paramount than clarity here,

The clarity is PERFECT, when you know the meaning. YOU haven't had the training because nobody gives a fuck if YOU understand that message. You don't work in an emergency operations center.

you could use an arbitrary phrase like "code black" and train people on what that means.

Once again we are expected to replace decades of experience with your "common sense" shortcuts. "This is not a drill" is a simple, short declarative sentence that means exactly what it says. Plain language.

What decades of experience has taught the people who do this for real (and aren't just nimrods pontificating about what "common sense" tells them how it ought to be done, on slashdot) is that plain language is much better than codes or secret decoder rings. This is embodied in something called the National Incident Management System (NIMS) and the Incident Command System (ICS) which came about in large part as the result of failures during large scale fire fighting in California. FEMA has FREE courses that can give you an orientation to the process. I've linked you to ICS-100b, which is the introduction. Go learn something. Maybe learn how to be useful to your community when a disaster strikes and not be an impediment yammering about how everyone ought to be doing things because you have common sense and know better. Or not.

How is it racist? Are you saying it is anti-white to buy canned food?

https://www.fema.gov/blog/2011...

The government suggests you stock up some on food, it is good preparedness for any possible disaster to have about a week of food on hand.

Technical point: unless someone was liberally using cobalt-salted bombs, radiation would be down to manageable levels in a month or two: The 7-10 rule applies here.

I might also add that we've been living in the shadow of fallout for nearly 70 years now. No mutants. No Godzilla. Not even giant ants. . .(grin).

Do you have your clothes dryer vent professionally cleaned every six months? Did you know that, in the US alone, 2,900 home clothes dryer fires are reported each year and cause an estimated 5 deaths, 100 injuries, and $35 million in property loss? By comparison, only 96 credible reports of Note 7 fires exist, causing 13 burns and damaging property 47 times, making the known-defective Note 7 roughly 30 times safer than a non-defective clothes dryer. Are you willing to accept the responsibility in case your clothes dryer results in injuries and death to others? Just to avoid a MINOR inconvenience?

Oh, I should stop taking my clothes dryer on planes?

Do you have your clothes dryer vent professionally cleaned every six months?

Did you know that, in the US alone, 2,900 home clothes dryer fires are reported each year and cause an estimated 5 deaths, 100 injuries, and $35 million in property loss?

By comparison, only 96 credible reports of Note 7 fires exist, causing 13 burns and damaging property 47 times, making the known-defective Note 7 roughly 30 times safer than a non-defective clothes dryer.

Are you willing to accept the responsibility in case your clothes dryer results in injuries and death to others? Just to avoid a MINOR inconvenience?

Seriously, think that through. Prior to regulations high rise fires killed LOADS of people.

Prior to [the past several decades], individual house fires killed LOADS of people too -- hopefully we can at least agree on that. And United States fire deaths have decreased dramatically over the past several decades. So in an intellectually honest universe, there are a number of confounding factors you would have to work through before simply declaring that hotel "regulations" (whatever those might be) are responsible for an allegedly significant decrease (that you have yet to quantify) in hotel deaths. Say, the significant decrease in smoking rates. Or significant improvements in fire-retardant materials. But at this point I'm guessing intellectual honesty is not the order of the day here.

And I didn't bother looking for airbnb specific fires. Because there is no reason to. Given airbnb doesn't require any additional regulation then best case scenario is that it will have a fire rate the same as the wider building population.

So instead of looking at the actual data to determine whether your hypothesis just might be incorrect, you're declaring the actual data doesn't matter (and even better, that you know what it would be if you did look) because you're taking your hypothesis as a given. Wow. Just wow.

There may be a greater potential for death, because you have more people concentrated, but your regulation and fire requirements work to prevent that. For example it doesn't matter how short the sprint is if the only exit is on fire. Lots of people put bars on their home windows that cannot be opened from the inside. This is the sort of thing that wouldn't be allowed in public accommodation.

I'm not in the US so I'm commenting on my own local regulations. But if you are a B&B for example, you are required to have a smoke detector in every room where someone sleeps, in all stair wells, and keep a fire extinguisher & fire blanket in all kitchen spaces. These are not requirements on private dwellings.

And as for rare or infrequent fatalities we clearly have very very different definitions of rare.... https://www.usfa.fema.gov/data... Gives 2013 total fires at 1,240,000, fatalities at 3240 and injuries at 15,925.

It is materially less safe than the existing hotel market. A simple example is hotels are held to a much higher standard for fire safety.

