Category Archives: Hazards
Complexity of NAFTA negotiations
The US, Canada, and Mexico are in several rounds of negotiations to change the North America Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). This has been a promise in the present Trump administration, and despite views on Trump, you have to give him credit for addressing his campaign promises – which many politicians can’t claim. NAFTA includes a […]
Quality of Life
While shamelessly check off an increasing number of decades, I’ve had the privilege of residing in several locations. Populated and not so populated. Lovely and not quite so lovely. Urban and rural. In previous blogs, I’ve mentioned growing up on a small dairy in South Carolina. I moved to various towns to teach school, work […]
Wildfires! Everywhere wildfires!
The wildfires are daily in the Canadian news. And this gets my ire up when I hear the ongoing news. It doesn’t have to happen this way. We cannot avoid lightning strikes that set some of the vast BC forest ablaze. This is nature. Maybe storms are more frequent or severe, but long term evidence […]
The Family Farm
I recently returned from a visit to my family farm in South Carolina, and was jolted back to the past. Many days of hard work with my siblings on a small dairy. For years, I remember waking up before 5AM, seven days a week. It was just a routine, like we all have. If nothing else, […]
The latest potential bio-terrorist weapon
I live in Canada, and perhaps like your location, ours a privileged society. Like most of the developed world, we have incredible freedoms. However, our liberal culture also has its dark side. Living in Victoria, British Columbia, are a disproportionate number of disenfranchised people — unemployed or under employed, disabled, and/or addicted. I used to […]
A look back on 2016
It’s worthwhile to look back at events, because as we often hear…”there’s nothing new under the sun.” The end of the year is an appropriate time to review a few disasters and emergencies, and perhaps weaknesses in preparedness and response. Maybe we can learn a few lessons. As we know, disasters can be either human-induced […]
Prepping for the Large One
We know that emergencies come in all sizes and shapes…from a bothersome power outage for an hour or so during a summer storm, to a 9.0 earthquake that rocks our world. As an emergency prepper, we look at worst case scenarios. This is why we advocate a supply stock for sheltering in place, ‘grab and […]
Why would anyone want to farm?
Perhaps soon after meeting someone, you are often asked, “What do you do?” My answer used to be complex, but now is relatively simple. “I work in agricultural emergency planning.” Then I usually must further explain that I prepare farmers for emergencies and disaster. That I have combined a background and also education in both […]
Getting from Disasters to Development
Is there a connection between development and disasters? Emphatically yes! The line may not be straight, but the more developed is the country, the less is the impact of disasters. I am speaking mostly of natural disasters, because these seem to be the most frequent events in developed countries. What do we mean by ‘developed’? […]
An Array of Emergency Projects
With summer having come and gone, some projects in which I have been engaged are heating up again. Here’s a sample: In British Columbia, the provincial legislation requires all local governments, large or small, to have emergency plans. Admittedly, some are very robust, and others might simply be captured in an 8 by 11 ½ […]
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