Public Accountability Requires Citizen Action (disasteraccountability.org)
Actions Needed to Alleviate the Shortage of Air Tankers To Fight Forest Fires By Mingyang Sun, student, Fordham University School of Law While the Little Bear Fire in New Mexico is under control, other wildfires are still rampant. In Waldo Canyon, Colorado, the wildfire has destroyed 347 structures and a death was reported on June [...]
Unlearned Lessons Exacerbate Little Bear Forest Fire By J. Brian Meskill, student, University of Connecticut School of Law The Little Bear Fire near Ruidoso, New Mexico continues to burn but is slowing and is now 60 percent contained. The fire, covering almost 40,000 acres, has caused at least 3 injuries, consumed 252 structures, and has [...]
On Sunday, August 30, two LA County Firefighters were killed when their truck plunged 800 feet on Mount Gleason while attempting to rescue 55 inmates, three corrections officers, and other fire personnel from a fire-crew camp. The loss of two heroes in this tragic accident raises awareness of the state’s use of inmates to fight [...]
“The federal firefighting system is “imploding” in California, due to poor spending decisions and high job vacancy rates,” according to Casey Judd, of the Federal Wildland Fire Service Association, in an interview with The Herald, a Monterey County, California newspaper. As a result of the problems, “small fires have exploded into extended, multimillion-dollar conflagrations,” writes [...]
Reports of dysfunction by Red Cross volunteers dispatched to Southern California for last year’s wildfires underscore the need for a close examination of what changes, if any, the Red Cross has made since Hurricane Katrina. The San Diego Union-Tribune reported excessive and uncoordinated car rentals and hotel bookings, volunteer mismanagement, and overall waste of volunteer [...]
This past week, the American Red Cross announced it is cutting one-third of the three thousand jobs at its National HQ in Washington, DC. According to ARC Chief Public Affairs Officer Suzy DeFrancis, ”We really need to reduce the size of our footprint in Washington and get back more to being a field-based, volunteer-driven organization,” [...]
Today, the crisis communications experts at Fineman PR issued their annual Top 10 PR Blunders List. Nine contenders, including the contaminated pet food crisis, Paris Hilton’s home confinement and Ellen DeGeneres’ dog adoption saga, were elbowed from first place by FEMA’s bungled news conference on the Southern California wildfires. The judges at Fineman offered this [...]
After FEMA employees posed as journalists at an October 23 press conference on the agency’s response to the California wildfires, some expected heads to roll – particularly after DHS Secretary Chertoff promised to have “appropriate disciplinary action taken against those people who exhibited what I regard as extraordinarily poor judgement.” That seemed to be the [...]