Emergency and disaster management briefing for December 1, 2021: The 2021 Hurricane Season officially ended on Tuesday; a school shooting in Michigan left 3 people dead and at least 8 injured; temporary container yards are helping alleviate congestion at the Port of Savannah; Panasonic announced it was the victim of a cyberattack; water main supplies were flushed for military housing residents on Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickman after families complained of foul-smelling water and some unusual ailments; DDC, a DNA testing firm, announced it was the victim of a cyberattack that compromised the information of more than 2 million people; police are investigating after a bomb threat at a high school in Illinois was found to be false; and one Georgia police officer was killed, and another injured after a shooting suspect opened fire on the responding officers.
The 2021 Hurricane Season officially ended on Tuesday. Experts note that it was the third most active season on record, with 21 named storms, seven of which became hurricanes, including four of which became major hurricanes. Hurricane Ida was one of those major hurricanes, and it made landfall as a massive Category 4 storm in Louisiana. According to reports, Ida is now considered the costliest hurricane on record, with an estimated $64.5 billion in damages.
A school shooting in Michigan has left three students dead, and another eight injured, three of which remain in critical condition. The incident occurred on Tuesday at the Oxford High School at around 12:51 p.m. Officers were summoned to the active shooting and apprehended the suspect, a 15 year old boy, however, no motive for the shooting has been established.
Congestion levels at the Port of Savannah have dropped thanks to major retailers who have opened up temporary container yards. The freight railroad, Norfolk Southern, opened its Dillard Yard on Monday to accept containers, and will begin routing shipping units to a nearby general aviation airport that is located in Statesboro. The sites operate as mini inland ports, serviced by intermodal rail, which takes the containers closer to manufacturing, agriculture, and populations centers, by shortening truck transportation distances. This in turn, alleviates truck traffic at ports, which is slow and largely inefficient, and clears the port of containers more quickly.
Panasonic announced it was the target of a cyberattack in November. The breach was discovered on November 11, but hackers allegedly had access to the company’s servers beginning on June 22. According to reports, the attack affected servers that housed information on Panasonic’s business partners and the company’s technology. A subsidiary of the company also suffered a ransomware attack in November of 2020, and business information was leaked from that attack.
Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickman military housing residents were asked to flush the water lines in their homes by running faucets for 3-5 minutes. The request came after Navy officials received multiple reports from military housing families of foul smelling water and a series of unusual ailments. Primary water distribution mains for military housing were flushed three times, and Navy officials have asked military housing residents to avoid using tap water for cooking or drinking until further testing is completed.
An Ohio-based DNA testing firm announced that it suffered a data breach that occurred between May 24, 2021, and July 28, 2021 that has impacted more than 2 million people. The cyberattack at DNA Diagnostics Center (DDC), affected older database backups dated 2004 to 2012–which are not connected to current databases in use by the company. Full names, financial, and financial account passwords were some of the items compromised during the data breach.
A bomb threat was called into the Maine West High School Tuesday afternoon, prompting an early dismissal of students. The high school, which is located in Des Plaines, Illinois, received the threat just before 1:45 p.m., and after students were dismissed, bomb sniffing dogs were brought in to help clear the campus. No threat was detected, and police are actively investigating the incident.
Four people were killed during a shooting in Georgia on Tuesday evening, including one police officer. Another police officer was also injured in the shooting, which occurred in Rex, a suburb about 30 minutes southeast of Atlanta. Multiple calls were made to 911, and responding officers met a 12-year-old boy who had been shot in the face, and then encountered the suspect, who opened fire on the two officers. The suspect, who also allegedly shot and killed two females prior to police arriving, was reportedly killed during the shootout.
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