Constrafor is stepping up to support local contractors across Florida, North Carolina, and Georgia with a comprehensive Disaster Relief Effort. This initiative, in conjunction with their Early Pay Program (EPP), aims to provide immediate financial support to contractors, enabling them to overcome delays, secure materials, and ensure timely payment for their teams.

Paul Davis Restoration pledges $1 million to the American Red Cross Annual Disaster Giving Program in response to Hurricanes Helene and Milton. This proactive donation ensures the Red Cross is equipped to meet the needs of those affected by disasters across the U.S. Discover how this significant contribution, along with volunteer efforts, supports disaster relief and community resilience. 

Floods and torrential rain have not gone away and residents hail stories of heroism as the clean-up continues.

The $20M debt of the Kamala Campaign is just the tip of the iceberg. The entire operations are in chaos.

The post DNC DISASTER: Finance Committee Member Dishes About HOW Bad It’s Getting appeared first on Clash Daily.

Disruptive rains, floods, strong winds and hail from Oct. 22 to Oct. 29 affected the Eastern Cape, KwaZulu-Natal, Free State, Limpopo, North-West, Gauteng and Mpumalanga provinces, Elias Sithole, head of the National Disaster Management Centre

Extreme weather in Spain is back over Malaga as flights and train travel are disrupted due to wind and rain

No business owner ever expects it to happen. After closing up for the day or the week, a phone call at 6 a.m. lets you know that the severe storm that passed through town overnight took a punch at your small business, with flood damage, fire, tornado or other damage.

Or it could have been an earthquake or hurricane. Still, what may have taken years to build is in ruins. How do you begin to recover?

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The Small Business Administration has extended deferment periods for all of l its disaster loans made either in 2020 or 2021, the agency announced on Monday.

The extended deferment includes the SBAs Economic Injury Disaster Loan – or EIDL – program, which many businesses that did not qualify for Paycheck Protection Program loans or other funding used to bridge the losses incurred during the COVID-19 pandemic.

All SBA disaster loans made in 2020 will have the first payment due date extended from 12-months to 24-months from the date of the note, the agency said. Disaster loans made in 2021 will have a first payment due date extended from 12-months to 18-months from the date of the note.

There are big opportunities for the music industry in podcasts, but one of the big barriers is licensing: the cost and complexity for podcasters of securing the rights to actually play music in their shows.

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Hurricane Katrina made landfall Monday but avoided a potential "Worst-Case Scenario" for the U.S. energy industry... and, as an extension, for the U.S. economy as a whole. As crude oil futures on the New York Mercantile Exchange reached $70.80 Sunday...

August 31, 2005 – As the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) swings into high gear to provide disaster relief to victims of Hurricane Katrina, ACCESS has learned that the Social Security Administration has no procedures to help many of these same victims get back on their feet. The problem that many victims face is that they escaped with only the clothes on their backs; meaning that they have too little iformation for the Social Security Administration to reissue them Social Security Cards. This means that storm victims face a variety of problems that neither they, nor the Federal Government have ever even considered.

January 19, 2006 – There is a lot of talk in the media about natural disasters. In the past year the United States has faced hurricanes, flooding, tornados and fires. The first thing on the mind of anyone who goes through a disaster is physical survival. But what very few people consider is economic survival. Just because you lose all of your physical possessions doesn’t mean that you have to lose everything that you have worked for all of your life. But in order to survive economically, you need to do some pre-planning.

Cell phones are now very common in the Western world and have become increasingly more important in a crisis. There are a number of different ways that cell phones can be  extremely helpful in an emergency situation, as a result it is important that the cell phone be operational and have power in the event it is needed.

During a crisis the battery life of a cell phone is crucial. A cell phone may be the only source of communication available.

Prolonging the battery life of a cell phone can be very important and should be considered a priority in an emergency situation. Regardless of whether you have an iPhone or an Android phone there are a number of things that can be done to extend the life of a cell phone’s battery.

Cell Phone Use in Natural Disasters and How to Conserve Battery Life

(Telecompaper) HKBN Enterprise Solutions (HKBNES) has signed a partnership agreement with disaster recovery vendor Information2 Software. HKBNES becomes Information2 Software's general distributor in Hong Kong...

