Keith Erwood is an expert in disaster and emergency preparedness he considers it his passion in life. [Keith has had an interest in and studied about weather, disasters, and emergency prepardness since he was very young.] Keith was born and raised in Staten Island, NY where he started his disaster experience in New York City. Keith worked for the FDNY as an EMT for thirteen years from 1993 through 2006 and volunteered as an EMT for two years before that. During his run with the fire department K
What I'm Reading
I just finished reading Zero Day Threat: The Shocking Truth of How Banks and Credit Bureaus Help Cyber Crooks Steal Your Money and Identity I highly recommend it.
Subjects I'd Like to Learn More About
I am always interested in learning more about business continuity, emergency preparedness.
In today’s economic climate banks are either cutting back on lending or just not lending altogether. When they are lending, they are making it difficult for businesses even with excellent credit to get a loan. Some may dispute this claim so I am including links to sources below that document that this is happening. This makes it tough for businesses to get by; many have difficulty in meeting payroll, or working with vendors to get supplies they need to stay in business. It becomes especial... Read Full Story
On Monday a large 7.5 earthquake hit the Indonesian island of Sulawesi, leveling approximately 10,000 homes, and injuring about 150 people. Also reported are six deaths at this time, though reports are still coming in. The quake was originally give a magnitude of 7.8 before being downgraded.It seems that the large quake is not getting much attention due to the world wide Financial Crisis.While there was an initial tsunami warning it was canceled a short while after the quake. I beleive they h... Read Full Story
This is the first in a series of posts I will be making on doing business during tough economic times. Hope you enjoy reading and that it will help you see your business through this financial crisis. Let’s face it, times are tough, and they will get tougher as the financial crisis we are in will likely get worse. Even if the bailout works, it will take months, if not a year or two before we start to see a positive impact, perhaps even longer if decisions made make the crisis worse. Duri... Read Full Story
Last Week we did a post (Google Announces Flu Tracking Capabilities, May Predict Outbreaks Before CDC) on tracking flu trends after Google publicly announced their capabilities of tracking the flu, and possibly warning of outbreaks weeks ahead of what was once possible using other current modeling methods.A few days later privacy concerns were raised in the news, though these concerns are not really warranted since personal data is not relayed to anyone.Basically Google uses specific search t... Read Full Story
Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) are in the hands of terrorists and have been used for some time in attempts to cause wide spread destruction and instill fear.May 16,2004 marks an ominous day in the war on terror. For that is the day that terrorists first used a chemical weapon in battle, and used by a non state or in other words not by a direct Government.Though this incident only caused a "slight exposure" to two Unites States, explosives ordinance disposal technicians, it was de... Read Full Story
President Elect Obama has been warned by leaders on both sides of the Atlantic to "brace himself for an early assault by terrorists."General Michael Hayden, director of the CIA, this week acknowledged that there were dangers during a presidential transition when new officials were coming in and getting accustomed to the challenges. But he added that no “real or artificial spike” in intercepted transmissions from terror suspects had been detected.Britain and the US are sharing all in... Read Full Story
If you're looking for some fine reading, and what the future of the Country may look like I have two great books I am recommending for you. The first one is the new book by Bill Gertz, The Failure Factory: How Unelected Bureaucrats, Liberal Democrats, and Big Government Republicans are Undermining America's Security and Leading Us to War.The other is a book by Robert J. Shapiro is called Futurecast and is a very telling book, especially if you consider what it says about European Cou... Read Full Story
Today at 10:00 AM PST the largest earthquake drill and exercise in history is taking place.Golden Guardian 2008, The Great Southern California Shakeout is now taking place. It is based on a magnitude 7.8 earthquake on the San Andreas fault.
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Mayor Gavin Newsom along with San Francisco City health officials, have announced the creation of an Influenza Task Force at a press conference. The meeting took place on November 16 2005.UPDATE: Another photo from the meeting
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Google announced yesterday that they are tracking flu trends and hope to be able to alert people to an outbreak before the CDC is even aware an outbreak has occurred.According to a post on the Google.org Blog "The CDC does a great job of surveying real doctors and patients to accurately track the flu, so why bother with estimates from aggregated search queries? It turns out that traditional flu surveillance systems take 1-2 weeks to collect and release surveillance data, but Google searc... Read Full Story
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