Disaster Safety Blog

Texting while driving - bad; texting in a hurricane - good, experts say

As Hurricane Bill continues churning in the Atlantic, it appears some people in parts of New England are getting a bit nervous, according to an article in the Connecticut Post. Some experts are even advising those who don't know how to text to take a lesson, because it just might save their life in a storm. 

The article, Mild hurricane season so far could easily turn wild, is the most emailed story of the day on ConnPost.com. Here is an excerpt:

This week marks the 17th anniversary of Hurricane Andrew which, like Hurricane Bill, was the first named hurricane of the season. Andrew, a Category 4 storm, ground its way through Florida and Louisiana, wreaking some of the most extensive damage of any storm in U.S. history, costing an estimated $35 billion in today's dollars.

The Hurricane of 1938, regarded as the worst storm to hit New England, also occurred in a year of relatively few tropical storms, according to weather experts.

All it takes is one storm.

It's not if, it's when, said Bill Jacquemin, a meteorologist with the Connecticut Weather Center in Danbury. "We haven't had a major hurricane since 1938, so most people think, 'We don't get them.' But that kind of thinking is just wrong."

If things get bad, Andrea Boissevain, the assistant Stratford health director, said that text messages are the most reliable way of communicating, because texting will continue to function even if voice cell service gets knocked out and land lines are taken down by trees.

"It might be a good idea if older people learn how to text," she said.

To that end, Jacquemin said that the Connecticut Weather Center has launched a text messaging service for emergency providers that warns of tornadoes, flooding and other weather emergencies.

"The storms that you have to worry about the most are the Cape Verdean ones," Jacquemin said. "Those are the ones that are forming now. A lot of energy comes out of Africa."

The worst storms, he said, are those that have a high forward speed in excess of 40 mph, like the monster storm of 1938.

The Institute for Business & Home Safety (IBHS) encourages you to take a break from texting and log onto www.DisasterSafety.org/hurricane, where you can find even more advice to help protect your home or business this hurricane season.

Galveston goes high tech to help vulnerable populations

 

Nearly a year after Hurricane Ike struck Galveston, Texas, the city is turning to technology to help those who need assistance in leaving if another storm threatens.

Galveston is relying on a new bar code registration system supplied by the state to help track people who evacuate, according to the newspaper. But it appears that many of the most vulnerable residents may not have returned to the area after Ike.




IBHS photo taken after Hurricane Ike hit Galveston, Texas, on Sept. 13, 2008

"It's very important that our citizens who have special needs sign up now," Mayor Lyda Ann Thomas told The Dallas Morning News. "Those who wait leave the city in a position of not being able to help them because we don't know exactly what their needs are." 

Fewer people than normal signed up for assistance during this year's hurricane preparedness town hall meeting, Assistant City Manager Carolyn Cox told The Dallas Morning News adding, "Apparently, some who normally sign up for help are no longer living in Galveston."

The Galveston County Daily News reported that only about 100 people have registered for transportation inland. Nearly 2,000 people required evacuation help during Ike.

Each evacuee will get a wristband with a bar code, for scanning when a person boards a bus and gets to a shelter. Not everyone is eager to sign up for the program, Cox told The Dallas Morning News.

Cox is concerned that people will not evacuate because they had to stay off Galveston for so long after Ike took out water, sewer and electrical services.

"People are placing a greater value on their property now and the fact that they couldn't get back directly after the storm," Cox said. "But you don't need to be here when the plumbing system and the electrical system doesn't work."

Before Ike struck, about 1,800 people boarded buses at the Island Community Center and rode to safety at shelters in Austin. They were not allowed to return to Galveston for more than two weeks.

People who register for evacuation help do not have to leave on the buses if they change their minds later or decide to leave with friends or family, Cox told the newspaper.

August typically is the most active month for Atlantic hurricanes. The Institute for Business & Home Safety (IBHS) wants to help you prepare now, before a storm threatens. Minimize the risks to your property with the free IBHS Hurricane Preparedness Guide.

Honk for hurricanes, tornadoes and wildfires

It’s safe to say Americans have become accustomed to hearing car alarms going off, so much so that many people now pay little attention. Researchers in Germany, however, are hoping the sound of thousands of car horns honking simultaneously will be enough to warn the general public to pay attention to an approaching natural disaster.

Researchers of the Fraunhofer Institute for Technological Trend Analysis (INT) in Euskirchen, Germany, applied in January for a patent of a technology that allows the horns of parked cars to be activated in case of disaster, according to RedOrbit.com.