I call bullshit -- that is, if you care about actual outcomes as opposed to bureaucratic box checking. Show me one Airbnb death from fire. One. If you can find one, then we can go on to discuss whether Airbnb's effective per-room-night death rate is higher or lower than the hotel industry's, which in the U.S. alone has thousands of fires and double-digit deaths each year.

In 2010 according to FEMA there were 350 smoking related residential fire deaths and 950 injuries. See https://www.usfa.fema.gov/down... .

Great numbers. Probably any of the numbers I listed would make the 66 injuries for e-cigs look really small.

Storm != Hurricane. The last hurricane in Florida was over 10 years ago.

Tropical Cyclone==Hurricane. Tropical Storm can also count, but it may also be a low-stage hurricane, depending on who is speaking.

Either you are confused, or you're relying on the confusion between classifications, but the fact is, Florida has suffered billions of dollars in damages from tropical cyclones in the past decade, including a few Federal Disaster Declarations and even some deaths.

Your home or the high-rise in which you work are unlikely to be consumed by fire. Are fire drills important?

In the United States in 2011 there were 1,389,500 fires resulting in 3,005 deaths and $11.7 billion in economic loss (according to FEMA) ... would you like to compare the corresponding numbers for terrorism?

The thing you have to remember is that all interventions have costs - if nothing else, lost time and increased cognitive load of those involved. The more involved the intervention, the more the cost. At a certain point, the costs expended on preparation outweighs the benefits accrued: you may think the lives of your children are priceless, but when push came to shove you probably didn't spend the extra $15,000 on the car that has a marginally better crash safety performance.

That's basically the point ShanghaiBill is making - individual acts of terrorism are eye-catching, but taken as a whole the amortized risk is near negligible. If you're going to expend effort, you're better off spending time on efforts which prevent against mundane but more frequent risks. For example, instead of making and playing a game which teaches terrorism responses, you'd be better off focusing on a game which teaches defensive driving techniques.

That's not to say a terrorism-response training game wouldn't help in the miniscule chance you're involved in a terrorism incident, but if it comes at a cost (e.g. adverse psychological effects due to increased "perception of personal vulnerability to terror attacks and their severity") then it might not be worth it.

In 2012, the U.S. Congress passed the Flood Insurance Reform Act of 2012 which calls on the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), and other agencies, to make a number of changes to the way the NFIP is run. As the law is implemented, some of these changes have already occurred, and others will be implemented in the coming months. Key provisions of the legislation will require the NFIP to raise rates to reflect true flood risk, make the program more financially stable, and change how Flood Insurance Rate Map (FIRM) updates impact policyholders. The changes will mean premium rate increases for some - but not all - policyholders over time.

One of the criticisms I've seen of this paper is that Pielke doesn't take into account the fact that we've built more resilient structures in response to past natural disasters so the fact that the costs remain about the same means either those responses haven't been very effective or that the natural disasters have been getting worse but the additional resilience keeps the costs about the same.

Disclaimer: I am the State Hazard Mitigation Officer for my state...

Having said that, I can vouch for the fact that every state gets 15% of the cost of the disaster just for mitigating future damages. Everything from acquisition / demolition and elevations for flooding to safe rooms and wind resistant construction for hurricane and tornadoes. This has been going on since the late 80's and is part of the Robert T. Stafford Disaster Relief and Emergency Assistance Act (Public Law 93-288) as amended. Section 404 covers the Hazard Mitigation Assistance and 406 covers Mitigation for Public Assistance (infrastructure).

http://www.fema.gov/robert-t-s...

Currently, our state has over 1,500 properties that are under deed restriction preventing any structures from being built there ever again.

Title 44 of the Code of Federal Regulations stipulates how the Hazard Mitigation Grant programs are to be implemented.

http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/C...

Add to that the newly (and controversially) enacted Biggert Waters National Flood Insurance Reform Act of 2012 and it makes the NFIP risk based as it should be.

http://www.fema.gov/flood-insu...

So yes, this nation has been actively seeking ways to make communities much more resilient to natural disasters.

And from an anecdotal point of view having been in emergency management for 15 years, I can say from personal experience that storms are getting more frequent and more powerful.

One of the criticisms I've seen of this paper is that Pielke doesn't take into account the fact that we've built more resilient structures in response to past natural disasters so the fact that the costs remain about the same means either those responses haven't been very effective or that the natural disasters have been getting worse but the additional resilience keeps the costs about the same.

Disclaimer: I am the State Hazard Mitigation Officer for my state...

