Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Disaster management/Archive 2

Assessment page on Natural disasters
Not sure if anyone else here knows about this page: Article_assessment/Natural_disasters. Gives an idea of the range of quality of articles on natural disasters. Carcharoth 16:02, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

FEMA Urban Search and Rescue Task Forces
I created the main entry for the FEMA US&R Task Forces as well as stubs for each of the teams. So far, only AZ-TF1, CA-TFs 1, 2 and 3 have anything beyond very basic stubs. If anyone is familiar with one of these Task Forces (or would like to do the research to flesh out the basic stub), I would be very appreciative.

I would also be interested in having the FEMA Urban Search and Rescue Task Force article reviewed. Any feedback would be appreciated as I am an amateur US&R enthusiast with no real life experience in the field.

Thanks!

Epolk 17:59, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

Portal:Disasters
Hey guys, I just wanted to let you know that I spent yesterday making Portal:Disasters and it is almost complete.

Feel free to contribute to the portal by any means. -- Nish kid 64 01:35, 3 October 2006 (UTC)
 * Looks good. I've started the talk page for the portal. Carcharoth 15:53, 21 October 2006 (UTC)

Rail Crash AfD
One of the articles within the scope of this project has been listed at AfD. If you have an opinion either way please see Articles for deletion/2006 Rome metro crash. Blood red sandman 20:07, 17 October 2006 (UTC)

Assessing articles
Does anyone here want to start going through Category:Disasters and tagging lots of article talk pages with this project's banner? We could then start assessing them, for the purposes of the project here. Or maybe the assessment in some areas should be left to other wikiprojects (eg. earthquakes and hurricanes), and we should restrict ourselves to those disaster articles not looked after by other wikiprojects? Carcharoth 06:23, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

Comprehensive Emergency Management
The four areas referred to - mitigation, preparedness, response and recovery and also commonly referred to as Comprehensive Emergency Management. Also, these terms are not consistent from country to country, therefore we need to be careful to create a NPOV. In New Zealand we have the Four R's - Reduction, Readiness, Response and Recovery for example. --Rediguananz 05:49, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

Category for Disaster relief organizations
How about a category for organizations like those mentioned in Emergency management as well as Médecins Sans Frontières & RedR? Call it Category:Disaster relief organizations? --Singkong2005 &middot; talk 00:32, 10 November 2006 (UTC)
 * Using Special:Prefixindex, I looked for categories starting with the words 'Disaster' and 'Emergency', and I found the following categories that are similar to what you are proposing:
 * Category:Disaster preparedness
 * Category:Disaster preparedness organizations in Canada
 * Category:Emergency services
 * Category:Emergency services in Orange County, California
 * Category:Emergency management
 * Maybe you could organise all these into a better category structure? With suitable thought given to the differences between emergencies and disasters, and between immediate responders and those that follow up in the mid- to long-term after a disaster. Difficult, but would be good to see some sort of category, as you say. Those categories I pointed out give a few ideas of organisations that could populate such a category. Carcharoth 00:42, 10 November 2006 (UTC)


 * Good job finding those cats...


 * It seems like a challenge - there's a lot of overlap with Category:Development charities. Can't do it now, but will give it thought... --Singkong2005 &middot; talk 13:21, 10 November 2006 (UTC)

An interesting question
Here is an unusual question - do we count the Cretaceous-Tertiary extinction event as a disaster? After all, for all it wasn't humans, it was certainly disasterous, and in my opinion it is certainly worth inclusion. What about in the opinions of the rest of the project? Blood red sandman 18:18, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

Stablepedia
Beginning cross-post.
 * See Wikipedia talk:Version 1.0 Editorial Team. If you wish to comment, please comment there. ★ MESSED  ROCKER ★  03:05, 26 November 2006 (UTC)

''End cross-post. Please do not comment more in this section.''

Sea Empress
Wanted do know if this article comes under the scope of your WikiProject? No loss of human life was experienced but thousands of birds and other wildlife were killed and the coastline was covered in oil resulting in a large cleanup operation. Alexj2002 17:11, 6 December 2006 (UTC)
 * Short answer: yes. Long answer: It is in Category:1996 disasters, so someone considers it a disaster. Category:Environmental disasters contains oil spills, and there is also Category:Industrial disasters. Loss of human life is not the only common criterion for disasters - loss of property and environmental damage are also referred to as disasters, if on a sufficiently large scale. Carcharoth 17:17, 6 December 2006 (UTC)
 * I would say no. I expressed a strong argument on Talk:Environmental_disaster for removing the Environmental disaster page from Emergency Management (and renaming it). I stand by the position that Emergency Management categorizes emergencies and disasters by their cause and not the type of loss. The Sea Empress incident is probably an environmental loss (as determined by an environmentalist). As viewed by Emergency Management, it was an industrial emergency (possibly a badly-managed one). The current article lacks sufficient information about the handling of the emergency to be relevant to Emergency Management. Parradoxx 19:04, 9 December 2006 (UTC)
 * Just because it doesn't currently say enough about how it was managed doesn't make it irrelevant. In fact, that's exactly what we should do at a project like this - expand articles such as Sea Empress to show the management side of the incident, which makes this article one of those which currently needs our attention - all the more reason to be attached to this project. Blood red sandman 21:03, 9 December 2006 (UTC)
 * After more consideration: I recant. This project does embrace disasters as well as disaster management. I maintain that the ecological system has a vast, natural capacity for managing events like foreign substances and meteor strikes -- and that capacity may well be beyond the lifespan of any individual to measure. However, because it was man-made, the introduction of a foreign substance by the Sea Empress was unnatural and so too the loss of life, even if the local ecosystem was not overwhelmed. I agree that the Sea Empress article should be expanded, nay - must be expanded, to include more description of its management. Any reservations which remain for me would be better expressed on Talk:Environmental_disaster. Parradoxx 22:01, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

