• Growing suicide trend poses risk to first responders

    In a growing trend, people in the United States are increasingly using dangerous chemicals to commit suicide; this trend puts first responders at risk by exposing them to deadly chemicals; in 2008 a Japanese girl released fumes that sickened ninety people in a chemical suicide attempt; responding to these suicide attempts is also costly as hazmat team materials are expensive to replace and removing contaminated vehicles requires hiring a private company

  • CIA forms taskforce to assess fallout from 250,000 leaked U.S. cables

    The CIA has formed a task force to assess the impact of 250,000 leaked U.S. diplomatic cables; the group will scour the released documents to survey damage caused by the disclosures; the name of the task force is WikiLeaks Task Force, or WTF for short; WTF is more commonly associated with the Facebook and Twitter profiles of teenagers, where the acronyms stand for three words used to express extreme disbelief or annoyance

  • Unease grows as Chinese telecom behemoth gains foothold in U.S.

    China’s Huawei Technologies — a company linked to the People’s Liberation Army, and which has been repeatedly accused of stealing software designs and infringing on patents — is now the world’s second-largest telecom equipment supplier behind Ericsson of Sweden, and with Chinese government backing, it has sewn up major deals in Asia, Africa, and Latin America; a $3 billion in advanced wireless equipment deal with Sprint Nextel will give entry into the U.S. communication market — and this has lawmakers and security experts worried

  • Spray-on skin to be commercialized

    Sheffield, U.K.-based Altrika set to produce a spray version of its Cryoskin donor skin cell product that can be applied in hospitals outside of a sterile surgical environment in order to reduce treatment time; the spray would be stored in individual doses so the right number of skin cells can be selected once the wound is assessed; the cells would then be thawed as the patient is being prepared

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  • Collaborators sought for emergency communications network demo

    NIST and NTIA are seeking partners in the telecommunications industry to help create a demonstration broadband communications network for the U.S. emergency services agencies; the demonstration network will provide a common site for manufacturers, carriers, and public safety agencies to test and evaluate advanced broadband communications equipment and software tailored specifically to the needs of emergency first responders

  • Initial tests for buried victims rescue device completed

    New victim detection device has been developed as part of a project aiming to enable people to be found quickly from under collapsed buildings or from natural elements like mud or snow; the detection device could literally be a lifeline for victims of future earthquakes, landslides, or terrorist attacks

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  • In era of tighter budget, simulation-based training becomes popular

    Training is invaluable, but first responder and emergency management agencies around the country are finding their budgets tighter than ever, and it is becoming increasingly difficult to conduct large-scale training exercises; the solution: simulation-based training

  • Indoor locator device for firefighter, first responders on the horizon

    After several years of research and slow, halting progress, development of an indoor locator device to be worn by firefighters and other emergency response personnel could reach the production stage next year

  • Georgia will be base for WMD homeland security response force

    DHS is setting up ten regional Homeland Response Forces tasked with handling weapons of mass destruction incidents; each will be assigned 570 personnel; the force will be trained to respond within six to twelve hours to regional disasters like chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear and high yield explosive incidents

  • Ambulance radios in London do not work in the rain

    Ambulances in London have a problem: ambulance crews often working without radios especially in heavy rain when their radios seem to have reception problems; ambulance panic buttons either did not work, or did not elicit any response when set off by staff; Airwave, the Airwave system is getting a £39 million upgrade in time for the 2012 London Olympics

  • North Carolina prepares for bioterrorism, epidemics

    North Carolina universities and state and federal agencies create the new North Carolina Bio-Preparedness Collaborative; the idea is to use computers to link all the disparate forms of data collected by various agencies quickly to root out indicators of new disease, or food-borne illness, or, in a worst-case scenario, an attack of bio-terrorism

  • Identifying disaster victims: Looking at teeth to determine victims' age at time of death

    In disasters which claim many victims as well as in an unsolved homicide case, looking at victims’ teeth to determine how old they were at the time of death would help in identifying them; age determination of unknown human bodies is important in the setting of a crime investigation or a mass disaster, because the age at death, birth date, and year of death, as well as gender, can guide investigators to the correct identity among a large number of possible matches

  • Map offers details of DHS grant money disbursement since 9/11

    The federal government — and, since 2003, DHS — have disbursed more than $30 billion in grants to states and localities since the 9/11 attacks; now you can see where each dollar went, and what states and localities did with the money they received; most of the money was used for homeland security-related projects; an uncomfortably large amount, though, was used in a way not as directly related to securing the home front

  • U.S. cyberattack drill exposes unsettling vulnerabilities

    Experts, including current and former officials, conduct a cyberattack-on-the-U.S. drill; the results show that the peril is real and growing; no grand plan emerged, but the group did agree to advise the president to federalize the National Guard, even if governors objected, and deploy the troops — perhaps backed by the U.S. military — to guard power lines and prevent unrest

  • Soteria to replace U.K.’s search-and-rescue helicopters

    The U.K. government wants to harmonize search and rescue (SAR) in the United Kingdom and replace current helicopters in operation with a bespoke capability; the government has chosen a helicopter from the Soteria Group which consists of Sikorsky, Thales, CHC Helicopter Corporation, and the Royal Bank of Scotland