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Year in Public Safety

2009 Dec 31 Posted by Joseph Pascarella

Greetings,

Ironically, 2009 began with a major success story in Public Safety regarding a potential disaster that was averted with a large commercial airline and 2009 ended with a failure involving a commercial airliner that could have been catastrophic.

On January 15, 2009, US Airways flight 1549 conducted an emergency landing on the frigid Hudson River. There were 155 Passengers and Crew members aboard and the crew averted a major disaster and avoided a crash landing in a densley populated New York City area metropolis that could have resulted in numerous casualties. The first response to the emergency landing was nothing short of phenonmenal and there were only a handful of minor injuries. This was a case study in everything going right in Public Safety, in every component.

On Christmas Eve, a potential suicide bomber plot thankfully went awry on a Detroit bound Airbus A330 carrying 278 passengers. The alleged attacker, Abdul Farouk Abdulmutallab managed to pass through security with a liquid inflammatory device and materials and was apparently on a watch list. Once again, the intelligence community failed to cooperate with near disastrous results.

In between, the major stories in public safety was the escalation in the war on drugs in Mexico (affecting Public Safety at the Southwest US Border) and the vicious Station Fire in Southern California that burned for nearly a month and two Firefighters died in the line of duty battling the blaze. Once again, the difficulty of communications under these intense circumstances are discussed.

Public Safety is a continuing effort and work in progress. As we enter a new year and decade, please do be grateful for the men and women pursuing this effort.

Happy and Healthy 2010 and Stay Safe!!

Joe Pascarella

December 31, 2009 | Filed under: Uncategorized
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2 Responses to “Year in Public Safety”

Scot Reeves, RN, MS Says:

Naturally, the ability to blame and point fingers becomes quite simple after the fact. As an alumni of the Emergency Management Master’s Program, a major pillar in Disaster and Emergency management is communication. This concept goes back to the conception of the Incident Command Structure during the Military input phases and the “4C’s”(command, control, coordination, and communication) to the onset of FIRECSOPE and the California wildfires. As we often discussed in class, what will it take; what lesson, event, catastrophe, or leader is needed in order to get the point across that communication and connecting the dots of terrorism is vital to National Security.

January 4th, 2010 at 2:29 pm

Joseph Pascarella Says:

Scot,

Thanks for the comments.

Joe

January 14th, 2010 at 5:47 am

Let us know what you think. All comments will be reviewed prior to going live. Comments that are profane or obscene, or unrelated to the topic of the post will not be published.

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