good afternoon i'm charles and pitino from the emergency manager with the pittsburgh district corps of engineers here in pittsburgh i would like to thank you for inviting me to speak today during your annual banquet and i would also like to take a moment to commend you and your organization with all the efforts that you have put forth in aiding in assisting victims of major disasters during the recovery portion today i would like to speak about four different topics one is real resiliency the second one is risk management the third is preparedness and the fourth is mitigation and i would like to conclude by and talk today with a brief overview of the corps of engineers and the pittsburgh district office start off the first topic of resiliency it's a derived from a seventeenth century latin word meaning resilient meaning leap back in this is a a very important trait for an individual or a community to have during those post disaster moments different people have different levels of resilienc some adapt to it very well some partially and some and not all and those victims they will suffer from that disaster for a very long time maybe the rest of their life so we need to stop and ask how do we get there from where we are now well under the next three topics i think i'll be able to show you some activities that you'll be able to do that will improve your ability to be resilient in the first one would be risk management now that this is a very common discussion topic among the emergency management professionals we strive for this every day and it's to get to the ability to where a community or even down the in the visual level you're able to withstand any type of their negative impact with little effort and continue to forward in return in the normal lifestyle although it takes some time it's not overnight but if you are prepared the second topic you'll be able to be resilient and be able to face that disaster a lot easier during risk management one of the tools that we use is called a hire a it's called a head it is a hazard if occasion and risk assessment it's a tool that where we take and we adin a fire that local hazards that we feel that we could be subjected to here with our local community and area and with those we w what type of risk we have and the chances of vulnerability that we have to those hazards and we'll plot amount and then we will a den of fire risk and we will assign a prayer priority to them to where we can handle them as they come to us the next thing is preparedness you know every day in our lives we prepare for one thing or another just recently we were all preparing for easter sunday dinner well a lot of risk assessment went into that a lot of preparedness you know we want to make sure that  we have everything put away because all the little kids tommy joe betsy and mary lou may break something well we take action to where the risk of them breaking something doesn't exist and that's part of preparing we prepare that make we make sure that we have enough food well on an individual basis for preparedness so we can be resilient are we prepared do we have all those things that we may need after the disaster to get back to the norm insurance papers person to pick wedding certificates all those critical things that people really stress out about during that post disaster time period then we want to take a look at mitigation how can we what do we need to do to reduce the amount of threat and disaster and damage possible loss of life property damage we need to reduce that risk to those so we take actions on our part to gather all those important papers and put them in a safe when a safe deposit box in a local bank and with these three things risk management preparedness and mitigation they are constantly involving in the emergency management profession we have the emergency management lifecycle model which is for actions preparedness responsible recovery aminah gate although they separate on the model they are constantly intermingling constantly and that's how life is in general but we need to a den of fire hazards within our local area that we may be subjected to analyze us assign priority to on prepare for those and mitigate any type of hazards that we can identify that we can resolve to the most and lowest level that will not impair our life and moving forward next i would like to talk about the corps of engineers the corps of engineers it's a subset of the united states army  it was formed in seven hundred seventy nine just three short years after the revolutionary war initially they were assigned a military construction with the forts and  and then and eight hundred twenty four they were assigned by congress responsibility for improving the navigational ways of the mississippi and ohio river and then moving forward they have s assigned the responsibility for civil works where the corps of engineers has become a major lead in flood reduction measures and there during  time frame the late thirty's early forty's the corps of engineers was assigned responsibility for construction over up to one hundred flood reduction projects across the nation to reduce floods the pittsburgh district here in pittsburgh we cover approximately twenty six thousand square miles covering the areas of southwest new york western pennsylvania eastern ohio northern west virginia and western maryland we have approximately forty one flood reduction projects within our area of responsibility ranging from locks and dams on the rivers to reservoirs with dams that we control both water quality and flood reduction we have approximately six hundred fifty employees  our leadership is active duty military and we respond we have a national response of responsibility for responding to disasters nationally to include all territories and properties of the united states just recently we responded to a typhoon solor inside pan where we were there for approximately one hundred twenty days and our response to natural disasters fall under two authorisations one that we use to respond to any kind of local disaster is public law eighty four ninety nine where we're authorized to respond and provide supplemental assistance to the local communities and the governors upon their requests fortunately we haven't had to use that much in the past ten years though many of you may recall her tropical storm ivan it came through and it caused quite a mess across to our local communities we responded to those and we assisted the local communities with restoring their projects in their communities the