Having said that, I can vouch for the fact that every state gets 15% of the cost of the disaster just for mitigating future damages. Everything from acquisition / demolition and elevations for flooding to safe rooms and wind resistant construction for hurricane and tornadoes. This has been going on since the late 80's and is part of the Robert T. Stafford Disaster Relief and Emergency Assistance Act (Public Law 93-288) as amended. Section 404 covers the Hazard Mitigation Assistance and 406 covers Mitigation for Public Assistance (infrastructure).

http://www.fema.gov/robert-t-s...

Currently, our state has over 1,500 properties that are under deed restriction preventing any structures from being built there ever again.

Title 44 of the Code of Federal Regulations stipulates how the Hazard Mitigation Grant programs are to be implemented.

http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/C...

Add to that the newly (and controversially) enacted Biggert Waters National Flood Insurance Reform Act of 2012 and it makes the NFIP risk based as it should be.

http://www.fema.gov/flood-insu...

So yes, this nation has been actively seeking ways to make communities much more resilient to natural disasters.

And from an anecdotal point of view having been in emergency management for 15 years, I can say from personal experience that storms are getting more frequent and more powerful.

The ARRL actually gives grants for this.

http://www.arrl.org/the-arrl-f...

So does FEMA, including to schools.

https://www.citizencorps.fema....

Although getting involved in something statewide might be biting off more than you can chew.

http://www.emergencymgmt.com/s...

If we start taking this sort of alarmist garbage seriously, my beachfront condo might get reassigned into a higher-risk flood zone, potentially increasing my insurance payments to something vaguely resembling actual cost! Then, if it should happen to flood for a third time this decade, I'll have to make do with less taxpayer money to rebuild it. How is that fair?

(In case it wasn't abundantly obvious, I don't actually espouse that point of view; but there's a reason why flood-estimate maps are Big Political Business at least in the US: because stuff getting flooded happens approximately all the time, we have the 'National Flood Insurance Program'. Your level of estimated risk governs your premiums; but not your payout in the event of an incident, so people are even less happy than usual to hear from Mr. Pessimism, when it comes time to redraw the Flood Insurance Rate Maps, regardless of his accuracy.

Luckily, with a suitable understanding of the political process and access to a few lawyers and engineers, it is frequently possible to evade such heinous miscarriages of justice as 'being classified as high risk just because your property has a recent history of flooding' and the like.

User "Todd Knarr" posted numbers above. Apparently you're no only too lazy to do your own research, you're also too biased to believe numbers given to you...

To expand on those numbers (there's a bit of a fudge factor because the timelines don't line up. Deal with it):
Tesla Model S cars in the USA and Canada: about 17200, as of Sep 2013 (source: http://www.goodcarbadcar.net/2...)
Tesla Model S fires in the USA and Canada: 4, ever (new enough model that we'll say "per year" if you want).
Tesla Model S fires per year (percentage): about 0.023%

Personal cars in the USA in 2007: about 254,400,000 (source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P... citing http://www.bts.gov/publication...)
Vehicle fires in the USA in 2007: about 258,000 (sources: http://www.chandlerlawgroup.co..., http://www.usfa.fema.gov/downl...)
Total car fires per year (percentage): about 0.101%

Ratio of Tesla Model S fires per Model S to all car fires per total cars: about 4.4 to 1

Have yourself a nice big helping of crow, you intellectually dishonest piece of shit.

I don't mean to suggest that any of the conspiracy theories are accurate, but the BBC did, in fact, report WTC 7's collapse before it happened. They've basically admitted as much:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/theeditors/2007/03/part_of_the_conspiracy_2.html

See also: https://archive.org/details/bbc200109111654-1736

The BBC erroneously reported the collapse at 4:53 p.m., as acknowledged in the above-linked article. The actual collapse occurred at 5:20 p.m., as confirmed by FEMA: http://www.fema.gov/pdf/library/fema403_ch5.pdf

At the time of the BBC's report, however, WTC 7 had been on fire for some time, and was already in danger of imminent collapse, so I don't find it too hard to believe that they simply made an honest mistake in the midst of all the confusion.

The US Fire Administration collects detailed statistics. You can check out the latest report Here

There are 7% categorized as intentional, with an additional 10% as under investigation, which may have some convincing arsons.

I based that on the parent's assumption that a 3% mortality was a 97% survival, which he said did not justify the media's "panic."

The truth is, we don't know exactly how many people this year's flu is going to kill. It usually kills between 20,000 and 40,000 people a year in the U.S., which is about equal to the automobile fatalities, which is also a major cause of death.

There are only about 2,500 deaths a year from home fires http://www.usfa.fema.gov/statistics/estimates/index.shtm

Because it causes so many deaths, there are things you should do about it. You should get vaccinated, to prevent yourself and everyone else from getting it. You should stay home for a few days if you have the flu, so that you don't go around infecting everybody else with it. That's what you call "panic."

