• Tiltable-head robots adept at navigating disaster debris

    Search and rescue missions have made the headlines in the last eighteen months, following the earthquakes in Haiti and Chile, the floods in Pakistan and New Zealand, and the tsunami in Japan; machines able to navigate through complex dirt and rubble environments could have helped rescuers after these natural disasters, but building such machines is challenging; Georgia Tech researchers have now built a robot that can penetrate and “swim” through granular material

  • 7/7 attacks could not have been prevented: report

    An inquest into the 7 July 2005 attack on London transportation concluded that any suggestion MI5 could have stopped the attacks was “based to a considerable extent on hindsight”; there were failures in the response by emergency workers — confusion, a shortage of first aid supplies, and radios that did not work underground, but the report concludes that government errors had not increased the death toll

  • Search-and-rescue robot operators get better with practice

    Urban search and rescue (USAR) task forces are essential for locating, stabilizing, and extricating people who become trapped in confined spaces following a catastrophic event; sometimes the search area is too unstable for a live rescue team, so rescuers have turned to robots carrying video cameras; trouble is, research shows that more often than not, the human beings who remotely operate the robots have a view of their robot-control skills which is at variance with reality, causing robots to get stuck

  • Philadelphia police hold emergency exercise

    On Wednesday morning the Philadelphia police department held a training exercise to help prepare officers to respond during a terrorist attack; starting at 10:30 AM roughly 50 officers gathered on 22nd Street and JFK Boulevard where they were given assignments, briefed, and eventually deployed to cover different sections of Center City; The drill involved members of the department’s Homeland Security Unit and was a rapid deployment exercise that reflected Philadelphia’s heightened level of awareness following the death of Osama bin Laden

  • Improving safety in the presence of chemical hazards

    A new kind of sensor could warn emergency workers when carbon filters in the respirators they wear to avoid inhaling toxic fumes have become dangerously saturated; first responders protect themselves from such vapors, whose composition is often unknown, by breathing through a canister filled with activated charcoal — a gas mask; airborne toxins stick to the carbon in the filter, trapping the dangerous materials, and as the filters become saturated, chemicals will begin to pass through; the respirator can then do more harm than good by providing an illusion of safety

  • DHS IG criticizes FEMA's IT systems

    DHS Inspector General says that FEMA’s IT systems “do not support disaster response activities effectively”; the IG recommends that FEMA develop a comprehensive IT strategic plan with clearly defines goals and objectives to support program IT initiatives, and that FEMA establish an agency-wide IT budget planning process to include all FEMA program technology initiatives and requirements

  • Missouri pounded by rains and tornadoes, thousands evacuate

    This week heavy rain storms are raging across the mid-west and south forcing thousands of residents in Missouri to flee as swollen rivers threaten to flood their homes; in some areas emergency responders do not have many options and can do nothing but hope that the levees hold; the mid-west will not see any respite from the storms until Thursday as another major storm system is about to hit; officials are bracing for substantial flooding; the region is still struggling to recover from major storms that spawned tornadoes in six states killing forty-five people and damaging structures; Missouri has requested aid from the Federal Emergency Management Agency

  • Japanese app helps spread earthquake warning

    After the 9.0 magnitude earthquake and tsunami ravaged Japan, hundreds of thousands of people have signed up for a new emergency warning app for their iPhones; when an earthquake is predicted to hit, the iPhone app, called Yure Kuru, will send out an alert and let subscribers know when the quake is coming, where the epicenter is located, and how bad the shaking will be; the app was developed by Tokyo based RC Solution Co., which specializes in mass alert systems and spreading information in the event of an emergency; since the 11 March earthquake, the company’s subscribers have sky rocketed from 100,000 to more than 1.5 million

  • AT&T shows mobile cell towers for disaster communication

    A new family of solutions from AT&T will make business, government, and public safety agencies better prepared for natural or man-made disasters; one of the new offerings, the “Fly-away” solution, packs a small cell site into a suitcase, offering first responders an easy-to-use, transportable system that can bring voice and data coverage to an area where disaster has knocked out communication channels

  • NY emergency services communication not up to snuff

    Nearly ten years after the 9/11 attacks, many police officers and first responders in New York still carry radios that cannot communicate with fellow emergency services personnel working for other agencies and jurisdictions; often, they use their personal cell phones during an operation; state lawmakers want this situation changed

  • New cloth captures noxious gasses, odors

    Cornell university students develop a new cloth that can capture noxious gasses and odors — and that can be fashioned into masks or hooded shirts to be used by soldiers and first responders; the garments use metal organic framework molecules (MOFs) and cellulose fibers

  • Disaster-zone phone communication software available for free

    Australian researchers developed software which enables mobile phones to communicate during a disaster; it will be freely available to the public by the end of the year thanks to the support of the Dutch NLnet Foundation; the software can be used on compatible mobile phone handsets to create an alternative “network” where conventional mobile phone coverage has been destroyed or does not exist

  • Report finds Coast Guard unprepared for BP oil spill

    An internal review by the U.S. Coast Guard found that its response to the colossal Deep Water Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico last year was hindered by its lack of preparation and reduced response capabilities; the 158 page review said that the government and private sector “demonstrated a serious deficiency in planning and preparedness for an uncontrolled release of oil from an offshore drilling operation”; in response to the review, R. J. Rapp Jr., the commandant of the Coast guard, said that his agency would pay greater attention to industry oil-spill response plans, begin preparing for future accidents, and conduct a study on the large use of chemical dispersants on the environment

  • DHS: U.S. unprepared for nuclear disaster

    Confidential DHS report says the United States is ill-prepared for a nuclear disaster — either an accident or a terrorist attack; just one example: if a major nuclear bomb were to hit Washington, D.C., there would be a need for about 61,000 beds in intensive care units; there are, however, only 118,000 intensive care beds in the entire United States and, on any given day, only 9,400 are free.

  • New Zealand company to offer personal jet packs

    A New Zealand company has successfully tested a jet pack, and will soon make it commercially available for about £50,000; in tests, the pack, which weighs less than 254 pounds, traveled 30 miles in 30 minutes on a full tank of fuel; it reached heights of up to 2,400 meters and top speeds of 60 mph; the company said the pack could be perfect for the emergency services, private users, and even the military