The technology is based on the eCall emergency system, developed at the direction of the European Union Commission and intended to help reduce the number of crash-related fatalities. It consists of a GPS sensor and a mobile phone component, which is activated only in case of an accident (i.e. when the airbags are triggered) and which can transmit data (e.g. accident time, coordinates and driving direction of the vehicle) to an emergency call center. All new cars produced in the EU must be equipped with eCall beginning in September 2010.

The INT researchers found out that this infrastructure can also be used to warn the population. Once the cars are equipped with a radio receiver, the horns can be triggered in case of disaster. The receiver can be activated only by emergency officials.

INT officials say that unlike text messages and television broadcasts, which require a resident to have a device on to receive a warning, a mere 14 percent of the registered vehicles are all that’s needed to warn an area about an approaching hurricane, wildfire or tornado. The researchers did not say how they will let the public know what type of disaster may be threatening.

Whatever disasters face the areas where you live, work and play, stay safe with the information from the Institute for Business & Home Safety (IBHS).

Microsoft taps into using social networking in disasters

Reliance on social networking tools in disaster situations is growing and Microsoft is seizing the opportunity to create its own option. Microsoft Vine is a Facebook-style network for PC users whose health and safety you’d worry about in a natural disaster.

The program was announced today. Beta testing is expected to begin next month.

Vine is a hyperlocal messaging and alert system intended to be used to share information during a crisis. Properly configured, it will gather local news and public safety announcements along with location information, reports and messages from friends–eventually even those posted to other services, like Facebook and Twitter–into a handy little dashboard. This being Microsoft (MSFT), that dashboard will be proprietary and require PCs running XP SP2 or Vista and 600 MB of hard disk space.

Here's what Microsoft is saying:

About Microsoft Vine

Use the dashboard to know what’s happening. Information associated with the places you have chosen will appear on your map, including articles from 20,000 news and public safety sources. Information from people you care about, such as alerts and reports, will appear on the dashboard too.

Send and receive alerts. Organize people into groups - the sports team you coach, people who live nearby, family far away, special friends, and emergency contacts. Each person defines how they want to receive alerts – through e-mail, a text message, or on their computer. Reach them quickly using alerts.

Post reports. You decide what you want to share with whom, and then the information is sent directly to their personal dashboard. Check in safe and well to let your family know you are okay, let trusted neighbors know you’re headed out of town, keep people informed of situations that matter, or share general information like the team practice schedule for the week.

New system for disaster notification put to the test in flooding

 The recent rise of the Red River in Minnesota put to the test a new system for alerting the community to an impending disaster. It's another sign of how technology and social networking are playing a role in managing disasters.

The flood that hit Moorhead, Minnesota last week was the highest measured flood in the city's history and has left behind millions of dollars in damages. The damage, however, could have been much worse, according to officials at Minnesota State University at Moorhead.

The university used the new system, called e2Campus, to communicate life safety information to the community and to recruit volunteers for sandbagging efforts. The system likely will be used again soon as 12 inches of new snow melts this week and the city and university prepare for another historic flood event around April 14.

Michael Parks, security director at the university, reports using the system to prepare the 7,500-student campus from the flood,

"We used e2Campus to inform the campus community about the projected flood by way of text messages, phone calls, email, and web page postings. We initially closed the residential halls and campus," he said in a presss release. "Every few hours, the flood projections got worse, so we sent more alerts warning of life safety issues while also asking for volunteers to help keep up with the rising waters. About 20 minutes after an alert was sent, hundreds and hundreds of volunteers would show up to help with sand bagging."

People that weren't even signed up for the alerts were often times sitting next to someone that got an alert and were recruited to help, Parks said. So for every person that got an alert, maybe 5 to 10 of their friends would come along with them.

"We know that e2Campus was the quickest, fastest way to get emergency life safety information to our campus community because we saw the overwhelming response after each alert. We could get fresh, timely information out to everyone as the conditions changed... and conditions were changing rapidly," he said. "Many of the multimodal alerts were sent during non-business hours. The text message alerts were effective in reaching the students spread around the city. For faculty and staff who did not have cell phones or power in their homes, the mass phone calls were their only source of life saving information."

More and more emergency officials are turning to texting and social networking as a means of communicating with residents during an emergency. Learn how to get better prepared for whatever types of disasters face your area by entering your ZIP code at DisasterSafety.org.

Engineers aim to create earthquake-resistant prototype skyscraper

Few continents have experienced more devastation from strong earthquakes than Asia, so engineers there are constantly striving to design better-built structures that can withstand strong shaking.