For those of us who cannot go, work or provide, Fr. John notes that we can still contribute in the most important way.

On St. Michael's Day of 2012, the parish of St. Michael the Archangel (UOC-USA) in Woonsocket, RI suffered tremendous damage from a fire. In this podcast, Fr. Anthony, the priest of St. Michael's at that time, shares hard-earned advice on preparing for, dealing with, and recovering from parish disasters. The most important advice? Keep the One Thing Needful top on the list of priorities at every step of the process.

What does the Orthodox Church have to say about Charlottesville? In the vocabulary of the day, nothing. In the language of the redemption of mankind: the Good News of Redemption found alone in Jesus Christ, and a life committed to imitation of his Royal way. The greatest mistake any human person can make, in this situation or any other, is to think that human means and ways will solve the tragedies and disasters of the fallen world. The solution must come from outside us, above us. Salvation is not found in killing our neighbor or our enemy. Salvation is found is seeing the Lord Jesus Christ in neighbor and in blessing our enemy, both. So if you wish to be saved, and if you want to make “a positive change in the world,” look neither to the Left, nor to the Right. Look up to Jesus Christ, the Savior and Redeemer of the World.

We read Acts 11:19-30, our epistle for this Sunday, by means of a Jewish text, 2 Esdras 10:21-23, and in the light of Psalm 43 (MT 44) and Genesis 22:15-18. The Christian Diaspora is understood by Luke as used by God for the growth and maturity of his people, and not simply as an occasion for great lament. This insight contrasts with Jewish responses to the earlier Diasporas caused by Assyria and Babylon, for we know that God turns even martyrdom and dislocation to His purposes: He is the One who tramples down death by death.

The BBC's Nikita Mandhani reflects on her personal experience of the second wave in India.

1. UN chief warns COP29 summit to pay up or face climate-led disaster for humanity  The Globe and Mail
2. Climate Summit, in Early Days, Is Already on a ‘Knife Edge’  The New York Times
3. At COP29 summit, nations big and small get chance to bear witness to climate change  The Globe and Mail
4. Terence Corcoran: COP29 hit by political ‘dunkelflaute’  Financial Post
5. COP29: Albania PM goes off script to ask 'What on Earth are we doing?'  Euronews

Emergency disaster management presents substantial risks and obstacles to shield tunnel building projects, particularly in the event of water leakage accidents. Contemporary water leak detection is critical for guaranteeing safety by reducing the likelihood of disasters and the severity of any resulting damages. However, it can be difficult. Deep learning models can analyse images taken inside the tunnel to look for signs of water damage. This study introduces a unique strategy that employs deep learning techniques, generative adversarial networks (GAN) with long short-term memory (LSTM) for water leakage detection i shield tunnel construction (WLD-STC) to conduct classification and prediction tasks on the massive image dataset. The results demonstrate that for identifying and analysing water leakage episodes during shield tunnel construction, the WLD-STC strategy using LSTM-based GAN networks outperformed other methods, particularly on huge data.

