cultural factors in response

Your planning must include a recognition of not only vulnerable needs populations but also cultural differences that may impact your response and recovery efforts.

Amplify’d from www.mysinchew.com

Ritual of a bath denied to Japan survivors Japan devastated Features  2011-03-20 13:01 By Huw Griffith RIKUZENTAKATA, Sunday 20 March 2011 (AFP) -- Of all the day-to-day hardships suffered by survivors of Japan's tsunami, the simple everyday ritual of a bath -- so important in the nation's culture -- is the thing many say they miss the most. In a country where bathing is an elaborate and highly prized daily pleasure, the people of the washed-away city of Rikuzentakata now can only rinse their faces in cold water. Life for many is now lived in a school hall, with the only water coming from a small military tanker parked outside the entrance. "I haven't had a bath in a week," said Honami Suzuki. "That's one of the worst things about living in the shelter." About 1,000 of the 9,500 people left homeless in Rikuzentakata are holed up in Daiichi middle school, where volunteer Tsutomu Nakai is co-ordinating their care. Read more at www.mysinchew.com

 

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Nuclear: some lessons learned?

Improved risk management ?

Amplify’d from www.google.com

Nuclear crisis may affect placement of US reactors (AP) – 4 hours ago WASHINGTON (AP) — Energy Secretary Steven Chu suggested Sunday that Japan's nuclear crisis might make it less likely that new nuclear reactors are built near large American cities, just one of many safety changes that could be forthcoming as U.S. officials review reactor safety. "Certainly where you site reactors and where we site reactors going forward will be different than where we might have sited them in the past," Chu said in response to questions about the Indian Point nuclear plant near New York City. "Any time there is a serious accident, we have to learn from those accidents and go forward." Meanwhile, the chairman of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission said his agency will again review how U.S. nuclear plants store spent-fuel from nuclear reactors. The state of the spent fuel pools at the Fukushima Dai-ichi plant has been a major concern as Japanese officials try to stem the release of radiation and bring the reactors under control. "Five days ago everybody was worried about earthquakes and tsunamis and the reactors cooling," NRC Chairman Gregory Jaczko told The Associated Press. "Today everybody is worried about the spent fuel pools. Until this is resolved we are not going to ultimately know what the most important factors are in terms of what needs to be addressed." Read more at www.google.com

 

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A silver lining?

Things are being slowly returned under control at Fukushima.

Amplify’d from www.latimes.com

Radiation levels may be falling at stricken nuclear plant The radiation levels are still high at the Fukushima Daiichi plant but appear to be coming down, says the head of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, cautioning that it is still hard to obtain accurate data.

And the spent fuel pool at reactor building No. 4 is thought to have boiled dry, allowing the fuel rods to heat up and become damaged, also releasing radioactivity into the environment. The nuclear cores inside the reactors are usually covered in water, but the top halves of the cores in reactors 1, 2 and 3 were exposed to air for at least several days, according to reports from the International Atomic Energy Agency and other sources. Even if those cores are resubmerged, they may have experienced permanent damage that would make them more difficult to keep cool, Lyman said. For instance, he said, if the exposed portions of the fuel rods have swelled due to heat, the gaps between them may now be too small to pass enough water to cool them. Read more at www.latimes.com

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When do you kick out the owners?

When an incident at a privately-owned facility threatens public health and safety, when does the common good supplant the private interests of the owners?

Amplify’d from www.boingboing.net

WSJ: TEPCO initially resisted using seawater to cool reactors; harm to "valuable power assets" feared Xeni Jardin at 6:33 AM Saturday, Mar 19, 2011  In the Wall Street Journal, news that Crucial efforts to stave off the worsening crisis at the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant were delayed by its operator's concerns over damaging "valuable assets," and by "initial passivity" on the part of Japan's government. Snip from WSJ: Tepco was reluctant to use seawater because it worried about hurting its long-term investment in the complex, say people involved with the efforts. Seawater, which can render a nuclear reactor permanently inoperable, now is at the center of efforts to keep the plant under control. Tepco "hesitated because it tried to protect its assets," said Akira Omoto, a former Tepco executive and a member of the Japan Atomic Energy Commission, an official advisory body involved in the effort to tame the plant. Both Tepco and government officials had good reason not to use saltwater, Mr. Omoto added. Early on, nuclear fuel rods were still under cooling water and undamaged, he said, adding, "it's understandable because injecting seawater into the fuel vessel renders it unusable." Read more at www.boingboing.net

 

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The crisis mapping crew and Lybia

A good piece on the contribution of "digital volunteers" to the efforts to help civilians in Lybia.

Amplify’d from libyacrisismap.net

OCHA, UNOSAT and NetHope have been collaborating with the Volunteer Technical Community (VTC) specifically CrisisMappers, Crisis Commons, Open Street Map, and the Google Crisis Response Team over the past week.    The CrisisMappers Standby Task Force has been undertaking a mapping of social media, news reports and official situation reports from within Libya and along the borders at the request of OCHA. The Task Force is also aiding in the collection and mapping of 3W information for the response. UNOSAT is kindly hosting the Common Operational Datasets to be used during the emergency. Interaction with these groups is being coordinated by OCHA’s Information Services Section.    The public version of this map does not include personal identifiers and does not include descriptions for the reports mapped. This restriction is for security reasons. All information included on this map is derived from information that is already publicly available online (see Sources tab).

