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Institute for Crisis, Disaster, and Risk Management Crisis and Emergency Management Newsletter Website |
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February
2004
Volume 6
- Number 1 |
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Northeast States Emergency Consortium (NESEC) By: Scott Burnotes Yes, disasters even occur in the Northeastern part of the United States. In fact, the Northeast States Emergency Consortium (NESEC) testifies that over $200 million dollars of damaged has occurred in the past ten years to the homes of residents in the Northeast. NESEC is a non-profit, natural hazard mitigation, and emergency management organization. It is made up the eight state emergency management agencies of Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island, and Vermont. A board of directors made up of the eight directors from each member state emergency management agency governs the NESEC. NESEC is funded by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) through the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and currently has a full time Executive Director, Edward Fratto, and Assistant Executive Director, Justine Denham. A recent addition to the NESEC website is the “Hazard Maps” section. In this section, users can access an interactive layered natural hazards map, which was developed by NESEC in partnership with TPMC Environmental Services. The map has twelve layers of natural hazard data for the Northeast United States and can be viewed at the regional, state and local level. For instance, a local emergency manager in Berkley, Massachusetts could quickly identify the natural hazards that pose the greatest risk to his/her community and plan for them accordingly. NESEC states, “(We) hope that state and local officials, as well as individual, will use this tool to better understand the natural dangers inherent to the northeast and to assist in the development of DMA 2000 Plans.” The hazard map is free for anyone to use and can be accessed at the NESEC website. NESEC has been awarded a grant by the Massachusetts Emergency Management Agency to install wind speed measuring instruments to the Sagamore and Bourne bridges in the Cape Code area. Currently, local officials responsible for deciding if the bridges should be closed due to harsh weather conditions do not have an accurate wind speed measuring capability at the bridges themselves. Instead, local officials must rely on estimates from instruments located miles away. NESEC quickly identified that a real-time wind speed measuring capability was needed in order to ensure efficient evacuations for Cape Cod during the hurricane season. NESEC is giving away a Midland Weather Radio Model 74-105X1 for every $25 donation. Donate money to a good cause and receive a great tool for disaster mitigation. This weather radio can be used to track severe conditions on its seven weather channels or to get up-to-date disaster information with its AM/FM radio capability. The radio has a battery backup for use during power outages and has an automatic alert system to aware you of any emergency weather conditions in your area. More information about making donations to the NESEC and the free weather radio can be accessed through the NESEC website at www.nesec.org/news/weather_radio.cfm. *Information for this article was gathered from the Northeast States Emergency Consortium website and Winter 2003 Volume 6 Issue 4 newsletter. For more information please go to www.nesec.org.
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