Aim/Purpose: Vis-à-vis management of crisis and disaster situations, this paper focuses on important use cases of social media functions, such as information collection & dissemination, disaster event identification & monitoring, collaborative problem-solving mechanism, and decision-making process. With the prolific utilization of disaster-based ontological framework, a strong disambiguation system is realized, which further enhances the searching capabilities of the user request and provides a solution of unambiguous in nature. Background: Even though social media is information-rich, it has created a challenge for deriving a decision in critical crisis-related cases. In order to make the whole process effective and avail quality decision making, sufficiently clear semantics of such information is necessary, which can be supplemented through employing semantic web technologies. Methodology: This paper evolves a disaster ontology-based system availing a framework model for monitoring uses of social media during risk and crisis-related events. The proposed system monitors a discussion thread discovering whether it has reached its peak or decline after its root in the social forum like Twitter. The content in social media can be accessed through two typical ways: Search Application Program Interfaces (APIs) and Streaming APIs. These two kinds of API processes can be used interchangeably. News content may be filtered by time, geographical region, keyword occurrence and availability ratio. With the support of disaster ontology, domain knowledge extraction and comparison against all possible concepts are availed. Besides, the proposed method makes use of SPARQL to disambiguate the query and yield the results which produce high precision. Contribution: The model provides for the collection of crisis-related temporal data and decision making through semantic mapping of entities over concepts in a disaster ontology we developed, thereby disambiguating potential named entities. Results of empirical testing and analysis indicate that the proposed model outperforms similar other models. Findings: Crucial findings of this research lie in three aspects: (1) Twitter streams and conventional news media tend to offer almost similar types of news coverage for a specified event, but the rate of distribution among topics/categories differs. (2) On specific events such as disaster, crisis or any emergency situations, the volume of information that has been accumulated between the two news media stands divergent and filtering the most potential information poses a challenging task. (3) Relational mapping/co-occurrence of terms has been well designed for conventional news media, but due to shortness and sparseness of tweets, there remains a bottleneck for researchers. Recommendations for Practitioners: Though metadata avails collaborative details of news content and it has been conventionally used in many areas like information retrieval, natural language processing, and pattern recognition, there is still a lack of fulfillment in semantic aspects of data. Hence, the pervasive use of ontology is highly suggested that build semantic-oriented metadata for concept-based modeling, information flow searching and knowledge exchange. Recommendation for Researchers: The strong recommendation for researchers is that instead of heavily relying on conventional Information Retrieval (IR) systems, one can focus more on ontology for improving the accuracy rate and thereby reducing ambiguous terms persisting in the result sets. In order to harness the potential information to derive the hidden facts, this research recommends clustering the information from diverse sources rather than pruning a single news source. It is advisable to use a domain ontology to segregate the entities which pose ambiguity over other candidate sets thus strengthening the outcome. Impact on Society: The objective of this research is to provide informative summarization of happenings such as crisis, disaster, emergency and havoc-based situations in the real world. A system is proposed which provides the summarized views of such happenings and corroborates the news by interrelating with one another. Its major task is to monitor the events which are very booming and deemed important from a crowd’s perspective. Future Research: In the future, one shall strive to help to summarize and to visualize the potential information which is ranked high by the model.

Aim/Purpose: The primary purpose of this study is to investigate the factors that impact the behavioral intention to use social media (SM) for knowledge sharing (KS) in the disaster relief (DR) context. Background: With the continuing growth of SM for KS in the DR environment, disaster relief organizations across the globe have started to realize its importance in streamlining their processes in the post-implementation phase. However, SM-based KS depends on the willingness of members to share their knowledge with others, which is affected by several technological, social, and organizational factors. Methodology: A survey was conducted in Somalia to gather primary data from DR practitioners, using purposive sampling as the technique. The survey collected 214 valid responses, which were then analyzed with the PLS-SEM approach. Contribution: The study contributes to an understanding of the real-life hurdles faced by disaster relief organizations by expanding on the C-TAM-TPB model with the inclusion of top management support, organizational rewards, enjoyment in helping others, knowledge self-efficacy, and interpersonal trust factors. Additionally, it provides useful recommendations to managers of disaster relief organizations on the key factors to consider. Findings: The findings recorded that perceived usefulness, ease of use, top management support, enjoyment in helping others, knowledge self-efficacy, and interpersonal trust were critical factors in determining behavioral intention (BI) to use SM-based KS in the DR context. Furthermore, the mediator variables were attitude, subjective norms, and perceived behavioral control. Recommendations for Practitioners: Based on the research findings, it was determined that management should create different discussion forums among the disaster relief teams to ensure the long-term use of SM-based KS within DR organizations. They should also become involved in the discussions for disaster-related knowledge such as food supplies, shelter, or medical relief that disaster victims need. Disaster relief managers should consider effective and adequate training to enhance individual knowledge and self-efficacy since a lack of training may increase barriers and difficulties in using SM for KS during a DR process. Recommendation for Researchers: The conceptual model, further empirically investigated, can be employed by other developing countries in fostering acceptance of SM for KS during disaster relief operations. Impact on Society: Disaster relief operations can be facilitated using social media by considering the challenges DR practitioners face during emergencies. Future Research: In generalizing this study’s findings, other national or global disaster relief organizations should consider, when applying and testing, the research instruments and proposed model. The researchers may extend this study by collecting data from managers or administrators since they are different types of users of the SM-based KS system.