other thing that we do is a we support fema under the presidential declarations that's covered by public law ninety three to eighty eight which is off commonly known as a stafford act under that response there is a national response framework plan where there is fifteen elements known as emergency support function the corps of engineer corps of engineers falls under e s f emergency support function number three where we are the prime federal agency for all civil works now one of the things under the s f three that we do is temporary emergency power where during a disaster  we mobilize to assess a community by installing temporary generators at critical facilities that they have identified now i want to take a moment and jump back to the very beginning of my discussion here and it's resiliency we have a campaign going on right now to support that we're working with local communities to have them pria denon five the critical facilities  facilities that wouldn't be needed to install a generator that information's loaded into a database where when the time does come hopefully it will not but if it does we will have all the details to where we can haul and install a generator very quickly thus preventing any type of loss of life or damage to improve property that's the corps of engineers along with the many other multitude of things that we do for maintaining navigation channels and the shoreline around our nation we're a great agency if you need any assistance please call us we're on the internet and in your local phone book thank you thank you sir for coming to this community event  to participate and celebration of african american history environmental conference for the community but i can't do things about myself and so i will always be reaching out to people like you because i recognize that when the corps of engineers speaks the community listens we have the red cross we have you not it way we have the salvation army we have a lot of these organizations supplementing but when the corps of engineers step in and the community listen about crime i'm concerned about politics i like to find out how do the corps of engineers deal with those particular well to be honest with you certain racism i won't speak directly to it on a general perspective you know that doesn't really come into play in our operation  we are a team both district in the national we are we're made up of a multiple to the races doesn't really make a difference we have a mission to and has to support the nation and the people of this nation and we will respond and get the mission done well i believe in your mission but there are some complaints concerns that i've heard down to the years katrina was amazing  the way the corps of engineers stepped in and performed his particular mission but the cry that follow can you comment about any of that no we're not a criminal investigating body or anything like that we our efforts in our mission is civil works and will leave a crime that's everything all the criteria is considered as far as the requirements for sanitary life support you know there's a specifics out there that how much room different sized families need and that's how we operate as far as the trailers themselves go and if that's where you're coming from that would have to be taken to fema directly or to there are the local political workers in the right well i want to community to have an a d c that they can look up to for justice and hands be served in that respectful manner and i see the corps of engineers is being that type an agency but we are just the instrument of execution and construction that those facilities as far as the way they are ran are i mean you're not really being specific to where i can respond  t again we were just responsible for setting nose up and making sure the infrastructure was in place to culminate the people that were living there well i can appreciate that we do have concerns and you receive your response was wonderful  and i want the audience to know that they followed the directives that you indicated earlier that they should come out as they did in their situations because i understand that things are still going on and some things won't be solved overnight but certainly certain communities  well they do fund raising and like who they do fund raising all the agencies you know when you say agency yeah i'm not i'm not talking about you know do fundrais something was going wrong and get it let me back up hemingway and let me back up a couple steps here and explain something to you ok during the execution and mission support for a presidential declaration pos we really do not have the manpower to physically execute it but we do have the knowledge and the technical expertise and the staffing to oversee and ensure that the missions have been properly when the this and get directives to become about these and you use the term environment environmental and that's one of our additional concerns ok whatever we do go out and respond the missions and let's say temperate in the established temporary housing area we take everything in consideration even the environment we do not do anything that may cause issues with the local environment we want to ensure that all animal life and plant life remains intact and we try to find the most reasonable and feasible location to set up a temporary housing complex so you know we do care about the environment also we we don't know we're only oversee the contractors that are actually physically doing the work but we oversee the expenditure of federal funds ok because we realize that those are your tax dollars and the other people in the community the people of the nation and we're responsible for ensuring that those dollars are properly used to provide services that they were intended for and then we make sure that program in place for emergency response to what degree their guidance and regulations cover i cannot talk to that i'm only familiar with the corps of engineers i will tell you that we there has been occasions and there will be occasions where we have to come together and executed a mission to provide support to the local community it's good  was responsible for military construction and were elected officials congress and president and along with it internally i'm sure they recognize that there was a need and  through cooperation and proper preparation that the corps of engineers mission was expanded to include civil works well i  hi my name is luke hanks and i'm president of brothers brother foundation a pittsburgh