I Speak of Dreams

Dr. Gwenn Is In: How do bloggers get information about Swine Flu? A new survey is trying to find out.

Dr. Gwenn Is In: How do bloggers get information about Swine Flu? A new survey is trying to find out..

How do bloggers get information about Swine Flu? A new survey is trying to find out. With Swine Flu, Influenza H1N1, now at pandemic levels world wide, gathering data and information about the virus is important to keep us all healthy. Believe it or not, part of the information hunt involves how you get your information on important health issues such as Swine Flu.

Pat Calahan: More Than Setting Jim Carrey Straight

I ran across Pat's Daily Grind when following up on who was rebuking Jim Carrey for his stupidity and mendacity.  Pat wrote In Which I Take Jim Carrey to Task.  So I thought I'd poke about and see what else interested Pat.  As it turns out, a lot of things (some titles are mine and some are Pat's)

• Putting my foot down
• A house with almost enough books
• Mother's Cookies?!?
• Be Honest About Harm
• PZ Myers is a great biologist and a bit of an ass when it comes to atheism and More on PZ Myers
• Fire on the Mountain
• Don't Pretend You Aren't Arguing When You Are
  

In February, Pat started another blog, Community Crisis Response

Australia Ablaze

It is summer in Australia, and they are facing disaster.

The deadliest bushfires in Australia's history have wrought death and destruction across southern Australia, killing scores of people, destroying hundreds of homes and razing entire towns to the ground.

At the last count the toll had reached 108, but the thousands of firefighters still battling the blazes warned that they expected to find many more bodies when they reach the worst affected areas tomorrow.

The fires began on the hottest day ever recorded in Melbourne and were fanned by gale-force winds. Many of the dead were said to have waited too long in their homes before fleeing and were burnt alive in their cars as multiple fires tore through the countryside of Victoria state. Some of the blazes were set by arsonists.

2008 was a bad year for fires in California. The low rainfall levels to date promise even more burning. My heart goes out to the good people of Victoria.

California Fires

My heart goes out to those affected by the Tea Fire and the Sylmar Fire.

Neither is on Inciweb yet.

Karoli was out taking photos.

Twitter on Sylmar fire

Twitter on Tea Fire

Cal Fire Blog on Tea fire  no label yet for the Sylmar Fire.  Los Angeles Fire Department blog is calling it the Saye Fire.

In An Emergency, Will Twitter (and Other 2.0 Tools) Save Us?

updated with message from Jesse:

For the past few years I have been trying to find ways that technology can be used to "Serve those that Serve Others".

Last week I spoke about some of the lessons learned from my deployment during Operation Hurricane Katrina at a technology conference called the Web2.0 Summit.  Video is now available, and I thought you might be interested in watching it:
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qogx6edklng

Please send me your thoughts, feedback, and ideas... and help me spread the word.

Here's Jesse's email: [email protected]

Jesse Robbins  refined his web chops at Amazon.com, eventually earning the  title of “Master of Disaster”.  He was responsible for Website Availability for every property bearing the Amazon brand. 

Currently, he's the CEO of a start-up in stealth mode, and is the co-chair of the Velocity Web Performance & Operations Conference and contributes to the O’Reilly Radar.

Robbins is also volunteer Firefighter/EMT and Emergency Manager, and led a task force deployed in Operation Hurricane Katrina. 

In this High Order Bit talk from Web Summit 2.0 2008, Robbins  uses examples from his Katrina experiences and other high-profile events to talk about the different learning curves for emergency services managers and Web 2.0 experts, to address the question: When and where are Web 2.0 useful in disaster response?  What is necessary for disaster services professionals and Web 2.0 professionals to learn from each other?

(I'm not fully confident the embed code will work, so here's the direct link: http://web20summit.blip.tv/file/1446474/)

disclosure: Jesse Robbins is my nephew, and I'm darned proud of him.

Citizen Journalism and Fire News

One of the good things about moving is less worry about fire.  I think my place is fairly well prepared--I've kept up with mowing and so forth--but I sit at the top of a brush-choked canyon bordering on  280, complete with eucalyptus stands.  The Trabing Fire cause:

vehicle exhaust ignited grass on the side of Highway 1 on Friday afternoon, Cal Fire spokesman Paul Van Gerwen said. The hot, dry conditions fueled a 640-acre wildfire that destroyed at least 20 structures and killed an estimated 40 domestic animals and injured several others in the Larkin Valley area.

