EMERGENCY PARTNER POSTINGS

Volume 3, No. 6

February 1999

EIIP Interns Assigned and Working: In conjunction with the University of North Texas, EIIP Partner, interns Jennifer Suter and Lindsey Burke are working respectively as EIIP Outreach Coordinator and EIIP Events Coordinator. EIIP audiences and active participants will be working with these young people as they assist in promoting our efforts through our newsletter/other means of outreach and through scheduling speakers, sessions and rehearsals to facilitate the Virtual Forum schedule. The EIIP is still searching for an intern to fill the roll of EIIP Education Coordinator.

EIIP Mail Lists Benefit from Partner Assistance: As result of a recent request to the Partners Mail List, several of our Partners expressed interest and willingness to moderate one or more of the EIIP Mail Lists; they have been sent Mail List Moderator Instructions
for review. Upon review and acceptance of assigned list, the information shared via our Mail List should pick up considerably. Persons serving as Mail List moderators will be listed once all have replied and accepted. Anyone interested in assisting in like manner, please contact amoore@emforum.org .

Please Note:

• "Round Table", Tuesdays at 1:00 PM Eastern Time, is available for Partner led discussions upon request. The International Association of Emergency Managers (IAEM) will host one Round Table discussion each month starting this month on January 26. We know other Partners will also step up to the plate and meet the challenge of scheduling and moderating a session.
• "Mutual Aid" informal session, all topics -- Thursdays 8:00 PM ET.

Please note that EIIP Partners are scheduled for a Round Table discussion every Tuesday in February. Please support their active participation in the Virtual Forum for the Round Tables as well as the formal sessions on Wednesdays. Partner-led Round Tables are as follows (more detail on topics will be announced prior to scheduled session):

• Tuesday Feb 2: David Graham and John Zangerlie, Baker & Hostetler LLP, Counsellors at Law
• Tuesday Feb 9: Lake County (IN) LEPC, Bill Timmer, LEPC Chair and Dean Larson, LEPC member
• Tuesday Feb 16: Phyllis Mann, President Elect of the International Association of Emergency Managers (IAEM)
• Tuesday Feb 23: University of Delaware, Tricia Wachtendorf and Gary Webb

February 1999 - Wednesdays - 12:00 Noon EST

Feb 3: The Virtual Library hosts authors, Jennifer Wilson and Arthur Oyola-Yemaiel --- their paper is "Emergent Coordinative Groups and Women's Response Roles in the Central Florida Tornado Disaster, February 23, 1998."

Feb 10: What is the Institute for Crisis, Disaster and Risk Management? John R. Harrald, Ph.D., Director of the Institute at George Washington University will tell us about the Institute's teaching and research roles in the Virtual Classroom.

Feb 17: The EIIP Panel Room features Project Impact Awardees in "Project Impact Revisited" to learn first-hand about Project Impact accomplishments this past year.

Feb 24: The Tech Arena features Edward Addy, North American Center for Emergency Communications (NACEC).

The following submitted the agreement form to become formal Partners and are listed on the EIIP Virtual Forum web site, with links to Websites if available (see http://www.emforum.org/partners/partic.htm). Each Point of Contact (POC) has been welcomed to the EIIP and encouraged to become an active participant and worker in the Partnership:

Baker & Hostetler LLP, Counsellors at Law: David B. Graham (dgraham@bakerlaw.com)

Emergency and Disaster Management, Inc.: Gunnar J. Kuepper, Director/Chief of Operations (gjk@emergency-management.net)

Florida Public Affairs Center, Florida State University: Janet D. Dilling, CEM
(jdilling@mailer.fsu.edu)

Strohl Systems: Pat Moore, Vice President, Business Continuity Education
(pmoore@strohlsystems.com)

Interested in joining the EIIP? New Partners are welcome; Partnership Criteria and Agreement Form may be found at the following URL: http://www.emforum.org/partners/criteria.htm

