Category Archives: Disaster Preparedness

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Looking Back at the Big Flood: Time to Examine Your ‘Human Supply Chain’

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The devastation left behind after Hurricane Harvey is a reminder that people are a critical link in the effort to build community storm resilience. We often remind our customers that to prepare for a disaster, they need to consider their supply chain risk—will they be able to access goods and services in the aftermath of a storm.

One area that is often overlooked is what is often called the human supply chain, which consists of your employees, customers and others members of your community.

Beyond ensuring that your employees are safe, business owners may need to consider other concerns: Do you have a plan that will allow your employees to continue working during the recovery? Can they work remotely? Are your employees trained in disaster preparedness? If your business relies on local customers, are they able to access your goods and services? What about rescue personnel and other business owners that provide goods and services to support the community?
Think of the human supply chain as a network of individuals who help your business to survive and continue to thrive after a disaster, like Hurricane Harvey, which dumped trillions of gallons of water on Texas a year ago.

Ensuring that this living, breathing supply chain remains connected is one of the recommendations culled from 13 in-depth studies that Zurich has produced on the impacts of natural disasters around the world. The latest report, “Houston and Hurricane Harvey: a call to action,” was released at the start of the 2018 hurricane season.

Zurich has developed a methodology called the Post Event Review Capability (PERC), which is an approach to understanding why a hazard becomes a disaster, and then from that, identifying entry points for building resilience.

A report released earlier this month highlights some of the lessons learned from these PERC studies and encourages businesses and communities to focus on resilience to prepare for future storms.

The report identifies some common truths about major storms:

  • Every dollar spent on disaster preparedness saves four dollars in future losses;
  • Early warnings paired with contingency and emergency planning can save lives and protect businesses; and
  • Risk managers and communities must “build back better” to strengthen resilience after a disaster strikes.

The report also emphasizes the human element in storm preparation and recovery. For example, one of the central lessons that emerged from the PERC studies is that successful response operations are mostly reliant on institutions. Providing equipment, access to food and showers, assisting with cleanup and offering paid time off for employees can go a long way towards supporting a community and creating a culture of assistance.

Business leaders should provide employee readiness training, the report concludes. Some companies already do this, making preparedness a part of business as usual. One such company regularly schedules “disaster recovery days.” The company will randomly announce, “It’s flooding today, work from home,” to practice employee readiness for the real thing.

This recognition that humans play a critical role in the recovery process is partly why Zurich continues to support SBP, an organization that seeks to shorten the time between disaster and recovery.

Zurich has worked with SBP since 2009, helping the nonprofit bring hundreds of families back home after Hurricane Katrina. SBP has remained in Southeast Texas since Harvey to help aid in the recovery efforts there.

Recognizing the need for home and business owners to identify and mitigate their risks prior to disasters, Zurich in 2014 committed a $3 million grant to SBP through its Z-Zurich Foundation. The grant helped fund SBP’s Disaster Resilience & Recovery Lab, an initiative through which SBP trains home and business owners in 30 communities at risk for disasters across the United States over the course of three years.

In the future, hurricanes will continue to wreak havoc, destroying homes and lives, damaging critical infrastructure and shuttering businesses, but it’s important to remember that humans are the key to resilience. Keeping people safe, engaged and part of the recovery process can help ensure that communities remain resilient in the face of major storms.

Structures in Wildland Urban Interface Present Added Fire Risks

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The trend of building homes in isolated wooded areas has been increasing across the United States. This urbanization of woodlands has changed the way forests are managed. Small wildfires that were once allowed to burn out are now suppressed to protect homes and buildings. Added to this are drought conditions exacerbated by climate change. All of these factors have increased the likelihood of wildfires.

The United States Forest Service (USFS) notes that 32% of the housing units in the U.S. and one-tenth of all land with housing are situated in the Wildland-Urban Interface (WUI). The largest cost driver for both Federal and State wildfire suppression operations is the protection of public and private property in the WUI, according to the USFS.

The “Wildland-Urban Interface Federal Risk Mitigation Executive Order 13728,” released in 2016 by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), reported that:

In 2015 alone, more than 10 million acres of wildlands burned, requiring the service of more than 27,000 firefighters and resulting in $2.1 billion spent by the USFS and the Department of the Interior (DOI) to suppress the fires—a record amount. Over the last decade, the fire season has become 2.5 months longer, and fires covering more than 10,000 acres increased, with the average area burned by wildland fires doubling in the last three decades to an estimated seven million acres per year.

This year, more records were broken. In California, the Mendocino Complex Fire became the largest wildfire ever recorded in the state, according to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, or Cal Fire.

According to FEMA, 46 million homes in 70,000 communities are at risk of WUI fires, which have destroyed an average of 3,000 structures annually over the past decade. As more people move into the WUI, businesses follow, putting organizations and jobs at risk.

To protect structures from fire, especially those in the WUI, the Insurance Institute for Business & Home Safety (IBHS) recommends that protection should take into account for a building’s materials and design features—as well as the selection, location and maintenance of landscape plants, including grasses, shrubs, bushes and trees.

According to IBHS, a defensible space should be maintained around a building to reduce wildfire threat and help a building to survive without assistance from firefighters. A vegetation management plan (VMP) also needs to be put in place, particularly in WUI areas. A VMP provides important information about the land, such as:

  • Topography (slope and aspect)
  • Location of building(s) on the land
  • Proposed fuel treatment details (suggested actions such as thinning and prescribed burning to minimize wildfire risks)
  • Environmental concerns (such as threatened and endangered species, state-listed sensitive species and wetlands)

The VMP also provides detailed information on how the three defensible space zones will be developed and maintained. When developing a VMP, IBHS recommends consulting a landscape professional such as a forester, range manager, or natural resource specialist.