Today's Asia Daily News reports on the latest attempt that aims to create atructures designed to withstand even the strongest earthquakes, yet still allow for innovative design and even the promotion of recycling. The news service says good progress is being made on a “super architecture” project by a joint government-private sector team. Below is the English version of this story.

A three-story steel-framed building shaped like a birdcage stands on the grounds of the Building Research Institute in Tsukuba, Ibaraki Prefecture. Built as a prototype to test a new antiseismic system, it is one of the fruits of a collaboration between five governmental organizations, including the Cabinet Office and the Construction and Transport Ministry, and more than 30 private companies, including steelmakers and housing construction firms.

The “birdcage” is a combination of two structures. The outer part is a rigid construction made of HSA 700 steel, which is about twice as strong as conventional steel. It is strong enough to withstand even an earthquake measuring the maximum 7 on the seismic intensity scale.

The disadvantage of using such high-strength steel has been its prohibitive cost. However, by reducing the amount of expensive metals used to create it, such as chromium and copper, and negating the need for the water-cooling process by allowing heat to dissipate under controlled conditions, it has become possible to produce such steel at a price the market can accept.

The inner structure is able to swing, like a hammock, if jolted. Separated from the outer steel section by an oil-filled buffer, the inside of the cage can house almost any type of structure, including an office building or apartment block.

Together, the sections form a two-stage antiseismic system–the outer part withstanding even the strongest quakes while the buffer suppresses shock waves, preventing them damaging the structure inside.

Specialists say that buildings constructed in accordance with the current Building Standards Law cannot be expected to escape damage if they are hit by an earthquake with a seismic intensity of upper 5 or more, even if they do not collapse.

When an earthquake with a seismic intensity of lower 6 occurred off the western shores of Fukuoka Prefecture in March 2005, the walls of some apartments were badly twisted resulting in some people being unable to open their front doors.

“What we’re planning is a building that won’t suffer damage even if it is hit by an earthquake with a seismic intensity of 7,” said Masahiro Yukawa of Takenaka Co., a member of the project team. “Instead, anyone inside such a building would experience shock waves that feel as if they only have an intensity of about 5.”

As the inner part of the cage does not affect the strength of the building, a wide variety of architectural concepts can be entertained. In addition, the outer frame of the building is designed to last more than 100 years, while the inner core can be changed to suit the needs and fashions of the times.

Colorado wildfire is example of using social networks during a disaster

Social networking sites may be changing the way the public communicates and expects to receive information during and after a natural disaster, according to a researcher at the University of Colorado.

Social networking sites like Facebook, MySpace, Twitter and Flickr are changing the way disaster situations are handled, according to Jeannette Sutton, Ph.D., of the University of Colorado at Boulder’s Natural Disaster Center. She has been conducting joint research with the school’s engineering department. The center's research found that, increasingly, when disaster strikes, the Web-savvy are seeking out and sending out information via social networking sites.

A recent example was a wildfire that broke out near Boulder, Colo., in January. The county of Boulder relied on a Twitter account to communicate some of the information about the fire. A resident also relied on Twitter to help frustrated residents find the best evacuation routes.

“By the end of that fire we had 100 new followers that were following us on Twitter and other organizations were re-tweeting us, including FEMA,” Boulder County Commission spokeswoman Patricia Demchak told TheDenverChannel.com.

Skepticism remains among government agencies, according to Sutton, who cited FEMA, which has started its own YouTube channel, an exception. The fear may be that the sites foster more rumor than reality. But Sutton’s research found that people are often extremely cautious about fact-checking their information before disseminating it.

Sophia B. Liu, a graduate student in engineering, was offered as an example. Liu tracks social networking during disaster situations as part of the Alliance for Technology, Learning and Society at the university and was among the residents forced to flee homes after the Olde Stage Coach fire broke out. She immediately started Twittering to keep track of the information she was hearing.

Liu told The Denver Channel that many of the firefighters, who were staged throughout her neighborhood as evacuations were under way shortly after the fire broke out, were brought in from elsewhere and could not tell her the best route out of her neighborhood.

Liu wound up Twittering that and other crucial information. Boulder police spokeswoman Sarah Huntley said that in some cases, Liu’s information came out quicker than law enforcement’s.

“It's a way to tune in and find out, 'How is my warning being perceived?' and 'How is the info actually coming across to the public?'" Sutton said.

Visit the IBHS video gallery to see how to protect your home from wildfire and other disasters.