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Books > Social sciences > Sociology, social studies > Social issues > Social impact of disasters
A timely ethnography of how Indonesia's coastal dwellers inhabit
the "chronic present" of a slow-motion natural disaster Ice caps
are melting, seas are rising, and densely populated cities
worldwide are threatened by floodwaters, especially in Southeast
Asia. Building on Borrowed Time is a timely and powerful
ethnography of how people in Semarang, Indonesia, on the north
coast of Java, are dealing with this global warming-driven
existential challenge. In addition to antiflooding infrastructure
breaking down, vast areas of cities like Semarang and Jakarta are
rapidly sinking, affecting the very foundations of urban life:
toxic water oozes through the floors of houses, bridges are
submerged, traffic is interrupted. As Lukas Ley shows, the
residents of Semarang are constantly engaged in maintaining their
homes and streets, trying to live through a slow-motion disaster
shaped by the interacting temporalities of infrastructural failure,
ecological deterioration, and urban development. He casts this
predicament through the temporal lens of a "meantime," a managerial
response that means a constant enduring of the present rather than
progress toward a better future-a "chronic present." Building on
Borrowed Time takes us to a place where a flood crisis has already
arrived-where everyday residents are not waiting for the effects of
climate change but are in fact already living with it-and shows
that life in coastal Southeast Asia is defined not by the
temporality of climate science but by the lived experience of tidal
flooding.
Terror by Rail is the compelling true story of a major catastrophic
event: the Amtrak 188 accident on May 12, 2015. After the accident,
Lynn's journey and passion for answers caused her to ask questions
about train safety and the bigger global issues that are challenges
of the rail. A must read for anyone who travels, lives, or works
near a rail system, Lynn's Terror by Rail is a wakeup call. As the
phrase goes: See Something Say Something, and Lynn is doing just
that! A born connector as a recruiter, puts the puzzle pieces
together, and readers are blown away by what could have been the
headline for that day had the story gone just 50 feet differently.
This story of a single mom's heartbreaking journey through hell and
back will give everyone facing challenges in their life a bit of
hope that nothing is permanent, and it is possible to come through
the pain to the other side.
Emergency Medical Services (EMS) agencies regardless of service
delivery model have sought guidance on how to better integrate
their emergency preparedness and response activities into similar
processes occurring at the local, regional, State, tribal and
Federal levels. The primary purpose of this project is to begin the
process of providing that guidance as it relates to mass care
incident deployment. The World Bank reported in 2005 that on
aggregate, the reported number of natural disasters worldwide has
been rapidly increasing, from fewer than 100 in 1975 to more than
400 in 2005. Terrorism, pandemic surge, and natural disasters have
had a major impact on the science of planning for and responding to
mass care incidents and remain a significant threat to the
homeland. From the attacks of September 11th, 2001, the subsequent
use of anthrax as a biological weapon, to the more recent surge
concerns following the outbreak of H1N1 influenza, EMS have a real
and immediate need for integration with the emergency management
process, and to coordinate efforts with partners across the
spectrum of the response community. The barriers identified from
the literature review and interviews with national EMS leadership
include: lack of access to emergency preparedness grant funding;
underrepresentation on local, regional, and State level planning
committees; and lack of systematic mandatory inclusion of all EMS
provider types in State, regional, and local emergency plans. In
December 2004, New York University's Center for Catastrophe
Preparedness and Response held a national roundtable that included
experts from major organizations representing the EMS system as a
whole. The report from that meeting concluded that: "EMS providers,
such as fire departments and hospital-based, commercial, and air
ambulance services, ensure that patients receive the medical care
they need during a terrorist attack. While EMS personnel, including
Emergency Medical Technicians and paramedics, represent roughly
one-third of traditional first responders (which also include law
enforcement and fire service personnel), the EMS system receives
only four percent of first responder funding. If EMS personnel are
not prepared for a terrorist attack, their ability to provide
medical care and transport to victims of an attack will be
compromised. There will be an inadequate medical first response."
