Policies

Blog Con­tent

All data and infor­ma­tion pro­vid­ed on this site is for infor­ma­tion­al pur­pos­es only and may reflect the per­son­al expe­ri­ences of the author and con­tribut­ing authors. While all infor­ma­tion is true and com­plete to the best of our knowl­edge, we can give no guar­an­tee as to the accu­ra­cy, com­plete­ness, suit­abil­i­ty, or valid­i­ty of any infor­ma­tion on this site and will not be held liable for any errors, omis­sions, or delays in this infor­ma­tion or any loss­es, injuries, or dam­ages aris­ing from its use.

Com­pen­sa­tion

Author will not com­pen­sate you in any way what­so­ev­er if you ever hap­pen to suf­fer a loss/inconvenience or dam­age because of/while mak­ing use of infor­ma­tion in this blog. All infor­ma­tion is pro­vid­ed on an as-is basis and is to be con­sid­ered infor­ma­tion­al only, and should be fact checked.

Blog Com­ments

I encour­age you to add a com­ment to this dis­cus­sion. Com­ments may be edit­ed for spelling, com­ment clar­i­ty, or to keep out ques­tion­able mat­ters.  Off-top­ic or com­ments may not be pub­lished, delet­ed, or both if they do not per­tain to the sub­ject mat­ter.

By sub­mit­ting a com­ment you agree that the com­ment con­tent is your own, and to hold this site and all sub­sidiaries and rep­re­sen­ta­tives harm­less from any and all reper­cus­sions, dam­ages, or lia­bil­i­ty.

Finan­cial Dis­clo­sure

This blog accepts cash pay­ments for adver­tis­ing, spon­sor­ships, inser­tions or oth­er forms of com­pen­sa­tion for our ser­vices. Even though we some­times receive com­pen­sa­tion for posts, links to affil­i­ate sites (such as Amazon.com) or adver­tise­ments, we always give our hon­est opin­ions, find­ings, beliefs, or expe­ri­ences on those top­ics or prod­ucts.

Dis­claimer

To all Fed­er­al, State, Coun­ty, Local and oth­er gov­ern­ment agen­cies not direct­ly indi­cat­ed here­in who browse, audit, read, com­pile con­tent, log, add to any data­base for future ref­er­ence, infor­ma­tion sur­round­ing the con­tent found pub­lished here­in.  This blog, weblog, web­site, here­in defined as “elec­tron­ic pub­li­ca­tion” is pub­lished for dis­as­ter pre­pared­ness for use by it’s users, browsers, sub­scribers, view­ers, etc.  For def­i­n­i­tion, “dis­as­ter pre­pared­ness” will be defined as a process of ensur­ing that a per­son, fam­i­ly, group, team, and/or orga­ni­za­tion has com­plied with pre­ven­tive mea­sures derived from read­ing this and oth­er elec­tron­ic pub­li­ca­tions, and is in a state of readi­ness to con­tain the effects of a fore­cast­ed dis­as­trous event, nat­ur­al or man made, to min­i­mize loss of life, injury, and dam­age to his, her, or oth­er prop­er­ty, can pro­vide res­cue, relief, reha­bil­i­ta­tion, and oth­er ser­vices in the after­math of the dis­as­ter, and has the capa­bil­i­ty and resources to con­tin­ue to sus­tain its essen­tial func­tions with­out being over­whelmed by the demand placed on them.

Con­cur­rent to the above, in no way is this elec­tron­ic pub­li­ca­tion an anti-gov­ern­ment nor is it an anti Unit­ed States pub­li­ca­tion of any kind what­so­ev­er.  If any such con­tent exists with­in, on, or is pub­lished on such elec­tron­ic pub­li­ca­tion, it exists by coin­ci­dence only, and in no way reflects an anti Unit­ed States or anti — gov­ern­ment sen­ti­ment, and should not be con­sid­ered a threat to any Fed­er­al, State, Coun­ty, local or oth­er gov­ern­ment enti­ty what­so­ev­er.

Def­i­n­i­tions of spe­cif­ic con­tent used in “Dis­claimer”

“Process,” Sequence of inter­de­pen­dent and linked pro­ce­dures which, at every stage, con­sume one or more resources (employ­ee time, ener­gy, machines, mon­ey) to con­vert inputs (data, mate­r­i­al, parts, etc.) into out­puts. These out­puts then serve as inputs for the next stage until a known goal or end result is reached.

“Orga­ni­za­tion,” A social unit of peo­ple, sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly struc­tured and man­aged to meet a need or to pur­sue col­lec­tive goals on a con­tin­u­ing basis. All orga­ni­za­tions have a man­age­ment struc­ture that deter­mines rela­tion­ships between func­tions and posi­tions, and sub­di­vides and del­e­gates roles, respon­si­bil­i­ties, and author­i­ty to car­ry out defined tasks. Orga­ni­za­tions are open sys­tems in that they affect and are affect­ed by the envi­ron­ment beyond their bound­aries.

“Mea­sures,” Actions tak­en either in antic­i­pa­tion of an event or in a need­ed event.

“Readi­ness,” State of pre­pared­ness of per­sons, sys­tems, or orga­ni­za­tions to meet a sit­u­a­tion and car­ry out a planned sequence of actions. Readi­ness is based on thor­ough­ness of the plan­ning, ade­qua­cy and train­ing of the per­son­nel, and sup­ply and reserve of sup­port ser­vices or sys­tems.

“Dis­as­trous Events” Man-made event (such as an armed con­flict, riot­ing, war) or a nat­ur­al event (such as an earth­quake, flood, hur­ri­cane) that pre­cip­i­tates a dis­as­ter.

“Loss,” Unre­cov­er­able and usu­al­ly unan­tic­i­pat­ed and non-recur­ring removal of, or decrease in, an asset or resource.

