Disaster Studies
Preparing your business for hurricane season
[lmt-post-modified-info] In the United States, June 1st marks the beginning of hurricane season. With everything else 2020 has given us, we hoped for a reprieve from at least one bad thing this year, however NOAA is predicting a busy season with an above-normal number...
FEMA Disaster Map
Return Period in Years for FEMA Declared Disasters by County This map produced by Global Data Vault, shows the average number of years between FEMA declared Disasters for each county in the United States. One can surmise that the darker density counties are at higher...
California Wildfire Occurrences Highest in October
Wildfires have taken a top spot in the news as of late. They cost American taxpayers between $20 billion and $100 billion every year, in expenses that range from air pollution and soil degradation to public health challenges and loss of human life. If it...
Predicting Hurricanes
Damage Caused by Hurricanes in the US Even though hurricanes mainly threaten the US Gulf and East Coasts, of all the natural disasters that happen in America, they are the most costly and destructive. Hurricanes can strike anywhere from Southern Texas to New England,...
A Tornado’s Costly Path
Recent events remind us that tornados often have a sad and deadly cost for the victims in their path. Even an F-3 tornado can cause devastation and the total destruction of everything in its path. Homes are reduced to matchsticks, office buildings to piles of rubble....
Information Destruction Through History
Loss of Knowledge Information the most valuable commodity in the world. All human progress depends on the accumulation and preservation of information. When information is lost, human progress suffers. This infographic displays some of the most significant losses of...
What went wrong in the days before Super Storm Sandy?
“Not only were many firms unsure about whether their galoshes were waterproof,” Bart Chilton, the regulator at the Commodity Futures Trading Commission said, “they hadn’t even tried them on.” Chilton’s sharp-tongued critique is in response to the apparent lack of...
Data Center Exposure and Recovery in New York City
Hurricane Sandy provided a fascinating opportunity to study the both the level of disaster planning and the resilience of New York City data centers. This article will examine a) what actually happened, b) what was the risk, and c) what are the lessons learned. What...
Hurricane Sandy Update
Hurricane Sandy Update Hurricane Sandy Update. Global Data Vault continues to support our customers in the affected areas especially New York and New Jersey. We have been busier than usual, but all of our customer recoveries have gone very well. We wish all of our...
Hurricane Sandy’s Reach
The devastation from Hurricane Sandy is widespread, even to areas of the country not in the storm zone. While the effects are widespread, we want to assure our customers that NONE of our production systems were affected by Hurricane Sandy’s wrath on the east coast....
Hurricane Sandy Power Outages
From the New York Times, here is a breakdown by time and state of the more than 6 million customers affected with Hurricane Sandy power outages this morning based on information updates from 35 major power companies: For more details on the impact see the New York...
New Orleans After Isaac – Update 7
With power mostly restored now - and apologies to those still waiting, this will be our final update in our New Orleans After Isaac series. Hurricane Isaac was a Category 1 hurricane. By wind speed, it was barely even that strong, with top sustained winds of 80 mph....
New Orleans After Isaac – Update 6
Real progress is finally visible today. While many are still without power, there is surely a light at the end of the tunnel for those homes and businesses still waiting. A new color is peaking through now on the map: green!
New Orleans After Isaac – Disaster Update 4
If you look carefully today, you can see some improvements since Isaac struck. The map is much more blue than red - clearly, the outages are being reduced. Entergy had said they would have power back to 90% of those "ready for power" by September 6. Hopefully this...
New Orleans After Isaac – Update 2
Progress in recovering power is moving slowly. Today Entergy reports they "expect to make significant progress today and through the weekend restoring power." They expect to restore power to 90% of customers "who can take power" by September 6. But the statsu today...
New Orleans After Isaac – Update 1
The current, as of 10a.m. on Thursday August 30, status of power outages in New Orleans is shown below. Entergy, the local utility, has 10,000 workers deployed to restore power. Legend: Blue = 1 to 50, Yellow = 51 to 250 and Red = 251 to 1,000 power outages. Red lines...
Hurricane Isaac Update
Here is a live view of wind speeds as reported hint.fm/wind. This image shows the measured sustained wind speed in New Orleans at 10:00a.m. today. It has been a busy couple of days for Global Data Vault, but things are going well. As the storm approached, we...
Hurricane Preparation Checklist – the Final 48 Hours
Hurricanes are expensive and deadly. Yahoo Finance reported that 7 of the 10 most costly U. S. weather disasters over the past 30 years were hurricanes. But the good news about hurricanes – if there could be “good news” about them – is that they are generally...
Are You Vulnerable to Smartphone Viruses and Malware
Uh, yes. The good news is that some smart phones are safer than others. But that also depends on how you’ve cared for it. For example, Apple’s wildly popular iPhone is built on a restrictive platform that protects it from being vulnerable to viruses and malware being...
Disaster Planning – Pacific Coast Tsunami Preparations
The Cascadia subduction zone is a 600-mile-long offshore earthquake fault that runs from northern California to southern British Columbia. And that fault has a serious tale to tell. Geologists have found sand deposits up and down the Pacific coast along this zone, the...