Preparedness Dialogue Update 08-14-10

As of 10:30 am this morning the FEMA Preparedness Dialogue had a total of 54 ideas posted (two of them are mine), with 96 comments appended (one of them is mine), a total of 441 cast and 164 registered users. These is kind of disappointing statistics for the first week of operation; not unexpected though, DHS is doing little publicize this dialogue. I guess they are depending on bloggers and such to make this go viral; they are going to be disappointed. My New Idea I posted a second Idea on the Dialogue this morning dealing with TSA gas dispersion study that I discussed here (twice) earlier this week. Here I suggested that FEMA might also have an interest in participating in the TSA study because of the preparedness issues that may be affected by the results of the study. Military Assistance Other than my two ideas, there is really only one other idea posted to date that would potentially be useful in emergency response planning for high-risk chemical facilities; it deals with using the resources of the US military as part of the governments planning for and response to a variety of natural or man made catastrophes. I have always maintained that the only organization with the necessary logistics, transportation and communications capabilities needed for responding to a truly national catastrophe is the US Military. The only surprising thing to me here is the response to this idea; it has a -3 vote total so far. There are no negative comments (I did provide some minor supporting comments to this idea) it is not clear what the reason is for the negative votes. Idea Tracking These are the three Ideas that I am tracking because I think that they might be of interest to the chemical security community. I submitted the first and last Ideas on the list. Counter-Terrorism Emergency Response Plan - CFATS (+3 Votes, Ranking 26) Bring in the Military (-3 Votes, Ranking 54) TSA Chlorine Dispersion Modeling Study (+1 Vote, Ranking 43)