SEARCH Libya Crisis Map Social Media Mapping for Common Operational Datasets Read more at libyacrisismap.net

 

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Nuclear blinders?

Has the media's attention on the nuclear incidents in Japan taken away from the huge devastation caused by the earthquake and tsunami?

Amplify’d from www.hlswatch.com

The apocalyptic visions of destruction brought by the Japanese earthquake and subsequent tsunami have been largely replaced in the media this week by reports of the struggle to control radiation from the stricken Fukushima nuclear plant. This provides a gripping narrative – a brave team battling to contain the threat, warnings of catastrophe and claims of incompetence, families desperate to protect their children and leave the area. But perhaps the media coverage tells us more about ourselves than it does about the threat of radiation. Psychologists have spent years identifying the factors that lead to increased feelings of risk and vulnerability – and escaped radiation from nuclear plants ticks all the boxes. It is an invisible hazard, mysterious and not understood, associated with dire consequences such as cancer and birth defects. It feels unnatural. Read more at www.hlswatch.com

 

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The way we produce and consume info

Is changing in many ways. Collective news gathering has replaced the old ways. We're now in the era of social convergence where we can all be broadcasters.

Amplify’d from blogs.hbr.org

Upon reading the title of this post I suspect your reaction is, "Really? I didn't even know it was a news organization." And that reaction is precisely why many people look with disbelief at the extraordinary estimates of Facebook's value. Facebook is not some plaything. It is a fully fledged news organization on a scale we have never seen. News organizations do two major things, commercially speaking: they use news to grab attention and then sell that attention to advertisers. In the old chain of news production, a piece of timely information was researched by journalists, sifted through by publishers, and disseminated. It was a reporting of the facts rather than an expression of opinion. As traditional news organizations faced the maelstrom of the digital revolution, many noticed that it was not just the stuff that editors had deemed socially important that was drawing in readers. Tailored, specialized news — the style and sport sections — that appeal to specific demographics pulled attention and therefore advertiser interest. Some hypothesized that tailored content could go further. Local newspapers, for example, could provide hyper-local content of interest to neighborhoods, like newsletters but with ads. Read more at blogs.hbr.org

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Cultural or corporate bias against truth

About time some official admit the painful truth. Does not come early enough to remove doubts in the minds of millions.

Amplify’d from www.riskintel.com

Nuclear plant chief weeps as Japanese finally admit that radiation leak is serious enough to kill people “The boss of the company behind the devastated Japanese nuclear reactor today broke down in tears – as his country finally acknowledged the radiation spewing from the over-heating reactors and fuel rods was enough to kill some citizens Japan’s Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency admitted that the disaster was a level 5, which is classified as a crisis causing ‘several radiation deaths’ by the UN International Atomic Energy. Officials said the rating was raised after they realised the full extent of the radiation leaking from the plant. They also said that 3 per cent of the fuel in three of the reactors at the Fukushima plant had been severely damaged, suggesting those reactor cores have partially melted down.” Read more at www.riskintel.com

 

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How do we deal with cyber threats?

Do we have the right legislative measures to protect our critical infrastructure?

Amplify’d from www.ottawacitizen.com

OTTAWA — Hackers are penetrating the national power grid, say industry insiders who want the federal government to act. "We certainly know from our customers that their systems have been infiltrated. It's been going on for some time," said Doug Westlund, president of N-Dimension Solutions, a Richmond Hill, Ont. cyber security company that works with North American utilities. "I can't tell you who they are, but they're close to home for sure." Westlund, whose company is part of a research project sponsored by the United States Department of Energy to protect the emerging digital "smart grid" against cyber attacks, likened the incidents to a covert penetration and reconnaissance of the U.S. system in 2009. Those cyberspies also reportedly embedded software in utilities' computers that could have disrupted future service. Officials speculate either Russia or China was responsible. Westlund said the Canadian intrusions appear to have been to navigate the systems and their controls, not to embed malicious codes. Read more at www.ottawacitizen.com

 

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too much focus on the nuclear?

Is the focus on restoring control over runaway nuclear reactors hiding Japan's own katrina-like response? We are seeing a few reports of vulnerable populations being left behind. Sound familiar?

Amplify’d from www.dailymail.co.uk

'We have been betrayed': Mayor of town near stricken Japanese nuclear plant claims his people have been 'abandoned' 'We've been left to die': Minamisoma's mayor Katsunobu Sakarai told the BBC his people felt alone and in danger The voice on the phone was calm and dignified, as befitted a proud Japanese mayor, yet this somehow made his fury more forceful. Hours after the tsunami struck, Katsunobu Sakurai told me, he had sought advice from the government on whether to evacuate the 71,000 people in his city, which is just 12 miles downwind of the Fukushima nuclear plant. At first ministerial officials simply ignored his calls. When he did manage to speak to them, they assured him there was no cause for concern; a message he accepted and dutifully relayed. He had toed the line because that is what Japan's civic leaders invariably do. But yesterday, far too late, the mayor of Minamisoma finally realised that he had been deceived, at best, and perhaps even lied to. Read more at www.dailymail.co.uk

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