Preventive Measures And Preparedness Disaster Planning

On January 15, 1919, one of the most tragic and strange disasters occurred in Boston, Massachusetts. It was around forty degrees that day, when two days previously it had been only two degrees. At 12:30 PM 2,300,000 gallons of molasses spilled into the streets near Keany Square after the tank holding it exploded, most think due to a combination of poor design and the drastic temperature flux. The aftermath was tragic, with twenty one deaths and one hundred and fifty injured. The company who owned the tank was quick to blame others, but soon it was found that the tank was poorly constructed, and if more time had been taken, the Boston Molasses Disaster would never have happened.

Introduction. On 06 January 2005, a cargo train carrying a massive amount of chlorine spilled in Graniteville, South Carolina creating panic and indeed chaos to both citizens and emergency managers on how to properly respond to the hazardous materials released from the train wreckage. The people of the small rural town of Graniteville located just outside of Aiken, South Carolina, where caught in their sleep when Freight train 192 traveling approximately 47 mph struck other consignments spilling a dangerous amount of chlorine gas into the atmosphere. As a result of this disaster, 5,400 individuals were evacuated from their homes whiling causing nine death. The magnitude of such disaster was one that would change any town or city forever.

little after 10 A.M. that morning the two mines exploded causing the ground to shake violently as far as eight miles away. The explosion shattered buildings and pavements, hurled people and horses violently to the ground, and knocked streetcars off of their rails. Willing volunteers rushed to the mines to help rescue as many miners as possible. Black coal filled the mines and the atmosphere outside. The explosion derstroyed a ventilation fan which was installed to circulate the clean air. The volunteers at to make its way through the fallen timbers, wrecked cars, mining equipment, coal dust and other rubble. As the rescue parties made there way deeper in the mine they used canvas curtains to restore ventilation. Many volunteers found the conditions

Imagine the cool, refreshing feeling of ice-cold water colliding with the dusty, dry-caked layer of your mouth for the first time after a strenuous day of working in the heat. At your construction job, you and 89 fellow laborers worked on completing the final floor in a sixteen-story building project in Lower Manhattan. After you took a swig of water from the share of the entire worker’s cooler, you returned to the cooler for another small dixie-cup round of water, but nothing came out. Unsatisfied, you looked around for a cool libation to suppress the uncomfortable frustration that started boiling inside of you in the hot, scorching midsummer blaze. You soon found a sense of sympathy when you realized that the guy behind you in line did not even get a single drop of water. In fact, out of the 90 workers, less than one-third of you actually got a single cup of water. After a few moments passed and the mental and physical stress started affecting your production, you gazed off at the building adjacent to your site. You never really payed any attention to the building for the last 8 months, but your eyes started to focus in on the actions of those inside it. The only person you could discern on

The role of the IC in this case was unique in the sense that high carbon monoxide and methane readings were detected sub-surface and the usual planning cycle had to be expedited. Five four man teams were dispatched into the mine to try to reach the miners or at least open some vents to release some of the poisonous gases. This incident also attracted world-wide media coverage and irregular reporting due to miscommunications plagued the ICS

Ventilation fans stirred the fire up tremendously. Many people know when wood and fire mix, bad things happen. Imagine the mine or an emergency department calling your wife and saying, “Your husband has died from a casualty yesterday from asphyxiation in the speculator mine in Butte, Montana”, this was the kind of call wives around Butte were receiving after this disaster.

On December 2, 1984, water inadvertently entered a storage tank containing more than 80,000 pounds of methyl isocyanate, or MIC, which reacts violently with water. A subsequent runaway reaction generated heat and pressure causing a relief valve to open and resulted in a massive toxic gas release. A dense, lethal cloud of approximately 40 tons of MIC was released to the city exposing to thousands of people. An estimated 3,800 people died immediately, and tens of thousands of people were injured. As of 1994, more than 50,000 people remained partially or totally disabled as a result of exposure to MIC. This tragedy led to the establishment of laws and Process Safety Management system.

