Category Archives: Disaster Preparedness

Want to scan your crypto wallet for risks? Check: AML crypto BTC, USDT, ETH. Checking cryptocurrency wallets for dirty money.

TSA’s Anti-Terror Trackers Tested at Penn Station

Posted on by

The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) had a presence in New York’s Penn Station this week, as it partnered with Amtrak to test new security technology that can help prevent and detect risks of terrorism and violence.

The TSA set up a passive system known as a stand-off explosive detection unit at the Amtrak concourse to identify individuals carrying/wearing a person-borne improvised explosive device (PBIED), such as a suicide bomb or vest. Such a vest was worn by terror suspect Akayed Ullah, when he attempted to blow himself up in a tunnel connected to the Port Authority in Midtown Manhattan last December.

The system will be tested at Penn Station through the end of this week and operated by Amtrak police officers. TSA spokesperson Lisa Farbstein said that local enforcement agents can be trained on the technology and laptop in one day and that local police would establish protocol if a weapon were to be detected.

online pharmacy vilitra with best prices today in the USA

According to TSA information, the unit’s main feature is a screening technology that can be used by Amtrak and mass transit agencies to detect potential threats—metallic or non-metallic—by identifying objects that block the naturally-occurring emissions emitted by a person’s body.

online pharmacy biaxin with best prices today in the USA

The unit does not emit any radiation and no anatomical details of a person are displayed.

The use of the detection technology enables a rail or transit agency to help safeguard against terrorist threats in a mass transit environment.

online pharmacy cipro with best prices today in the USA

The TSA is supplying two models of the equipment for the purposes of the demonstration. One model is mounted on a tripod, the other is contained in a trunk.

The equipment is mobile, which allows agencies to easily relocate it to different stations. Users operate it via a laptop computer in the station. The image that appears on the laptop reveals concealed objects that block the body emissions and indicate the location and size of those objects on a green image of an individual.

Penn Station was the most recent stop in the new technology’s national testing tour. In December 2017, the scanners were used in the Los Angeles 7th Street metro station where more than 86,000 people pass through each weekday; one month earlier they were used by Amtrak in Washington, D.C. They were also used in Secaucus, New Jersey in 2014 as riders made their way to MetLife Stadium for Super Bowl XLVIII.

Amtrak Positive About Meeting PTC Deadline

Posted on by

Earlier this month, Amtrak President Richard Anderson told the House railroads subcommittee that his company is on target to complete installation of positive train control (PTC) on the infrastructure it controls and on all of its equipment by the Dec. 31, 2018 federal deadline. He warned, however, that trains without PTC by the deadline could not use Amtrak’s tracks.

“We believe that PTC should ultimately be in place for all Amtrak routes and, as a matter of U.S. policy, PTC should be required for all passenger rail trips in America,” Anderson told the House Subcommittee on Railroads, Pipelines and Hazardous Materials.

PTC is designed to eliminate human error by using four components: GPS satellite data, onboard locomotive equipment, the dispatching office and wayside interface units. The system communicates with the train’s onboard computer, allowing it to audibly warn the engineer and display the train’s safe braking distance based on its speed, length, width and weight, as well as the grade and curvature of the track, according to railroad operator Metrolink.

buy champix online www.methanol.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/png/champix.html no prescription pharmacy

If the engineer does not respond to the warning, the onboard computer will activate the brakes and safely stop the train.

Anderson’s testimony poses a challenge for major transportation providers like NJ Transit, whose trains run on the Northeast Corridor east of the Hudson River tunnels to New York City. Committee members have noted that NJ Transit “hasn’t even started” the process of installing PTC, while the company’s spokeswoman maintains that despite delays attributed to software compatibility, she believes they can meet the deadline. According to a Federal Railroad Administration progress report, 8% of NJ Transit’s locomotives and none of its tracks were updated with PTC as of the end of 2017.

After Congress passed the PTC Enforcement and Implementation Act of 2015 it also authorized the FAST Act, which allocated $199 million in PTC grant funding and specifically prioritized PTC installation projects for Railroad Rehabilitation and Improvement Financing funding. The Association of American Railroads estimates that freight railroads will spend $10.6 billion implementing PTC, with additional hundreds of millions each year to maintain. The American Public Transportation Association has estimated that the commuter and passenger railroads will have to spend nearly .

buy vibramycin online www.methanol.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/png/vibramycin.html no prescription pharmacy

6 billion on PTC.

“Without PTC, the system is too vulnerable to single points of failure, many of which are dependent upon the memory of a single human being interacting with a big, complicated system,” Anderson said. “When an engineer loses situational awareness or forgets a rule, we have no systems to assist them and help them prevent that error.”

He also noted that Amtrak is taking additional steps, such as installing inward-facing cameras. “These cameras monitor locomotive and engineer performance and are installed in Amtrak trains along routes in the northeast, midwest, and west and we are actively working to install them on Amtrak trains nationwide. Reviewing the data from these cameras, coupled with the data from our efficiency testing programs, provides us an excellent view of operational issues to be addressed in future training programs.”

Efforts to upgrade train technology has been a nationwide priority. The most recent major derailment occurred on Dec. 18, 2017 when an Amtrak train derailed near Tacoma, Washington, killing three passengers and injuring about 100. That crash was the result of excessive speed in a steep curve, which experts suggested could have been prevented with PTC’s automatic braking technology. Amtrak Train No. 501, on its inaugural run, was traveling 80 miles per hour in an area limited to 30 miles per hour when it derailed on an overpass, sending the train’s 12 coaches and one of its two engines careening onto the highway below.

