Archive for October, 2005
October 22nd, 2005 | 
Author: [ Reading time: 2 - 4 minutes ]
Scientists: Better Preparation Needed for Inevitable Disasters
By Christopher Bodeen
Associated Press
posted: 21 October 2005
11:10 pm ET
SHANGHAI, China (AP) — Governments need to stop assuming that death and destruction from natural disasters are inevitable and work more closely with scientists on ways to minimize the damage, a leading scientific group said Thursday.
Governments focus too much on response rather than prevention, while the number of known disasters has risen from about 100 per decade before 1940 to nearly 2,800 in the 1990s, the International Council for Science said in a report.
“It’s time to change the mind-set that natural disasters are inevitable,” said Gordon McBean, author of a recent report by the council on natural disaster prevention.
“We can’t actually stop hurricanes or tsunamis or other extremes of nature. But … we can avoid a lot of unnecessary human and economic losses,” said McBean, policy chair of the Institute for Catastrophic Loss Reduction at Canada’s University of Western Ontario.
The rise in natural disasters results mainly from increasingly volatile global weather patterns and growing human populations in exposed areas such as coastlines.
Natural disasters are defined as events that outstrip the capacities of local communities to cope. While earthquakes and tsunamis have caused huge damage, the worst losses were caused by extreme atmospheric events and weather-related hazards such as storms, floods, landslides and wildfires, McBean said.
Scientists must integrate research in engineering, climate, health, and the social sciences and “find a better way to plug these insights into the policymaking process,” McBean said.
Governments exacerbate damage from natural disasters, he said, by removing mangrove swamps that protect vulnerable coastlines, ignoring risks from volcanoes, earthquakes, floods landslides and wildfires, making poor use of satellite data and networked early warning systems, and favoring financial incentives that sacrifice sustainability for short-term gain.
“We have an opportunity right now right after disasters while governments are more receptive to influence policy from the start,” McBean said by phone from the eastern Chinese city of Suzhou, where the group is holding its general assembly.
The data on disasters, compiled by the Brussels-based Center for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters, doesn’t give monetary figures for damage. However, the insurance industry estimates natural disasters caused US$140 billion in economic losses last year, second only to the record US$179 billion reported in 1995.
With a slew of recent disasters including last December’s Asian Tsunami, Hurricane Katrina in the United States and this month’s India-Pakistan earthquake, the numbers for this year are likely to be even worse, McBean said.
“Scientists have to get involved with the policy-making community right from the beginning and try to understand what the constraints on policy-making are,” McBean said.
[ Reading time: 3 - 5 minutes ]
This story is REALLY for the doomers out there…
Rich
Nation’s Leading Alarmists Excited About Bird Flu
February 2, 2005 | Issue 41•05
WASHINGTON, DC—The avian influenza virus, a mutant flu strain that has claimed the lives of 31 people in Eastern Asia since it was first observed passing from birds to humans in 1997, has the nation’s foremost alarmists extremely agitated.
Representatives from the Alarmist Council.
“Right now, the bird flu is just a blip in the newspapers, but if the avian influenza virus undergoes antigenic shift with a human influenza virus, the resulting subtype could be highly contagious and highly lethal in humans,” Matthew Wexler, the president of the National Alarmist Council and one of the nation’s leading fear mongers, said Monday. “My professional opinion, and more importantly, my personal belief, is that this is a cause for great national alarm.”
Wexler’s sentiments were unanimously upheld by members of the alarmist community.
“The bird flu could cause a global influenza pandemic similar to the Spanish Flu that killed more than 20 million people in 1918,” medical alarmist Dr. Preston Douglas said. “Many experts also believe a major global flu outbreak to be imminent, if not—God forbid—already underway. Why, recent observation and documentation has recorded at least one case of human-to-human transmission of a rare strain of the avian influenza virus. If this one case is proof that the animal virus is mutating into a contagious, lethal human virus, then the entire world is basically doomed. Doomed!”
Douglas is best known for his brilliant alarmist analyses of flesh-eating bacteria, Ebola, and SARS—all of which he successfully developed into topics of major international trepidation.