Disasters weather man-made, natural, or technological are ineluctable. Community stakeholders, leaders, and citizens are ultimately culpable for ensuring that a sound disaster preparedness and recovery plan is in place should a calamity materialize. Failure to enact such a plan comes with immeasurable consequences. Over the discourse of this paper, the Banqiao Dam disaster will be examined as a case analysis, to render what preparedness and recovery plans were sanctioned, as well as the scope of the response effort.

On December 3, 1984 a gas leak occurred at a facility in Bhopal India, owned and operated by Union Carbide India Limited that killed an estimated 3,500 people, although some speculate the death toll was closer to 8,000. To this day, the residual effects of the toxic chemicals that were poured on the ground and buried by Union Carbide workers at the Bhopal site continue to make people sick. Heavily contaminated soils and groundwater have poisoned an estimated 200,000 people with chronic exposure since the gas leak occurred and long after the plant was shut down. Union Carbide claimed

The series of ethical issues that took place leading to the disaster are complex, and other factors such as economic and political issues arose after the catastrophe happened. The purpose of this paper is to discuss the ethical issues that took place before the disaster happened, and investigate the moral obligations, social responsibility and justice at an individual and organizational level. The ethical dilemma is broken down into three categories, which include the company’s management priority to reduce costs and time, neglecting safety issues addressed by staff, human misjudgment and errors in neglecting pressure reading; and finally, overlooking the technical design flaws that were not tested by BP before installing to use. The

On the 17th of April, 2013 a fire and subsequent explosion at the West Fertilizer Company facility in West, Texas caused the death of twelve emergency responders, three civilians and injured over two hundred and sixty others. The explosion destroyed the WFC site and many other buildings, making it one of the “most destructive incidents investigated by the U.S. Chemical Safety Board.”[2] The CSB report found that a fire of unknown source caused the piles of stored ammonium nitrate to be covered with soot which heated up and eventually caused the ammonium nitrate to detonate. OSHA and the EPA, neither had regulations

The Topsham community in Portland, Maine pertinent risks and hazards will be discussed. It 's current state of readiness is exceptional. The purpose of the Topsham community Hazard Mitigation Plan is to provide a comprehensive set of guidelines for hazard response and mitigation in the community. The plan identifies potential risks with appropriate mitigation responses to significantly reduce loss of life, injuries, economic costs, and destruction of natural and cultural resources. As the occurrences of the hazards identified in this plan are unpredictable, the plan itself will continue to evolve and be evaluated. With this, the mitigation strategies and maintenance process will be labeled as ongoing. The mitigation strategies and maintenance of the plan provide direction for the future of mitigation activities within the state and the process will continue until changed for any valid reason. The community has made progress on

The Bhopal gas leak has been the worst industrial disaster so far in the history. On the late night of December 3rd many woke up with irritating eyes and chocking to death on a gas called Methyl isocyanate. The gas covered 40 square km of the city, the exact number of people killed and injured will never be known but at least 1,300 people died instantly that night as they ran for their lives, and half a million were expose to the toxic gas. The Union Carbide Gas Leak happened about 33 years ago, but up to this date people in Bhopal, India still are affected by this horrible event.

Over the past few decades, the significance, magnitude and consequence of risk management and communication have been brought before the world over and over again in a number of situations related to health, terrorist activities, natural disasters etc. When one turns the pages of history, it is rather obvious that lack of planning and absence of resources due to unpreparedness makes it difficult for the concerned authorities to manage an emergency or epidemic a problematic and traumatic task. The chaotic situations can turn out to be more nerve-racking and tense when preparations are not made before hand (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services 2002).

On August 29, 2009, Hurricane Katrina struck the United States Gulf Coast. It was a Category 3 Hurricane, according to the Saffir Simpson Scale. Winds gusted to up to 140 miles per hour, and the hurricane was almost 400 miles wide . The storm itself did a tremendous amount of damage, but the storm’s aftermath was cataclysmic. Many claimed that the federal government was slow to meet the needs of the hundreds of thousands of people affected by the storm. This paper will examine the four elements of disaster management – preparedness, response, recovery, and mitigation – as well as an analysis on the data presented.