As previously reported in Risk Management, a similar derailment in Philadelphia in May 2015 that killed eight, was also blamed on excessive speed and could have been avoided if PTC had been in place.

New Bill Would Toughen Calif. Dam Inspections

Posted on by

DWR Photo: Lake Oroville on Jan. 19, 2018 with lake levels at 707 feet.

A year after the spillway collapse at the Oroville Dam, leading to evacuations of almost 200,000 residents and a beat-the-clock patching job to avoid a break in the tallest dam in the United States, new legislation to strengthen inspections of dams awaits approval of California Gov. Jerry Brown.

The bill would require annual inspections for high hazard dams, raise inspection standards and require consultation with independent experts every 10 years, according to ABC News.

As reported by Risk Management Magazine, problems at the Oroville Dam began when the dam’s main sluice was damaged after a winter season of record rain and snowfall, following five years of drought. Torrential rainfall caused water levels to rise so quickly that large amounts needed to be released to prevent the dam from rupturing and sending a wall of water to the communities below.

A recent report of the root-cause of the spillway failure by the Independent Forensic Team (IFC), which includes members of the Association of State Dam Safety Officials and the United States Society of Dams, notes that:

There was no single root cause of the Oroville Dam spillway incident, nor was there a simple chain of events that led to the failure of the service spillway chute slab, the subsequent overtopping of the emergency spillway crest structure, and the necessity of the evacuation order. Rather, the incident was caused by a complex interaction of relatively common physical, human, organizational, and industry factors, starting with the design of the project and continuing until the incident. The physical factors can be placed into two general categories:

  • Inherent vulnerabilities in the spillway designs and as-constructed conditions, and subsequent chute slab deterioration

  • Poor spillway foundation conditions in some locations

The IFC report concludes that all dam owners in the state need to “reassess current procedures” in light of its findings.

According to the IFC:

“The fact that this incident happened to the owner of the tallest dam in the United States, under regulation of a federal agency, with repeated evaluation by reputable outside consultants, in a state with the leading dam safety regulatory program, is a wake-up call for everyone involved in dam safety. Challenging current assumptions on what constitutes ‘best practice’ in our industry is overdue.”

Initial response to the spillway failure included erosion mitigation for both spillways during the incident, sediment removal and installation of temporary transmission lines at a cost of $160 million, According to the DWR. Phase-two includes removal of the original 730 feet of the upper chute, replacing it with structural concrete.

Thousands of U.S. Bridges Deemed Deficient

Posted on by

More than 54,000 bridges along the Interstate Highway System in the United States were rated as “structurally deficient,” according to new analysis conducted by the American Road & Transportation Builders Association’s (ARTBA). This was just one of many of the concerning statistics detailed by ARTBA in its 2018 Deficient Bridge Report on Jan. 29.

Other critical details include:

  • The average age of a structurally deficient bridge is 67 years, compared to 40 years for non-deficient bridges.
  • Repair needs are identified among one in three U.S. bridges (226,837 total) and one in three bridges (17,726) along the Interstate Highway System (IHS).
  • There is the equivalent of one “structurally deficient” bridge for every 27 miles of the 48,000-mile IHS, which carries 75% of the nation’s heavy truck traffic.

The ARTBA report echoes the results of the American Society of Civil Engineers’ Report Card for 2017, wherein the U.S. received a performance of D+ based on the physical condition and needed investments for improvement. As reported by Risk Management magazine in 2017, the U.S. spends only 2.5% of its gross domestic product on infrastructure. The American Society of Civil Engineers estimated that, over the next 10 years, the gap between planned investments in infrastructure and investment needs could exceed $2.1 trillion, with the largest investment gap in the transportation sector, followed by schools, electric utilities and water/wastewater systems.

With Americans crossing these deficient bridges 174 million times daily, there is reason for concern among private citizens and companies. At the current pace of repair or replacement, it would take 37 years to remedy all of them, said Alison Premo Black, PhD, ARTBA chief economist, who conducted ARTBA’s analysis.

“An infrastructure package aimed at modernizing the Interstate System would have both short- and long-term positive effects on the U.S. economy,” she said, noting that traffic bottlenecks cost the trucking industry more than $60 billion per year in lost productivity and fuel.

The report was issued just ahead of President Trump’s first State of the Union address on Jan. 30, in which he identified a struggling infrastructure and requested legislation aimed at capital improvements:

Tonight, I am calling on the Congress to produce a bill that generates at least $1.5 trillion for the new infrastructure investment we need. Every federal dollar should be leveraged by partnering with state and local governments and, where appropriate, tapping into private sector investment—to permanently fix the infrastructure deficit.

Any bill must also streamline the permitting and approval process—getting it down to no more than two years, and perhaps even one.

National Public Radio reported that the White House initially called for a $1 trillion rebuilding plan but raised the stakes during the address, and specifically called out certain phrasing.

“That word ‘generates’ is important,” wrote NPR contributors in an analysis of the speech, “because this would not mean the U.S. government is spending $1 trillion.” President Trump has allocated $200 billion in federal spending on infrastructure. “The bulk of the $200 billion would go toward leveraging state and local money and private investment,” NPR’s David Schaper reported.