Bird flu was first identified as a strain of infectious influenza in Italy in the early 1900s. Of the 15 subtypes, only subtypes H5 and H7 are known to be capable of crossing the species barrier from birds to humans. The first human outbreak, which occurred in Hong Kong in 1997, killed four people. Since then, the bird flu has remained a relatively minor virus, killing fewer individuals than common-cold variants. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have issued neither an epidemic warning nor a public-health alert in connection with bird flu.
According to leading alarmists, the CDC’s lack of immediate concern is a cause for alarm.
“So, basically, the CDC doesn’t have the first inkling of what to do about a potentially explosive form of flu that infects ducks and chickens,” said Fox News Science, Health, and Epidemics Commentator Marylinne Kent. “Given the popularity of these two birds as a food source among Asians, and the fact that we have no idea how many undocumented Asians have settled illegally in our nation, the potential for danger is extremely high.”
“I urge you all to think of your families,” Kent added.
Harold Jefferson, a founding member of the American National Citizen’s Institute for Alarm, read from a prepared statement Tuesday.
“We have to face the facts: This isn’t just a rapacious killer that could be incubating anywhere within our borders and for which there is no known cure,” Jefferson said. “It is also an indicator of the profound indifference of millions of American citizens. Mark my words: People who aren’t scared now will look pretty stupid if it turns out that they should have been.”
Jefferson added: “The bird flu could someday claim as many lives as Mad Cow Disease.”
Ruth Herrin, the New York Post’s veteran panic expert, has relied heavily on information provided by alarmists in the scientific community.
“Listen, I’m no disease expert,” Herrin said. “But I know that people should be warned about global devastation any time a devastation scenario can be extrapolated from an actual news report. And for the 16th consecutive month, that time is now.”
None of the nation’s 15,000 certified alarmists have offered a strategy to deal with a possible outbreak.
“Listen, finding cures is not my job,” Wexler said. “I just report the facts as best and as briefly as I can. Then I interpret them in what I, as an alarmist, believe to be the most effective fashion. And if what I perceive here is real—namely, a looming epidemic and an atmosphere of apathy and fatalism in the U. S. medical community—then we are facing Armageddon.”
[ Reading time: 4 - 6 minutes ]
As if we didn’t already have enough to worry about, with a record setting hurricane season, and Wilma about to strike from below (it’s all Venezuela’s fault), to flash flooding in the northeast, earthquakes all over the world, last year’s tsunami and earthquake menace, and even dogs and cats living together…NOW we have to consider the threat of the Undead in large metropolitan areas…
EDITED TO ADD: Happy Halloween!
Study Reveals Pittsburgh Unprepared For Full-Scale Zombie Attack
October 19, 2005 | Issue 41•42
PITTSBURGH—A zombie-preparedness study, commissioned by Pittsburgh Mayor Tom Murphy and released Monday, indicates that the city could easily succumb to a devastating zombie attack. Insufficient emergency-management-personnel training and poorly conceived undead-defense measures have left the city at great risk for all-out destruction at the hands of the living dead, according to the Zombie Preparedness Institute.
Pittsburgh, a prime target of the undead.
“When it comes to defending ourselves against an army of reanimated human corpses, the officials in charge have fallen asleep at the wheel,” Murphy said. “Who’s in charge of sweep-and-burn missions to clear out infected areas? Who’s going to guard the cemeteries at night? If zombies were to arrive in the city tomorrow, we’d all be roaming the earth in search of human brains by Friday.”
Government-conducted zombie-attack scenarios described on the State Department’s website indicate that a successful, citywide zombie takeover would take 10 days, but according to ZPI statistician Dr. Milton Cornelius, the government’s models fail to incorporate such factors as the zombies’ rudimentary reasoning skills and basic tool use.
“Today’s zombies quickly learn to open doors, break windows, and stage ambushes,” Cornelius said. “In one 1985 incident in Louisville, a band of zombies was able to lure four paramedics and countless law-enforcement officials to their deaths by commandeering an ambulance radio and calling for backup.”