based charity in pennsylvania that has helped people with different types of disasters since the early one nine hundred sixty s in the late and early sixty's we were involved with assisting populations in africa and asia that were affected by epidemics of one type or another including smallpox polio measles and we provided immunizations for populations in many countries including liberia in west africa india countries in central america such as nicaragua honduras immunization and so smallpox literally has disappeared from the earth we were involved who are still involved with him ization gets childhood diseases some of these diseases are with us all the time such as measles some are cyclical they come and they go poliomyelitis is one of them for example one of our early claims to fame in the sixty's and seventy's is that we introduced the concept  polio my latest immunization using the oral vaccine and sometimes the injectable vaccine to rotary international rotary international liked what we were doing so much that in one thousand nine hundred seventy eight they adopt top to the world wide program to support immunization worldwide against polio over time rotary international has raised almost one and a half billion dollars to buy a polio vaccine for used by the children all over the world and the end result of that and working with the world health organization and others is polio has almost disappeared from the earth there are literally only a few dozen cases a year of this crippling terrible disease  and before there are literally hundreds of thousands every year so it's been a tremendous relief medical relief our more traditional work in disaster relief began in one nine hundred seventy in pittsburgh we responded to an earthquake in chimbo tape arup which is a town along the coast killed about seventy thousand people we provided donations from the pittsburgh area and beyond certain types of building materials and food and other items to just help those people get back on their feet since then we have expanded our work in disaster relief in the seventy's we worked in central america nicaragua with an earthquake sudden and nature and we responded to the appeals of local people and each of those countries sometimes it's a ministry of health sometimes there's another social organization could be a rotary club could be a church group and we provided medical supplies and equipment for some of the hospitals and clinics that serve those populations we worked with the rebuilding of homes by providing materials of one type or another this would be roofing material nails hammers shovels that sort of thing so people can make their own prevent us asters and this is particularly in eastern europe in the case of the former soviet union we sent food from our u s government and other sources to feed people in russia so that this is as communism fell because there was a fear that there would be mass starvation in the cities and we did this with other charities such as the red cross and catholic relief services and others we also worked in the ninety's in former yugoslavia another country in europe providing medicines and food and other resources into the countries that became bosnia serbia croatia macedonia except from we've also since then expanded our disaster relief work into other countries some of them are in africa we've done work to help people affected by the apolo up break just in two thousand and thirteen two thousand and fourteen where we assisted over seventy hoss clinics with medical supplies that were treating victims of ebola we've done other types of work with other disasters around the world more recently  and including hurricanes or or typhoons as they call them in the philippines the tsunami in india in two thousand and five and sarah laca helped to rebuild schools involved with earthquakes and  disasters could be floods could be drought could be fired in the in the case of charleston west virginia not too far from pittsburgh we were involved with providing water after the main source of water for this community of over three hundred with in the u s predominately with church groups but sometimes we work with other kinds of organizations we were involved after hurricane sandy for example with the supply of medical equipment to individual doctors nurses and clinics to help them rebuild their clinics after they have been smashed by the floodwaters of hurricane sandy so that's some of the disaster work the brothers brother does we don't respond every disaster we're not that strong but we do have a medical supply response that we're able to provide we do provide some logistics transportation for donated goods and again it could be food could be medical items could be building materials one type or another occasionally we are involved with the building of schools or the rebuilding of schools after disasters we are doing one now in nepal after their earthquake in two thousand and fifteen and again we did several  supported the rebuilding of several schools in haiti in two thousand and ten that helped maybe two thousand three thousand students so that's that some of the story of brothers brother as it relates to disaster work we do get support around the country so we get help from people in california and florida and missouri and lots of other places and companies from all over the united states help us as well with their donations of needed items if you're thinking of disaster response you have to be very careful as an outsider wherever you are from the outside that you're integrating your work with the local agencies local leaders because truly it is their problem on a day to day basis they don't want you to send the wrong thing they don't want to review responsible if something is sent that sub standard they want something i think sent to them that they can use and use and mediately so when you have a disaster whether it be the apolo outbreak in west africa or an earthquake or a sudden need in the united states you always want to be sure that you're talking to local organizations that include local governments or you are working with local charities that are talking to local governments to be sure that what you're providing is not duplicated by our disaster assistance agencies whether they be state or national such as fema and i'm happy to answer questions if there are any  from the audience and or the moderator however you wish to proceed  that's a wonderful question the question is how does brother brother determine that we're going to respond to a