EIIP Logo Accessible to Partners

We continue to add new Partners to the EIIP. Part of the EIIP Memorandum of Agreement states that we will link to each other's web sites, if one exists. In response to a request of a new Partner for the EIIP logo, we have made the logo easily accessible and in an appropriate size for any of our Partners' use at: http://www.emforum.org/images/ic_forum.gif

The Open GIS® Consortium (OGC) has established a Special Interest Group (SIG) within its Technical Committee to address the disaster management community's geospatial information and decision support technology requirements. This initiative comes on the heels of a number of international reports and studies published over the past two years which argue that improved effectiveness in disaster management can only be achieved with better tools for the interchange and consumption of data and information. Using these reports as background the SIG has produced a White Paper that describes its charter and mission, under review currently are a workplan and discussion paper that begins the process of bridging the needs of the disaster management community with the framework of distributed technology and open geoprocessing. Chairing the Disaster Management Special Interest Group is Dr. Elaine Padovani, a leading disaster expert with the US Federal Government. Materials, contact information and other related documents are available at: http://www.opengis.org/disaster/

Working in a consensus based environment and focused on the needs of the global
disaster management community, this SIG will meet at regular intervals in association with OGC Technical Committee meetings that are held six times a year. To underscore the global nature of this SIG meetings are planned for Atlanta (February 7-12), the Netherlands (April 19-23), Washington, DC (June 14-18), UK (August 9-13), Japan (October 4-8) and Los Angeles (Dec 6-10) over the 1999 calendar year.

Over this period the SIG will assemble geoprocessing requirements and input from
representatives of the disaster management communities in these regions. These
requirements will be evaluated against the existing specification for interoperable geoprocessing being developed by the Technical Committee. If necessary, the SIG will make recommendation for extensions and/or modifications to the existing specification that address requirements of the Disaster management community. In addition, a series of interoperability demonstrations, testbeds and prototypes may be defined by SIG and promoted to test the suitability of newly defined solutions in controlled settings.

The Open GIS Consortium is a not-for-profit industry consortium dedicated to the
widespread use of interoperable geoprocessing throughout the world's information
infrastructures. For more information contact: Lance McKee, Vice President Corporate Communications, Open GIS Consortium, Inc., 35 Main Street, Suite 5, Wayland, MA 01778-5037 USA Tel. +1 508-655-5858 Fax +1 508-655-2237 lmckee@opengis.org
http://www.opengis.org

Arkansas Tech University Reaches Milestones

The School of Community Education and Professional Development of Arkansas Tech University offers a Bachelor of Science Degree in Emergency Administration and Management. The program has reached several milestones after being in existence for less than two years. In December of 1998, the first three degrees were awarded to Charles Austin, Keith Frazier, and Mike Williamson, all three career emergency personnel. There are currently over 100 declared majors in the program.

The Council also received an announcement from the dean regarding the donation of a $300,000 software system from Strohl Systems. The software will be utilized as an instructional training tool for the EAM courses as well as for administrative application in disaster recovery and crisis contingency planning. See http://commed.atu.edu for EAM information.

EENet Schedule for February '99

February 3, 2:00 - 3:00 PM EST: Learning Again - Features segments from the April 20,1994, EENET program entitled, "New Techniques for Vehicle Rescue."

February 10, 2:00 - 4:00 PM EST: Unified Command: Practical Issues, Part II - Second of 3-part series on managing extensive local and state response, incorporating federal response into the command structure, and preparing for long-term recovery.

February 17, 2:00 - 3:00 PM EST: National Alert Broadcast - FEMA's monthly Video Magazine on emergency management activities and issues.

February 24, 2:00 - 4:00 PM EST: Mitigation - How It Can Work for You - Valuable information on "Project Impact" and other Mitigation initiatives.

New Environmental Sciences, Policy and Engineering Sustainable Cities Program at the University of Southern California: The University of Southern California Environmental Sciences, Policy and Engineering Sustainable Cities Program is a new multidisciplinary doctoral training program funded by the National Science Foundation. It is a campus-wide collaborative that brings together multiple disciplines involved in environmental research, policy and management around the theme of building sustainable cities for the 21st century. This is a 2-year program involving course work and participation in faculty collaborative research projects. See http://www.usc.edu. Contacts: Joseph Devinny (Devinny@usc.edu) or Jennifer Wolch (Wolch@usc.edu) - call (213) 740-7832 for additional information.