ZPI researchers noted that tens of thousands of Pittsburgh citizens live in close proximity to a cemetery. This fact, coupled with abnormally high space-radiation levels in eastern Pennsylvania and ongoing traffic issues in the East Hills and Larimer areas, led Cornelius to declare the likelihood of a successful evacuation as “slight to impossible.”
“The designated evacuation routes would be hopelessly clogged, leaving many no choice but to escape by foot,” Cornelius said. “Add a single lurching zombie into that easily panicked crowd and you’ve got a nightmare scenario.”
Cornelius’ model shows that after the ensuing stampede, “the zombie could pick and choose his victims,” and predicts the creation of hundreds of new undead “in a single half-hour feeding frenzy.”
Pittsburgh’s structural defenses are particularly inadequate. The city’s emergency safe houses, established by a city ordinance in the early ’70s, lack even the most basic fortifications for zombie invasion.
Enlarge Image
Pittsburgh residents participate in a zombie-preparedness training exercise in 1998.
“Under the ordinance, wooden tool sheds and rusty station wagons are classified as adequate shelter,” Cornelius said. “But once dozens of zombies hungering for living flesh begin pounding on the walls and driving their half-decomposed fists through the windows, sheds and cars quickly give way.”
Federal Undead Management Agency spokesperson Dr. Sheena Aurora downplayed the ZPI report, arguing that zombies move slowly and can be easily overpowered. Aurora advised citizens to look over their shoulders frequently, adding that a large shopping mall can serve as a “long-term, even fun” refuge from zombies.
Such assertions alarm zombiologist Olivier Baptiste, who calls FUMA’s information “hopelessly outdated.”
“Dr. Aurora’s claims are based on decades-old zombie models,” Baptiste said. “Widely released evidence from recent years clearly shows that zombies can run just as fast, if not faster, than a living human.”
Added Baptiste: “That FUMA trains its field agents to shoot zombies in the torso, rather than the head, demonstrates just how out of touch the government is.”
Evans City, PA Police Chief Gino Fulci said zombie preparedness comes down to training on the local level.
“Children need to be taught from preschool that they might have to put a bullet between the eyes of their own undead mother,” Fulci said. “‘Destroy The Brain’ banners should be hung above the entrances of schools, churches, and town halls everywhere.”
Cornelius recommends that Pittsburgh residents prepare a “go-bag” containing a Glock 17 pistol and 50 rounds of ammunition. If leaving the house is not an option, Cornelius advises residents to barricade all first-story doors and windows, and have at least one method of suicide prepared, should zombies successfully breach the home.
[ Reading time: 1 - 2 minutes ]
Since 1999, I’ve had spurts of time where I’ll go months without having a media person contact me asking to help them find “Survivalists”. I guess this is better than the FBI and other alphabet agencies asking for the same thing.
The lady below is looking for folks into prepping and practicing a lifestyle of being ready. If you’re interested in helping her out, send her an email below. She writes for StyleWeekly.com
Hi Richard,
I’m a magazine writer in Richmond, VA, and I came across your Web site today. I found your site to be quite comprehensive and I wanted to ask you if you’re acquainted with any folks or organizations in Virginia, particularly Central Virginia, who are interested in survival and emergency preparedness. If so, could you tell me how to get in touch with them?
Many thanks,
Melissa Sinclair
Melissa.Sinclair@styleweekly.com
[ Reading time: 6 - 9 minutes ]
Apocalypse, now? Katrina, other disasters fuel doomsday predictions
By Kari Huus – Reporter – MSNBC
Updated: 9:02 p.m. ET Oct. 19, 2005
It’s been 10 months of epic disaster. First there was the tsunami that killed some 250,000 people in Southeast Asia. Then came Hurricane Katrina with its devastating toll on the Gulf Coast, followed by an earthquake that took tens of thousands of lives in South Asia. Now, Hurricane Wilma, one of the most powerful storms ever measured in the Atlantic Basin, is stalking the Florida coast, and experts are warning of a deadly avian flu pandemic.