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Vice President Kamala Harris' luring of celebrities out of their mansions to perform songs for middle-class voters struggling to afford groceries and rent was symbolic of an attitude that ultimately doomed her presidential campaign.

Japan's nuclear watchdog on Wednesday formally disqualified a reactor in the country's north-central region from restarting, the first rejection under safety standards that were reinforced after the 2011 Fukushima disaster. The decision is a setback for Japan as it seeks to accelerate reactor restarts to maximize nuclear power.

“How could we have prepared for this?” Operation Blessing’s Disaster Relief team hears these words all too often after a disaster destroys a family home. Nobody knows when disaster will strike, so it’s important to be prepared with a disaster emergency kit. Does your family know what do to in case of disaster? How prepared are you? These fun questions are designed to spark a family conversation about your specific preparation plan. Here are some suggested talking points. When will you stay?...

Before I speak to organizations about energy-efficient and disaster-resilient construction, I update the toll that recent storms and disasters have taken.

Washington — Recently released interactive training from the Chemical Safety Board incorporates agency findings from a deadly refinery explosion to form guidelines for managing hazardous chemicals and complying with OSHA’s standard on process safety management.

We’ve all seen the headlines — fearsome storms, flooding, earthquakes and more. Fortunately, these disasters don’t happen every day — at least not in most places — but hearing the news is a reminder that a severe weather event or natural disaster could happen on any given day in your town and at your facility. Do you have a disaster preparedness and recovery plan in place? 

Washington – A lawmaker is predicting a grim outcome if regulators do not strengthen safety standards for air transport of lithium cells and batteries.

Lowell, MA — Keeping workers safe during a disaster – natural or human-caused – is the goal of a new online course from a NIOSH Total Worker Health Center of Excellence.

Arlington, VA – The Mine Safety and Health Administration has addressed all of the 100 corrective actions recommended in its 2012 internal review following the Upper Big Branch mine explosion in April 2010, the agency announced Jan. 13.

Because natural disasters can result in significant loss of life and property, it’s incumbent not only on individuals and homeowners to prepare to respond, but also on businesses to have response plans in place.

How does facility safety go beyond building infrastructure and protocol during hurricane season?

How can emergency responders best be prepared with proper respiratory protection this hurricane season?

The post Resilient Hospitals: An inter-regional guidance on strengthening resilience to health emergencies and disasters in health facilities was curated by information for practice.

The post Disaster Resilience Scorecard for Cities was curated by information for practice.

The post Disaster Risk Communication Hub: Simple guidance and practical tips for practitioners was curated by information for practice.

The post Entry points for disaster risk reduction mainstreaming in humanitarian shelter and settlements interventions was curated by information for practice.

Disaster SNAP (D-SNAP) and other federal nutrition programs play a critical role in mitigating spikes in food insecurity during such challenging times. This is due to their ability to expedite and strengthen the response to disasters of various types.

The post Leveraging Federal Nutrition Resources for Disaster Recovery was curated by information for practice.

One of the creators of a Christian nonprofit effort aimed at “better Christian politics” claims President-elect Donald Trump’s victory in the 2024 election is a “disaster” for the United States.

