Disaster zone blog

Surprise! It is a Hurricane
Eric Holdeman Eric Holdeman

Surprise! It is a Hurricane

A very dangerous tropical storm is approaching. One that could drop copious amounts of rain and significant storm surge on ocean beaches. The State of Florida is in the bullseye.

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CrowdStrike Explained
Eric Holdeman Eric Holdeman

CrowdStrike Explained

By now most people following technical issues in the internet and cybersecurity have followed the impacts of the CrowdStrike SNAFU.

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Critical Infrastructure Vulnerabilities
Eric Holdeman Eric Holdeman

Critical Infrastructure Vulnerabilities

Recent events in France and the United States highlight the vulnerability of our nation’s critical infrastructure systems. While much attention has been directed, appropriately so, to cybersecurity of the electrical grid, there are other physical threats to a multitude of infrastructure systems.

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Update on COVID-19
Eric Holdeman Eric Holdeman

Update on COVID-19

As we know, even the President of the United States is not immune from contracting COVID. We have heard in the popular press about the increase of cases occurring—even during the summer.

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Detecting Wildfires with Cameras
Eric Holdeman Eric Holdeman

Detecting Wildfires with Cameras

Power companies are looking at different solutions to reduce their wildfire vulnerabilities associate with being blamed for fire ignition. In Hawaii, there is this, Cameras With AI Shoot for Early Fire Detection in Hawaii.

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Hiring for Soft Skills
Eric Holdeman Eric Holdeman

Hiring for Soft Skills

Every emergency management program, at every level of government and business has to hire new people to replace those that leave for other opportunities or for expansion purposes. The typical terms used in hiring are Knowledge, Skills and Abilities (KSA).

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YoYo Climate Policy
Eric Holdeman Eric Holdeman

YoYo Climate Policy

We are “blessed” to live in interesting and historic time. Many a book will be written about the first 25 years of the 21st century. In disaster terms there will certainly be a chapter or two written about climate change and its impact on the size, frequency and duration of natural disasters.

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Zombie Wildfires
Eric Holdeman Eric Holdeman

Zombie Wildfires

Wildfires in this era of heat are hard to put out and then they can be everywhere at once. Now there is another category of wildfires, those that will not die.

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Haboob as a Hazard
Eric Holdeman Eric Holdeman

Haboob as a Hazard

The old goat is still learning! Today I learned a new term for “Dust Storm” which in today’s parlance is called a “Haboob.”

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Heat Waves
Eric Holdeman Eric Holdeman

Heat Waves

Summer is here and heat waves are sure to come.

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New 2024 Disaster Movie
Eric Holdeman Eric Holdeman

New 2024 Disaster Movie

There is a timely movie release coming to theaters this summer. Given all the tornado activity we have had in 2024, there will likely be significant interest in Twisters.

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Texas Power Outages
Eric Holdeman Eric Holdeman

Texas Power Outages

There is something wrong with the Texas electrical grid. The system there is either very unlucky or very fragile when disasters strike that state.

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More Leadership Training Please!
Eric Holdeman Eric Holdeman

More Leadership Training Please!

One of the topics they delved into more deeply is the need for more, what I will call, pure leadership training for emergency managers.

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Are Emergency Militias Needed?
Eric Holdeman Eric Holdeman

Are Emergency Militias Needed?

We are coming off of a horrific weekend with the attempted assassination of former President Trump, along with the death and serious shooting injuries to two other rally attendees.

With the above in mind, do we really need more guns?

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Prior to writing for The Readiness Lab, Eric Holdeman wrote Disaster Zone blog posts for Emergency Management Magazine. He was a prolific writer and all articles are still available on their website, which is linked below.