1999 Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Region III Chemical Emergency Preparedness and Prevention Conference: EPA Region III will conduct its 1999 Chemical Emergency Preparedness and Prevention (CEPP) Conference in Washington, DC, September 20-23, Washington Hilton and Towers Hotel, to increase the awareness of the Emergency Planning and Community Right-to-Know Act (EPCRA) and Chemical Emergency Preparedness and Prevention (CEPP) program. Visit http://www.epacepp.com or call toll-free (877) 804-CEPP.

Genocide, Terrorism, Crime and Proliferation All Being Studied with Open Sources of Intelligence - European Spies, Gendarme and Scholars Gather to Exchange Views: The Director of EUROPOL and the Director General of the National Intelligence Service of The Netherlands will open a conference in The Hague, March 9, 1999 to convene intelligence and information professionals from over 25 countries to discuss new methods of using open sources of intelligence to obtain early warning on genocide, and to combat regional crime, global terrorism, and proliferation. Speakers are from INTERPOL, Scotland Yard, the Swedish military, and from several leading European companies specializing in data mining and Internet exploitation. In its second year, the conference is unique as a networking forum where national spy services, national/local police and military services, and private sector parties are able to exchange information about new open sources and methods. Conference includes 4-hour course of instruction on March 8 on open source intelligence. Visit http://www.oss.net or email: Robert D. Steele Vivas, OSS CEO bear@oss.net Phone: (703) 242-1700 Fax: (703) 242-1711.

Wind Hazard E-Mail Group Formed: Persons interested in wind engineering and/or natural disaster mitigation issues are invited to join a new cross-disciplinary, moderated e-mail discussion group (wind_haz_mit@egroups.com ) dedicated to furthering wind hazard mitigation. Sponsored by Partners-In-Mitigation Fellowship under a grant from the American Society of Civil Engineers. James Cohen, PE, PIM Fellow; (609) 730-0510; fax: (609) 730-0511; e-mail: jccpc@msn.com; WWW: http://www.egroups.com/info/help.html. Or see: http://www.egroups.com/subscribe?list=wind_haz_mit&vcode=2727.

• CNN news site details Pentagon plan to dispatch team to Russia to work on a "shared early-warning center" to preclude any accidental launch of missiles brought on by a Year 2000 bug in nuclear command and control systems; includes NORAD compliance testing results. http://cnn.com/TECH/computing/9901/15/nukes.y2k.idg/index.html
  
  
• The Natural Hazards Center added a brief page to their Web site to direct emergency managers needing Y2K information. http://www.colorado.edu/hazards/sites/y2k.html
  
  
• The President's Council on Year 2000 Conversion toll-free Y2K information line is 1-888-USA-4-Y2K. Provides information on how the problem may, or may not, affect government services, banks, household appliances, power, telephones, other utilities, etc.
  
  
• The President's Council features a consumer information on http://www.y2k.gov and a quarterly report summarizing existing industry and public-sector assessments for key areas that could be affected by Y2K problems (see the Web site for a copy).
  
  
• The Federal Trade Commission has 3 publications for consumers on Y2K:
  1. consumer electronic products, 2. home office equipment, and 3. personal finances. Online at http://www.ftc.gov with a "Business Fact Sheet" on Y2K.
  
  
• The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) provides information through the Y2K section of its Web site: http://www.fema.gov/y2k.
  
