Disasters Underground


Book Description

The rapid expansion of the RAF during the mid/late 1930s necessitated a massive storage requirement for high explosive bombs and other ordinance. Drawing on the experience of the Great War ammunition factories, the authorities set about identifying underground sites around Britain safe from the threat of air attack. Unfortunately in the haste of the moment safety arrangements were not a high priority and, as a result, there were a number of appalling accidents; the most serious occurred in November 1944 when 3,800 tons of HE bombs detonated at the same time resulting in the deaths of 68 people in a Staffordshire quarry.




Disasters 2.0


Book Description

Emerging social media and so-called Web 2.0 technologies will continue to have a great impact on the practice and application of the emergency management function in every public safety sector. Disasters 2.0: The Application of Social Media Systems for Modern Emergency Management prepares emergency managers and first responders to successfully appl




World Disasters


Book Description

This fascinating book looks at some of the most horrifying and noteworthy disasters to have occurred around the world. More than 200 disasters involving aircraft, ships and trains as well as fires are analysed in detail, accompanied by 500 photographs. The entries, which are arranged chronologically, explain the background to each incident, the event itself, and the search for causes and culprits. The volume also contains a wide-ranging introduction, a bibliography, and a comprehensive index.




Disaster Robotics


Book Description

A comprehensive, authoritative, and accessible reference for disaster robotics that covers theory, specific deployments, and ground, air, and marine modalities. This book offers the definitive guide to the theory and practice of disaster robotics. It can serve as an introduction for researchers and technologists, a reference for emergency managers, and a textbook in field robotics. Written by a pioneering researcher in the field who has herself participated in fifteen deployments of robots in disaster response and recovery, the book covers theory and practice, the history of the field, and specific missions. After a broad overview of rescue robotics in the context of emergency informatics, the book provides a chronological summary and formal analysis of the thirty-four documented deployments of robots to disasters that include the 2001 collapse of the World Trade Center, Hurricane Katrina, the 2010 Haiti earthquake, the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, the 2011 Japanese earthquake and tsunami, and numerous mining accidents. It then examines disaster robotics in the typical robot modalities of ground, air, and marine, addressing such topics as robot types, missions and tasks, and selection heuristics for each modality. Finally, the book discusses types of fieldwork, providing practical advice on matters that include collecting data and collaborating with emergency professionals. The field of disaster robotics has lacked a comprehensive overview. This book by a leader in the field, offering a unique combination of the theoretical and the practical, fills the gap.




Disaster Drawn


Book Description

In hard-hitting accounts of Auschwitz, Bosnia, Palestine, and Hiroshima’s Ground Zero, comics display a stunning capacity to bear witness to trauma. Investigating how hand-drawn comics has come of age as a serious medium for engaging history, Disaster Drawn explores the ways graphic narratives by diverse artists, including Jacques Callot, Francisco Goya, Keiji Nakazawa, Art Spiegelman, and Joe Sacco, document the disasters of war. Hillary L. Chute traces how comics inherited graphic print traditions and innovations from the seventeenth century and later, pointing out that at every turn new forms of visual-verbal representation have arisen in response to the turmoil of war. Modern nonfiction comics emerged from the shattering experience of World War II, developing in the 1970s with Art Spiegelman’s first “Maus” story about his immigrant family’s survival of Nazi death camps and with Hiroshima survivor Keiji Nakazawa’s inaugural work of “atomic bomb manga,” the comic book Ore Wa Mita (“I Saw It”)—a title that alludes to Goya’s famous Disasters of War etchings. Chute explains how the form of comics—its collection of frames—lends itself to historical narrative. By interlacing multiple temporalities over the space of the page or panel, comics can place pressure on conventional notions of causality. Aggregating and accumulating frames of information, comics calls attention to itself as evidence. Disaster Drawn demonstrates why, even in the era of photography and film, people understand hand-drawn images to be among the most powerful forms of historical witness.




Implementing EMDR Early Mental Health Interventions for Man-Made and Natural Disasters


Book Description

"In this latest insightful volume gathered and edited by Marilyn Luber, the authors have combined the lessons learned with personal accounts of how they proceeded. There is still much to be done to integrate mental health care effectively into disaster response worldwide, but this volume will help to point the way to best practices." --Robert Gelbach, PhD Past Executive Director at EMDR Humanitarian Assistance Programs Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) is a method of psychotherapy that has been extensively researched and proven effective for the treatment of trauma. This book presents EMDR early-response intervention protocols for such traumatic events as earthquakes, mining accidents, tsunamis, and ongoing warfare. It also provides concise summary sheets to facilitate quick information retrieval in perilous circumstances. The book is authored by several of the first generation of therapists who successfully employed EMDR as a clinical treatment for acute stress following massive trauma events. They vividly describe their experiences and the protocols and models they developed to respond to disaster. The book describes two of the most commonly used resources: the Butterfly Hug and the Four Elements Exercise for Stress Management. Includes new information on acute stress, secondary PTSD, and vicarious traumatization growing out of interventions subsequent to natural disasters, warfare, and massacres in Turkey, Asia, the Middle East, South and Central America, and the United States. Interventions that can be put to use on site and posttrauma are presented for groups, including work with children, adolescents, and adults and with special populations. Additionally the book addresses working with first responders such as firefighters, EMS workers, and others when using EMDR. It facilitates the gathering and organizing of client data and contains updated and new scripted protocols, as well as summary sheets from EMDR Scripted Protocols: Basics and Special Situations and EMDR Scripted Protocols: Special Populations. Also included are templates for repeat use and an interactive PDF. Key Features: Provides EMDR early-intervention procedures for man-made and natural catastrophes Addresses EMDR and early interventions for groups of all ages and special populations Highlights international perspectives on how to organize a mental health response for recent traumatic events Includes early-intervention scripts and summary sheets for individuals, groups, and special populations, as well as self-care scripts for clinicians Offers concise summary sheets for quick information retrieval




Historical Mining Disasters


Book Description




Surviving Disasters


Book Description

With every major disaster, there are amazing tales of survival. This book covers some of them.




Fire Underground


Book Description

How a modern-day mine disaster has turned a Pennsylvania community into a ghost town * For much of its history, Centralia, Pennsylvania, had a population of around 2,000. By 1981, this had dwindled to just over 1,000—not unusual for a onetime mining town. But as of 2007, Centralia had the unwelcome distinction of being the state’s tiniest municipality, with a population of nine. The reason: an underground fire that began in 1962 has decimated the town with smoke and toxic gases, and has since made history. Fire Underground is the completely updated classic account of the fire that has been raging under Centralia for decades. David DeKok tells the story of how the fire actually began and how government officials failed to take effective action. By 1981 the fire was spewing deadly gases into homes. A twelve-year-old boy dropped into a steaming hole as a congressman toured nearby. DeKok describes how the people of Centralia banded together to finally win relocation funds—and he reveals what has happened to the few remaining residents as the fiftieth anniversary of the fire’s beginning nears.




Current Mine Safety Disasters


Book Description