But the real worry about the flu and SARS is that it may be more lethal than the usual flu. The flu of 1917-18 caused 650,000 deaths in the U.S., and maybe 40 million worldwide. That's more than the first world war. The 1917-18 flu was unusual in that it attacked mostly young people.

Nobody knows how lethal the latest flu and the latest viruses will be. They could cause another 650,000 deaths in the U.S. Scientists have created viruses in the laboratory that are capable of that many deaths, and they're trying to figure out how to prevent it.

What you call panic is what they call intelligent preparations.

As the old joke goes, if you're calm when everyone is running around in panic, maybe you don't understand the seriousness of the situation.

http://www.fema.gov/

So I did a little math. I know, a bad habit, but I can't help myself.
In any case, I was curious as to the numbers behind the recent Tesla vehicle fires and how that compares to the rest of the vehicles on the road.

So last year 21,500* Tesla vehicles where sold. To date there have been 3 fires. That makes 21500/3 equals roughly 1 fire out of 7167 vehicles. That looks pretty bad, wow. Tesla vehicles must be terrible. Right?

For comparison, there were 194,000** vehicle fires between 2008 to 2010 or to oversimplify things 97,000 per year. And in 2008 there were roughly 256 million*** vehicles on the road.
256000000/97000 equals about 1 fire out every 2639 roadable automobiles. Doh!

It appears that it is almost three times as likely that any random vehicle on the road will catch fire than any random Tesla. That bears repeating. You are just about 3 times safer from dying by fire in a Tesla.

And yet another sensationalist story that the media is getting wrong.

* http://www.forbes.com/sites/hannahelliott/2013/11/05/tesla-up-9-as-production-hinders-growth/
** http://www.usfa.fema.gov/downloads/pdf/statistics/v13i11.pdf
***http://www.rita.dot.gov/bts/sites/rita.dot.gov.bts/files/publications/national_transportation_statistics/html/table_01_11.html

FEMA has instructions on how to build a safe-room into your home..

http://www.fema.gov/safe-rooms

It's been up for years, and the instructions are clear enough for a do-it-yourselfer to do, or to hand off to a contractor to build.

How big you make the room(s) is up to you. If you're in a tornado area, it wouldn't be a bad idea to make effectively a studio apartment. That could be a bedroom, bathroom, and kitchen pantry. That way, if your house was completely blown away, you'd still have somewhere to live.

If you can afford a $50k room for something statistically rare, you can make a nice home theater (aka "man cave"). A theater room is better without windows, and soundproof from the rest of the house. With independent emergency power, you could camp out in it, and watch movies through the apocalypse, and come out sometime after its done.

We've been discussing making our safe room here. Unfortunately, most of Florida is not only a tornado risk, but a flood zone. You get both risks during hurricanes. So you may be in the totally safe shelter room from the house falling down around you, but if your exits are blocked, you may end up drowning in the same room.

Here is some interesting information on car fires from the US Fire Administration (USFA->FEMA->DHS) and the National Fire Protection Association.

From 2008-2010 "Approximately one in seven fires responded to by fire departments across the nation is a highway vehicle fire. This does not include the tens of thousands of fire department responses to highway vehicle accident sites.". The leading factors in ignition where "mechanical failure" (44.1%) and "electrical failure" (22.3%). 1

The actual number of highway car fires in that period was approximately 582,000, or an average of over 500 car fires every day on American highways.2

In this accident which involved an electric car a large piece of sparking metal debris was run over by the car and thrown up with enough force to slice through the cars stored energy compartment, in this case one of the batteries. The driver was alerted via the display to a problem and instructed to pull over immediately due to the fact that one of the batteries was now leaking and smoldering. A short time later the burning ember reached critical temperature and was able to ignite the softer materials in the adjoining 'frunk', the carpeted front side trunk located where most cars have an engine. The other 15 battery compartments, having not been skewered by a giant metal spike, remained unharmed due to the firewalls and other protection, as did the passenger compartment.

If the owner had been driving a gas powered car and that metal spike had instead been driven up into the gas tank, ripping it open and showering the fuel with sparks as it was dragged along the highway, would the driver have had any warning other than a loud bump and then the passenger compartment being consumed by flames?

This is not the first Tesla fire, there was another involving the Roadster resulting in a recall of 439 vehicles. The source of the fire in that instance was not the advanced battery at all, it was one of the old style 12V lines (Tesla vehicles still include a regular 12V battery for lights/instruments and 'ignition') being in a bad position near a headlight and susceptible to damage that could spark a fire. Going back to the statistics above we have over 100 car fires each day (22.3% of 500) caused by those 12V wires and components being damaged and shorting out. For example Honda recalled over 140,000 (non-hybrid) Fits in the US this year because the wiring in a 12V door switch could get wet, short out and start a fire. GM had the same problem last year and had to recall almost half a million vehicles.