  
• The 24-page January issue of the "IAEM Bulletin" focuses on Y2K issues for emergency management. Look for Y2K issue on the IAEM Web site: http://www.emassociation.com

http://www.lawsonline.com/bulletin.htm
LAWCHEK® has researched State Homepages to determine which states have addressed the Y2K problem and possess Y2K Webpages that feature Y2K Office Contact Information. To find out if your state offers Y2K information online and to review Y2K related links, read the LAWCHEK® Newsletter.

http://www.usfa.fema.gov/hazmat
The 'Hazardous Materials Guide for First Responders' has been added to the US Fire Administration website.

http://www.consrv.ca.gov
The Division of Mines and Geology in the California Department of Conservation has established a database of the historical landslide areas in the state, including the landslides of 1998.

http://www.viexpo.com/ear/index.htm
Health and Welfare messages are being handled in near real time at the site operated by the Disaster Message Service. Posts for needed aid are also appearing randomly on this list.

hoaxcheck@hoaxkill.com or hoaxkill@hoaxkill.com
Check to see if computer virus alerts are real - second URL can be used to stop forwarding of hoax messages. The following page is considered the industry standard information source for new virus hoaxes and false alerts. Bookmark http://www.datafellows.com/news/hoax.htm .

Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) Update:

FEMA Regional Interagency Steering Committee (RISC) Meetings on Y2K Preparedness - Meetings will be held in each of FEMA's ten regions February-March of 1999. The purpose of the meetings will be to: (1) review initial Y2K compliance assessments and probable consequences; (2) prioritize critical State and Regional consequence management issues; and (3) identify required State and Federal actions, policies, and decisions.

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National Emergency Management Association (NEMA)Update:

Y2K Issues - In a recent press conference, John Koskinen, chairman of the President's Council on Year 2000 Conversion, said the Clinton administration plans to enlist Federal and State emergency managers to help address problems that might be faced by communities and States on January 1, 2000. Koskinen has asked NEMA President Ellen Gordon to serve on a Y2K Senior Advisory Board.

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National Volunteer Fire Council (NVFC) Legislative Update:

Action Alerts for Fire Services - The NVFC is urging fire service personnel to take action on the following Action Alerts:

• Volunteer Fire Assistance Program --- ISSUE: The House Interior Appropriations subcommittee will soon consider funding for the Volunteer Fire Assistance (VFA) program for FY 2000. Without additional funding, many rural communities will be unable to train, equip, or help organize fire service efforts in the coming year. To support the VFAP, contact your Representative and ask them Congressman Ralph Regula, Chairman of the Interior Appropriations subcommittee to request that VFAP be given requested funding for FY 2000; forward information to others and ask them to do the same; and forward copies of letters you send or receive to the NVFC to track the campaign. (See related information on brochure below.)
  
  
• Children's Sleepwear Safety --- ISSUE: In 1972, the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) implemented its first fire safety standard for children's sleepwear under the Flammable Fabrics Act. By 1975, it was mandatory that all children's sleepwear sizes 0-14 be flame retardant. In 1996, the CPSC voted to reverse this standard. Publication of a Federal Register notice that begins the official comment period on this issue. Direct comments to: Office of the Secretary, Consumer Product Safety Commission, Washington DC 20207 fax: (301) 504-0127 email: cpsc-os@cpsc.gov Comments should be submitted in 5 copies and captioned "Sleepwear Revocation".

'How to Contact Congress' Brochure - The NVFC brochure discusses the different methods of contacting and addressing Members of Congress to get the most out of a letter to Congress. For a copy of this free brochure, email awilson@nvfc.org or call 1-888-ASK-NVFC and ask for the "How to Contact Congress" brochure.

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Emergency Management Association of Tennessee (EMAT) Update:

TEMA/EMAT Spring Conference: March 30 - April 1, 1999, Nashville, Tennessee, Regal Maxwell House Hotel. Pre-registration is required as seating will be limited and pre-assigned due to course content activities. Topics include: How local Chief Elected Officials handled disasters when emergency managers were not available; EMAC - Emergency Management Assistance Compact; Weapons of Mass Destruction, etc..

