More on the tragic death of two FF

In Listowel, a small town in southwestern Ontario

Amplify’d from www.lfpress.com

Firefighters continued to douse the scene of a downtown fire into the evening in Listowel that claimed the lives of two firefighters Thursday. (SCOTT WISHART, QMI Agency) LISTOWEL - Two North Perth volunteer firefighters were killed Thursday battling a fire that began in a dollar store whose roof collapsed. Several firefighters were inside the building when the roof collapsed, QMI Agency has learned. Two firefighters were trapped in the Dollar Stop building and later found dead. Their identities hadn't been released. Listowel residents had gathered at the scene, milling about, a nervous tension filling the air. "We all have friends on the fire department and we all feel just sick," said Kelly Irwin, who works in the building next door and was just going out for lunch when she saw thick, black smoke. "(The firefighters) are all local, they're all young guys and they all have young families. The whole town is just on edge right now waiting to hear who it is. But it doesn't matter who it is, it's a real tragedy." Read more at www.lfpress.com

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Heroes are not only oversees

We have our own who put it on the line for us every day.

Amplify’d from www.woodstocksentinelreview.com

Members of the Perth County Ontario Provincial Police (OPP) responded to Main Street west in the Town of Listowel Ontario around 3:30 today to assist the Listowel Volunteer Fire Department who was responding to a structure fire. The fire began at the Dollar Store. A short time later two firefighters were unaccounted for. A search of the structure revealed that two firefighters had succumbed to injuries sustained while fighting the fire. The Ontario Fire Marshall's office has been contacted and is attending. OPP have closed down Main Street, Tremaine Avenue and Wallace Avenue and are asking people to stay clear of the area. There are no further details at this time. Read more at www.woodstocksentinelreview.com

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Japan ... how long the crisis?

Amplify’d from www.guardian.co.uk

Friday 18 March 2011 Article history A week after an earthquake powerful enough to shift the earth's axis by 6.5 inches, shorten the day by 1.6 microseconds, and push Japan two feet into the ground, the country is struggling with multiple crises. Any one of these would test the strongest of nations. Japan has a nuclear crisis, a fuel crisis, 430,000 people homeless, 2 million households without power, 1.4 million without water – all that running concurrently with the task of recovering the bodies of over 9,000 people still thought to be missing. To say that this is the greatest emergency Japan has faced since the second world war – as the prime minister, Naoto Kan, said on Monday – is no exaggeration. Radiation levels above and around the two stricken reactors of the Fukushima Daiichi No 1 nuclear plant have reached such a peak that crews trying to douse one reactor and its spent fuel rod pool were forced back. Increasingly, the ad hoc attempts to cool down the reactors and the pools – by using high pressure hoses from fire engines and Chinook helicopters dumping water from the air – appear not to have worked. The latest status of the four reactors at the plant hardly makes reassuring reading. That leaves reconnecting the plant to the grid and restarting the cooling pumps inside as the last line of defence before a major release of radiation. Read more at www.guardian.co.uk

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Again, confusing messages worry people

One message to Japanese and another for rest of the world. What's right?

Amplify’d from www.smh.com.au

Widespread confusion over nuclear danger The crisis at the Fukushima nuclear plant has led to broad international differences in the portrayal of potential danger.

World anger and frustration is growing at "misinformation" surrounding the deepening nuclear crisis in Japan from the company that operates the ravaged Fukushima Dai-Ichi power plant. An Australian nuclear expert is among a chorus of international voices questioning Tokyo Electric Power Company's (Tepco) ability to handle the world's worst nuclear accident since Chernobyl. The criticism comes after Tepco's conflicting reports and ambiguous and evasive language this week as the Fukushima situation worsened. Read more at www.smh.com.au

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Fear mongering or real threat?

Nature and earthquake in particular are hard to predict.

Amplify’d from californiawatch.org

Is California next in line for big quake? March 16, 2011 | Susanne Rust In just the past year, three major earthquakes have rocked the Pacific Plate. There was last week’s 9.0 temblor off the coast of Japan; the February quake that toppled Christchurch, New Zealand; and the magnitude 8.8 that shook Chile last year. If you were to look at the Pacific Plate as if it were a square, you’d notice that those three quakes mark three of its corners. Which leaves one corner untouched. And some are now wondering if that fourth corner – running from British Columbia to Southern California – is about to go. "It is as though the earth becomes like a great brass bell, which when struck by an enormous hammer blow on one side sets to vibrating and ringing from all over,” wrote Simon Winchester, the author of "Krakatoa" and "A Crack in the Edge of the World," in the March 13 edition of Newsweek. “Now there have been catastrophic events at three corners of the Pacific Plate – one in the northwest, on Friday; one in the southwest, last month; one in the southeast, last year. That leaves just one corner unaffected – the northeast. And the fault line in the northeast of the Pacific Plate is the San Andreas Fault, underpinning the city of San Francisco." Read more at californiawatch.org

 

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When you don't get in front, you'll pay

When you don't provide information in an open manner, it forces journalists to dig for info. Beware what they'll find

Amplify’d from www.theaustralian.com.au

Fukushima nuclear plant owner falsified inspection records THE Japanese owner of the stricken Fukushima nuclear plant falsified safety data and "dishonestly" tried to cover up problems there. Tokyo Electric Power Co injected air into the containment vessel of Fukushima reactor No 1 to artificially “lower the leak rate”. When caught, the company expressed its “sincere apologies for conducting dishonest practices”. The misconduct came to light in 2002 after whistleblowers working for General Electric, which designed the reactor, complained to the Japanese government. Another GE employee later confessed that he had falsified records of inspections of reactor No1 in 1989 - at the request of TEPCO officials. He also admitted to falsifying other inspection reports, also on request of the client. After that incident TEPCO was forced to shut down 17 reactors, albeit temporarily. Read more at www.theaustralian.com.au

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Are they on the same page?