“Injury,” Includ­ing but not lim­it­ed to Dam­age to a prop­er­ty, or bod­i­ly harm to a per­son.  Dis­ease or impair­ment of a per­son­’s body or mind. Infringe­ment, wrong, or vio­la­tion of a legal right for which law pro­vides dam­ages. Also called legal injury.

“Dam­age,” Harm or injury to a per­son, prop­er­ty, or sys­tem result­ing in impair­ment or loss of func­tion, use­ful­ness, or val­ue.

“Prop­er­ty,” Arti­cle, item, or thing owned with the rights of pos­ses­sion, use, and enjoy­ment, and which the own­er can bestow, col­lat­er­al­ize, encum­ber, mort­gage, sell, or trans­fer, and can exclude every­one else from it. Two basic kinds of prop­er­ty are (1) Real (land), involv­ing a degree of geo­graph­i­cal fix­i­ty, and (2) Per­son­al (any­thing oth­er than real prop­er­ty) which does not involve geo­graph­i­cal fix­i­ty. Per­son­al prop­er­ty is sub­di­vid­ed into tan­gi­ble prop­er­ty (any phys­i­cal ani­mate or inan­i­mate object) and intan­gi­ble prop­er­ty (intel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ty).

“Pro­vide,” To allo­cate or give resources to a per­son, enti­ty or thing, usu­al­ly for pur­pos­es of com­ple­tion of a project.

“Reha­bil­i­ta­tion,” Restora­tion of an enti­ty to its nor­mal or near-nor­mal func­tion­al capa­bil­i­ties after the occur­rence of a dis­abling event.

“Ser­vices,” Intan­gi­ble prod­ucts such as account­ing, bank­ing, clean­ing, con­sul­tan­cy, edu­ca­tion, insur­ance, exper­tise, med­ical treat­ment, or trans­porta­tion.  Some­times ser­vices are dif­fi­cult to iden­ti­fy because they are close­ly asso­ci­at­ed with a good; such as the com­bi­na­tion of a diag­no­sis with the admin­is­tra­tion of a med­i­cine. No trans­fer of pos­ses­sion or own­er­ship takes place when ser­vices are sold, and they (1) can­not be stored or trans­port­ed, (2) are instant­ly per­ish­able, and (3) come into exis­tence at the time they are bought and con­sumed.

“After­math,” The end result of cumu­la­tive­ly neg­a­tive effects of adverse and often cat­a­stroph­ic events or sit­u­a­tions. For exam­ple, the after­math of a com­pa­ny’s bank­rupt­cy, earth­quake, flood, or oth­er event can leave many thou­sands of peo­ple unem­ployed, with­out hous­ing, food, cloth­ing, or oth­er required resources.

“Dis­as­ter,” Calami­tous, dis­tress­ing, or ruinous effects of a dis­as­trous event (such as drought, flood, fire, hur­ri­cane, war) of such scale that they dis­rupt (or threat­en to dis­rupt) crit­i­cal func­tions of an orga­ni­za­tion, soci­ety or sys­tem, for a peri­od long enough to sig­nif­i­cant­ly harm it or cause its fail­ure. It is the con­se­quences of a dis­as­trous event and the inabil­i­ty of its vic­tims to cope with them that con­sti­tute a dis­as­ter, not the event itself. Although there is no uni­ver­sal­ly accept­ed def­i­n­i­tion of a dis­as­ter, the fol­low­ing obser­va­tion by the US dis­as­ter relief spe­cial­ist Fred­er­ick C. Cuny (1944–1995) comes close, “A sit­u­a­tion result­ing from an envi­ron­men­tal phe­nom­e­non or armed con­flict that pro­duced stress, per­son­al injury, phys­i­cal dam­age, and eco­nom­ic dis­rup­tion of great mag­ni­tude.” The def­i­n­i­tion adopt­ed by the World Health Orga­ni­za­tion (WHO) terms a dis­as­ter as “The result of a vast eco­log­i­calbreak­down in the rela­tions between man and his envi­ron­ment, a seri­ous and sud­den (or slow, as in drought) dis­rup­tion on such a scale that the strick­en com­mu­ni­ty needs extra­or­di­nary efforts to cope with it, often with out­side help or inter­na­tion­al aid.” The US Fed­er­al Emer­gency Man­age­ment Agency (FEMA) describes it as “An occur­rence of a nat­ur­al cat­a­stro­phe, tech­no­log­i­cal acci­dent, or human caused event that has result­ed in severe prop­er­ty dam­age, deaths, and/or mul­ti­ple injuries.” Dr. Kath­leen J. Tier­ney (Direc­tor, Dis­as­ter Research Cen­ter, Uni­ver­si­ty of Delaware) puts the mat­ter in a dif­fer­ent per­spec­tive: “Many peo­ple try­ing to do quick­ly what they do not ordi­nar­i­ly do, in an envi­ron­ment with which they are not famil­iar.”

“Capa­bil­i­ty,” Mea­sure of the abil­i­ty of an enti­ty (depart­ment, orga­ni­za­tion, per­son, sys­tem) to achieve its objec­tives, spe­cial­ly in rela­tion to its over­all mis­sion.

“Resource,” An eco­nom­ic or pro­duc­tive fac­tor required to accom­plish an activ­i­ty, or as means to under­take an enter­prise and achieve desired out­come. Three most basic resources are land, labor, and cap­i­tal; oth­er resources include ener­gy, entre­pre­neur­ship, infor­ma­tion, exper­tise, man­age­ment, and time.

“Demand,” An asser­tion of a right, such as to seek a com­pen­sa­tion or relief.

 

 

 

This page last edit­ed 01/24/2012