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National Institute for Urban Search & Rescue (NI/USR) Update:

The XII Part 3 Systems Test Successful! The third test of XII occurred January 21-23 when all linkages, computers, servers, beta software, e-mail, telephones, modems, T-1 and T-3 connections were tested. The test took place in a virtual environment from separate locations on the Atlantic and the Pacific coasts. Two scenarios ran simultaneously, one an explosion, the other a Y2K power grid failure. New players participated, the Mitre Corporation and Argonne National Laboratory, as well as old friends from Force Protection at Hanscom AFB, and the Marine Corps Warfighting Lab (Camp Pendleton) and DISA, operating from Washington, DC. The date for XII Part 4 with the Navy/Marine Urban Warrior exercise is March 15-21, 1999. http://www.niusr.org/xii911.

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State of Utah Comprehensive Emergency Management Division (CEMD) Update:

State of Utah Heavily Involved - Utah is currently busy in three major areas: the Legislature is in session, Y2K contingency plans are being prepared, and contingency planning for the 2002 Olympics is moving forward. During the last six months, the Utah CEMD has been undergoing a restructuring. Newly appointed Director, Earl Morris, is breathing new life into the organization.

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February 7-10, 1999: NEMA 1999 Mid-Year Conference - Mayflower Hotel, Washington DC (http://www.nemaweb.org).

February 7-10, 1999: SALEMDUG Conference - New Orleans, LA (504-342-1586).

March 13-16, 1999: IAEM Mid-year Committee Retreat - Emmitsburg, Maryland.

March 22-24, 1999: Disaster Recovery Journal Spring Conference - San Diego, CA http://www.drj.com.

March 30-April 1, 1999: TEMA/EMAT Spring Conference- Regal Maxwell House Hotel, Nashville, TN

April 21-23, 1999: Embracing Continuity & All that Jazz! Continuity Planning & Management '99 - Ernest N. Morial Convention Center, New Oleans LA. Visit the CPM '99 web site for details http://www.ContingencyPlanExpo.com.

May 12-14, 1999: 1999 HMAC Annual Conference & Hazardous Materials Transportation Exposition - Sponsored by the Hazardous Materials Advisory Council; contact HMAC, 1101 Vermont Avenue, Ste 301, Washington DC, http://www.hmac.org

May 12-15, 1999: Global Disaster Information Network (GDIN) Conference - Mexico City; sponsored by the Mexican government in partnership with the US Government and the World Bank, http://www.state.gov/www/issues/relief/gdin99.html.

May 23-28, 1999: Association of State Floodplain Managers (ASFPM) Annual Conference - Portland, Oregon ( asfpm@floods.org ).

May 24-29, 1999:CAMEO99 - Crowne Plaza Phoenix Downtown, Phoenix AZ. Sponsored by EPA CEPPO, NOAA HAZMAT, AZSERC; see web site: http://www.nrt.org/nrt/cameo.nsf

June 3-6, 1999: International Hazardous Materials Response Teams - IAFC, Towson Maryland.

June 16-19, 1999: Response '99 - National Association of Search & Rescue, Orlando, Florida.

June 16-18, 1999: 2nd Annual Higher Education Project Conference - EMI, Arrangements still pending
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September 20-23, 1999: EPA Region III Chemical Emergency Preparedness and Prevention Conference - Washington Hilton and Towers Hotel, Washington, DC. For more information, call (877) 804-CEPP toll free.

Interested in archaeological expeditions searching for biblical evidence? See Mysteries of the Bible at http://www.biblemysteries.com. The focus is more on the scholarly than religious. Read theories on Sodom and Gomorrah's resting place beneath the Dead Sea, archaeological evidence on the Tower of Babel, or the Pharaoh of the Exodus.

"Emergency Partner Postings" is a monthly update on progress of the partnership, activities, and services available through Emergency Information Infrastructure Partnership (EIIP) Virtual Forum web site, other electronic sources of information, and articles of interest concerning awareness and use of information technology. The news will be posted on the web site the last week of each month.

We encourage readers to submit articles for this newsletter about use of the Internet for emergency management and other aspects of information technology. Deadline for contributions is the 20th of each month for that month's newsletter. Submit contributions to Jennifer Suter, jsuter@emforum.org.

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