Articles for deletion/2006 Milwaukee explosion
The article on the 2006 Milwaukee explosion is up for AfD. Sinse it is within the scope of the project, it seems apropriate to say here that anyone with an opinion on this AfD should make it heard! Blood red sandman 17:26, 7 December 2006 (UTC)

1979 Nice tsunami
I think that this event deserves its own article, seeing that it is one of the few in modern Europe with significant human casualties. I have, however, not found much material on what little I can find is in French. The article on tsunamis has some relevant references to it. I hope that there is a Francophone that is intereted in taking on the task of writing the article. --  rxnd  ( t  |  &#8364;  |  c  ) 12:14, 11 December 2006 (UTC)
 * I agree. Good to see more activity on this wikiproject! Any plans for collaborations, or should we just continue beavering away in our little corners on various articles? How many people are watching this page anyway? Carcharoth 12:37, 11 December 2006 (UTC)
 * I keep an eye on it, but you might probably have guessed that by how many posts I've made here. As for writing that article, I might give it a go based on a Babelfish translation of the references, if no-one who actually speaks French turns up. Finally, as far as a plan goes for the project, I'm probably going to be out of any collaborations because starting just after Chris--  rxnd  (  t  |  &#8364;  |  c  ) 13:58, 19 March 2007 (UTC)tmas I intend to try to go systematicaly through records of historic aviation disasters, and create articles on them, as currently there is a pretty appalling lack of articles on such crashes. Blood red sandman 17:31, 11 December 2006 (UTC)
 * I thought there were rather a lot. Are there just a lot missing as well? I tried to find a French Wikipedia article on that tsunami, but drew a blank in both the Nice and tsunami articles. Carcharoth 17:43, 11 December 2006 (UTC)
 * "I thought there were rather a lot. Are there just a lot missing as well?" What, French-speakers or aviation accidnets? I might look for something as well tonight, but not right now - things in the real world to do. If you rp, I'll get back in an hour or so, signing out now. Blood red sandman 18:16, 11 December 2006 (UTC)
 * So, I got back to looking at this again. There are several references in the tsunami article. --  rxnd  (  t  |  &#8364;  |  c  ) 13:58, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

Active members?
Can any active members of this WikiProject (or anyone wanting to join) sign in below, please? Thanks. Carcharoth 12:36, 11 December 2006 (UTC)
 * Blood Red Sandman 17:32, 11 December 2006 (UTC)
 * Carcharoth 17:44, 11 December 2006 (UTC)
 * Thisisbossi 15:36, 23 December 2006 (UTC)
 * Parradoxx 22:04, 8 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Sanguinity 01:41, 9 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Niayre 02:02, 9 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Dragomiloff 04:16, 15 January 2007 (UTC)
 *  rxnd  ( t  |  &#8364;  |  c  ) 12:33, 10 March 2007 (UTC) - should be able to return

Earthquake naming conventions
Please see Talk:Basel earthquake for a discussion on the name for an earthquake article. Thanks. Carcharoth 01:03, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia Day Awards
Hello, all. It was initially my hope to try to have this done as part of Esperanza's proposal for an appreciation week to end on Wikipedia Day, January 15. However, several people have once again proposed the entirety of Esperanza for deletion, so that might not work. It was the intention of the Appreciation Week proposal to set aside a given time when the various individuals who have made significant, valuable contributions to the encyclopedia would be recognized and honored. I believe that, with some effort, this could still be done. My proposal is to, with luck, try to organize the various WikiProjects and other entities of wikipedia to take part in a larger celebrartion of its contributors to take place in January, probably beginning January 15, 2007. I have created yet another new subpage for myself (a weakness of mine, I'm afraid) at User talk:Badbilltucker/Appreciation Week where I would greatly appreciate any indications from the members of this project as to whether and how they might be willing and/or able to assist in recognizing the contributions of our editors. Thank you for your attention. Badbilltucker 23:07, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

Assessment and infoboxes
I've added some info about the assessment process to the project page...I'm hoping there will be some interest in getting this process started. I've noticed some systematic deficiencies from disaster articles, so I put together a checklist of things to look for when assessing articles.

I've also noticed some disaster articles have infoboxes, and others don't. I've found the infoboxes to be very helpful when updating lists, and I think they are useful to readers in general. Existing infobox templates include Template:Infobox hurricane, Template:Infobox winter storm, and Template:Infobox tornado single. It would be nifty if there were more of these for different kinds of disasters. -- Beland 01:46, 31 December 2006 (UTC)


 * Thanks for that. Do you have a link to this systematic deficiencies list? I noticed several historical earthquakes missing (and recently requested the translation that created 1356 Basel earthquake), but I'm sure there is a lot more missing. One thing I did think was that we need a lot more ties to history WikiProjects. Disaster management tends to be more focused on present-day disasters and management and preparation. I'd like to see more focus on the history of disasters. Do you think adding a "and history" bit to the WikiProject title would work, or is it best to deal with something like this another way? (Hey, Beland! A blast from the past!) Carcharoth 04:09, 31 December 2006 (UTC)
 * I don't know whether changing the title will change the amount of interest in the project. Certainly if you think disaster history is underattended, just diving into it would certainly help a lot.  You can also specifically add disaster history-related tasks to this project's todo list, or tag those articles for attention, to help recruit more editors to work on those articles.  My checklist of things to look for is right on the project page at WikiProject_Disaster_management.  The most useful thing (from my perspective) to have on every article would be the infobox.  I didn't make a list of which articles were deficient (though I have left notes and tags here and there) because I thought any systematic surveys would be most efficiently accomplished at the same time as article assessment for the release project. -- Beland 03:22, 2 January 2007 (UTC)