disaster either the united states or somewhere around the world first we have to have confidence of the local agencies that we're working with typically these would be groups that we work with before for different reasons we work with ministries of health overseas we work with mission hospital medical mission facilities sometimes for decades and they know us and we know them sometimes to work with a rotary or organization which is a it's a group that we can trust so that so that would be one thing is to be sure that we have trusted recipient partners and trust  means we work with them before trust means that everybody that we know that knows them has great confidence so that's that's one step and a concern but the second is we have to be sure that the local governments are willing to work with our partner agencies in a productive way sometimes that is actually hard to do for example we're in some of the countries that we work  the local governments want to tax the donations of goods that we send or the money that we send it's governments like to tax that's how they survive that's how they fund their own people their own people can be doing good work if you have to rebuild schools because they all fall down or so many i'm dead the money has to come from somewhere so there is a real feeling by some governments that they must tax donations from the outside when they determine that we have to be very careful what we do sometimes  to tax one item and not another and so we want to we want as an outside group want to avoid paying taxes on americans who support us have trouble enough paying their own taxes let alone somebody else's so we we honor that and and we say we can help you if they have certain restrictions are very are so well that's right that you're country we can help you this way but we can't help you that way so that would be one concern another is the speed response sometimes you can get to an emergency area very quickly sometimes it takes a long time for example when you had the earthquake and the tsunami and sherlock in india that was maybe ten years ago or the typhoon that hit the philippines  but maybe two years ago one of our challenges was just the logistics of helping people halfway around the world how do you do that if you do it by air it's incredibly expensive if you do it by sea what you're shipping may take two months may take three months to get there if that's the case you want to be sure that what you're sending is useful three months after the disaster you just have to have to consider that you also have to consider that if the disaster is big enough that these countries are getting assistance from people all over the world and you have to do some cord nation with who is providing what to whom and why for example if you work with a rotary club or zation or you work with a religious organization they may have international connections that are quite powerful they could be from europe they could be from japan they could be from someplace else and those and they are and their friends in these other countries are generating resources on their own and you just want to be sure that you're not sending too many nails and not enough hammers i guess that's a simple way to look at it but it doesn't take long to sort the sort out but it can be that someone says we're going to provide five million nails no one else needs to do that and then you say well do you want to provide the hammers or something else or or buy would locally for them to use these are all kind of quick discussions that  take play yes you also have to worry about this the quality of what you're sending because in some countries they're just different standards of what you can bring in an example would be in some parts of africa and they require that if you're sending in medicines that those medicines have a two year expiration date that means that something sent something in the beginning of two thousand and sixteen it has to have an expiration date of something beginning of two thousand and eighteen were to be accepted in the western hemisphere you don't have to worry about that as much you can send something with a it's in many countries with an expiration date of less than one year there are a lot of reasons for that but you have to evaluate the interests and needs and restrictions of each country you also have to be concerned about your recipients and really how strong they are that can be an example would be if someone says well we'll take a lot of building materials you have to be sure that they can house the building materials when they come in you have to be sure that they have the capacity to clear something through customs if there's a need or to mobilize the local communities in a given country to get something done for example in some of the countries in africa it  is expected that if you're building a school that the local community wants to participate because you're helping their own children but you someone has to get the community in those countries to agree that they don't have any money they maybe make less than a thousand dollars a year without the disaster and so there's a negotiation process literally in some parts of africa to talk with local leaders to negotiate how many bricks they're going to hand make for the school if you can't get them to commit to the bricks then you have a tremendous weight problem in terms of shipping things in and just doesn't work but if you can get the local leaders to agree to dig the ditches and to help put in the water drainage systems in the and help  generate some of the building materials it can work and can work very very of effectively it's remarkable how it can work that's a long way to answer your question hopefully i've answered it well a very simple one was a year or so ago when they had this terrible water problem in charleston where the water system the the water treatment systems were polluted with with chemicals and you couldn't get water in well charleston is only less than three hundred miles away from pittsburgh and we were able to get to get a bottle of water to people who needed it needed it through church networks within twenty four hours of the problem that was pretty good to get a delivery of something that everybody needed within twenty four hours that's that's a very simple response another one would be the outbreak of ebola in west africa where we were dealing with seventy different medical facilities and we had to negotiate with everybody around the world where they felt they had to negotiate with us