AHC Emergency Management Consulting

The FY 2011 UASI grant awards were announced Thursday.  The reduction from 64 to 31 UASIs caught many by surprise.  While I was predicting that the UASI list might go down to 40-45, 31 was a deeper cut than was expected. "Eligible candidates for the FY 2011 UASI program have been determined through an analysis of relative risk of terrorism faced by the 100 most populous metropolitan statistical areas in the United States, in accordance with the 9/11 Act. Based on that analysis, the eligible candidates have been grouped into two tiers according to relative risk. Tier I includes the 11 highest risk areas and will be allocated 81.6 percent (81.6%) of the total UASI funding available; Tier II includes the other 20 candidate areas and will be allocated the remaining 18.4 percent (18.4%) of the total UASI funding available." Click to enlarge This compares the FY 2011 UASI grant awards (red) to 2010 amounts (blue).  I plotted the 2011 awards against the 2010 awards to see

The recent move by the House of Representatives to limit the Urban Area Security Initiative to only 10 cities has obviously caused concern for the 54 other UASI cities.  These cities will be clamoring to make the case that they too are at risk from the threat of terrorism.  While there are many past examples of terrorist acts or attempted acts across the country, from Oklahoma City to Seattle, one not need to look far to find a solid basis for this concern. Let's look at some recent news for example. NationalTerrorAlert.com  is one of many sources that I use to stay on top of terrorism related news.  (NationalTerrorAlert.com is a private homeland security blog and not affiliated with any government agency.)  I get an e-mail daily with relevant news summaries and links to source news stories.  Today was no exception and the headlines explain my point well: NYPD releases video of bust of suspected terrorist plotting attacks on NYC synagogues FBI no-show in NYC terror probe raises q

A proposed 2012 budget bill in the House of Representatives slashes the current level of local first responder funding, with the biggest cuts coming in areas critical to anti-terrorism and emergency preparedness.   American community leaders are reeling. They did not see this coming. Many of their leaders are in a state of shock and denial.  The United States Congress is prepared to make heavy cuts in homeland security grant funding unlike anything they had imagined. While Congress shaved local first responder funding by about 20% for 2011, their current plans for 2011 are to cut 67% from the FY 2010 level of $3 billion to $1 billion overall. The Urban Area Security Initiative (UASI) which was created to help enhance capabilities in the most at-risk cities will go from a high of 64 cities down to 10 cities under the current House of Representatives proposal.  Cities that were making great headway enhancing capabilities are going to lose ground on preparedness. This means that potentia

I just got this great comprehensive report in the mail and thought I would pass it along.   BC  Management recently published complimentary BCM Compensation reports as a result of the 9th Annual BCM Study (2010) findings, which closed on December 15, 2010.  The next study (soon to be released) will focus on 2010 compensations. USA BCM Compensation Complimentary Report  - Published March 2011. Focus is on 2009 compensations for full-    time , permanent employees in the USA. Some interesting findings include: BCM Average Total Compensation for USA is $105,980 USD 57.89% of Global Managers received an increase in total average compensation and the average total compensation increase was 14.44%. 39.08% of study participants indicated 4-10 years of    business continuity  related expertise while 53.94% of the study respondents indicated 21 - 35 years of total work experience. According to our study results, the top certification for the USA was the Certified Business    Continuity