The Chernobyl nuclear explosion was undoubtedly one of the biggest tragedies that the Soviet Union had seen. Few in the world know that there were other major disasters in the USSR, the scale of which was just as mortifying. The Kyshtym accidentIt is also known as Chelyabinsk-40 accident. Today, this town is called Ozersk; it used to be a secret settlement during the times of the Soviet Union. It was the first man-made disaster that the USSR had seen. In 1957, an explosion of tanks with radioactive waste occurred at Mayak chemical factory. No one was injured as a result of the explosion. However, there were about 270,000 people living in the affected area. The military were evacuated first - they were attracted to liquidation works. Civilian people were evacuated two weeks later.A reserve called East-Ural Radioactive Trace was created on the site of the accident many years afterwards. The site is still closed to the public - the level of radiation there is still high.Krasnoye SormovoThe radioactive accident in Red Sormovo (Krasnoye Sormovo) occurred 16 years before the Chernobyl disaster - in 1970. The accident took place during hydraulic tests on a new nuclear submarine at the plant in the Nizhny Novgorod region. The reactor started up accidentally, and the Krasnoye Sormovo workshop was filled with radioactive vapors immediately. Twelve people were killed on the spot, about 200 others received a huge dose of radiation. The workshop was isolated from external environment, which made it possible to avoid the danger of radioactive contamination of the area. The work to liquidate the consequences of the accident took four months.Only 200 out of 1,000 employees of the factory had stayed alive by January 2012. All of them became first- and second-degree disabled individuals. Explosion at Baikonur CosmodromeMore than 100 people were killed as a result of the explosion that took place on Baikonur Cosmodrome in 1960.Shortly before the accident, Soviet engineers were developing a new intercontinental ballistic missile at the facility. Marshal Nedelin was supervising the tests as the chief commander of missile forces of the USSR. Many safety rules were violated as the team was in a rush to have the report ready for the anniversary of the October Revolution. At one point, the engine of the missile was launched earlier than expected, which caused fuel to explode. The information about this tragedy has long been classified.Kurenyovskaya tragedyThis tragedy took place in the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic in 1961. The causes of the accident started forming ten years earlier. The Kiev authorities decided to build a landfill of liquid waste from nearest factories and plants in Babi Yar. In 1961, the dam, which was holding the dump, burst, sending an avalanche of dirt 14 meters high and 20 meters wide. The avalanche turned as many as 81 buildings into ruins. Sixty-eight of those buildings were residential. About 1,500 people became homeless as a result of the disaster, about 200 were killed. The authorities decided not to distribute the information about the accident. The victims were buried quickly. Kiev disconnected itself from international communication the day when the tragedy occurred not to leak any information. These are just a few disasters that the USSR had seen in its history, but there were more.

June 30, 1971, was the day when the largest tragedy in the history of Soviet cosmonautics took place. It was the day, when the entire crew of the Soyuz-11 spacecraft was killed during the return mission: Georgy Dobrovolsky, Vladislav Volkov and Viktor Patsaev. When returning to Earth, the crew of the Soyuz-11 spacecraft - Vladislav Volkov, Georgy Dobrovolsky and Viktor Patsaev - were killed as a result of the depressurization of the descent vehicle. The cosmonauts were buried underneath the Kremlin wall. This was the second and the last disaster in the history of manned space flight for both the USSR and Russia. Soyuz comes to replace Gagarin's Vostok Soyuz is a family of disposable manned transport spacecraft, which was designed and built by Design Bureau OKB-1 (currently known as Energia Rocket and Space Corporation named after Korolev). 

The Spanish authorities allowed a humanitarian disaster to occur in Valencia when a catastrophic flood hit the region. The government of Spain pays first priority to Ukraine, rather to its own people. Humanitarian crisis in Valencia due to government inaction On October 29, torrential rains hit Valencia inundating dry riverbeds and ravines filled with dead wood and debris. Floodwaters went upstream under pressure trapping thousands of people. To date, 217 bodies have been identified. According to European satellite emergency assistance system Copernicus EMS, the floods affected 15,633 hectares of land, including 3,249 kilometers of streets and roads. Over 190,000 people were affected, 17,597 residential buildings were ruined or partially damaged. Hospitals of the region work in overdrive due to disrupted logistics.

"Tell me the numbers, I'll take care of the politics." Shashi Nambisan, director of the Transportation Research Center (TRC) at UNLV, recalled a pivotal discussion in the early 1990s with then-County Commissioner Bruce L. Woodbury about the transportation needs of a region on the precipice of substantial growth.

Today the science academies of the G7 countries and seven additional academies issued three joint statements to their respective governments to inform discussions during the G7 summit to be held in May in Japan, as well as ongoing policymaking.

The academic biomedical research community should improve its ability to mitigate and recover from the impacts of disasters, says a new report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine.

Our ability to observe and predict severe weather events and other disasters has improved markedly over recent decades, yet this progress does not always translate into similar advances in the systems used in such circumstances to protect lives.