Emergency and disaster management briefing for December 20, 2021: A massive fire at a QVC warehouse in North Carolina killed one employee; the Semeru volcano in Indonesia erupted early Sunday, spewing ash more than a mile into the sky; the NWS recorded nine tornadoes in a historic weather event in Minnesota; Bibb County deputies were dispatched to an Outback Steakhouse restaurant after it received a bomb threat; CISA issued a directive and deadline for patching Log4j vulnerabilities; the NFPA now offers free online drone training for public safety agencies; NIOSH is seeking public input regarding future centers for excellence for collaboration on personal protection technology; and an investigation is underway into a manual shutdown of Unit 1 at the St. Lucie Nuclear Plant in Florida.
1. A devastating fire at a QVC distribution center in Rocky Mount, North Carolina, claimed the life of one person. The fire broke out in the early hours of Saturday morning and destroyed the main section of the warehouse. The massive fire burned for 16 hours and drew 50 agencies from eight counties to help contain and put out the fire.
A body has been found at a QVC distribution center in North Carolina, police say, a day after a five-alarm fire burned through the facility. https://t.co/cKYFo5v1Dt
— NBC News (@NBCNews) December 20, 2021
2. The Semeru volcano in Indonesia erupted early Sunday morning and spewed ash more than a mile into the sky in white and gray ash clouds. Officials warned residents to stay miles away from the eruption and remain away from rivers to avoid any potential lava flows. An eruption by the volcano in early December killed at least 46 people, displaced thousands and left several missing.
3. Last Wednesday, severe weather moved through Minnesota, spawning multiple tornadoes. In what the National Weather Service (NWS) is calling a historic weather event, a total of nine tornadoes touched down across the state on December 15-16. The strongest was an EF-2 that struck the Hartland area, packing winds of up to 115 mph.
4. Deputies in Bibb County, Georgia, were called to an Outback Steakhouse after the restaurant received a bomb threat. The restaurant, located in Macon, received a call around 7:30 p.m. on Sunday evening from an unknown person who stated that a bomb had been placed in the building. Law enforcement used a bomb disposal K-9 unit to check the building and gave the all-clear at around 9 p.m. An investigation into the incident is underway by authorities.
5. After the Log4j vulnerability became known last week in the open source Apache logging library, governments, businesses, and private agencies have scrambled to identify vulnerabilities and install patches. The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) issued an emergency directive on Friday, addressing the vulnerability issue and giving a deadline for mitigation and patch installations. According to the directive, the risk posed to Federal Civilian Executive Branch Agencies is unacceptable, and all fixes and patches must be completed by December 23.
6. Firefighting agencies continue to increase their drone usage to enhance multiple operations across a wide variety of applications. Some of the beneficial uses for unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) – also known as drones – include search and rescue operations, hazardous materials incidents, natural disasters, and emergency responses requiring situational awareness. To address gaps in operational knowledge, planning, and education, the National Fire Protection Agency (NFPA) now offers free online training for public safety agencies through a Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) grant.
NFPA Releases Free Online Drone Training Program %7C Firehouse https://t.co/kQeIzp3wQm #drone #uav
— Drone News Feed (@DroneNewsFeed) October 26, 2021
7. The National Institute for Health and Safety (NIOSH) seeks to increase the research and development of personal protective technology (PPT) through centers of excellence. NIOSH is seeking public input regarding the development of these future centers of excellence that will serve as collaborative knowledge hubs for PPT research and practice. The focus of these centers are identified as three broad areas that include research into innovative design, the evaluation of factors affecting PPT and the development of new technologies to increase efficacy. Comments are due by January 31, 2022, and more information is available in the full document, which can be accessed in the Federal Registrar.
8. An investigation is underway into the manual shutdown of a reactor at the St. Lucie Nuclear Plant on Florida’s Hutchison Island in early December. A decision was made by staff to shut down the reactor after water levels entering a steam generator kept decreasing. Unit 1 was successfully shut down without any other issues or complications, and it was restarted and at full power just three days later. It is unknown why the water levels decreased, although it may have been that a water valve was inadvertently closed.
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