Coinciding with Attorney General Eric Holder telling ABC News this week that “the American people would be surprised by the depth of the [homegrown terrorist] threat” while discussing his growing concern about Americans becoming radicalized and turning to terrorism, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano told the Council on Foreign Relations that it is incumbent that citizens pay attention to their surroundings for anything suspicious and out of place, and to report it to proper authorities. It might just prevent a domestic terrorist attack, she said.
“With respect to individuals and the private sector, we’re taking a much closer look at how we can support and inform our greatest asset, individual citizens, and with them the private sector. You are the ones who know if something is not right in your communities, such as a suspicious package or unusual activity,” Napolitano said.
What To Do If You Spot Suspicious Terrorist Activity
If you see suspicious behavior, do not confront the individuals involved.
Take note of the details:
S – Size (Jot down the number of people, gender, ages, and physical descriptions)
A – Activity (Describe exactly what they are doing)
L – Location (Provide exact location)
U – Uniform (Describe what they are wearing, including shoes)
T – Time (Provide date, time, and duration of activity)
E - Equipment (Describe vehicle, make, color etc., license plate, camera, guns, etc)
Suspicious activity is often recalled after an event. We must train ourselves to be on the lookout for things that are out of the ordinary and arouse suspicions.
Napolitano said “three years ago, it was an attentive store clerk who told authorities about men trying to duplicate extremist DVDs. This led federal agents to eventually round up a plot to kill American soldiers at the Fort Dix army base here in New Jersey.”
And “just last month, a passenger saw two employees exchange a bag at the Philadelphia airport that had not been properly screened. That passenger’s vigilance ultimately stopped a gun from getting onto the plane.”
“For too long, we’ve treated the public as a liability to be protected rather than an asset in our nation’s collective security,” Napolitano confessed.
“There’s actually an important role we can play in educating even our very young about watching for, and knowing what to do, if you’re in an airport and you see a package left with no one around,” Napolitano said.
This story comes to us via Homeland Security - National Terror Alert. National Terror Alert is America's trusted source for homeland security news and information.
Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden warned Americans “to be prepared to receive the consequences of the Obama and Bush administrations.” In a new recorded audiotape aired by Arabic Al Jazeera TV Wednesday, June 3 - as Saudi king Abdullah greeted US president Barack Obama on his arrival in Riyadh - bin Laden said Obama had planted the seeds for “revenge and hatred” toward the United States in the Muslim world.
The warning was issued the day before the US president was to deliver a speech to Muslims from Cairo.
This story comes to us via Homeland Security - National Terror Alert. National Terror Alert is America's trusted source for homeland security news and information.
Secretary Napolitano Dispatches Senior Department Officials to Review Security Procedures With International Airport Leaders
Release Date: December 31, 2009
For Immediate Release
Office of the Press Secretary
Contact: 202-282-8010
Secretary Napolitano to travel in the coming weeks to build on these efforts
Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano today announced that she is dispatching Deputy Secretary Jane Holl Lute, Assistant Secretary for Policy David Heyman and other senior Department officials on a broad international outreach effort to meet with leaders from major international airports in Africa, Asia, Europe, the Middle East and South America to review security procedures and technology being used to screen passengers on flights bound for the United States.
“As part of the ongoing review to determine exactly what went wrong leading up to Friday’s attempted terrorist attack, we are looking not only at our own processes, but also beyond our borders to ensure effective aviation security measures are in place for U.S-bound flights that originate at international airports,” said Secretary Napolitano. “Because I am fully committed to making whatever changes are necessary to protect the safety of the traveling public, I am sending Deputy Secretary Lute and Assistant Secretary Heyman to work with our international partners on ways to collectively bolster our tactics for defeating terrorists wherever they may seek to launch an attack, and I will follow up on these efforts with ministerial-level meetings within the next few weeks.”
Deputy Secretary Lute and Assistant Secretary Heyman will first travel to Europe , departing on Monday. While there, they will brief European authorities on the findings of President Obama’s aviation security review and then report back to Secretary Napolitano on their discussions on enhancing international security measures.
Following the attempted attack on Christmas Day, the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) issued a directive for additional security measures to be implemented for last point of departure international flights to the United States , such as increased gate pat-downs and bag searches. At the direction of the flight crew, passengers may also be asked to follow additional instructions, such as stowing personal items, turning off electronic equipment and remaining seated during certain portions of the flight.
Other security measures implemented have included the deployment of additional law enforcement at airports, air marshals, and explosives detection canine teams. TSA will continue to work with airline and law enforcement authorities, as well as federal, state, local and international partners to put additional security measures in place to ensure that aviation security remains strong. For more information on current security measures, visit www.tsa.gov.