In 2007, the Institute of Medicine in its landmark report Emergency
Medical Services at the Crossroads issued a recommendation that
stated: "The Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS), the
Department of Homeland Security and the States should elevate
emergency and trauma care to a position of parity with other public
safety entities in disaster planning and operations." Since the
time of these reports Federal progress to address these issues has
included the creation of the Office of Health Affairs (OHA) within
the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the creation of the
Emergency Care Coordination Center (ECCC) within HHS, and the
creation of the Federal Interagency Committee on EMS (FICEMS)
Preparedness Committee. In an effort to increase the level of
preparedness among EMS agencies, the National Emergency Medical
Services Management Association (NEMSMA) approached the DHS and OHA
to engage them in a partnership that would provide a greater
understanding of the shortfalls in EMS emergency preparedness and
provide resources to fill those gaps. The primary objective of this
project is to understand model policies and practices across a
spectrum of disciplines and provider types that will lead to a
better prepared EMS deployment to mass care incidents. This project
should serve as a foundation for further development of EMS
specific policies and templates that improve EMS readiness to
manage the full spectrum of hazards that face their communities.
From earthquakes to tornados, elected officials' responses to
natural disasters can leave an indelible mark on their political
careers. In the midst of the 1992 primary season, Hurricane Andrew
overwhelmed South Florida, requiring local, state, and federal
emergency responses. The work of many politicians in the storm's
immediate aftermath led to a curious "incumbency advantage" in the
general election a few weeks later, raising the question of just
how much the disaster provided opportunities to effectively
"campaign without campaigning." David Twigg uses newspaper stories,
scholarly articles, and first person interviews to explore the
impact of Hurricane Andrew on local and state political incumbents,
revealing how elected officials adjusted their strategies and
activities in the wake of the disaster. Not only did Andrew give
them a legitimate and necessary opportunity to enhance their
constituency service and associate themselves with the flow of
external assistance, but it also allowed them to achieve
significant personal visibility and media coverage while appearing
to be non-political or above "normal" politics. This engrossing
case study clearly demonstrates why natural disasters often
privilege incumbents. Twigg not only sifts through the post-Andrew
election results in Florida, but he also points out the possible
effects of other past (and future) disaster events on political
campaigns in this fascinating and prescient book.
This is the first systematic study of famine in all parts of Europe
from the Middle Ages until the present. In case studies ranging
from Scandinavia and Italy to Ireland and Russia, leading scholars
compare the characteristics, consequences and causes of famine. The
famines they describe differ greatly in size, duration and context;
in many cases the damage wrought by poor harvests was confounded by
war. The roles of human action, malfunctioning markets and poor
relief are a recurring theme. The chapters also take full account
of demographic, institutional, economic, social and cultural
aspects, providing a wealth of new information which is organized
and analyzed within a comparative framework. Famine in European
History represents a significant new contribution to demographic
history, and will be of interest to all those who want to discover
more about famines - truly horrific events which, for centuries,
have been a recurring curse for the Europeans.
Homeland Security Presidential Directive - 7 (December 2003)
established the requirement to protect national critical
infrastructures against acts that would diminish the responsibility
of federal, state, and local government to perform essential
missions to ensure the health and safety of the general public.
HSPD-7 identified the Emergency Services as a national critical
infrastructure sector that must be protected from all hazards. The
Emergency Management and Response-Information Sharing and Analysis
Center (EMR-ISAC) activities support the critical infrastructure
protection and resilience of Emergency Services Sector departments
and agencies nationwide. The fire service, emergency medical
services, law enforcement, emergency management, and 9-1-1 Call
Centers are the major components of the Emergency Services Sector.
These components include search and rescue, hazardous materials
(HAZMAT) teams, special weapons and tactics teams (SWAT), bomb
squads, and other emergency support functions. This Job Aid is a
guide to assist leaders of the Emergency Services Sector (ESS) with
the process of critical infrastructure protection (CIP). The
document intends only to provide a model process or template for
the systematic protection of critical infrastructures. It is not a
CIP training manual or a complete road map of procedures to be
strictly followed. The CIP process described in this document can
be easily adapted to assist the infrastructure protection
objectives of any community, service, department, agency, or
organization.