to come up with enough of the right thing to do the right many things to literally stop the transmission of a bowler that we we re not a leader we were a follower in that process but with assistance from various parts united states we we were involved whether any other questions your party or comment for those who didn't hear you were expressing appreciation for the type of work that we do and i just want to say thank you to that but truly when we respond or another disaster agency response we have thousands of people behind us wanting to do essentially the same thing that is to help somebody and sudden need and sometimes those people give ten dollars sometimes they give a lot more but it is to say men each organization that responds represents really tens of thousands of people or thousands of people it's not just one person so when we send our people abroad we make it very clear to the local recipients or their leaders that they see a couple faces but those couple faces are not the people who provide the material they're just the intermediary so we we go through this process of aren't we all in this together thousands of people from the united states and tens of thousands of people in the receiving country in regards to how we handle our our materials that we sent abroad typically they come to us as donations from companies or hospitals we just shirts underwear that sort of thing we are big challenges is for us of where we concentrate on our money is the transportation it's the locomotion it's the movement of the things from here to there all over the world that's where when money comes in to us that's the first thing that we first place we put our money the second it was a we have funds and this has been a tradition it's not a formal policy but it will it seems to work out that way if we generate enough funds for the emergency response the donation and distribution of these donated goods we do get involved with capital projects such as the building of schools and clinics and that sort of thing and we do that with local  recipients and i mentioned the idea that in certain places in africa that involves a negotiation with the local community literally the discussion is how many can be how many bricks can you produce out of a certain quality over what period of time and that's a discussion point it's a way of measuring communities interest in a school or community center or clinic so we we do look at new technologies but we get so many things that are useful that are simple that are donated to us that it's not a priority for us but i do understand that there's a reason always a reason to take a look at your technology and bring it in an example would be ten years ago we did not look very much it at solar systems solar power and we we do look at it now and sometimes we get offered wonderful things as donations and sometimes we get things that are donations that are bits and pieces and and we really don't want them and we do tell potential donors thank you but no thank you because we have our standards our recipients don't know how to handle them the material so that's so hopefully that answers part of your question so again we appreciate  achievement that our first medical team represented all of america not just part of so that was that was a wonderful achievement from the beginning it sort of set the tone of cooperation and interconnection with others around the world that we were all the same right including americans which in one thousand fifty eight not everybody was so sure another wonderful achievement was our work in immunization and again this is when i was a young very young person it was the work of the fight against smallpox that's the disease that one of the plagues of the old testament is one of those it was one of the great passions and to be able to say brothers brother had a role in its destruction there was no more smallpox in the world it's kept in laboratories as an endangered species it was a tremendous another was the introduction of polio imitation as a concept to rotary international which raised one point almost one one and a half million dollars for the fight against polio to a tremendous telling someone else and giving someone else the inspiration to go do something bigger and better is an achievement  i would say since then this is a collective we've helped people in over a hundred countries and we have provided one million books mostly in english some in spanish to schools all over the world therefore into the hands of tens of millions of students over time maybe even hundreds of millions but you know not everyone touches a book reads it but it is to say tens of millions receive the benefit and our ability to help over two thousand hospitals and clinics  by supporting the local doctors and nurses and other medical staff with the tales that they needed to treat their patients that they saw the ones in their neighborhood those together were tremendous achievements for us  we did that go it went back to the early years where we talked about who we were and what we were trying to do and a lot of that vision has remained the same we do have a lot of publications on our website in the organization again it's called brothers brother foundation it's typical for nonprofit will have photos of the things that we say we do we have newsletters and articles on the kinds of things that anyone who wants to see about us can see for themselves it's literally hundreds and hundreds of pages available on the internet describing our history over the past sixty years yes it's yet is we have made our mistakes you know if you're doing something for sixty years to say it was perfect it would be would be foolish but we have learned i think one of the great talents that we have is as tying into a local organizations that have integrity integrity can come because of religious belief integrity can come because your mom and dad and daddy told you what to do when you were a child they inspired you some how it can come through through other ways but we have been very fortunate that people have an interest in other people and think of us having interest in other people we have been able to find each other around the world and that gives us a much greater strength together than we would have separately and so that's that's been one of our great strengths as is being able to find the right types of people to work with competitors  find people i think individually sometimes it's preference in nature you know there are advantages to beliefs and one of them is