Free Republic

Has anyone had experience rebuilding after a disaster? What did you have to deal with? What government agencies became involved? I am in Sonoma County and was in the Nuns Fire. As many of you know from the news many lost everything. We have been stymied at every turn by the county, FEMA, EPA, Army Corps and other agencies preventing clean up. They want home owners to sign over insurance to them so they may provide clean up (contract out). As I understand it, the county has yet to issue a single clean up permit to anyone. Out of county...

In addition to taking down the sites of dozens of high-profile companies for hours (and, in some cases, days), Amazon's huge EC2 cloud services crash permanently destroyed some data. The data loss was apparently small relative to the total data stored, but anyone who runs a web site can immediately understand how terrifying a prospect any data loss is. (And a small loss on a percentage basis for Amazon, obviously, could be catastrophic for some companies). Amazon has yet to fully explain what happened when its mission-critical and supposedly bomb-proof systems crashed, but the explanation will be important. As will...

Japan – What’s Next? by Ari Bussel Japan is trying to get back to normal, but is it really possible? Allow me to start by quoting a reader’s comments to an earlier article I wrote about Japan – An Earthquake and a Tsunami: Having been through multiple earthquakes — Sylmar, Whittier Narrows, Palmdale, NORTHRIDGE, let me try to explain what an earthquake does to you. As we go through life, we base all our thoughts on certain foundation concepts. These are our “anchors” to explain the world. When Terra Firma is not firma, essentially every single thing you think about...

Schooled In Disaster by: Lance Nation, September 30, 2008 In the recent Senate Hearing, the Ad Hoc Subcommittee on Disaster Recovery of the U.S. Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Government Affairs attempted to establish whether the lessons learned from Hurricane Katrina were effectively implemented along the gulf coast when Hurricane Gustav and Ike hit Louisiana and Texas this past summer. “I have some good news about the federal response,” stated Houston’s Mayor Bill White in his opening testimony. “President Bush, Secretary Chertoff, Administrator Paulison, and the most senior members of [the Federal Emergency Management Administration] and the Corps of...

Tom Kauffman thought that once a storm blew over people could go home, clean up a few things and return back to normal, everyday life. But two mission trips to Biloxi, Miss., changed his thinking. People are still recovering from the impact of Hurricane Katrina, which struck the Gulf Coast in 2005. "A storm doesn't just blow over and people don't go back to their homes the next day," said Kauffman, 69, of Manchester Township. "There's a lot of pain and suffering and a lot of waiting. I opened my eyes up." Kauffman plans to return to Biloxi a third...

Scout `angel' recalls fiery horrorhttp://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&c=Article&cid=1153173011551 http://tinyurl.com/jfma3 JIM COYLE Jul. 18, 2006. 06:01 AM Long before there were Guardian Angels, pressing their largely unasked-for services upon a largely unreceptive city, Toronto had guardian angels of a more popular and fetching sort. And, happily, I had reader Glen Bonham to remind me. Recently, after the death of a retired harbour police officer who played a role in the long-ago drama, I wrote about the burning of the cruise ship Noronic at the foot of Yonge St. in 1949, and the death of 119 passengers in an inferno that gave downtown Toronto the...

I have had to format C: so many times, I need a new way to get my computer back quickly. I have a dial up connection so updating my Windows packages and Norton virus definitions and other such stuff is a real pain. I have tried several backup meathods and none so far are satifactory. I would love to be back up in a few hours instead of days with all my software installed with the proper serial numbers with all the updates and settings that I like, down to my wallpaper and file locations. I want one of those...

Veritas Israel providing disaster recovery planning systems to Palestinian Authority Veritas Israel CEO Daniel Daniel: The moment the IDF bombs the PA, it should be ready for a computer crash. Sapir Peretz 8 Sep 03 14:57Veritas Israel is providing computer security and database back-ups to the Palestinian Authority (PA), as part of its disaster recovery planning (DRP) solutions. The products provided are meant to go into operation in case initial infrastructures collapse. Veritas Israel CEO Daniel Daniel said the company had been providing the DRP systems to the PA and to private companies operating in the PA for the past...