Situation Report

General recommendations:

• People living in close proximity to the fire-stricken areas should remain indoors and avoid inhalation of smoke, ashes, and particulate matter in the area. Ordinary dust masks, designed to filter out large particles, will not help as they still allow the more dangerous smaller particles to pass through. Special, more expensive dust masks with true HEPA filters will filter out the damaging fine particles but are difficult for people with lung disease to use. Consult with your physician before using a mask, especially if you have a lung disease.
• If you live close to or in the surrounding area, it's recommended that you refrain from exercising outdoors, especially if you smell smoke or notice eye or throat irritation.
• Extra precaution should be taken for children, who are more susceptible to smoke because their respiratory systems are still developing and they breathe in more air (and consequently more pollution) per pound of body mass than adults.
• When driving your car in smoky areas, keep your windows and vents closed. Air conditioning should only be operated in the "recirculate" setting.

Our Urgent Cluster report from Christoph Dennenmoser lists 36 events monitored by Humanity Road volunteers for the month of May 2012.  Thanks Christoph for putting it together! A total of 17 volunteers supported the disaster desk in May.  Having so many really helps manage the workload. We really appreciate all the hard work - especially with the pre-exercise crisis mapping events for RIMPAC and Pacific Endeavor in May.  Great job!  The team leads averaged 12 events each - with Cindy being high responder in May with 14 events.  A huge thank you also to Judith (5) and Avi(4) for their help in responding this month.  Also thank you to Dave, Herold, Jeff G, Melissa, Shirley, Steven, Toni, Yakubu and Vincent.   Cindy Becker, who leads our Animals in Disaster cluster team reported an active month supporting the emerging events as well as publishing RedCrossDog articles “Happy Mother’s Day”, to all pet Mom’s and “A Pet’s Summer Wish List”, and from the Animals in Disaster Digest “Horses, Hurricanes and Floods”.  As well as “Toad Power.

Earthquakes were the predominant event registered in May with 53% of our responses, followed by 19% fires.  Information was monitored and tweeted in various languages including, English, Spanish and Italian with machine translations in Bulgarian, and Ajerbaijanii.  Humanity Road released instructions on notifying loved ones that you are safe, such as in Italian “@humanityroad In un disastro dire la tua famiglia sa che sono sicuri. Interruzione di telefono? Prova di testo o l'aggiornamento”  Information is published but also monitored in the local language, and Chris Thompson noted during one key word search, that the Bulgarian word for trapped is капан. 

Earthquakes:  May started the month of high earthquake activity beginning with an offshore 6.0 near Chiapas, Mexico. @CruzRojaInforma  reported the public having only shaken nerves and no casualties or damage.   Volunteers monitored for impacts on emerging earthquake events during May which included tremblors in Chile – Coast, Italy, Bulgaria, Japan – Hokkaido, Greenland, NZ – Christchurch, Argentina, Japan, Italy, Greenland. A 5.6 in Azerbaijan Monday, May 7 according to the report, the earthquake caused some damage and residents of multistoried buildings left their homes.  Volunteers confirmed The President of Azerbaijan is on Twitter and dual tweets in Azerbaijani and English https://twitter.com/#!/presidentaz.  Avi Sharma from Nagpur India reported 5.3 in Assam India, and Bettie Tussey activated the desk on May 20 for the 6.0 quake that struck Northern Italy, volunteers monitored for impacts and tracked open/closed and impacted hospitals and urgent needs, translation assistance was provided by Jeffrey Gerard.  Judith Frazier translated and reported that the Civil Protection of Modena is seeking doctors, psychologists for children and trained volunteers.

M 5.5, 3km NW of Cavezzo, Italy Tuesday, May 29, 2012 10:55:57 UTC
M 5.8, 3km W of San Felice sul Panaro, Italy Tuesday, May 29, 2012 07:00:03 UTC
M 6.7, 37km ESE of Suncho Corral, Argentina Monday, May 28, 2012 05:07:23 UTC
M 5.6, 5km NNW of Pernik, Bulgaria Tuesday, May 22, 2012 00:00:32 UTC
M 6.3, 95km E of Miyako, Japan Sunday, May 20, 2012 07:20:37 UTC
M 6.0, 6km SSW of Felonica, Italy Sunday, May 20, 2012 02:03:52 UTC
M 6.3, Off the coast of Aisen, Chile Friday, May 18, 2012 02:00:40 UTC
M 4.8, 1km ENE of Timpson, Texas Thursday, May 17, 2012 08:12:01 UTC
M 4.6, 12km S of Anchorage, Alaska Wednesday, May 16, 2012 15:02:51 UTC
M 6.2, 46km NNW of Putre, Chile Monday, May 14, 2012 10:00:39 UTC
M5.3 – Assam, India Friday, May 11, 2012 at 12:41:31 UTC
M5.6 - 13km NW of Cinarli, Azerbaijan Monday, May 7, 2012 at 04:40:29 UTC  
M6.0 – Offshore Chiapas, Mexico  Tuesday, May 1, 2012 at 22:43:33 UTC

Fire:  Humanity Road Volunteers worked many fires during the month of May releasing wildfire tips, evacuation and shelter information for events happening across the USA in Michigan, New Mexico, Colorado, Texas, Arizona, California and Florida.  Some of the fires listed are the Gladiator Fire, Duck Fire, Banner Fire, Wildfire Livermore Ranch in Texas, Little Bear Fire in NM, and Hewlett, and Sunrise Canyon (Paradox) in Colorado,  and Pine Creek, Michigan, Whitewater-Baldy Complex, New Mexico. Toni McNulty reported the Crown King, AZ was under an evacuation order due to the Gladiator Fire.

Severe Weather:  May brought severe weather in the form of tornadoes, storms, riptides and flash flooding.  Cindy Becker reported monitoring severe weather/tornado activity in Nebraska and Minnesota.  Tropical Storm Beryl wreaked havoc along the coast and Bettie Tussey activated the disaster desk when over 30 ppl were rescued at Tybee Island during the memorial holiday weekend.  Humanity Road Volunteers worked heavy rains which caused flash flooding in the Florida panhandle.  Road closures in the Florida panhandle #flwx  Volunteers guided folks in twitter to the American Red Cross facebook page for NW Florida and helped relay information about road closures. Kate Starbird created a tweak the tweet map for the wildfires http://www.cs.colorado.edu/~starbird/TtT_Fires_map_byEvent.html

Volcano:  Vincent reported into the disaster desk about the evacuation of nearby residents and an airport closure Sam Ratulangi due to an eruption of Volcano Lokon in Indonesia. Christoph reported Volcano Fuego is erupting. As far as I understood, they are evacuating the area. The city of Guatemala is not under evacuation. Pictures from Conred on Facebook

Other:  Volunteers monitored a 5 story building collapsed in Kenya under the hashtag #westlands. On Monday May 7th at about 1:25pm local time, a 5 story building under construction in the residential neighborhood of Westlands outside Nairobi, Kenya collapsed trapping people in the rubble.  The Kenya Red Cross dispatched their EMS unit to the scene.  At least one victim was transported to an area hospital.  Tweets were monitored by Humanity Road within seconds of the report from Kenya Red Cross dispatch report.  No urgent needs were identified in Twitter.  Locals in Nairobi and Humanity Road commended Kenya Red Cross on their rapid dispatch and arrival to the scene.  The Disaster Desk was active for 20 minutes for this event -an update from Kenya Red Cross reported only 1 person was injured. 

This overview is a snapshot for the month of May 2012.  Do you like to support emerging events and monitor for disaster?  Help us, you can sign up at http://www.humanityroad.org/Volunteer