Emergency Preparedness - page 662

As floodwaters slowly receded from much of Iowa, authorities focused their attention on a swollen Mississippi River that punched through at least two levees in western Illinois and increasingly threatened hamlets in Missouri. 

The Department of Homeland Security's failure to implement more than 1,000 recommendations made by its own inspector general has cost the government millions of dollars, according to a report released today by the IG's office. 

Recently, the House Homeland Security Committee (HHSC) held a hearing to examine whether the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is ready to lead relief efforts in the event of a major US catastrophe. Despite the vast amount of resources dedicated to improving DHS's disaster-response capacity, the consensus of the hearing was that the organization is unprepared to provide adequate post-disaster leadership. 

The sprawling network of levees — built over many years to protect the Upper Mississippi basin from the sort of disastrous flooding that has claimed homes, lives and millions of acres of farmland in the past week — was never designed to withstand the magnitude of a 500-year flood. 

Some emergencies are so complex, police or fire departments can`t handle them alone. A pretend explosion had local responders calling on the North Dakota National Guard`s 81st Civil Support team for assistance. 

Ali Usman's wife died of bird flu 10 days ago, but he still has not been officially notified by the government. Desperate for information, he scours the newspapers, which until last month aggressively wrote about deaths in the country hardest hit by the disease, but finds nothing. Keep Reading

A former Navy officer has been tapped to revamp the federal government's small-business disaster assistance program. 

A National Guard plane normally used for anti-drug operations and law enforcement surveillance soared over Indiana today to help with flood-disaster recovery. 

The Sierra Madre earthquake, which struck at 7:43 a.m. June 28, 1991, was centered near the Sierra Madre fault zone in the San Gabriel Mountains and was considered relatively mild, registering at magnitude 5.8 on the Richter scale. Still, two people died — one man in Glendale was felled by a heart attack — and 100 people suffered mostly minor injuries. Total damage: $40 million, most of it to buildings with unreinforced masonry. 

Federal authorities need to work harder to involve their state and local counterparts in disaster response planning and preparedness, Alabama's homeland security chief said at a congressional hearing Wednesday.