Monthly Archives: April 2010

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Incredible Dog Leads Rescue Workers to Fire

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This is just incredible.

A dashcam video from the Alaska State Troopers shows a dog leading them through winding back roads to a blazing fire at his owners’ property.

The video on the troopers’ website shows the German shepherd running to meet the trooper’s vehicle, then racing to the house on Caswell Lakes on April 4.

Troopers say Buddy and his owner, 23-year-old Ben Heinrichs, were in the family workshop when a heater ignited chemicals. Heinrichs told Buddy: “We need to get help.”

The dog eventually found a trooper responding to a call about the fire.

Dogs have been aiding rescue and security work for years and can help in everything from finding survivors to locating bombs. And all this makes me wonder if canines, more so than technology, are the answer for better security in airports and providing an invaluable resource for disaster first responders. (At least the good doggies that study up and pass their tests.)

Technology is great and all, but I’m not sure it will ever be able to do this.

How the National Weather Service Uses Weather Balloons to Predict Disasters

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It’s great to see FEMA embracing online video and pumping out so much interesting disaster-related content. As the agency reiterated recently, education and awareness are the keys to preparedness and, these days, there is no easier way to get the message out then with free-to-distribute online media.

Well done, FEMA.

This one is about how the National Weather Service helps predict disasters by using weather balloons. It clearly wasn’t direct by Matin Scorsese, but it is interesting and gives a nice, behind-the-scenes look at how NWS does its job.

SEC Watchdogs Watching Porn, Not Wall Street

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SEC porn XXX

According to an internal investigation, 33 SEC employees or contractors have been watching porn on company time and company computers. Not only are these obvious and widespread violations of SEC policy — and hopefully, the policy of every company outside of that specific industry — but the transgressions all occurred at a time when the financial companies that the watchdog was supposed to be watching were, ya know, busy burning down the global economy and all.

Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA), the ranking member of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, had this to say:

“It is nothing short of disturbing that high-ranking officials within the SEC were spending more time looking at pornography than taking action to help stave off the events that brought our nation’s economy to the brink of collapse … This stunning report should make everyone question the wisdom of moving forward with plans to give regulators like the SEC even more widespread authority. Inexplicably, rather than exercise its existing regulatory enforcement authority, SEC officials were preoccupied with other distractions.”

Exactly how widespread were these “distractions”? In at least two cases, it was certainly impairing regulators’ ability to do their jobs.

A regional office staff accountant tried to access pornographic websites nearly 1,800 times, using her SEC laptop during a two-week period. She also had about 600 pornographic images saved on her laptop hard drive.

Separately, a senior attorney at SEC headquarters admitted to downloading pornography up to eight hours a day, according to the investigation.

“In fact, this attorney downloaded so much pornography to his government computer that he exhausted the available space on the computer hard drive and downloaded pornography to CDs or DVDs that he accumulated in boxes in his office,” the inspector general’s report said.

For its part, the SEC issued this response:

“We will not tolerate the transgressions of the very few who bring discredit to their thousands of hardworking colleagues,” he said.

Depending on your moral sensibilities, the news may be worse for what it represents (employees who clearly aren’t fully committed to doing their jobs for 8 hours a day) than for what actually happened.

Either way, not a good look for the agency — both figuratively and literally.

Somali Pirates: Attacks Down but Reach Spreads

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We’ve covered the pirate crisis in the Gulf of Aden numerous times — once in the February 2009 issue of Risk Management and twice more on this blog (The Rising Price of Piracy Insurance and Security at Sea).

Though the International Maritime Bureau (IMB) states that sea attacks worldwide fell by more than a third in the first quarter of this year, the attacks continue. Pirates are now increasing their area of surveilance and capture (it now includes the massive Indian Ocean) and though U.S. and foreign warships have been canvassing the area, the pirates have not backed down. In fact, their army and area of operation has seemed to grow.

This week alone, three Thai fishing vessels were seized in hijackings 1,200 miles east of Somalia in the Indian Ocean — the farthest from the Somali coast pirates have ever attacked, according to the EU Naval Force. A total off 77 crew were taken hostage.

And just yesterday, in the fourth attack in less than a week, pirates seized a bulk carrier — the Liberian-owned Voc Daisy — in the Gulf of Aden. The ship was heading from the UAE towards to the Suez Canal when it, along with its crew of 21, were taken hostage.

After a successful pirate hijacking, the shipping company that owns the vessel will, in most cases, immediately issue a ransom for the return of the ship and crew. But that may become a bit tougher for American ships should they fall victim to a pirate attack.

The shipping industry has long seen ransom payments to retrieve hijacked vessels, cargos and crews as a cost of doing business. But after Obama last week issued an executive order on Somalia, shipping officials say it’s no longer clear whether companies with U.S. interests can legally pay ransoms. The industry is worried because ransoms have been the only way to quickly and safely free hostages.

The order states it is illegal for anyone to supply financing to any Somalis involved in military activities. Contrary to that, the U.S. Treasury Department said it is not interested in prosecuting anyone trying to free hostages. This understandably puts shipping companies in a tough place.

“Taking away our ability to secure the safe release of our crew members and vessels could put us as an employer and ship owner in a very difficult position,” Moller said. “Thankfully we have not had to test such a scenario under these restrictions and it’s difficult for us to comment further on the consequences of the order without speculating.”

The IMB states that currently, pirates hold 14 vessels and 305 hostages.

Picture 2

The IMB live piracy map illustrates where pirate attacks have occurred so far this year.