South-west Donegal, Ireland, June 1856. From the time that the
blight first came on the potatoes in 1845, armed and masked men
dubbed Molly Maguires had been raiding the houses of people deemed
to be taking advantage of the rural poor. On some occasions, they
represented themselves as 'Molly's Sons', sent by their mother, to
carry out justice; on others, a man attired as a woman, introducing
'herself' as Molly Maguire, demanding redress for wrongs inflicted
on her children. The raiders might stipulate the maximum price at
which provisions were to be sold, warn against the eviction of
tenants, or demand that an evicted family be reinstated to their
holding. People who refused to meet their demands were often
viciously beaten and, in some instances, killed - offences that the
Constabulary classified as 'outrages'. Catholic clergymen regularly
denounced the Mollies and in 1853, the district was proclaimed
under the Crime and Outrage (Ireland) Act. Yet the 'outrages'
continued. Then, in 1856, Patrick McGlynn, a young schoolmaster,
suddenly turned informer on the Mollies, precipitating dozens of
arrests. Here, a history of McGlynn's informing, backlit by
episodes over the previous two decades, sheds light on that wave of
outrage, its origins and outcomes, the meaning and the memory of
it. More specifically, it illuminates the end of 'outrage' - the
shifting objectives of those who engaged in it, and also how, after
hunger faded and disease abated, tensions emerged in the Molly
Maguires, when one element sought to curtail such activity, while
another sought, unsuccessfully, to expand it. And in that
contention, when the opportunities of post-Famine society were
coming into view, one glimpses the end, or at least an ebbing, of
outrage - in the everyday sense of moral indignation - at the fate
of the rural poor. But, at heart, The End of Outrage is about
contention among neighbours - a family that rose from the ashes of
a mode of living, those consumed in the conflagration, and those
who lost much but not all. Ultimately, the concern is how the poor
themselves came to terms with their loss: how their own outrage at
what had been done unto them and their forbears lost malignancy,
and eventually ended. The author being a native of the small
community that is the focus of The End of Outrage makes it an
extraordinarily intimate and absorbing history.
This report contains research on behaviors and other factors
contributing to the rural fire problem; identifies mitigation
programs, technologies, and strategies to address those problems;
and proposes actions that USFA can take to better implement
programs in rural communities. In the Spring of 2004, the U S Fire
Administration (USFA) partnered with the National Fire Protection
Association (NFPA) in a cooperative agreement project entitled
Mitigating the Rural Fire Problem. The purpose of the project was
to examine what can be done to reduce the high death rate from
fires in rural U S communities. Rural communities, defined by the U
S Census Bureau as communities with less than 2,500 population,
have a fire death rate twice the national average. The objectives
of the project were to a) conduct research on behaviors and other
factors contributing to the rural fire problem, b) identify
mitigation programs, technologies, and strategies to address those
problems, and c) propose actions that USFA Public Education
Division can take to better implement programs in rural
communities. Research sources included a review of the published
literature, some original statistical analysis, and information
from national technical experts who have worked with NFPA.
In "Closing the Food Gap," food activist and journalist Mark Winne
poses questions too often overlooked in our current conversations
around food: What about those people who are not financially able
to make conscientious choices about where and how to get food? And
in a time of rising rates of both diabetes and obesity, what can we
do to make healthier foods available for everyone?
To address these questions, Winne tells the story of how America's
food gap has widened since the 1960s, when domestic poverty was
"rediscovered," and how communities have responded with a slew of
strategies and methods to narrow the gap, including community
gardens, food banks, and farmers' markets. The story, however, is
not only about hunger in the land of plenty and the organized
efforts to reduce it; it is also about doing that work against a
backdrop of ever-growing American food affluence and gastronomical
expectations. With the popularity of Whole Foods and increasingly
common community-supported agriculture (CSA), wherein subscribers
pay a farm so they can have fresh produce regularly, the demand for
fresh food is rising in one population as fast as rates of obesity
and diabetes are rising in another.
Over the last three decades, Winne has found a way to connect
impoverished communities experiencing these health problems with
the benefits of CSAs and farmers' markets; in "Closing the Food
Gap," he explains how he came to his conclusions. With tragically
comic stories from his many years running a model food
organization, the Hartford Food System in Connecticut, alongside
fascinating profiles of activists and organizations in communities
across the country, Winne addresses head-on the struggles to
improve food access for all of us, regardless of income level.
Using anecdotal evidence and a smart look at both local and
national policies, Winne offers a realistic vision for getting
locally produced, healthy food onto everyone's table.
The United States Fire Administration (USFA) is committed to using
all means possible for reducing the incidence of injuries and
deaths to firefighters. One of these means is to partner with other
people and organizations who share this same admirable goal. One
such organization is the International Association of Fire Fighters
(IAFF). The IAFF has been deeply committed to improving the safety
of its members and all firefighters as a whole. This is why the
USFA was pleased to work with the IAFF through a cooperative
agreement to develop this revised edition of Emergency Incident
Rehabilitation.
