Emergency Management

In Humacao, a city on the eastern coast just north of where Hurricane Maria’s eye passed, power poles and lines still litter the ground in some areas. PHOTO: ARIAN CAMPO-FLORES/THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

Six months after Hurricane Maria, as many as 7,000 of the island’s small businesses remain closed

wsj.com - by Arian Campo-Flores - March 19, 2018

 . . . Though economic activity in Puerto Rico has picked up in recent months, businesses large and small are struggling. Electricity woes continue to plague the island, where 91% of power generation has been restored but the grid is prone to sudden outages. Insurance money has arrived slowly, with $1.7 billion paid in residential and business claims as of Jan. 31—about 40% of the expected total, according to the island’s Office of the Commissioner of Insurance.

And the market is shrinking as a result of an accelerating exodus of Puerto Ricans fleeing conditions on the island.

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cbsnews.com - February 11, 2018

An explosion and fire at an electric substation threw much of northern Puerto Rico into darkness late Sunday in a setback for the U.S. territory's efforts to fully restore power more than five months after Hurricane Maria started the longest blackout in U.S. history. The island's Electric Power Authority said several municipalities were without power, including parts of the capital, San Juan, but they were optimistic it could be restored within a day as they worked to repair a substation that controls voltage.

The blast illustrated the challenges of restoring a power grid that was already crumbling before it was devastated by the Category 4 hurricane.

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ALSO SEE RELATED ARTICLE HERE - Explosion cuts power in Puerto Rico

CLICK HERE - CDC - Public Health Response to a Nuclear Detonation - January 16, 2018 at 1:00 p.m. (ET)

cbsnews.com - by Rebecca Shabad - January 5, 2018

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has scheduled a briefing for later this month to outline how the public can prepare for nuclear war.

"While a nuclear detonation is unlikely, it would have devastating results and there would be limited time to take critical protection steps. Despite the fear surrounding such an event, planning and preparation can lessen deaths and illness," the notice about the Jan. 16 briefing says on the CDC's website, which features a photo of a mushroom cloud.

The notice went on to say that most people don't know that sheltering in place for at least 24 hours is "crucial to saving lives and reducing exposure to radiation."

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Humanitarian aid workers help fight cholera in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Photo: OCHA/J-L. Mbalivoto

unmultimedia.org - 22 December 2017

Access to data is crucial for humanitarians responding to various crises worldwide.

For example, aid workers feeding hungry people in Nigeria use a mobile-based platform to monitor the price of rice and other staples to know when costs increase.

To better assist these professionals, the UN has opened a global humanitarian data centre in the Netherlands that aims to improve lives by connecting people and data.

Veronique Durroux spoke to Javier Terán Castro, a statistician with the UN humanitarian affairs office, OCHA, who explained how it functions.

http://www.unmultimedia.org/radio/english/2017/12/un-centre-aims-to-connect-people-and-humanitarian-data-to-improve-lives/#.Wj0Cma3MzFR

The Centre for Humanitarian Data - https://centre.humdata.org

HDX - https://data.humdata.org