National Dialogue Closed

Friday was the last day for public participation in the National Dialogue on Preparedness. It is now up to the DHS Local, State, Tribal, and Federal Preparedness Task Force to review the Ideas presented, decide which ones to try to implement and complete the implementation process. The set-up of the web site indicates that the Task Force will keep the public up to date on the progress in this area. I’ll keep watching to see how well that goes and how much detail will be provided in the process.

There have been a total of 266 Ideas submitted to the Dialogue. A total of 869 registered users have posted 420 comments on those Ideas and voted a total of 3,297 times. During the last five days of the Dialogue we had a nice surge of participation; 148 new participants, 39 new Ideas, and 55 new comments.

Throughout the Dialogue I have tracked those Ideas that I thought would be of interest to the chemical security community. In the last five days of the Dialogue there hasn’t been much change in the status of these Ideas and the same ones that were identified as ‘Hot’ ideas on Monday finished up with that designation; though it still isn’t clear what that means. Here is the final status of these Ideas (once again I submitted Ideas 2, 3, 4, and 7).

● FEMA CBRNE Preparedness Division (5 votes, 0 comments, rank 98) - Hot
● Funding Post-Emergency Response Research (6 vote, 0 comments, rank 87) - Hot
● Update "pre-fire" tours to include "pre-hazmat" considerations (9 votes, 0 comments, rank 65) - Hot
● HAZMAT Rail Shipment Notifications (-4 vote, 0 comments, rank 252)
● TSA Chlorine Dispersion Modeling Study (0 votes, 1 positive comment, rank 278)
● Bring in the Military (-13 votes, 4 positive comments, rank 265)
● Counter-Terrorism Emergency Response Plan - CFATS (11 votes, 0 comments, rank 45)

National Dialogue on Preparedness Update 09-06-10

This coming Friday will mark the end of the National Dialogue on Preparedness. As of 10:30 last night there were 227 Ideas posted on the site. There are 721 registered users who have made 365 comments and voted 2,796 times.

Ideas Followed

There have been no new Ideas added to the list of seven that I have been following here on this blog. Four of the seven (#s 2, 4, 5 and 7 below) were submitted by me. The status of the seven Ideas that might be of interest to the chemical security community is listed below.

• FEMA CBRNE Preparedness Division (4 votes, 0 comments, rank 105)
• Funding Post-Emergency Response Research (6 vote, 0 comments, rank 81)
• Update "pre-fire" tours to include "pre-hazmat" considerations (8 votes, 0 comments, rank 67)
• HAZMAT Rail Shipment Notifications (-5 vote, 0 comments, rank 224)
• TSA Chlorine Dispersion Modeling Study (-1 votes, 1 positive comment, rank 198)
• Bring in the Military (-14 votes, 4 positive comments, rank 232)
• Counter-Terrorism Emergency Response Plan - CFATS (11 votes, 0 comments, rank 44)

HOT Ideas

The IdeaScale people that run this site have yet to explain what they mean by the term “Hot Ideas”, but three of the Ideas followed here have made it to their “Hot Ideas” listing. Those would be the first three Ideas listed above. My guess is that, by some criteria not yet explained, these are Ideas that are already receiving some sort of consideration by the Local, State, Tribal, and Federal Preparedness Task Force.

Participation Urged

As always I urge readers of this blog to take the time to look at this site and add their two-cents to the discussion. It is not often that citizens are given the chance to directly participate in the decision making processes of the Federal Government. We need to utilize those opportunities when they do come along.

NOTE: Updated 09:00 EDT, 09-07-10 Added links. The new Google editor does not ‘accept’ links when pasting from MS Word and I'm still getting used to this.

National Dialogue on Preparedness Update 09-01-10

We are looking at another update on the National Dialogue on Preparedness because of a recent Idea posted by Randall Hecht that should be of interest to the chemical security community. Before we look at that new Idea, lets look at the stats for the Dialogue as of 3:50 pm EDT today.

