Two years ago, I wrote an essay in TIME about the radical genius of creating a cabinet-level position to manage volunteers in California, America’s Disaster Laboratory. Today, we have more big news coming out of the lab.
Secretary Karen Baker, the woman who got that job on Gov. Schwarzenegger’s cabinet, is introducing the nation’s first Disaster Corps--a squad of 1,000 elite, well-trained volunteers who can can be deployed to disaster sites as soon as they are needed (without waiting for the soul-killing bureaucratic sign-offs that so often delay volunteer efforts…
I just wrote a review of a strange and compelling book that I want to tell you about. A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities that Arise in Disaster, is by Rebecca Solnit, an author and essayist.
The book chronicles five disasters--the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, the Halifax explosion of 1917, the 1985 Mexico City earthquake, Hurricane Katrina and 9/11. But instead of rehashing the old stories of suffering and redemption, Solnit focuses on the ways many people seemed to thrive in some ways in the midst of all…
This year, Americans will experience some 1,200 tornadoes and 8,000 wildfires. A handful of storms will probably turn into honest-to-God hurricanes. Disasters are getting more common and more expensive, largely because we keep moving more of our valuables into the country’s most beautiful, unstable places.
Watching over this all-night, boom-bust casino is Craig Fugate, the new head of FEMA under President Barack Obama. Check out my story in the new Atlantic about why Fugate, a former firefighter, is an unusual choice for the job.
Wherever I go to talk about the brain in disasters, I get asked one question in particular: What about children? How does a child’s brain respond to a disaster? Is it different than an adult’s brain?
Yes, very different. And the differences make children both better and worse at responding to disasters. It depends on the age of the child and the type of disaster, of course, along with a million other caveats. But here’s what we know:
* Before a disaster strikes—Young children have extremely plastic brains. They can learn faster than adults, making them…
IN AMERICA, THE PEOPLE IN CHARGE OF EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT spend millions of dollars a year holding training drills and tabletop exercises. All well and good. But when was the last time that you--the most important person on the scene--got invited?
Thanks to John Solomon for flagging last week’s 5-day nationwide drill in Israel as a model for a meaningful drill. Imagine: a drill that includes the entire population--and features surprise scenarios that require people to take action.…
Just did my first webinar of all time. I am still not sure how to explain what a webinar actually is, but I have to say, it was surprisingly pleasant. Basically, myself and two emergency managers California and Florida chatted with about 250 people about how to craft warnings (from hurricanes to wildfires to swine flu) that people will actually listen to.
Thanks to Governing Magazine for inviting me and to Visa Public Sector for sponsoring the show. I learned a lot from the listeners and my fellow panelists--Ron Lane, Emergency Services Director in San…
I was struck by a paragraph in a recent article by Natalie Angier in which she explains why we remember songs so much more easily than regular spoken words. Believe it or not, the answer goes a long way toward explaining why we tend to move so slowly in life-or-death situations.
The brain understands the world by detecting patterns:
“The brain has a strong propensity to organize information and perception in patterns, and music plays into that inclination,” said Michael Thaut, a professor of music and neuroscience at Colorado State…
I gave a speech at the State Department yesterday, and as always happens at these things, I came away much the wiser. In fact, I am starting to think that the main reason to do these speeches is the selfish one: because at the end, I just stand there sipping from a bottle of water and people walk up to tell me wondrous, strange, fascinating stories.
Anyway, after this speech for the Overseas Security Advisory Council, a man came up to me and told me about Jeff Cooper’s Colors. I neglected to ask…