It’s enough to make just about anyone pause to look for meaning in the madness.
For many who await Judgment Day, the writing is on the wall.
So close is the correlation between recent events and the biblical prophecy of the Second Coming, by the reckoning of RaptureReady.com, its “Rapture Index” has been hovering around 160 — the highest levels since just after the 9/11 terrorist attacks. According to the Web site, “the higher the number, the faster we’re moving towards the … rapture.” When the number is above 145, it advises: “Fasten your seatbelts!”
“There is a resurgence of End Times thinking,” says Stephen O’Leary, an expert on apocalyptic thinking and an associate professor at the University of Southern California. Anxiety about doomsday always lurks under the surface and resurfaces periodically, he says. “It’s a very traditional way of coming to terms with disaster. In one sense it’s as old as the hills … but there is a recent uptick of this kind of thinking.”
Current events have provided rich fodder for religious groups devoted to watching for the End Times, when the faithful believe that they and nonbelievers will ultimately be judged. Nowhere is this more evident today than on the Internet, where scores of Web sites analyze the news through a biblical lens. While predictions of an apocalypse are part of many religions, including a version in Islam that is very similar to the Christian one, it is evangelical Christians who are sounding alarms in U.S. churches and online.
Among the most commonly cited biblical passages describing the beginning of the end are in Matthew, where Jesus warns that “nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom: and there shall be famines, and pestilences, and earthquakes,” and this passage in Luke: “And there shall be signs in the sun, and in the moon, and in the stars; and upon the earth distress of nations, with perplexity; the sea and the waves roaring.”
The race to interpret the news
Many evangelical Christians believe these events signal the End Times, as spelled out in the Book of Revelation, which go something like this: First there is the Rapture, in which God’s loyal followers suddenly disappear from Earth and enter his kingdom. Then comes the Tribulation, a seven-year period of rule by the Antichrist and severe hardship on Earth. During this time, nonbelievers who remain on Earth will have a chance to convert to Christianity but will be hounded by the Antichrist and his minions. Then comes Armageddon, when God comes back to defeat Satan in a devastating battle. Ultimately, there is Judgment Day, when those who are with God live on in Paradise, and others are eternally condemned to Hell.
There are scores of Web sites that interpret current events through the prism of biblical passages, seeing divine signs not only in the weather, but in the war in Iraq and events at the United Nations.
Abbaswatchman.com “explains how virtually everything we are seeing, from hurricanes and tsunamis to tensions with Damascus are fulfilling prophesies.” The blog ApocalypseSoon.org strives “to document the final moments of human history as it unfolds and to announce the return of Jesus Christ on earth.” The list goes on.
New Orleans warning
Some Web sites serve as a pulpit for those who believe that God sent Katrina to smite New Orleans for its sinning ways and to send a warning to the rest of the nation.
“Although the loss of lives is deeply saddening, this act of God destroyed a wicked city,” says conservative anti-gay activist Michael Marcavage on the site RepentAmerica.com. He says New Orleans was punished for a “public celebration” of homosexuality, wanton drunkenness and show of flesh.
Alabama state Sen. Henry E. “Hank” Erwin Jr., a Republican, expressed a similar view in a weekly column he writes for news outlets. “New Orleans and the Mississippi Gulf Coast have always been known for gambling, sin and wickedness,” he wrote. “It is the kind of behavior that ultimately brings the judgment of God.”
Irwin Baxter, founder of End Times Ministries, is among those more focused on how Katrina and the other disasters, combined with key political indicators — including the Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza Strip — point to an imminent apocalypse. “With all these converging at the same time, it looks to me we are very close to or just entered the (End Times),” says Baxter.
“People are really apprehensive right now,” he says. But the upside, from his point of view, is that the disasters could help make believers out of doubters. “If we continue seeing event after event of this magnitude … I think it could really galvanize a lot of people.”
He’s given up his regular job as pastor at a Pentecostal church in Richmond, Ind., to devote all his time and energy to End Times Ministries, which includes a magazine that has 30,000 subscribers, a Web site and a radio program broadcast on 30 stations and over the Internet.