To date there have been 205 Ideas posted by 626 registered participants. There have been 323 comments posted to these Ideas and 2,319 votes on the Ideas. We seem to be getting more active participation as time progresses.

New Idea

Randall Hecht has proposed a reorganization of the Technical Hazards Division of FEMA. He would like to see chemical, biological, radiological and explosive hazardous material coverage restored to the responsibility list for that Division. He has this specific recommendation for chemical hazardous material:

“Chemical, which includes chemical weapons, toxic industrial chemicals and toxic industrial materials. Has the responsibility of working with the agencies and organizations (NRT and RRTs, SERC and LEPCs) which deal in this area day-to-day, i.e., US EPA, US DOT, US DOE, and DHHS. They are to build the tools and guidance documents, not conduct exercises.”

Status of followed Ideas

Below is the tabulation of the status of the now seven Ideas that I think might be of interest to the chemical security community. I submitted Ideas 2, 4, 5, and 7. Reader’s of this blog should take the time to look at these Ideas if they don’t have time to peruse all of the Ideas on the site.

Participation Urged

Once again, I would like to urge anyone with an interest in the response to chemical incidents (accidental and deliberate) to become part of this dialogue. In my review of the 205 Ideas submitted, I think these 7 Ideas may be of interest to our community. But, don’t take my word for it; register, log-on, and participate in the Dialogue.

National Dialogue on Preparedness Update 08-30-10

I am providing an update on the National Dialogue on Preparedness today because I added a new Idea to the discussion and thought that I would plug it here so the readers of this blog would have an additional reason to visit the Dialogue before the September 10th closure arrived.


There are currently 173 Ideas posted to the Dialogue with my latest addition. The 518 currently registered users have made 274 comments and have posted 1,949 votes to date. There are a wide variety of both idea topics and idea quality.

Newest Idea

My latest Idea deals with setting up a program to conduct research on disasters right after they happen. This will allow authorities to learn more about the actual consequences of the incident and be able to put that knowledge back into the planning process for future events.

Tracked Ideas

I now have six postings that I am tracking because of their possible interest to the chemical security community (well my last one is of interest only marginally to this community; but it is mine so I’ll track it anyway). My ideas are numbers 1, 3, 4 and 6. The current status is listed below.

● Funding Post-Emergency Response Research (1 vote, 0 comments, rank 128)
● Update "pre-fire" tours to include "pre-hazmat" considerations (5 votes, 0 comments, rank 63)
● HAZMAT Rail Shipment Notifications (-4 vote, 0 comments, rank 166)
● TSA Chlorine Dispersion Modeling Study (-1 vote, 0 comments, rank 143)
● Bring in the Military (-12 votes, 4 positive comments, rank 175)
● Counter-Terrorism Emergency Response Plan - CFATS (9 votes, 0 comments, rank 40)

Encourage Dialogue Participation

Once again, I would like to urge all readers of this blog to participate in this Dialogue. Everyone in this country has a vested interest in ensuring the preparedness of the nation to prevent, respond to, and recover from all sorts of disasters, man-made and natural. If you do nothing more than read and vote on the Ideas that catch your eye while surfing the site, you will have participated in the Dialogue and done at least a small part in increasing the over all level of preparedness.

National Dialogue on Preparedness Update 08-26-10

I’m doing this week’s update on the National Dialogue on Preparedness web site early because the site closes for new ‘Ideas’, comments and voting when the month closes next week. I want to make sure that everyone gets the additional day to get to the site, submit their insightful ideas, comment on the Ideas in the current crop that are of personal interest, and most of all vote on the Ideas posted to the board.


As of 8:20 pm EDT tonight there were a total of 144 ideas posted on the site. A total of 416 users have posted 237 comments and voted a total of 1,614 times. That vote total definitely gives a distorted picture of the true case. Since you can actively vote-thumbs up or thumbs-down, the act of not voting on a particular Idea (if you have voted on anything else) is actually a statistical commentary on that Idea. With the Ideas being ranked based upon their vote totals, a non-vote is a mildly negative response; not a bad as a thumbs down, but negative none the less.

