Preparedness and Communications

The National Weather Service in New Orleans says 2-4 inches of rain have fallen. Another 1.25-2.5 inches of rain is expected to fall in an hour in portions of the warned areas.

Ida overwhelmed sewers in minutes when it barreled in over the city on Sept. 1, flooding entire neighborhoods, causing stormwater to surge into people’s homes and killing at least 13 New Yorkers.

A policy of emphasizing fire suppression without active efforts to clear forests of dead trees and other flammable growth makes the chances of huge conflagrations much more likely.

The National Weather Service in Lake Charles expects the storm to officially make landfall on the middle Texas coast on Tuesday with the possibility of turning into a Category 1 hurricane targeting the SE Texas.

For businesses and other organizations to develop the sort of resilience needed to withstand a disaster like Hurricane Ida, having a plan for employees and having built-in redundancy are keys to success.

On Monday, Hamilton Medical Center reported 62 COVID-19 patients, with 58, or 94%, unvaccinated. It had 14 of those patients in the intensive care unit (ICU), with 13, or 93%, unvaccinated. And nine were on ventilators, all unvaccinated.

The ice storm earlier this year caught most of Texas by surprise and crippled communities. This preparedness workshop aims to educate residents on what to expect next time and how to be better prepared.

"They knew what was going to happen when the fire hit that forest. They sent 100 to 200 people up here to dig trenches instead of sending a dozer to put that out. We're fighting fires like 50 years ago."

If you live in the area or anyplace else where wildfires are burning in California, you might notice hazy skies, the smell of smoke and ash collecting on your car windshield. That's bad.

An emergency declaration authorizes state agencies to coordinate a response to the storm and pre-position personnel, vehicles and equipment for possible rainfall amounts of 2 to 4 inches through late Wednesday across a wide swath of the state.

After the Alameda Fire last year destroyed or damaged many homes and businesses, the Ashland, Ore., Chamber of Commerce went about deploying an online preparedness toolkit to help develop a more resilient community.

The state expects to receive $46 million in Federal Emergency Management Agency funding to bring in the supplemental health care workers via a contract with ProLink Healthcare in Cincinnati, Ohio.

Precise destruction tallies are not yet available due to dangerous conditions, Cal Fire says, but Sacramento Bee journalists observed many homes, a post office, an elementary school and a church all burned to the ground in Grizzly Flats.

More than 500 homes were destroyed by the Dixie fire as of Wednesday, according to Cal Fire. An estimated 557 single-family homes were reported destroyed alongside eight multi-family buildings.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency and Federal Communications Commission will test the Emergency Alert System on TVs and radios nationwide and the Wireless Emergency Alerts on some cellphones. Both tests will start at 2:20 p.m. ET.