There were *194,000* highway vehicle fires between 2008 and 2010. That's over 150 a day. Source

Tesla has thousands of vehicles on the road, some operating since 2008. Like every other gas car on the road, its fuel is flammable.

No matter what precautions or design approaches a manufacturer uses short of windpower, highway fires will happen with any car. Five years in, Tesla has had a single fire, it did not spread rapidly, and the driver was unharmed. Unless this becomes a trend, there's nothing to see here.

Not that that's what the show is "about," but candle fires kill an average of 166 people in the US every year and injure about 1,289 more out of 15,260 reported candle fires every year.

It's a small number, but fire + irresponsibility = trouble.

Don't blame (only) AT&T for the terse message. The WEA system limits messages to 90 characters:

http://www.fema.gov/wireless-emergency-alerts

WEA will look like a text message. The WEA message will show the type and time of the alert, any action you should take, and the agency issuing the alert. The message will be no more than 90 characters.

I can't believe the government asked for such an arbitrary and small limit on message size, so I'm assuming that the carriers said that's all they could provide, probably because a 90 character message fit into some control message they were already sending to phones.

I'm sorry to exacerbate your concern. But I am not the least bit sorry about speaking truth to ignorance. Which "targetted groups" are you preemptively defending????? Most serious anthropologists will tell you the notion of "race" as a scientific concept is a myth. There is no clean cut genetic signature that will magically identify an African, an Asian, or a Caucasian, or Homosexual, or Islamist, or Jedi. There is no biological basis for ANY of various ways people may choose to culturally self-identify. It makes for entertaining barroom debates, but to see this issue scientifically as being composed of dark side and light side, black/white, is, in the words of Wolfgang Pauli, not even wrong.

Honestly, genomics is no more dangerous than cooking. Would you walk up to jacque pepin and tell him he plays God with the power of life and death because bladed tools like the kitchen knife he used to create culinary works of art has also been used as weapons by mobs to carve up innocent women and children ?

You are not obliged to respect my brand of humor. You have a right to express your own opinion and observe your own convictions. But nor I am not obliged to flatter your preconceptions about me, my chosen profession, or the facts of reality. Your concern for the honor and good name of rednecks, skinheads, religious fundamentalists, uncompromising US congressional representatives, and post-modern literary critics is quixotic but mostly unnecessary. If there is anyone else here on slashdot who thinks I've spoken harshly beyond the boundaries of humor, I will willingly make a public apology for being not nice and hurting others feelings.

But on the flip side: How is it that *you* feel no remorse or culpability for painting the hard work and achievements of so many genomic research professionals as "the road to hell that is paved with good intentions"? In this day and age of connectedness, that acquaintance or loved one of yours who is (or will be) fighting cancer is fighting with an upper hand thanks to the insights gained from the increasing number of cancer genomes that are being decoded. Would you put their oncologists in the same league as Josef Mengele? Do you honestly believe it is sensible to sound the alarm over some anonymous malcontent of dubious existance who is determined to weaponize cancer biology? The real world is *not* as frightening as you make it out to be. Do you get that despite nuclear proliferation, the first two nuclear attacks have also been the last two? For every two Boston bombers, there are scores of selfless Boston heroes ready to step up and put their own safety and security on the line. Being CERT trained myself, I pray for the same courage if I should ever be called upon. In the world I live in, it *is* those with good intentions who make the difference at the end of the day. What does it say about you that your obsession gravitates toward the harm doers rather than the good doers? Humanity wins. Your bio-terrorist-wannabes loose. I'll wager my life on it. Care to deal?

I've never heard of or seen learner plates before. I'm genuinely curious where you live that they have those, since it's an interesting idea, though a bit excessive, I think.

As for risk, how does owning a gun put anyone at "significant risk" compared to any of the other risks you regularly tolerate? A gun is only a source of risk if there is ill intent or negligence involved. But if you're concerned with ill intent, the chemicals in our garages and kitchens are more readily available, cheaper, more dangerous, and easier to procure, not to mention that our cars can do a lot of damage too if we want. If you're worried about negligence, why not have smokers register? There are almost 45x more deaths caused by secondhand smoke (49,000/year in the US, not to mention that 17% of fire-related deaths in residences in the US are caused by smoking) than accidental/unknown intent gun deaths in the US each year (about 1100 in 2011). If risk is your concern, there are FAR greater risks we regularly face that do not require that we give up our right to privacy, so I'm not sure why you think guns in the hands of properly registered owners put you at significant risk.