sometimes you get the extra help that you need so i would say it's a combination of people believe certain things together there's enough common in all of us and in all religions that once you find the common core you can get along and you can say let's help people together wherever they were ever they they are but i you know it is a challenge for us there are dishonest people out there in every field and and we have to work around them away from them and treat well truly you have to believe what you yet not to believe in what you're doing that that would be the first you have to be prepared for some adversity if you're doing the right thing you're not getting rich if you're doing the right thing you're not getting rich you know this this type of charity work is is this is not a place for people who want to get rich it's for the place for people who want to give riches and they do it either their own or they get other people to help them with theirs and together to make a a greater kindness well thank you very much for the time i know you've got visitors coming from all over the country i just met someone from cincinnati and another places around town and just good luck with the other presentations that you have today and he was like framework for really investigating indoor chemicals and so if this hotel was in california all the sister hotels all of them in california which is where i live in suburban l a all to post a sign now that's a warning chemicals in this building then known to the state of california to cause cancer and injury to the and warm and microsoft office has even though they're in seattle they've taken a step further they now put health warning labels on their keyboards and they say that keyboards can cost serious injuries or disorders and now the whole nation is concerned about japanese medical doctor and there is a whole new pair of model coming out of columbia university to upgrade and enhance the skills of doctors and nurses so we're able to check people for you look for magnetic hypersensitiv and we're actually modeling what's coming out of nasa because that's a huge problem for astronauts are they have worked in the radiation so you have you to just take your thumb and ring finger and put it together on both hands down a little ring finger next to  perfect and you rotate your wrist will inform the whole strong one two three strikes and you're perfectly balanced this is a kinetic test and we're looking specifically at nerves right now now let's just have you hold this mike in the left h that the glasses will pick up static and it was energy so how about this we're going to take this nano wrap and we're going to play on cable right there that works without power and just reading that close it's rock casting throat so when you are holding this mike it offloads the static charge in your body and balances you within less than about ten seconds so one two three four five six seven eight  your glasses figures together one two three blocks out this technology is how i feel myself a breast cancer and how i'm walking today because i had a stroke my son had a brain injury and was in the hospital for almost a year he lost his ability learned for four years it took us four years to get this vance but when we got it for this level it allowed for his brain to reintegrate so he's learning that he and he finished high school with almost twenty three years ago so we thank god because we have one hundred families and farms and businesses and schools in the u s and canada with this technology and god has given miracles the gentleman who did our packaging was blind from us five four and a half weeks he also had a diabetic woman for eight years of with not healed this technology not only does electricity there's water so if you will be kind enough to hold this and we're just going to have you trade  going to get some water for you to home ok and we're going to show you how when a in a home or in a building and electricity is grounded hold this and if you can get mystic when electricity is war with this one because if you make food with static water that makes the food static and then you can't digest it to your bloating that gastric reflux you have all these problems and then you don't properly take your nutrients and s static again and create a balance again so as we are scanning our food scare on our water a scan of our fruits and vegetables or making the food radioactive we can retrofit scanning systems fellow hi my name is ted robinson i'm with says empower i'm thrilled to be here tonight to talk about the subject of nuclear emergency preparedness first of all i would like to tell you about system power we're a nonprofit and squirrel hill here in pittsburgh we focus on two things energy and insurance law specifically we talk we work to  help low income people be able to afford electricity and we also work to for single payer so everyone gets health care today we're going to be talking about nuclear emergency it's now there's three main types of nuclear emergency as there's a nuclear explosion a dirty bomb explosion would strike has been in the news recently because of the events in europe and also nuclear facility events first of all nuclear explosion is the use of a device that produces an uncontrolled chain reaction which is followed by the production of a huge amount of energy which creates a fireball a shockwave mushroom cloud and fall  and here's a picture of a nuclear explosion what should you do if there's a nuclear explosion many people think that is unsurvivable but there's were people  three hundred meters from hiroshima who survived the first thing you want to do if you see a flash of light you don't know where the flash lights coming from is to duck  down to the ground and duck the reason for this is within two if you're within ducking down if you are within a couple of miles of the nuclear explosion a blast wave will hit you within eight seconds and it will send if you're near a window or anything like that it will send the glass out like bullets at you and what you want to do is be on the floor in it can save your life however in many cases there might be a warning before the explosion there might be growing world tensions and it might to notice that there might be an imminent nuclear explosion near you in that case you should follow the instructions provided by emergency response personnel you might be instructed to take shelter you might be instructed to go to a specific location or evacuate the area entirely if you need to shelter in