An 18-wheeler carrying an oversize load struck part of the Interstate 5 bridge over Washington’s Skagit River. This hit caused to pavement to give way, causing two other vehicles to plunge into the water. Only one of the three people involved remained hospitalized Friday. That lady was in stable condition, according to Skagit Valley Hospital.
Here is a link to the full article at CNN .
Archive for the ‘Breaking News’ Category
Washington state bridge collapsed when a truck’s cargo seemed to hit a support girder
Posted by Austin Dalton on May 24th, 2013 at 11:29 am GMT+7
UAVs and the Moore Tornado: response to CNN blog
Posted by Dr. Robin Murphy on May 24th, 2013 at 7:43 am GMT+7
CNN has a nice blog post on the UAVs that weren’t used at Moore. Here are my comments:
Small UAVs have been used at 11 disasters internationally. The first use of small UAVs was in the US by the Center for Robot-Assisted Search and Rescue, which I direct, during Hurricane Katrina as part of the Florida State Emergency Response Team. We have been advising on the use and procedures for getting permissions for the tornado response, as flying even a small UAV requires coordination with the other activity- hence the no fly zone. The FAA has had an emergency COA process for years, though we find many agencies and industries are not aware of it. We are happy to assist agencies and industries in adopting and deploying unmanned systems of any kind.
OKC Tornado– unmanned systems not the best fit, here’s why
Posted by Dr. Robin Murphy on May 20th, 2013 at 8:55 pm GMT+7
Our hearts go out to the victims and the responders in Oklahoma. We have been working with the FEMA Innovation Team from shortly after the devastation occurred, however aerial and ground unmanned systems are not a good fit for this situation.
In terms of UAVs: There’s already aerial coverage from manned assets and it does not appear that multistory commercial buildings are heavily damaged. Two-story houses and apartment buildings and “strip malls” are well understood failures so additional aerial views are generally not needed to provide more information. If UAVs were available to the first responders, then they would be a much less expensive source of aerial information than manned helicopters or exploiting news helicopters. UAVs provide the ability to serve as wireless nodes (indeed, a big shout out to Roboticists Without Borders member Black Swift Technologies for their work with that) but the coordination with air traffic control and manned assets plus the deployment of COWs (cellular towers on wheels) means that if there weren’t available immediately, they are less likely to be of benefit.
In terms of UGVs: This is a wide affected area with “shallow” debris versus a big building collapse. Canines are the quickest way to locate any survivors that aren’t shouting or aren’t on the surface of the debris. You don’t need the UGV to penetrate the debris further than what a search camera can go to help find survivors or speed extrication.
In terms of UMVs: If there are lakes and streams, marine vehicles might be useful in searching for missing person who may have been swept into a pond and drowned.
We continue to stand by to provide assistance as needed.
China earthquake and Bangladesh collapse… the challenges of remote disasters
Posted by Dr. Robin Murphy on April 25th, 2013 at 2:26 pm GMT+7
The Chinese earthquake and the Bangladesh collapse coming on the heels of the Tanzania building collapse illustrate the need for rapidly deployed, regional teams of disaster robots that can quickly get there. The Bangladesh collapse might have been aided by the use of small robots to penetrate in the rubble. Ground robots are less useful for a wide area of residential buildings, though UAVs are very helpful for assessing the extent of damage. But for now, the best we can do in the rescue robot community is to send our thoughts and prayers to the victims, their families, and the responders.
Waco Explosion: no robots needed
Posted by Dr. Robin Murphy on April 18th, 2013 at 4:17 am GMT+7 – Updated: April 18th, 2013 at 11:40 am GMT+7
We are all keeping the victims, the families, and the responders in the devastating explosion of the fertilizer plant in Waco in our thoughts and prayers. We’ve reached out and there doesn’t appear to be a need for robots at this time. The event occurred in the evening, a problematic time to fly sUAVs to get an immediate overview. Damage to residential areas do not require robots, as canines are much faster at detecting victims and the debris is usually sufficiently shallow that the interior view from a robot is not needed for searching or extrication. Robots are sometimes useful for forensics- to enter areas and capture the scene before people enter and disturb it by virtue of entering. But the word is that they aren’t needed for this case.
Iran Earthquake: CRASAR monitoring but this type is hard for robots
Posted by Dr. Robin Murphy on April 10th, 2013 at 4:00 am GMT+7 – Updated: April 11th, 2013 at 1:32 pm GMT+7
Dr. Tetsu Kimura and member of our IRS-CRASAR expeditions is coming back from Robocup Rescue in Iran and has asked about CRASAR robots for the Iran earthquake. I am taking the liberty of sharing my reply:
The earthquake is awful and what another tragic loss of life. I am a great admirer of Amir and his efforts. We’ve been watching the earthquake here– I don’t think the robots would be of much use but certainly would try to support a response. It is painful to see the loss of life.
The primary damage based on the media- which could be wrong- appears to be to mud and brick houses versus multi-story commercial buildings, if victims survive they are probably fairly shallow (less than 6m) and in voids surrounded by brick and mud has become sand– there are generally no voids from the surface to the survivor for the robot to penetrate. Dogs can readily detect the presence of a person and then it requires manpower for extraction. Existing techniques work well for depths of 6m. Robots are slow compared to canines, and CRASAR deployment with FLTF-3 during Hurricane Charley and FLTF-3 deployment of ground robots at Hurricane Katrina showed that ground robots didn’t provide a cost/benefit for wide area search of urban residences. So unless it’s a multi-story building such as an apartment that has collapsed, current ground robots won’t make a difference and we recommend more canine teams. In the future, something like Dan Goldman’s sandsnake robots on a large scale could help.
Landslides are also challenging for ground robots, as we saw at the La Conchita mudslides- as with the mud and brick residences you have nothing but dense dirt, not the void spaces seen in a commercial concrete structure.
The nuclear facility is another matter, of course, and the situation may call for ground and aerial inspection.
For the wide area search of residences, besides canine teams other technologies such as ground penetrating radar and better informatics to coordinate researchers and resources would be a huge potential contribution and why the Center for Emergency Informatics exists.
Finally, there is the large travel time as Satoshi noted for the Tanzania collapse, so we would arrive around 72 hours later, outside the probability of long-term survivors. The robots would add little to recovery of the critical infrastructure in this case.
Please let me know what you think. In the meantime our prayers are with the victims, their families, and the responders.
Update Tanzania collaspe: CRASAR not needed
Posted by Dr. Robin Murphy on March 29th, 2013 at 3:10 pm GMT+7 – Updated: March 30th, 2013 at 5:29 am GMT+7
We have been communicating with the Tanzanian Embassy in London and the response is winding down- we won’t be needed, though we may be asked to engage the Tanzanian response community at a later date to expose them to the advances in rescue robotics. We extend our condolences for the families of the four dead and two injured reported this morning in the news, and hope that the missing will be found.
We are watching the Tanzania building collapse with great sorrow and wish the Tanzanian people and responders the best as they struggle to help the victims and families and deal with their losses. We are on internal stand-by and hope to be invited to assist. In a dense building collapse like this, very small tethered robots can often go 20 to 30 m further than the 8m or so that traditional search camera systems can penetrate. The Japanese Active Scope Camera is also great for dense collapses, as seen at our deployment at the Berkman Plaza collapse in Jacksonville.