And if you believe that the intended use of the items impacts how private they should be allowed to be (i.e. cars and chemicals are fine, since they're intended for good uses, while guns are bad, since they're inherently destructive), that argument falls apart in light of the fact that I'm explicitly given the right to own them, as well as given the right to privacy, which would override any "want to know" that you have. But if you're still not swayed, what about cigarettes? They're only intended for smoking, which is an inherently destructive action that is directly responsible for about 20% of US deaths every year (roughly 443,000) according to the CDC link I provided earlier. That stands in stark contrast to the roughly 31,000 intentional deaths caused by guns in the US in 2011. Again, why not have smokers register?

Besides which, even in your example with the learner's permit and the learner plates (which I think is an excessive and unnecessary practice), I would assume those plates go away once the training period has ended. At least in all the places I've lived, before a gun owner can be licensed to carry they must go through a training period, so even based on your analogy there should be no need for gun owners to continue to sacrifice their privacy after they're properly licensed. And if the gun owner merely keeps the gun at home, rather than concealed carrying, that doesn't give you a right to know about it, any more than you have a right to know about the car that the parents next door bought and keep in the garage for their kid who doesn't yet have his permit.

Your "want to know" does not give you any sort of right to know what I have or what I do in my own home. I don't own any guns, but your comment strikes me as a lot of FUD. I prefer sticking to facts.

Applied where? I read the article, no link but it says that the program is called the “National Emergency Technology (NET) Guard”. Googled and found http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Emergency_Technology_Guard which links to http://www.fema.gov/government/grant/netguard/index.shtm which says:

Page not found
The requested page "/government/grant/netguard/index.shtm" could not be found.

Reading the Wikipedia article, it says, "Finally, June 18, 2008, FEMA announced it was starting the NETGuard program." There is a citation to http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=92008366 which is a transcript of an interview with Senator Ron Wyden who is apparently a terrorist. He is threatening to put a hold on some DHS nominee until the program is started. The transcript is dated June 29, 2008, after the Wikipedia article says that the program started.

It's all vaporware. Nothing to see here.

FEMA and the FCC had a big display for a solution to this problem at this year's National Association of Broadcasters show in Las Vegas. The system is called IPAWS or Integrated Public Alert and Warning System. It augments traditional broadcast-based EAS infrastructure with IP-based infrastructure and mobile using the Common Alerting Protocol. The FEMA guy told me that this is an ongoing effort to integrate all these systems but that it is recognized and it will take a few years, especially on integration with over-the-top content delivery. The press release is here: http://www.fema.gov/news/newsrelease.fema?id=52880

Wolf Blitzer, is that you?

Given the general agreement in this wee thread, I suspect you're quite alone, and therefore should just be dismissed as a mere ankle-biting troll. However, I'll give you a small taste of what you desire, since you're apparently either a fan of using Bing, or are completely incapable of using Google:

http://www.fema.gov/news/event.fema?id=13672

They're rather typical for the region, and no, there was no massive CNN media hype blitz for that one - which was my entire fucking point, dear child.

Now kindly go back under your bridge and STFU.

What to Do During an Earthquake
What to Do After an Earthquake
Get cover, stay there, and don't go outside.

Finally, science validates my lifestyle!

What to Do During an Earthquake
What to Do After an Earthquake
Get cover, stay there, and don't go outside.

Finally, science validates my lifestyle!

What to Do During an Earthquake
What to Do After an Earthquake
Get cover, stay there, and don't go outside.

What to Do During an Earthquake
What to Do After an Earthquake
Get cover, stay there, and don't go outside.

Can you name a single place in the US that isn't prone to some natural disaster? Earthquakes in California, hurricanes and tsunamis (remember, most of hese floods are worse than anything in over 100 years) on the coasts, tornados in the midwest, floods near rivers. No US citizen is safe from natural disasters.

While certainly there is nowhere with 0 risk, it would be silly to claim that the risk can't be mitigated greatly by choosing a safer location. A few minutes with google returned several good lists of disasters:
http://www.fema.gov/news/disaster_totals_annual.fema
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/reports/billionz.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_natural_disasters_in_the_United_States
While you are right that you can find virtually any area in the US on those lists, there are some areas that show up over and over again. Those are the regions to avoid.

Having just attended training in emergency preparedness, we trained not to release details, so the Japanese are just following the standard script. They also said never lie, or you will never be believed in the future. They seem to be following the script.