Each year, approximately 1,100 Americans 65 and older die in home
fires and another 3,000 are injured. These statistics, combined
with the fact that adults ages 50 or more care for and will soon
enter this high-risk group, inspired USFA to develop a new public
education campaign targeting people ages 50-plus, their families
and caregivers. People between 65 and 74 are nearly twice as likely
to die in a home fire as the rest of the population. People between
75 and 84 are nearly four times as likely to die in a fire. People
ages 85 and older are more than five times as likely to die in a
fire. A Fire Safety Campaign for People 50-Plus encourages people
ages 50 and older - including the high risk 65-plus group - to
practice fire-safe behaviors to reduce fire deaths and injuries.
The strategy is to inform and motivate adults as they enter their
fifties so that stronger fire safety and prevention practices are
integrated into their lives prior to entering the higher fire-risk
decades. In addition, many Baby Boomers are currently caring for
family members ages 65-plus and can encourage fire safe habits.
In 2010, the Incident Emergency Medical Subcommittee (IEMS),
operating under the authority of the National Wildfire Coordinating
Group (NWCG) - Risk Management Committee, completed the document,
Interim Minimum Standards for Medical Units Managed By NWCG Member
Agencies. The document was the first of several to be developed
that will address the need for uniform standards and safe delivery
of medical care provided by Emergency Medical Services (EMS)
personnel at wildland fire. It focused on recognizing current
practices and recommending standards to medical units for;
promoting the use of licensed personnel within their scope of
practice, state EMS office notification, applicable rules and
jurisdictions, medical direction, communications, patient
transportation and medical equipment, medication and supplies used.
The IEMS also committed to developing wildland fire specific
protocols and this document, Clinical Treatment Guidelines for
Wildland Fire Medical Units, PMS 551, is the finished product. A
task group of physicians with diverse backgrounds in wildland fire
medicine, wilderness medicine and emergency/ clinical backgrounds
reviewed this document and provided valuable input. These
guidelines where developed with the expectation that the typical
appropriate Basic Life Support (BLS) or Advanced Life Support (ALS)
EMS interventions will be provided as needed so we did not include
detailed protocols for EMS medical or trauma patient care, which
already exists. Rather, we focused on guidance for the unique
differences and challenges associated with remote sites and
expanded evaluation skills needed for patient care issues such as:
1) assisting a patient with first aid and self-care health
management; 2) triaging conditions for recognition of appropriate
self-care assistance vs. need for transport to clinical medical
care; and 3) initiating urgent/EMS care using appropriate and
predetermined transport modes.
The Agency Administrator's Guide to Critical Incident Management is
designed to assist Agency Administrators in dealing with critical
incidents. A critical incident may be defined as a fatality or
other event that can have serious long-term adverse effects on the
agency, its employees and their families or the community. Although
fire incidents inspired this document, it also has application to
other types of incidents. The Agency Administrator is the
highest-ranking agency line officer with direct responsibility for
the personnel involved in the incident (for example, BLM District
Manager, Park Superintendent, Forest Supervisor, Refuge Manager,
BIA Agency Superintendent or State land manager). Through
effective, efficient, and timely leadership, Agency Administrators
are responsible for the overall management of critical incidents
within their jurisdiction. This document includes a series of
checklists to guide an Agency Administrator through those difficult
and chaotic days that follow a death, serious injury, or other
critical or highly visible event. The time to use it is now This
document needs to be reviewed and updated at least annually. The
availability of Critical Incident Stress Management (CISM) teams
and related resources varies constantly - it is imperative that
local units pre-identify in this plan the CISM resources that can
support local unit needs. This guide was designed as a working tool
to assist Agency Administrators with the chronological steps in
managing the incident. It also provides a detailed overview of
Agency Administrators' responsibilities before a critical incident
occurs, during the actual management of the incident, and after the
incident activity has taken place. It is not intended to take the
place of local emergency plans or other detailed guidance. It
should be used in conjunction with other references as well as the
attached appendixes. This guide can also be used as a worksheet
(both in preparation for and in management of a critical incident)
by Agency Administrators and others with oversight responsibilities
during a critical incident.
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