To be sure, not all conservative Christians think it’s wise to make predictions. “There have been storms throughout history,” says Mark Bailey, president of the Dallas Theological Seminary, a conservative evangelical institution. “To say about any of these that ‘this is it’ is dangerous speculation.”
He is also troubled by the view that storms are used to punish a certain group of people. However, he adds, “It’s a great time to ask, ‘If this was it, would I be ready?’”
Apocalypse on the big screen
The soul-searching, and the speculation in Christian circles is driven in part by a highly successful series of films based on the best-selling book series “Left Behind.” The story, a melodrama with a backdrop of End Times prophecy events, focuses on characters who remain on Earth after the believers are swept to heaven in the Rapture. The films, starring former television actor Kirk Cameron, launched on DVD in 2000 and have prompted a wave of other books, movies and spin-offs in the apocalypse genre. The third “Left Behind” movie is set to premiere at churches across the country on Friday.
USC’s O’Leary suggests that media coverage of real disasters from Sri Lanka to New Orleans may also be intensifying the belief in impending peril, because the events are delivered instantaneously to American living rooms. “There is a sense of escalation that makes us feel that it’s happening more rapidly,” says O’Leary.
Religious groups don’t have a monopoly on apocalyptic thinking. O’Leary says that even in secular circles, people also embrace apocalyptic thinking when it converges with worrisome scientific or technological developments.
“The prime case was the Y2K scare,” he says, referring to fears of a disaster on the eve of the new century. “For awhile it seemed to have a rational technical basis, which seemed to go overboard,” creating fears that lingered until the clock struck 12:01 a.m. on Jan. 1, 2000, “long after computer programmers said it was going to be OK,” he says.
Evidence of global warming fuels fears of impending disaster among those who don’t necessarily believe in divine intervention, O’Leary points out. And the emergence of nuclear weapons technology after World War II lent plausibility to belief in a secular version of Armageddon.
“You don’t have to be a religious believer to think that we’re headed for disaster,” O’Leary says.
URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9731623/
[ Reading time: 2 - 3 minutes ]
FEMA official in New Orleans blasts agency’s response
Regional director said top officials ignored his pleas for help
Thursday, October 20, 2005; Posted: 12:10 p.m. EDT (16:10 GMT)
WASHINGTON (AP) — Federal Emergency Management Agency officials did not respond to repeated warnings about deteriorating conditions in New Orleans and the dire need for help as Hurricane Katrina struck, the first FEMA official to arrive in the city conceded Thursday.
Marty Bahamonde, a FEMA regional director, told a Senate panel investigating the government’s response to the disaster that he gave regular updates to people in contact with then-FEMA Director Michael Brown as early as August 28, one day before Katrina made landfall.
In most cases, he said, he was met with silence or a polite thank-you from Brown, who said he would check with the White House. “I think there was a systematic failure at all levels of government to understand the magnitude of the situation,” Bahamonde said.
The testimony before the Senate Homeland Security Committee contradicted Brown, who has said he wasn’t fully aware of the dire conditions until days later and that local officials were most responsible for the sluggish response.
Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, who chairs the panel, decried the testimony and e-mail released by Bahamonde on Thursday as illustrating “a complete disconnect between senior officials and the reality of the situation.”
“His urgent reports did not appear to prompt an urgent response,” Collins said.
In e-mails to various FEMA officials, including one to Brown, Bahamonde described a chaotic situation at the Superdome, where many of the evacuees were sheltered. Bahamonde e-mailed FEMA officials and noted also that local officials were asking for toilet paper, a sign that supplies were lacking at the shelter.
“Issues developing at the Superdome. The medical staff at the dome says they will run out of oxygen in about two hours and are looking for alternative oxygen,” Bahamonde wrote in an e-mail to David Passey, an assistant to Brown, in late afternoon on August 28.
Less than an hour later, Bahamonde wrote: “Everyone is soaked. This is going to get ugly real fast.”