There wasn't much citizen journalism involved in the Trabing Fire, as it didn't last that long. But there is some good work being done on the other fires burning around California.

Big Sur is burning; it's the Basin Complex fire on Inciweb.  You can get updates from SurFire2008.org. 

There's another fire near Santa Barbara, the Gap Fire (link to InciWeb).  Doc Searles is following it -- look for sbgapfire on technorati; here's the flickr photoset; local Santa Barbara info on Edhat.

Via Coach Brown in Ukiah, the Mendocino County webpage on fire information and a dedicated blog from a private individual.

There's a firefighter blog run by (I believe) Ret. Capt. Mike. 

There's also the SOS Forests blog from the Western Institute for Study of the Environment (W.I.S.E.) -- the link is for the category 2008 fire season.  W.I.S.E. also is keeping a Western Fire Track.

Flooding in the Mid-West

Tara C. Smith, who writes the blog Aetiology,  is a professor at the University of Iowa in Iowa City.  She's blogging on the flooding: Iowa's Flooded and Why Pandemic Preparedness Pays Off.

I wonder what effect the Midwest floods are going to have on food costs.

Submerged fields in parts of five Midwest states and no sign of a significant change in the wet weather pattern drove corn prices at the Chicago Board of Trade to another record high above $7 a bushel.

Those prices will cheer farmers, but not if their crop shrinks. This year's average corn crop yield was cut 3 percent by the U.S. Department of Agriculture earlier in the week.

"It's the worst in recent memory, at a time when demand has never been higher" for food, feed and to supply ethanol plants, said Gavin Maguire, an analyst with Iowa Grain in Chicago.

"We can't rule out $8 corn at all. We haven't even gotten to the critical growing phase for the corn crop -- we're above $7, having just finished planting. If we have a real burning July, anything goes, in terms of price," he said.

I also want to refer to to Making Light's Tips for an Apocalypse

Disasters and Technology

Update: watch the video of Jesse and Mikel Maran's speech

Jesse Robbins wrote about the Burma/Myanmar disaster and technology aiding in recovery, and reported on the Innovative Support To Emergencies, Diseases and Disasters  (InSTEDD)'s work on getting support software translated to Burmese.

Jesse and Mikel Maran spoke at Where 2.0 on Disaster Tech: What is Working and What is Coming

This is all over my head, mostly....but Jesse's my nephew and I'm danged proud of him.

Physicians in Emergencies

A stong quake on the Hayward fault would be more economically devastating than Katrina's effect on the Gulf Coast.

The area would probably also need medical support in the days and weeks following the quake. John S. Ford MD, MPH is a California physician writing the blog California Medicine Man. He tried to volunteer as a physician in New Orleans, but no dice: he discovered that Louisiana would not honor out-of-state doctors' licensing.

Disaster Preparedness and Emergency Out-Of-State Physician Licensing.

Any such physician assisting there would be practicing without a license and I surely don't need to review the medicolegal implications of that. Their state legislature is obviously filled with a group of rocket scientists!

[snip]

I was surprised to see that 18 states opted for no emergency licensing at all.  Talk about protecting your turf!

Maybe every states' lawmakers should be reviewing their own laws. To me, emergency reciprocity seems like the way to go. For most state medical boards, a physician's licensing status can be checked reliably and instantly on the internet. Why wouldn't a state want a physician in good standing in his home state to volunteer in the event of an emergency?

Have You Ever Wanted to Be An Extra? Here's Your Chance to Role-Play and Help Out

On  November 14, 2007 ,  the Office of Homeland Security is mounting "Golden Guardian 2007", a full-scale   disaster-preparedness exercise for Santa Clara County.

The plot is this: there's a rock concert at San Jose's Municipal Stadium and Silicon Valley is the subject of a bio-terror attack.  The scenario is fake, but the responders are real.  They need "victims" to practice on.  That's where you come in.  Be a victim!  You'll have a script!

Read more below the fold or go directly to The Volunteer Center of Silicon Valley,
or call (408) 247-1126.