Silence is not a substitute for candor.

Silence can fuel rumors far more dangerous than the truth. Silence does not inspire trust.

Yes sad isn't it. But we are dealing with a forth estate here. The media will twist things the best they can to scare people and so sell their product.

The script is not the performance:

I think script is the right word. You know that a good Public Information Officer (and team) is expected to have already written the answers to 95% of the questions that will come up at a news conference. FEMA Public Information Officer

[Tepco] has already been severely criticised by Japan's prime minister, Naoto Kan, for failing to inform him immediately that a serious explosion had taken place following the earthquakes. "What the hell is going on?" asked Kan last week when he finally caught up with Tepco officials, in remarks picked up by a stray microphone. "Retreat is unthinkable," he told the firm, fearing that the decision to evacuate 740 staff from the stricken reactor site was the start of a complete abandonment.

Embattled Tepco faces its BP moment over Japan nuclear disaster

Now I can't give any more details of the training. Sorry.

Why not?

Oops that was a bit dramatic. It really is just a personal problem for me. No standing rules or anything nefarious.

Radiation Protection - Protective Action Guides

My choice would be release details so the people who wished to become educated on the issue could make their own decisions. You know the slashdot crowd. This is not how it is done.

It's important that the emergency services can rely on citizens to be autonomous in terms of food for a certain amount of time.
http://www.fema.gov/pdf/library/epc.pdf

Making preparations for emergencies and disasters gives you a greater margin to survive. You might not be getting any help any time soon, if ever. Consider the fact that the states knew that they were responsible for taking care of incidents for four days before FEMA stepped in, and the botched responses by the city of New Orleans (epic fail), the state of Louisiana (epic fail), and ultimately the federal government in Katrina. Not a shining moment for the United States.

However, many police, fire and EMS organizations from outside the affected areas were reportedly hindered or otherwise slowed in their efforts to send help and assistance to the area. FEMA sent hundreds of firefighters who had volunteered to help rescue victims to Atlanta for 2 days of training classes on topics including sexual harassment and the history of FEMA.[12] Official requests for help through the proper chains of command were not forthcoming due to local and state delays in engaging FEMA for federal assistance, even after approached by such authorities. Local police and other EMS workers found the situation traumatic; at least two officers committed suicide, and over 300 deserted the city after gang violence and "turf wars" erupted around the city.[13] A report by the Appleseed Foundation, a public policy network, found that local entities (nonprofit and local government agencies) were far more flexible and responsive than the federal government or national organizations. The federal response was often constrained by lack of legal authority or by ill-suited eligibility and application requirements. In many instances, federal staff and national organizations did not seem to have the flexibility, training, and resources to meet demands on the ground."[14Criticism of government response to Hurricane Katrina]

Think at least five basic scenarios, not all of which you may believe is necessary to prepare for, and you can do it in steps.
- Trouble on the road (breakdown on deserted road, trapped by blizzard or flood)
- Quickly evacuate from home indefinitely (hurricane, tornado, fire, flash flood, industrial accident, terrorist attack)
- Trapped at home for 1-4 weeks with loss of some services (massive blizzard, floods, loss of power, flu epidemic)
- Massive civil disorder (LA riots, Katrina looting & gang activity)
- Society changing event (deadly pandemic, EMP bombs destroy all electronics, major disruption in society)

Preparations can start small:
- For the car: a first aid kit, a couple of space blankets and plastic ponchos, some matches, steel mugs, a few granola bars, a can/bottle opener, bottled water, small tool kit, knife, duct tape, and flashlight.
- For the home: 3 days supply of food and water set aside, a first aid kit, flashlights w/ batteries, battery operated radio, some emergency cash, a fire extinguisher, a small repair kit/tool kit
- Start pulling your documents together in a safe place

Over time, you can build up to prepare to the level you believe necessary, including a one year supply of food for long term storage (just an example - many other vendors / options).

Ready America
Are You Ready? - An In-depth Guide to Citizen Preparedness
How to Disaster-Proof Your Life
How to Survive Anything Mother Nature Throws at You
Blackout Survival Guide
4 Facts You Need to Know About D

I'd much rather read something focusing more closely on computer incident (and NOC operational) response and its similarities to ICS principles. I'm sure there are places that run coordinated responses to events (especially cross-departmental events) along the lines of an Incident Command System, and I'd be curious what their experiences are and how other groups can transition to something similar.

I have to imagine that any cyber-response being handled at the national level is going to follow NIMS to some extent as well.

First: Is there any sort of method in-place wherein a message can be repeatedly broadcast, but only alert subscribers on the first successfully received message?