Why is the information coming out of Japan so different that what US officials are saying?

Amplify’d from www.reuters.com

(Reuters) - The United States would like more information from Japan on its nuclear crisis and does not expect harmful radiation from stricken Japanese reactors to reach U.S. territory, officials said on Thursday. Nuclear Regulatory Commission chairman Gregory Jaczko said the United States was working to provide ideas and possibly equipment to help Japan cool its overheating Daiichi nuclear power plant about 240 km (150 miles) north of Tokyo. President Barack Obama, who is leaving for a trip to South America on Friday, stopped by the Japanese embassy in Washington to sign a condolence book and said his administration felt "great urgency" to help Japan. The president is expected to make a fuller statement at 3:30 p.m. EST about the crisis. The White House said Obama was confident that Japan was aware of the severity of the crisis it faced. Read more at www.reuters.com

 

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Is the use of social media in your plan?

The future is now. People are using social media to communicate with each other during disasters. Do you plan to do the same to communicate with your audiences and stakeholders?

Amplify’d from www.bostonherald.com

Social media Web sites — used this week in Japan by survivors of the earthquake and tsunami to communicate — are becoming key disaster response tools. “Before social media, it was difficult for normal people to talk to more than a few people in real-time,” said Dan Zarrella, “social media scientist” at Cambridge marketing firm Hubspot. As land lines and mobile phone networks became overwhelmed, Web sites such as Twitter, Facebook and Skype offered victims of the earthquake and tsunami ways to get relief information and contact friends and family. Read more at www.bostonherald.com

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Disasters are truly global now

No matter where they happen, disasters now necessitate a global response.You can no longer just worry about your local stakeholders and audiences. Others also help shape public opinion.

Amplify’d from www.pbs.org

How Social Media, Internet Changed Experience of Japan Disaster by Dorian Benkoil, March 15, 2011 Tagged: ap, cell video, earthquake, facebook, ipad, japan, kobe, nhk, streaming video, tsunami, twitter The reports and pictures of the devastation from the earthquake and tsunami in Japan last week reminded me of reporting on the earthquake that leveled Japan's port city of Kobe in 1995. On a personal level, I am praying for the people in a country I have come to see as a second home. As a media observer, what struck me this time was how rich and multifaceted the information flow was. In 1995, I worked in the AP bureau in Tokyo, trying to understand what I could from Japanese broadcast news reports. We were sometimes able to reach someone, official or not, in the Kobe region via phone for a quick interview as the death toll rose, eventually reaching more than 6,400. We, of course, covered the major news conferences held by agencies and government offices. For information from the region, I relied largely on the reporters and photographers  (including me three weeks and then six months after the quake) who were dispatched to the scene. Listening to and watching the broadcast channels and the other wire services was an overwhelming and chaotic but -- by today's standards -- thin experience. Multi-platform Experience Today The past few days, sitting at home and in my office in New York, it felt like I had more information and contacts at my fingertips than I did then as a reporter in Japan. The morning I learned of the quake, I had a TV connected to digital cable, an iPad, a Blackberry and a web-connected computer in my living room. I flipped among ABC, NBC, MSNBC, Fox, CNN, and BBC on TV. An iPad app gave me video of quake alerts in English and other languages from Japanese national broadcaster NHK. I dipped into the Twitter and Facebook streams. Read more at www.pbs.org

 

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When overblown fears impede progress

The situation between Ontario and Japan is so different. CANDU reactors are built differently and we don't have major earthquakes and tsunamis here.

Amplify’d from www.torontosun.com

Halt urged for nuclear harings By TERRY DAVIDSON, Toronto Sun Last Updated: March 16, 2011 6:36pm

Greenpeace and Ontario’s nurses paired up on Wednesday to call for the province to halt hearings on new nuclear reactors for Ontario. The hearings on development at the Darlington nuke plant slotted for next week should be postponed, said the environmental group and the Registered Nurses’ Association of Ontario. “There has been no assessment of the cost-effectiveness of new reactors and the environmental and safety reviews ignore the potential for accidents like we’re seeing in Japan,” said Shawn-Patrick Stensil, a nuclear analyst with Greenpeace. “The need, cost-effectiveness and safety of the reactors is in doubt ... a rethink is required,” he said. The nurses’ association said there are lessons in the nuclear disaster unfolding in Japan. “What happened in Japan is capable of happening anywhere there are nuclear reactors,” said Doris Grinspun, executive director of the nurses’ association. “No doubt the nuclear experts and government leaders in Japan were confident that the sheer magnitude of this week’s disaster could never happen there,” Grinspun said. Read more at www.torontosun.com

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