Giant pink slugs! Cannibal snails! Snakes falling out of trees! And a "Kitten Crisis"!  All of these were in the news this week.  Thank Australia for the slugs and snails.  The snakes are scaring kids at Washington D.C. playgrounds. And the kittens, well, the kitten crisis headline was from a San Francisco paper, but I've got a kitten crisis too!

Her name is Lady Grey.  Her big brothers, Earl Grey and Batman, went to their new homes this morning. Lady Grey is distraught, and I thought I'd be nice and let her sit with me while I work (I also couldn't stand the pitiful cries emanating from my bathroom/her prison).  She settled in nicely, beneath my chin, but then I guess she just couldn't resist the lure of the blinking cursor because the next thing I knew, a miniscule cat was flinging itself at my laptop screen.  In less than a second, she'd managed to hit enough keys with her wee paws that my laptop was locked.  The arrow would not move.  I was in trouble.

Back to the throne room for Lady Grey and onto the phone for me.  Luckily, my boyfriend can fix anything and is a really nice man.  He had me back up and running in no time.  Whew!  Computer crisis over.  But in the spirit of mitigation and risk reduction, how about helping me prevent another kitten/computer crisis?  Who wants the runt of the foster litter?

My kitten crisis aside, disasters and animals are a tricky situation. A veterinarian friend of mine shared this heartbreaking article about the animals that were killed, wounded, and lost during last week's tornado in Oklahoma and the emergency veterinary responders who did their best to help.  It made me think about my pet preparedness, and it might not hurt for all of you to make sure your employees have thought about that too (here, this might help).  Evacuating two dogs, a kitten (but she's going home with one of you soon, right?), a lovebird, a turtle, and an African Grey who is not shy about talking back is no small task.  But I'm not leaving without them.

Buffy Rojas

In a report that evaluates national preparedness, infrastructure and public-private partnerships were called out as areas for improvement.

"The nation has made important progress in the national areas for improvement identified in the 2012 NPR-Cybersecurity, Recovery-focused core capabilities and integration of individuals with disabilities and access and functional needs-but challenges remain.  Enhancing the resilience of infrastructure systems and maturing the role of public-private partnerships are newly identified national areas for improvement," according to FEMA's website.

FEMA and its partners released the 2013 National Preparedness Report (NPR) on Wednesday.  The NPR is an annual status report on the nation's progress toward reaching the National Preparedness Goal of a secure and resilient nation. The report was developed to meet the requirements of Presidential Policy Directive 8/PPD-8: National Preparedness.  PPD-8 is aimed at strengthening the security and resilience of the United States through systematic preparation for the threats that pose the greatest risk to the security of the nation, including acts of terrorism, cyber-attacks, pandemics and catastrophic natural disasters.

The report summarizes national progress in building, sustaining, and delivering the 31 core capabilities outlined in the  National Preparedness Goal. The 2012 NPR highlighted preparedness accomplishments in the decade since the September 11, 2001 attacks and the 2013 NPR focuses on accomplishments either achieved or reported on during 2012. The 2013 NPR presents an opportunity to reflect on the progress that whole community partners-including all levels of government, private and nonprofit sectors, faith-based organizations, communities and individuals-have made in strengthening national preparedness and to identify where preparedness gaps remain.

Read it for yourself!  Download the report here: 2013 National Preparedness Report.

Another report also released this Wednesday (I guess I forgot that I asked for disaster research reports for my birthday!), contained some interesting findings about public perception of disasters and disaster relief funding.

The national study, by the Pew Research Center and the Washington Post, was conducted May 23-26 among 1,005 adults, and found broad support across demographic groups for the view that federal spending in response to natural disasters is emergency aid and does not need to be offset by cuts to other programs. They broke it down in all sorts of political ways that don't need to be reported here. But more interesting (to me), is this secondary finding, reported almost as an afterthought:

"Nearly half of Americans (47%) say they paid very close attention to news about the deadly tornado that struck Moore, Oklahoma, last week. Interest in the tornado was only slightly lower than interest in Hurricane Sandy last fall (53%). Interest in the storm far surpassed interest in the week's other top stories, including the murder of a British soldier in London (18% very closely), the debate over immigration policy in the U.S. (17%) and news about the Obama administration's policy on the use of military drones (17%).

So, the "strike while the iron is hot" approach to raising awareness for preparedness and continuity (and requests for funding) seems to be the way to go.  If you can piggyback your message onto a news story that half of the employees in your organization are following, the odds of you getting your message across have got to increase.  Just be sure to do it in good taste.

Click here for a list of ten recent disasters to see which were most closely followed.  The event in the number one spot had 73% of Americans paying very close attention.  Can you guess what it is?

You've got to check out this article: "Why don't risk management programs work?" from Network World.  The publication asked two risk management experts to explain why risk management programs don't seem to work.  The result is a fascinating piece full of frank talk that is refreshing, thought-provoking, and (unfortunately) hard to come by.

What follows are a few teaser quotes.  Read the article to find out who said them and how they backed them up!

"I look at much of what is called 'risk management' and laugh because the only other alternative is to weep."

"Risk management programs don't work because our profession doesn't, in large part, understand risk. And without understanding the problem we're trying to manage, we're pretty much guaranteed to fail."

"I regularly see fundamental terms like threat, vulnerability, and risk being used inconsistently, and if we can't normalize our terms, then there seems to be little chance that we'll be able to normalize our data or communicate effectively. After all, if one person's 'threat' is another person's 'risk' and yet another person's 'vulnerability', then we have a big problem. How much credibility would physics have if physicists were inconsistent in their use of fundamental terms like mass, weight and velocity?"

"There is a Catch22 around ROI. Most people won't invest in risk and metrics until they understand the value (business case). But getting those value statements to make that business case? Well, that requires a strong investment in a risk and metrics program."

This week, The Japan Times, reported on Katada's insightful program, it's astounding results, and what we might learn from his approach.  Read the article here.

"In general, people don't evacuate even though they know they should. It's natural to be reluctant to escape when everybody else is staying put," Katada told the Japan Times. "So I told the students that they must be brave and be the first ones to evacuate. If you do, others will follow you and you can save their lives, too. That's exactly what happened."

Katada says he believes children must be educated to be proactive responders and that by educating children, preparedness becomes infused into the culture.

"In two decades, those children will be parents. If they grow up to be adults who know how to act, their children will act accordingly," he said, "I believe it's our responsibility to nurture such an environment for the generations to come."