Wondering how many nukes are within range of your location? Find out with the Nuk-O-Meter There are 6344 nuclear warheads are within range of San Jose CA, US
More Info By country
2347 from USA
3684 from Russia
192 from UK
121 from China
By delivery
2490 from long range ICBMs
0 from short range missiles
1083 from bomber aircraft
2771 from nuclear submarines
Flooding
Let Your Family Know You’re Safe,
If your community does flood, register on the American Red Cross Safe and Well Web site available through redcross.org to let your family and friends know about your welfare
If you don’t have internet access (https://disastersafe.redcross.org/default.aspx)
call 1-800-RED CROSS to register yourself and
your family.
Anderson Dam could fail after major earthquake
City officials and residents downstream from Anderson Lake were not surprised to learn that Morgan Hill could flood if a major earthquake occurs on a fault that runs under the reservoir.
A new preliminary study released this week by the Santa Clara Valley Water District says the 240-foot-high dam holding back the county's largest reservoir could turn to liquid if a quake of 6.6 magnitude or higher is registered on the Calaveras fault directly beneath the lake, or a 7.2 quake occurs within a mile or two on the same fault.
In such an event, the top of the dam could slump and allow water to spill over, the study says, potentially sending a 35-foot wall of water rushing to downtown Morgan Hill, flooding Gilroy, San Martin and the entire valley floor up to San Jose within a couple of hours.
District officials say that because the reservoir is currently only about 64 percent full, the risk of flooding is low. Read More Jan 6, 2009
By Michael Moore - Staff Writer
Another reason to PREpare source
Disaster Preparedness
Why Prepare ?
Natural Disasters
Earthquakes
Stanford Report, October 16, 2009
Is Stanford ready for the next big earthquake?
L.A. Cicero
Larry Gibbs, associate vice provost for EH&S
BY ELAINE RAY
As Bay Area residents look back on the Loma Prieta earthquake, Stanford Report asked university emergency officials how things have changed since the magnitude 6.9 temblor rocked the campus in 1989. Larry Gibbs, associate vice provost for Environmental Health and Safety (EH&S), and Keith Perry, emergency manager in EH&S, offered their expertise on how the campus community can prepare for the next Big One.
Q. What lessons have we learned in the past 20 years?
A. Stanford has moved forward in a number of critical areas. The major lessons learned include the need to be better prepared for any type of emergency that may impact the university, from an earthquake to power outages to pandemics. Emergency planning needs to be an integrated aspect of the business operations of every academic and administrative unit.
Another component of effective emergency management is communication. Stanford has made significant improvements in its ability to communicate to staff, faculty and students through the implementation of the AlertSU mass-notification system and the outdoor warning system, both of which were tested on Thursday.
Q. How are our preparations different from what they were 20 years ago?
A. Stanford has made significant investment in the protection of the critical infrastructure of the campus, from completion of seismic retrofitting of many buildings to the development of backup and redundancy systems for our extensive electronic administrative systems and records.
L. A. Cicero
Keith Perry, emergency manager in EH&S
In the area of emergency planning and response, Stanford has developed an emergency management system in which all units of the university participate. During a campus-wide emergency we can activate a central emergency operations center that is led by the president and provost and staffed by the senior university management. In addition, 25 satellite operations centers, which include all the schools and operational units of the university, can be activated. Our all-hazards campus-response capabilities focus on preparing for a major earthquake and at the same time allow us to manage other types of emergencies.
Emergency management is an element of every school and unit at the university. With a focus on personal preparedness combined with an organizational effort, we must be able to respond to the overall needs of the institution. The guiding principles used in development of the overall emergency management program include protection of life safety, securing of the critical infrastructure and facilities, and resuming the teaching and research programs.
Stanford also recently received a significant grant from the Department of Education to further develop programs, strategies and templates for use by other colleges and universities in developing their own emergency plans. This program demonstrates that there is a growing understanding of the challenges and significant efforts required to implement an effective emergency management program on a university campus.
Q. How do earthquake preparations figure into the construction of new buildings?
A. Building codes have changed substantially since 1989, and facilities built since then are constructed with seismic structural considerations as one of the core requirements. Many Stanford buildings are constructed to standards above and beyond basic code compliance. Additionally, Stanford has made significant investment in the protection of the critical infrastructure of the campus, from completion of seismic retrofitting of many buildings to the development of backup and redundancy systems for our extensive electronic administrative systems and records.
Q. How should individual faculty, staff and students prepare for the possibility of an earthquake?
A. One of the main tenets of emergency management is to be personally prepared for an earthquake. Every person should have a personal plan for themselves and their families. Know what to do if you feel the shaking begin, and understand the basic survival needs for having to be on your own without power and other amenities for up to 72 hours. Work out a communications plan with family and friends. If you need assistance developing a plan, Environmental Health and Safety offers a monthly class on personal preparedness. It is open to all staff and faculty. To register, go into STARS via Axess and sign up for EHS-5090, "Personal Emergency Preparedness."