place this is very key if you have a basement in your home that is where you want to go you want to go into the corner that has the highest level of soil so you can protect yourself from radiation from the explosion and you want to build basically an impromptu shelter if you have a heavy desk anything that is heavy and thick you want to put it in the corner and cover it with as many materials as you can because gam radiation is stopped by more greater amounts of mass and so if you have more things between you and the explosion you're going to receive less radiation you're already receiving a lot less radiation by being in the basement you can receive one hundred times less radiation from being in the basement and being in a protected impromptu shelter than if you were outside  here's a drawing of someone who has is constructing an impromptu shelter and it just it doesn't have to be complicated it can be just as easy as that the second thing you want to do is you're going to need water before anything happens you want to fill every container in your house with water everything from kitty pools to bathtubs to washing machines  if you have water mattress you want to fill up anything you can because that's just a great safety tip also want to get other supplies such as food and there's a list here but trash bags baby wipes pockets all of these things combined can help you save your life now the reason you want to do this why you want to be in your basement is the amount of radiation out there falls drastically over time so within seven hours after a nuclear explosion the amount of fallout the amount of radiation out there is ninety percent last year multiply that by a seven you get to forty nine hours that you get to ninety nine percent and if you multiply that forty eight hours again to a little bit over two weeks you get to ninety nine point nine percent of the radiation from the explosion will not be there so the safest thing to do is to shelter in place if you have a basement and a lot more information can be found at w w w dot k i for you dot com slash guide dot h t m is a great guide for what to do in a nuclear emergency now the second type of issue we might be facing is a dirty bomb explosion now this is just a typical bomb filled with nuclear material radioactive material now it is not going to produce an atomic blast it's not going to produce some washroom what it is is simply an explosion that is designed to disperse radioactive material over an area now this is a drawing of a hypothetical dirty bomb explosion in new york city if you see here right at this right here is new york city right here here's manhattan because right there this inner ring here if there was a detonation right there would everyone living there would see a five percent greater chance of cancer so one out of one hundred people would more would die of cancer than typically would be in this area here the second area there's a point five increase the chance of cancer and so that's one out of thousand and this larger area here is a point zero five increase in the chance of cancer one out of ten thousand people will die of cancer that would not have died of cancer normally and as you can see it's heavily dependent on the wind direction and in this case it's going in this direction but if it was going in a different direction of course there'd be completely different people impacted so it's actually even safer to be right there right south of the explosion that all the way over here anyway what to do if there's a dirty bomb explosion if you're outside cover your mouth and nose with a claw and find the first building you can that has not been significantly damaged and go inside you want to get away from all the dust and materials that are out there turn on local radio t v to get updates if the facilities are available remove your clothing because you're going to have radioactive dust on that and you're going to want to take that off put it in a plastic bag seal it up and if you can take a shower to wash away as much radiation as possible from that you the news local news broadcast should direct you to where to go to get tested after everything happens to determine if you've been impacted or affected by the  radiation and there's more information available emergency dot cdc dot gov slash radiation slash dirty bombs dot a p now the third one is a nuclear facility of that now this nuclear facility is can run into all sorts of problems and most of them don't have any impact on safety they can just have their tiny things that happen all the time the lot of these plants are aging but sometimes you have something that is a lot worse this is the international nuclear event scale and if you look here  seven is a major accident a one is what they call an anomaly which is just a small thing that has gone wrong and there's a bunch of levels in between at level seven you have things like sure no ball and you can see the planet is significantly impacted by an explosion and here's a picture of fukushima when it was exploding and this is not a nuclear explosion this is a  a conventional explosion that has nuclear materials in it because nuclear power plant but it is just a conventional explosion now when we're talking about emergency response this is japan had an evacuation zone which was this circle here which they expanded to involuntary valuation zone of this circle here which is thirty kilometers which is about eighteen miles this is the radiation the amount of radiation found and that is you can see where the radiation goes is not dependent upon what the emergency response zone is it depends on the wind and the rain and factors like that  the the area that was off limits was modified over time and currently these red a areas are not habitable and will not be habitable any time in the near future so what does this hear oh here's a lesser example but still significant here is three mile island here in pennsylvania this was a level five and if you go back to the event scale that is right here an accident with wider consequences now a lot of people don't think that this was a big deal like it was a big deal at the time but a lot of people think that it got  fixed there was no real impact but here's one study that someone did about lung cancer cases near three mile island right after the explosion and these red areas here where a lot of people received increased radiation doses had higher rates of lung cancer than typically found such as the green areas and again the areas that were impacted depended