Bahamonde said he was stunned that FEMA officials responded by sending truckloads of evacuees to the Superdome on that day even though they knew supplies were in short supply.
“I thought it amazing,” he said. “I believed at the time and still do today, that I was confirming the worst-case scenario that everyone had always talked about regarding New Orleans.”
[ Reading time: 3 - 5 minutes ]
Uh-oh…looks like Chertoff is at it again…
Homeland security secretary defends actions
Chertoff says he relied on FEMA experts to manage Hurricane response
Wednesday, October 19, 2005; Posted: 1:02 p.m. EDT (17:02 GMT)
WASHINGTON (AP) — Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff defended his actions before and after Hurricane Katrina, telling lawmakers Wednesday he relied on Federal Emergency Management Agency experts with decades of experience in hurricane response.
“I’m not a hurricane expert,” Chertoff said several times in responding to criticisms from members of a special House panel set up to investigate the dismal federal response to Katrina, which killed more than 1,200 people, flooded New Orleans and forced the evacuation of hundreds of thousands.
Chertoff, a former prosecutor and Justice Department official, took over the Homeland Security Department in February.
Lawmakers grilled Chertoff about why he stayed home Saturday before Katrina made landfall on Monday, why he made a previously scheduled trip to Atlanta on Tuesday, and why he didn’t act more decisively to speed up the federal response.
Brown was ‘battlefield commander’
Chertoff said he relied on former FEMA Director Michael Brown as the “battlefield commander” and focused his efforts on making sure FEMA had all the resources it needed. He said he stayed in telephone contact with the office while at home and during the trip to Atlanta.
“I don’t think there was a lack of a sense of urgency,” he said.
Chertoff’s appearance came as weather forecasters kept a wary eye on Hurricane Wilma, the latest in a host of such storms, as it has grown into one of the most intense Atlantic hurricanes on record. Forecasters said it likely will strike the east coast of Florida with devastating winds by late in the week.
Most of the blame for the federal response to Katrina has fallen on Brown, who resigned last month after Chertoff removed him from direct responsibility for Katrina relief and recovery efforts.
Brown blamed state and local officials in Louisiana for the slow response to Katrina when he testified before the committee last month. Chertoff disagreed.
“From my own experience, I don’t endorse those views,” he said.
Frustrated by response
After the levees broke in New Orleans, Chertoff said he became increasingly frustrated with the federal response and decided by the end of the first week to replace Brown with Coast Guard Vice Admiral Thad Allen. A week later, he relieved Brown of his duties and ordered him back to Washington.
Wednesday’s hearing provided the first opportunity for lawmakers to question Chertoff directly about his role in the response. FEMA was an independent agency before it was folded into the Department of Homeland Security when it was created after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
The investigation is being conducted by a special committee appointed by House GOP leaders. Democratic leaders, insisting on an independent investigation, have refused to cooperate in what they contend is a too-soft probe of the Bush administration by GOP lawmakers.
Several Democratic congressmen from the affected areas have attended the hearings and questioned witnesses. They were joined Wednesday by Rep. Cynthia McKinney, D-Georgia, who blasted what she called a lack of leadership in the Bush administration’s response to Katrina.
Rep. Henry Bonilla, R-Texas, objected when McKinney asked Chertoff why he should not be charged with negligent homicide because of the federal response.
When questions “are over the top and not constructive, I don’t believe the secretary should waste his time by answering,” Bonilla said.
Chertoff did answer, however, declaring the President Bush “was deeply and personally engaged in the process from before the hurricane; I was deeply and personally involved in the process from before the hurricane.”
Earlier, Chertoff told the committee that FEMA was overwhelmed by Katrina and must be retooled to improve preparation and response to natural disasters.
“There are many things that did not work well with the response,” Chertoff said, adding later, “We are not where we need to be as a nation in the area of preparedness.”
Chertoff said Katrina demonstrated that FEMA’s system for moving supplies into disaster areas is not adequate and that communications systems must be made to work even in the worst disasters. He said the agency also must learn how to identify issues and target resources when state and local officials are overwhelmed by a storm.
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