Yes, that's part of the CBS specification and and the emergency system uses this as well. The messages are broadcast for a set amount of time at a set repetition rate. They also contain serial numbers so that the handsets can distinguish between old and new messages. There is also a provision for sending updates to messages which have already been transmitted.

With what geographic granularity will the broadcasts be sent (or perhaps more properly, received)?

I'm not sure how granular it will be in practice, but it could technically get down to the individual cell level. Most likely, the carriers know which cells approximately serve which zip codes and would group based on that. The specs don't say exactly how this should be done, except that the "Cell Broadcast Center" should determine the affected cell sites for the geolocation (geo-code, polygon, circle) of the emergency message.

Third: Is there any pertinent documentation available that I can ogle?

There really isn't much documentation which is publicly available. Here are a few things, although they're short on real details:
Announcements: FEMA FCC CTIA
Standards (paywalled): ATIS 0700006 Joint ATIS/TIA J-STD-100

Sorry I don't have links to the actual specifications content. For some reason, you have to be a member company or pay for them.

I should have referred to the system by its proper name -- in the U.S., it's called the Commercial Mobile Alert System (CMAS). There are similar systems being set up in other countries which closely follow the U.S. specifications, and those systems should be compatible with CMAS (at least that's the plan).

they tried to claim it was a Federal issue (when no hurricane has ever been labeled as such)

Perhaps this is a bit of a nitpick, here are the Tropical Storms and Hurricanes that were declared Federal Disaster: 2010 Otto - US Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico TS Nicole - North Carolina Earl - USVI, MA, NC Alex - TX 2009 Ida - AL, NY, NJ http://www.fema.gov/news/disasters.fema

I'm sure they've thought of this, but I really hope that the river next to it doesn't flood ....

(Rummages through FEMA's awful web site for flood maps) Well, that's interesting. Apple's probably OK, as the 1% flood line doesn't appear to cover their site. However, there's an interesting line on the map called, "limit of study", that appears to end before the site... Assuming that I have the right location, google maps is here, and here is FEMA's flood map (note: FEMA's link was working earlier, but now appears to be broken -- I hope I got the link right).

During and after Katrina everyone attacked Bush, often very personal attacks for the Federal and even state responses to that event.

Yet here we are nearly two months after this started and there has been very little vitriolic attacking on the current President.

Why is that I wonder? The Obama administration was in charge of the offices at the Interior that oversaw this and no changes were made. The Justice Department could have been turned on to BP and people could be in jail right now, but nothing was done.

I'll field this one.

Why is the difference between Deepwater and Katrina? Well multiple reasons. First, Katrina was a natural disaster, and Deepwater was a man-made one, no matter how many times BP and anti-government apologists claim it was a "natural disaster" or an "Act of God". While not all the facts are in, it's looking increasingly likely criminal negligence and lack of proper enforcement of regulations due to long time corruption in the Mines and Minerals Service are to blame. The government has always had a role in the preparation and recovery after natural disasters. In fact, there's a whole agency dedicated just to that, the Federal Emergency Management Agency. States and even large cities have similar agencies. Man made disasters? Not so much. The government simply doesn't have the tools or expertise in repairing deepwater drills. It never did. Now we can argue whether or not the government should have the tools and the expertise in-house for future events, but it has never had this. Second, Katrina had warning. Days of warning for Katrina specifically, and years of warning about the possibility. Sadly, the devastation of Katrina pretty much played out exactly as predicted. The Bush Administration simply failed to prepare because he appointed political allies instead of the (albeit recent) tradition of professional emergency managers. Finally, and this is the biggest difference. The economic and human toll of the two disasters are simply incomparable. The death toll for Katrina is literally 100 times greater. The economic impact is equally disproportionate.

You talk about coverups, but the only coverup I'm aware of is BP's not the government's. Keep in mind, BP was repeatedly denying access to the site by outsiders and providing the absurdly low estimates. Not the Coast Guard, nor any other government agency.

I don't know how severe a 3.4 quake is, maybe it really is inconsequential

FEMA (for kids! Sorry it was the quickest result on Google) sez that earthquakes below about 4.3 on the Richter scale cause "no damage": http://www.fema.gov/kids/intense.htm Remember, it's a logarithmic scale, so a 3.4 is almost 1/10th as destructive as a 4.3.

I honestly believe that an 18-wheeler or tour bus passing in front of my house would cause significantly more shaking than a 3.4 quake. I don't have a seismometer in my house to prove it, alas.

(Far from villagers, too, BTW)

Yes, yes, I apologize for my ignorance of geography. But my point remains, and is valid-- these people are scamming the poor guy.