Category Archives: Disaster Preparedness

Want to scan your crypto wallet for risks? Check: AML check BTC, USDT, ETH. Checking cryptocurrency wallets for dirty money. You may not be aware of a risky transaction and at any moment, even can increase your AML rating into the red zone.

Another Reminder About Emergency Planning for an Active Shooter

Posted on by

Washington Post shooting calendarYesterday, Dec. 2, 2015, marked the 336th day of the year and 355th mass shooting, according to the Mass Shooting Tracker, which logs incidents in which four or more people are shot. Indeed, there were two mass shootings yesterday: a smaller incident in Georgia in which a woman was killed and three men injured, and the slaughter of at least 14 people and injury of 17 at an office holiday party at San Bernadino’s Inland Regional Center, which provides social services to residents with developmental disabilities. No motive has been found thus far, but two shooters have been identified as a county employee who had attended the party and his wife.

As I wrote in the November issue of Risk Management magazine, researchers from the Harvard School of Public Health and Northeastern University found that the rate of mass shootings has tripled since 2011. According to a study released last year by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, active shooter incidents, where police arrive to a shooting in progress, are also on the rise. The FBI found that 160 of these incidents had taken place in the United States between 2000 and 2013, 70% of which occurred in either a business or educational environment. An average of 11.4 incidents occurred annually, averaging 6.4 in the first seven years studied, and 16.4 in the last seven years.

With the growing frequency and ever-increasing fatalities, risk managers clearly cannot afford to become so inured to these incidents. Rather, much like they do for other forms of crisis, from fires to tornadoes, they need to be acting now to train employees, develop emergency plans, and ensure business continuity provisions are in place.

“You have smart people leading organizations who know they need to do something, but you see them fall into a pattern of planning to have a plan, and they confuse that with taking action on the issue,” said Jay Hart, director of the Force Training Institute. “Planning to have a plan is not a plan. They need to understand that this is a leadership issue, because it is about protecting the people in the company.”

For tips on preparing for an active shooter incident, check out the Q&A with Hart from the December issue of Risk Management, and “Preparing for an Active Shooter Incident,” from the November issue. When developing a plan to respond to an active shooter crisis, make sure to:RM11.15_ff_shoot_side.630

Long-Awaited Infrastructure Repair Bill Nears Passage

Posted on by

Road work

While short-term patches have been used to shore up our nation’s infrastructure for years, leaving large, long-term projects such as bridge repairs to languish, those issues may be remedied by a bill passed by Congress on Tuesday. The measure approves a long-awaited five-year measure of more than $300 billion to fund highways and mass transit. Known as TEA-21, the bill is expected to win final passage by the House and Senate.

“Right now, 11% of our bridges across the country are rated structurally deficient and another 13% are considered functionally obsolete,” Andrew W. Herrmann, 2012 president of ASCE and principal with Hardesty & Hanover LLP, an infrastructure engineering firm, told Risk Management in February 2014. “This means they were designed to an older standard, so they may not have the same lane widths or turning radius or may have been designed to carry lesser loads.”

Deterioration of the nation’s infrastructure jeopardizes public safety, threatens quality of life, and drains the U.S. economy. “If they have to start closing down, restricting or putting mileage postings on bridges, the economy will be affected,” said Herrmann, who served on the advisory council for the 2003, 2005 and 2013 report cards and chaired the council for the 2009 edition. “Bridges are the most pressing need in the infrastructure overall. You can have all the roads and highways you want, but if you don’t have the bridges to cross the rivers and intersections, it slows everything down.”

In California alone, 58% of roadways require rehabilitation or pavement maintenance, 20% need major maintenance or preventative work and 6% need to be replaced. Traffic volume is also growing 10 times faster than lane miles, the California Transportation Commission reported.

According to the Wall Street Journal, highlights of the bill include:

  • Extending the Highway Trust Fund through Sept. 30, 2020, and allowing for total transportation spending of as much as $305 billion.
  • Renewing the Export-Import Bank through September 2019.
  • Separating the budget for Amtrak’s Northeast Corridor services from the rest of the passenger rail network. This would allow the carrier to invest more in the heavily-traveled lines between Boston and Washington.
  • Preserving a program that allots a share of mass-transit funding for seven high-density Northeast states, including New York and New Jersey. The House had earlier voted to eliminate the set-aside and use the money to fund bus programs whose funding had been slashed in 2012.
  • Providing a total $10.8 billion for freight projects, including establishing a $4.5 billion grant program designed to award money to large-scale freight projects.
  • Providing the largest share of funds to the federal highway-aid program, with authorization to spend $207.4 billion over five years.
  • Providing the next largest share of funding to mass transit projects, at $48.7 billion over five years, an increase over levels approved by the House.