more on wind direction than it did proximity to the plant i mean you could be as close as here and not really have any impact  what to do if there's a major accident at beaver valley or if you're near another plant if you're within ten miles of the ten miles of the plant you're in the emergency planning zone and  if you're in the emergency planning zone you will receive materials yearly that have things such as evacuation routes telephone  numbers and necessary information for when you live there if there is a plant emergency sirens will go off within the entire ten mile radius for three minutes straight and that means you know something's gone wrong and so you should turn into tune into the radio television to find out what the problem is and you'll be there told to take shelter which again if you have a basement that's where you're probably going to want to be or if you're told to evacuate there's an official evacuation plan map this is the one for beaver valley and if you look here this is the ten mile radius for  valley but again if you remember the map of fukushima the radiation might not stay within this ten mile radius so you have to be aware of the potential of deadly radiation going outside that zone anyway as these routes lead mostly to things like gymnasiums and here's one from fukushima that that people go to now where does this where in this entire planning  can local organizations become involved well one of the things is if there's a major event you're going to have a lot of people here who are not going to be able to go back home because there's going to be large areas that are not going to be habitable and they are going to have to be taking care of until new places for them to live can be found so that's one thing the other thing that is some people do not have a an area within their home that is safe for them to go in the event of a murder and see if you don't have a basement and you don't have a very well constructed home you might not really have a place to go now this is if you are in a church or any other kind of building that has a good basement  if there's time you might be consider setting up a shelter in the basement to create take care of people from the local community who are not able to have a place for themselves anyway one last thing i want to point out and that is funding opportunities because i noticed that one of the things that people might be interested in are finding out virginities and there's one thing i want one place i want everyone to go to it's h t t p ass slash slash tool kat kit dot climate dot gov slash content slash funding dash opportunities at that website there are dozens of people giving out money for things like emergency response  and other types of things as related to climate change related to just emergencies and general community response and that's a very very helpful web site to go to anyway as if anyone has any questions at this point time i'd like to take them yes well there are governmental agency is obviously like the n r c there are other agencies like nears that work in this arena we specifically only focus on the beaver valley plant we basically monitor the beaver valley plant a lot of plants are on the contrary kind of don't have anyone looking at them except for the n r c  and some places that are more controversial like davis bessie in ohio have a lot of people looking at them because it's a pretty dangerous plant they toledo well there's the problem most people have with davis bessie is that omas had this very serious accident a few years ago and they their safety record has been pretty spotty now it's true every nuclear power plant releases nuclear waste all the time this is something that most people don't know there's been some studies that have shown there's a correlation between living near a nuclear power plant and increased rates of certain things such as leukemia  there's other studies that don't show that way so the science is kind of up in the air's fars that but specifically as far as dave is bessie that plant has had numerous numerous issues over the years yes ye and the other question actually there was more of an emphasis on shelters back in the fifty's when everyone was scared of an imminent nuclear war in the sixt now adays there's less preparation for this type of thing ye well i'm not familiar with the house state i am familiar with fern all which was another location in ohio that had a significant issue with nuclear waste that i think believe it was  processing facility and that resulted in i think they boo moved people out of the area and closed a few things down in response to that  pennsylvania i know there's a location in apollo township and one near there near vandergrift and both of those places have significant amounts of nuclear waste buried there in a way that does not meet any standards and is extremely dangerous there's been lawsuits related to increase cancers in the area  and this is just near us right here i mean ohio pennsylvania i mean if you look around the contrary everything from the tests in the fift to i mean all sorts of things there's there are impacts and that definitely needs to be looked at i mean one of the things people think about when they think about nuclear is they think that nuclear is a clean safe technology that we need to do it because of climate change but one of the things that people don't realize is that in order to get the uranium that they use for the nuclear power plants they have to mine for it and the amount of material that they have to mine to get just small amounts of uranium for these nuclear power plants is a huge operation that takes a lot of energy so the amount of energy use just to get the uranium and they're not using clean energy to get the uranium is a significant percentage of the amount of energy produced by the nuclear power plant some places say that it's approaching twenty percent this this is something that people don't realize well my parents sent me to a summer camp one year and a place called fort scott and that camp no longer exists because it was too close to f d and my wife who grew up in vandergrift could see a nuclear waste facility from her backyard i'm in these things happen all around the country well the unfortunately radiation is not something that you can be tolerant of they might want you to be tolerant of it but your body will do something else and this is not our web site this is a government web site that lists dozens of places that are giving out money but i could talk to you off camera