NOTE: I just (9:00 pm) went back and looked at the home page of the site and discovered that the Dialogue has been extended to September 10th. Well I’ve started this anyway so it’s still being posted tonight.

HAZMAT Preparedness Idea

We had a new Idea submitted today that was specifically targeted at preparedness for the chemical community and would certainly affect the high-risk chemical facilities. Michael Pirrello suggested that incentives should be given to industry with on-site hazardous materials to invite emergency response agencies to participate in hazmat response planning.

Idea Status

Here is the Thursday evening status of the Ideas that I am tracking because of their potential to be of interest to the chemical security community.

Update "pre-fire" tours to include "pre-hazmat" considerations (3 votes, 0 comments, rank 68)
HAZMAT Rail Shipment Notifications (-5 vote, 0 comments, rank 142)
TSA Chlorine Dispersion Modeling Study (-1 vote, 0 comments, rank 117)
Bring in the Military (-13 votes, 4 positive comments, rank 147)
Counter-Terrorism Emergency Response Plan - CFATS (6 votes, 0 comments, rank 46)

Of my three Ideas (#s 2,3 and 5 in the above list) only one is doing moderately well. Fortunately none are doing as bad as the one about using military forces for responding to large scale disasters. One of the drawbacks to this type of system is that very few people explain the reasons for their votes, one way or another.

My Ideas are kind of targeted at a small subset of the preparedness community so I can understand the low vote totals (I assume their low totals, we can’t tell for sure how many canceling pairs of +/- votes there are). But I had hoped that the Readers of this blog would be more active in their participation on these idea.

I am kind of disturbed by the heavy anti-military vote seen in the response to the ‘Bring in the Military’ idea. Part of the problem may be due to negative responses to some the comments about using the military in a semi-combat role along the border. Part of it may be a long-term fear in this country of military involvement in internal political matters. Outside of Reconstruction (which was an anomalous situation to say the least) there is no historical basis for that fear. But it has been a under current in this country for a long time.

Hot Ideas

At the top of the list of Ideas on each page there are six tabs to be used to sort the Ideas. The first two are self-explanatory (‘Recent’ – ordered by date submitted, and ‘Popular’ – ordered by vote totals). The last three (‘In Review’, ‘In Progress’, and ‘Complete’) are apparently going to be used by the Local, State, Tribal, and Federal Preparedness Task Force, to track their review of these Ideas after the submission/voting process is complete.

The final tab, ‘Hot Ideas’, is one that I can’t figure out. I looked at it early in the process and it looked like it was a listing of the Ideas with positive vote totals; eliminating those with zero or negative totals. It didn’t make a lot of sense so I didn’t say anything about it. I re-looked at the Ideas in the ‘Hot Ideas’ list tonight and that original idea doesn’t hold water.

The top idea on the ‘hot’ list has 48 votes, but there is one idea with significantly more votes than that. The second Idea on the ‘hot’ list is #6 on the ‘popular’ list. Interestingly the two Ideas on my coverage list with positive vote totals both made the ‘hot’ list. I don’t know why, maybe someone from DHS or Idea Scale can explain that.

Participate

I certainly want to encourage all of my readers to get involved in this Dialogue. Too often in this country we complain about the lack of responsiveness of the government to the ideas and wishes of the governed. We complain that the only voices heard are those of the rich and influential. When we are presented with an opportunity to have our individual voices heard and our unique ideas publicly discussed and evaluated we owe it to ourselves and our country to actively participate.

It is disappointing to see only 416 active participants in this Dialogue. That is fewer than the number of people sitting on our behalf in the House of Representatives. It is even more disappointing to see that there are only 144 Ideas on how we can make our country and local communities better prepared for responding to the inevitable disasters, both natural and man-made, that are sure to come our way.

I’m sure that our national and personal creativity has not waned that far. Step forward with your thoughts and ideas; become part of the Dialogue. Participate in the discussion and the evaluation of these Ideas. Remember the phrase from the radicals of the 60’s; if you aren’t part of the solution, you are part of the problem.