Q. How should departments and other units prepare?
A. All departments on campus should have a basic life-safety plan based on university-provided templates. This plan should be communicated to all staff so that there is a basic understanding of how to respond during an emergency. This includes evacuation procedures, emergency assembly points and staff phone trees. In addition, departments should evaluate their operations to identify mission-critical functions and develop strategies to ensure that those functions can be maintained or quickly resumed after a business interruption. Each local organization will be best positioned to identify where their critical assets lie and what type of interruption will have a significant impact on their operation. For more information on university emergency plans, visit our website or send us an email.
In 1987, the National Earthquake Prediction Evaluation Council convened a panel of experts for the first time to evaluate the likelihood for future earthquakes in California. In a report published in 1988, the panel concluded that there was a 50 percent probability for an earthquake of magnitude 7 or larger within the San Francisco Bay Area in 30 years or less. The panel also said there was a 30 percent probability for a 6.5 to 7 magnitude earthquake in the Santa Cruz Mountains within 30 years. This was the highest probability they assigned to any single fault segment in the Bay Area. The 7.1 Loma Prieta earthquake struck in the Santa Cruz Mountains only one year later in 1989.
After the Loma Prieta earthquake, the panel of experts was again convened to determine whether they should change the estimate of the probabilities of future large earthquakes in the San Francisco Bay Area because of the earthquake and other new data. Their report, issued in July 1990, was endorsed by the National Earthquake Prediction Evaluation Council and the California Earthquake Prediction Evaluation Council.
The panel identified four fault segments in the Bay Area along which they now believe large earthquakes are most likely: the peninsula segment of the San Andreas fault between Los Gatos and Hillsborough; the Hayward fault between Fremont and San Leandro; the Hayward fault between San Leandro and San Pablo Bay; and the Rodgers Creek fault between San Pablo Bay and Santa Rosa. They estimated that the probability is about 25 percent for a large earthquake on each one of these fault segments within 30 years.
More importantly, when the probabilities of earthquakes on all of these segments are combined mathematically, there is a 67 percent chance for at least one earthquake of magnitude 7 or larger in the San Francisco Bay Area between 1990 and 2020. Such an earthquake could strike at any time, including today.
The panel also concluded that:
There could be more than one earthquake of magnitude 7 or larger in this 30-year period.
Major earthquakes on all four fault segments are likely within the next 100 to 150 years.
Each earthquake is likely to be of magnitude 7. If two fault segments slip during the same earthquake, for example along the Hayward fault, then the anticipated magnitude could be as large as 7.5.
Earthquakes of magnitude 7 are considered possible, but not as likely, on other Bay Area faults such as the Calaveras, Concord, and San Gregorio.
A repeat of the magnitude 8.3 San Francisco earthquake of 1906, which broke several segments of the San Andreas fault from south of San Jose to Cape Mendocino (a distance of more than 270 miles), is not likely during the next few decades.
Numerous earthquakes with magnitudes of about 6 are also likely; these smaller earthquakes could cause some damage, especially near their epicenters.
About Probabilities
We do not know what will happen in the future, but with the information we now have, we can estimate the likelihood that something will happen. We express the likelihood by using probabilities.
A probability of 50 percent means that it is just as likely to happen as not to happen.
A probability of 67 percent means that it is twice as likely to happen as not to happen.
A probability of 75 percent means that it is 3 times more likely to happen than not to happen
Scientists capture deepest underwater volcanic eruption on film
By Phil Han, CNNAuthor "By Phil Han, CNN"
This is the first time an underwater volcanic eruption has ever been caught on film
Scientists have been trying for 25 years to film an underwater eruption
The West Mata volcano lies 1.2 km below the ocean surface
Scientists hope to study tectonic plate movements and the Earth's crust
Weather
Power Failure
Customer Safety Call 911 for Downed Lines Your safety is our first concern. If you see a downed power line, assume it is energized and keep yourself and others away. Call 911 immediately to report the location of the downed line then call your locate service provider.
( In Northern Ca ) 1-800-743-5002, PG&E's 24-Hour Emergency and Customer Service Line.
Source
GoBag.org Website purpose: To make emergency preparedness easier by providing one place to find links to a lot of the best information.
During these tough economic times, many states and cities are facing major cutbacks to First Responders so it is more important than ever for businesses and consumers to know what they should plan for and do during an emergency situation.
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Sign up now for free and turn your mobile phone into an emergency alert device. Get warnings and alerts for your area sent directly to your mobile phone and e-mail. We monitor both natural and man-made disasters, warnings, and threats in all 50 states. We can also notify your emergency contacts if you might need help - all for free! Be safe. Let DAD look out for you.
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