IBHS recommends creating three defined areas around a building called defensible space zones. Each zone has specific recommendations for the types of plants used, including how they should be grouped and maintained.

Jacksonville Murders Force Reassessment of Active Shooter Risks

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A mass shooting at a video game tournament in Jacksonville, Florida on Sunday has once again shined a spotlight on the growing risks businesses face even as they conduct normal operations.

A lone shooter, 24-year-old David Katz, opened fire on football video gamers at a pizza restaurant, killing two and injuring at least nine before turning the gun on himself in an adjacent restaurant. Reports indicate that Katz was allegedly upset at being eliminated from the tournament. One of the deceased victims was a player who defeated Katz in a prior tournament, leading investigators to believe there had been a motive for the shooting. 

The effect of mass shootings has left Florida numb, especially since this follows the Feb. 14 massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, which left 17 dead and 17 injured; and the Pulse Nightclub shooting in Orlando in 2016, leaving 49 dead and 53 injured. These tragedies demonstrate that no business or venue should consider itself inherently safe and serve as reminders to risk professionals in all sectors that their organizations could be vulnerable to a mass shooting.

Public Safety
The shooting was unique in that it occurred during a live broadcast of the football gaming tournament. Gunshots were clearly audible as players delivered commentary during their simulated contests, prompting them to take cover and call the police, who responded minutes after receiving the first call.  

The incident marked the 235th mass shooting in the U.S., according to the Gun Violence Archive, an organization that collects information about gun-related violence in the country. The FBI and the United States’ Congressional Research Service consider a mass shooting to be one that injures at least four people, excluding the shooter.

In light of this increasingly commonplace threat, understanding how to respond to an active shooter situation can mean the difference between life and death. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security has provided the Run.Hide.Fight plan for guidance in what to do in an active shooter scenario.

Mental Health
As more information about Katz emerges, the links between gun violence, mental health and public safety in the United States become more evident.

CNN reported that Katz had a history of mental health issues and legally purchased a 9mm handgun and a .45-caliber handgun in Maryland. How he transported the weapons and ammunition across state lines and into the event are details still being investigated.

CNN also obtained police records that show 26 calls to the police from the Katz family home in Columbia, Maryland, from 1993 to 2009, for issues ranging from “mental illness” to domestic disputes. At least two of those calls involved Katz arguing with his mother, although none of the reports provided to CNN indicate any physical violence.

Since 2013, residents in Maryland must obtain a handgun qualification license from the state police before purchasing a pistol or revolver. That means Katz would have submitted his fingerprints, undergone a background check (which includes disqualifying individuals who were voluntarily or involuntarily hospitalized for more than 30 days), and passed a firearms safety training course to buy those guns. This scenario has been met with wide skepticism. And since some of his documented mental health issues may have occurred before the gun laws were revised, the disqualifications may not have applied to Katz.

“That clearly is an area in need of reform,” said Democratic Sen. Robert Zirkin, who chairs a Senate committee that handles gun laws.

Insurance
Risk Management magazine recently reported that companies may not be aware of potential gaps in their coverage or that the limits of their coverage, when considering active shooter incidents, are insufficient.

“You might have property coverage, but you might not have assessed your properties in specific locations against this type of risk,” said Robert Hartwig, clinical associate professor of finance and co-director of the Risk and Uncertainty Management Center at the University of South Carolina’s Darla Moore School of Business.“You almost certainly would not have crisis management under your ordinary property or liability policy. So these represent gaps that, as a risk manager, you might be unaware of.”

Beyond property damage, it can be unclear what is covered after a shooting. For example it is difficult to establish the liability for allowing an assailant on a property. “Unfortunately, the increase in the number of active shooter situations has probably gotten ahead of the law on this issue,” Hartwig said. He added that a number of states do allow individuals to carry concealed weapons much, if not all, of the time. “So it’s not necessarily the case that, just by entering the premises with a weapon, individuals are violating the law. Therefore, a business is not necessarily negligent by allowing an armed individual to enter its premises.”  

Body Scanners Installed in L.A., Tested in Other Locations

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Security scanners that screen passengers entering stations and terminals are being tested around the country and have been installed in subway stations in Los Angeles. The Associated Press reported that the machines scan for both metallic and non-metallic objects. They can detect suspicious items from a distance of 30 feet and are capable of scanning more than 2,000 passengers per hour. About 150,000 passengers ride on the Metro’s Red Line daily and the subway system counted more than 112 million rides last year, the AP said.

The New York Times reported that the federal government has been studying the technology for 15 years. The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) partnered with the Los Angeles transit agency on the project, helping the agency test and vet security technologies. The devices purchased are made by the company Thruvision and can be placed at locations throughout the transit system, officials said.

According to the Times:

Officials in Los Angeles said that riders need not worry that their morning commute would turn into the sort of security nightmare often found at airports or even sporting events. The portable screening devices, which will be deployed later this year, will “quickly and unobtrusively” screen riders without revealing their anatomy and without forcing them to line up or stop walking, they said.

“We’re looking specifically for weapons that have the ability to cause a mass casualty event,” Alex Wiggins, the chief security and law enforcement officer for the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority, said Tuesday. “We’re looking for explosive vests, we’re looking for assault rifles. We’re not necessarily looking for smaller weapons that don’t have the ability to inflict mass casualties.”

On Aug. 14 the scanners were tested in the Port Authority Bus Terminal in Manhattan, where in December a man set off a crude pipe bomb in an underground subway passageway, injuring himself. It is estimated that the Port Authority serves about 8,000 buses and 225,000 commuters daily.

As the Risk Management Monitor reported, the TSA also tested body scanners in New York’s Penn Station in Manhattan in February and has conducted tests at Union Station in Washington, D.C., and at a New Jersey Transit station during Super Bowl XLVIII, the AP said.