October 2015 the Warmest Ever Recorded

Posted on by

It isn’t just your imagination: October 2015 was the warmest on record worldwide, and saw the greatest above-average deviation for any month. According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the average temperature across global land and ocean surfaces was 1.

buy zantac online healthymomsandbabes.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/jpg/zantac.html no prescription pharmacy

76 °F above the 20th century average, surpassing the previous record set last year by 0.36 °F. The globally-averaged land surface temperature was 2.39°F above the 20th century average—the highest for October in 136 years of NOAA records.

buy mobic online healthymomsandbabes.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/jpg/mobic.html no prescription pharmacy

NOAA land and ocean temp percentiles

October was also the warmest month ever compared to average, out of a total of 1,630 months. What’s more, NOAA reports, eight of the first 10 months of the year have been record warm for their respective months—also a record number of broken records. Globally-averaged land surface and sea surface temperatures have been 1.55 °F and 2.30 °F above average, respectively, surpassing all previous records. With many months setting record high temperatures by unprecedented margins, NOAA said in August that there was a 97% chance that 2015 would secure the title of the warmest year on record, and it remains solidly on track.

In early November, the Met Office, Britain’s national weather service, and NASA both reported that the Earth’s average temperature is likely to rise 1 °C above pre-industrial levels for the first time by the end of 2015. This milestone is significant since it marks the halfway point to two degrees Celsius, the internationally accepted limit for avoiding the worst consequences of climate change, the Washington Post reported. Since 2000, global monthly heat records have been broken 32 times, yet the last time a monthly cold record was set was in 1916, according to CBS News.

Some of the heat is likely due to a strong El Nino event in the Eastern Pacific that continues to gather strength.

buy zocor online healthymomsandbabes.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/jpg/zocor.html no prescription pharmacy

This year’s El Nino is already one of the three strongest ever seen, CNN reports, but cannot account for all of the year’s warmth, as 13 of the 15 warmest years on record have occurred since 2000. Rather, it is the combination of long-term warming and the strong El Nino pushing Earth toward its second consecutive warmest year on record.

According to Aon Benfield’s October 2015 Catastrophe Report, there were three billion-dollar weather-related disasters in October: flooding in South Carolina with economic losses of at least $2 billion, $4.2 billion in damage from Typhoon Mujigae in China, and $1 billion in damage from flash flooding in France. The firm estimates worldwide economic losses from October to total more than $10 billion. There have been 21 billion-dollar weather events through October 2015, Aon reported, on pace for a lower total than the annual average of 28.

Check out the infographic below for more of the major climate anomalies and events from October 2015:

NOAA october climate anomalies

Climate Change’s Impact on Cities and Businesses

Posted on by

Growing populations around the globe have created larger cities, as well as greater concentrations of risk. It is projected that a rise in sea levels and increased intensity of events will amplify the impact of hurricanes, tornadoes, heat waves, floods and droughts. Because of this, climate change is seen as one of the biggest threats to cities and businesses and could account for an estimated 20% of the global GDP by the end of this century, according to “Business Unusual: Why the climate is changing the rules for our cities and SMEs” by AXA.

While some cities have worked to put resilience plans in place to reduce the impact of flooding and other disasters, there is much to be done and businesses are vulnerable, especially small- to medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). Only 26% of SMEs have taken action to protect themselves, yet 54% are worried about the impact climate change could have on their business, and the number rises to 75% in emerging markets, the study found.

AXA-SME impact

“These disasters would be magnified by the fact that populations and assets have never been so concentrated in disaster-prone areas,” Henri de Castries, chairman and CEO of AXA Group said in the report. “Half of the world’s population now resides in cities, often along coastlines, and this proportion is due to rise to nearly two-thirds by the middle of the century, representing some 6.4 billion people. It comes as little surprise, then, that 80% of the climate change adaptation costs for 2010-2050 would be borne by urban areas.”

According to the report, these are common elements of resilience planning:

  • Risk assessments to identify key vulnerabilities.
  • Adaptation of essential infrastructure to withstand changes to the environment.
  • Development of flood defenses to protect inhabited areas from flooding caused by extreme weather events and increased rainfall.
  • Urban planning and relocation of buildings, including adapting to future developments that allow greater resilience to the consequences of climate change.
  • Development of emergency warning and response plans—emergency response planning is a core pillar of resilience strategy.
  • Community engagement and awareness-raising activities.

Additional findings:

Impact IImpactII