Center of Excellence

The Press and Disasters – A Reporters Point of View:

CHENGDU, China: The colleague trembled as she spoke. Tears welled up in her eyes and poured forth. A question was formulated, but had barely been posed before the emotion became too great, and she excused herself and left the room. What was the point, she wanted to know, of American journalists asking so many probing questions about the proper response to the earthquake that devastated Sichuan Province last week? What good was served with people still dying and desperate rescue efforts still under way, she demanded, second-guessing the coverage of the Chinese press and asking why they hadn’t posed harder questions?

Read more about it here: Compassion for Quake Victims is Compatible With the Quest for Truth

WINDSOR, Color. — A large tornado bounced through several northern Colorado towns on Thursday, killing at least one person, damaging or destroying dozens of homes and flipping over tractor-trailers and freight rail cars….

U.S. Search and Rescue crews were requested and were being sent to Windsor to help look for anyone trapped….

Crews from Loveland, Ft. Collins and other front range cities arrived with equipment, without any requests, to help chop and remove those downed trees. Their progress was impressive as most streets were clear by 11 pm.

Read more about it here: Monster Tornado Cuts Path of Destruction

In the UK, the primary responsibility for planning for and responding to any major emergency rests with local organisations, acting individually and collectively through Local Resilience Forums (LRF) and Strategic Coordinating Groups (SCG). With this in mind the Civil Contingencies Secretariat (CCS) launched a programme of work to ensure that multi agency pandemic flu plans at the LRF and Regional / Wales levels are fit for purpose.

An effective local response will require the cooperation of a wide range of organisations and the active support of the public. Many important features of a pandemic will not become apparent until after it has started (i.e. when person-to-person transmission has become sustained) and at this time there may be very little time to develop or finalise preparations, so plans must use as their base UK planning assumptions and presumptions as outlined in the National Framework.

Read more about it here: Pandemic Influenza: Supplementary Guidance for Local Resilience Forum Planners

Like earthquakes, floods, fire, and terrorist attacks, a pandemic outbreak has the potential to cause major business interruptions, not to mention confusion, fear…in and out of the workplace. Disasters directly affect an organization’s ability to stay in business. Sending the wrong message during a disaster can be just as harmful as - or even more than - not planning for the disaster at all.

Successfully managing major business interruptions, such as a pandemic flu outbreak, requires creating a comprehensive communication plan. The major component of effective pandemic communication is message mapping, a process of creating prepared messages that can be used in disaster or pandemic-related situations. This paper examines the role of message mapping and the Chandler Message Mapping process in disaster preparedness, especially as it relates to pandemic flu.

Read more about it here: Message Maps: Blueprints for Pandemic Preparedness

Glasgow Airport is owned and operated by BAA Ltd. Handling over 8. 8 million passengers a year; it is the busiest of the three BAA-owned Scottish Airports. Glasgow is situated in the west of Scotland with the airport some 7 miles to the west of the city centre near to the town of Paisley. On 30 June 2007, the second busiest day of the year due to the school holidays commencing the previous day, Glasgow Airport became the target for a car bomb attack, which propelled the airport into the glare of the world’s media and created severe business continuity issues for the airport. In line with BAA group requirements, Glasgow Airport has a fully functioning business continuity management (BCM) strategy. This came into its own during the incident and this case study details the attack and its repercussions, overviews the response and highlights the lessons learned.

Read more about it here (PDF): Business Continuity and Crisis Management Case Study

The Educated Soldier: 3 Colleges will Provide Courses for Forces in Iraq

By ANDREA L. FOSTER

U.S. troops in Iraq and other foreign countries will be able to take face-to-face classes, many of them to earn bachelor-of-arts degrees, under contracts totaling $66-million that the Department of Defense awarded this month to three American colleges.

The colleges will be the first to provide on-the-ground instruction to troops in Iraq, according to Julio A. Hernandez, an Army spokesman. Forces in as many as 23 other countries, mainly in the Middle East, may also be served.

The institutions and the value of their contracts are Central Texas College, $47.5-million; Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, $5.6-million; and the University of Maryland University College, $13.3-million. The colleges already have a reputation for educating U.S. military personnel (The Chronicle, July 7, 2006). Their contracts, to benefit troops of the U.S. Central Command, are for 14 months, but could be extended an additional three years and 10 months.

Susan C. Aldridge, president of the University of Maryland University College, announced its award this month. In a phone conversation, she estimated that as many as 15,000 active-duty military personnel will be taking courses taught by full-time University College faculty members.

Courses, offered first in Iraq, are expected to begin August 1, said Ms. Aldridge. She anticipates that the University College will have faculty members at five U.S. bases in Iraq over the length of the contract.

Most of the students will be taking first- or second-year liberal-arts courses with the goal of earning bachelor-of-arts degrees. But some students will be taking courses with the goal of earning a master’s degree, she said.

The University College is already providing face-to-face classes to Central Command troops in four countries: Afghanistan; Djibouti, in East Africa; Kuwait, and Qatar. Central Texas is offering courses in those countries and in Egypt and Kosovo.

The Center for IT Excellence at Bellevue Community College has released their May 2008 newsletter.

You can view it here: May 2008 Center for IT Excellence Newsletter.