Property: Long description
From LINKS Community Center
It is a property of type Text.
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In the night of Tuesday, 29.8.2023, a fire had started in an approx. 40 m high silo in Wesselburen (Dithmarschen district). The silo was filled with about 30 tons of grain. The temperatures in the silo were estimated to be between 600 and 700 degrees. Approximately 200 firefighters were involved in the very difficult firefighting operation until the first of September. Smoldering fires were smothered by the use of nitrogen.
While hundreds of emergency personnel were in action at that silo fire in Wesselburen, a second silo filled with oat was on fire on Wednesday, 30.8.2023, in the city of Neumünster.
Already on July 31, 2023, there was a large-scale mission for more than 200 firefighters from the Duchy of Lauenburg district and the Hamburg professional fire department: a 37-meter-high silo tower on the outskirts of Brunstorf with 200 tons of different types of grain had caught fire.
Also in August a silo fire happened in the French Atlantic port of La Rochelle (see link for information). +
Educational advice, interesting stories in connection with fire fighters and fire brigades plus the operational interventions are among the most popular events that draws attention of the public and generates feedback from citizens.
Interesting stories from all over the country and events which surely attracts the attention of the public are posted on social media, such as :
* joining the fire service as a new recruit,
*wedding of a fire fighter colleague,
*competitions (rescue dog, rescue rope, fire fighter of the year city award),
*private life professional activities by fire fighters,
*animal rescue,
*information sharing on meteorology events (rainfalls, heatwaves),
*earthquakes,
*celebrations
Mostly used social media platform in Hungary is Facebook. +
In March 2021, the Suez Canal was blocked for six days by the Ever Given, a container ship that had run aground in the canal. The 400-metre-long (1,300 ft), 224,000-ton, 20,000 TEU vessel was buffeted by strong winds on the morning of 23 March, and ended up wedged across the waterway with its bow and stern stuck in the canal banks, blocking all traffic until it could be freed. Egyptian authorities said that "technical or human errors" may have also been involved. The obstruction occurred south of the two-channel section of the canal, so there was no way around it for other ships. The blockage of one of the world's busiest trade routes significantly slowed down trade between Europe, Asia and the Middle East.
On 28 March, at least 369 ships were queuing to pass through the canal, stranding an estimated US$9.6 billion worth of trade. On 29 March, Ever Given finally freed by 14 Egyptian, Dutch, and Italian tug boats at high tide to dislodge it.
(Source: Wikipedia) +
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Two days before the crime, he posted on Facebook inviting other teenagers to come to the fast-food restaurant. Around the afternoon of July 22, the young man visited the restaurant and killed five children and teenagers with a pistol. After that, the perpetrator left the scene and shot at other fleeing people, four of them died. Police tried to shoot the perpetrator to no avail. He hid in an apartment building, left it in the evening and shot himself in front of the police. Initially, the investigators assumed that the rampage was non-political. However, commissioned experts concluded that the crime was right-wing terrorism, as the perpetrator had selected his victims according to racist criteria. Moreover, the day was not chosen by chance, because five years earlier the extreme right-wing attacks in Oslo and Utøya by Anders Breivik took place. +
On the 20th of May 2022, a tornado cut a swath of devastation from west to east across the city over a width of 300 meters. Throughout the district, roofs were torn off, metal insulation and other materials flew for kilometers, the fire department said. Severe damage was reported, over 1000 trees were uprooted, many buildings and cars destroyed. Public transport, including railroads, was severely affected. Overall, 43 people were injured, 13 of them seriously.
As usual for such events, citizens produced a lot of information (texts, pictures and videos) and provided on different social media platforms. From the development of a research project with the safety innovation center as the coordinator, the fire department of Paderborn is using INSPIRE for the monitoring and analysis of social media information.
The gathered information granted the fire department helpful insights in the management of operations.
'''Overview'''
The information were mainly gathered from Twitter. The following figure shows the number of social media posts when the tornado hits.
'''Early warning'''
Past experience shows that the probability of a tornado in Germany is very low. Likewise, it is typical for a tornado that it can only be predicted in the short term. Accordingly, the awareness of the population and authorities for the development of a tornado was not very high. The tornado hit the city at 17:13 and early warnings for an upcoming tornado were posted by so called tornado-spotters (well known in USA).
'''Increased Situational Awareness'''
The mass of social media posts were filtered using both a hashtag search and a keyword search. This is a collection of keywords that match the selected scenario (for example, in the case of a tornado, these are keywords like storm, severe weather, destruction, etc.). Thus, the available number of social media posts is reduced and filtered for relevant posts, which can then be reviewed by disaster management organisations to expand the situation picture.
In the case of a large-scale incident, the fire department of Paderborn had to work through the emergency scenes step by step. Accordingly, the fire department only arrived at the scene of the damage a few hours later or even at night or the next day. The information from social media was relatively easy to assign to an operation site, especially for those familiar with the city. In many cases, this made it possible to view and assess the situation at the scene of the incident even before the firefighters themselves went there. In this way, priorities could be refined and the deployment of forces could be adjusted.
'''Event Notification'''
Another function that the Paderborn Fire Department uses is the detection of anomalies in observed social networks. This means, for example, a high rate of increase in the number of results of a defined search over a certain period of time. If, for example, there is a 10% increase compared to the last 3 hours, the fire department is automatically notified.
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The crisis in Ukraine is causing a mass exodus of people seeking safety to neighboring countries and the rest of Europe. Thousands of people are arriving in Italy.
In order not to leave them alone, we have activated the DRUZI project, a Ukrainian word meaning "friends", in which "Ukrainian" volunteers, who have knowledge of the language, support girls, boys and adolescents aged 9 to 18 through and continuous online support.
The project, which is part of our response to the Ukrainian Emergency in Italy that we have activated since early March, with integrated protection interventions, support for reception and inclusion, aims to support educational continuity, relationality and integration. social welfare of boys, girls and adolescents who fled Ukraine and arrived in Italy. +
The map has been created with the support of Google Maps with the aim to collect all the information related to the war and to provide some instructions on how people could help and contribute to sustain the humanitarian aid. The map was continually updated to be sure that all information was verified and trusted. The map was disseminate through social media platforms such as Facebook and Instagram as a way to reach as many people as possible. +
A citizen called 112 and reported smoke emanating from the residential building. The emergency services secured live streaming from the incident. The operator sent an SMS to the citizens and could then follow the fire development via the citizen's phone. The live stream was available in emergency vehicles, emergency services and operations managers, as well as the police.
The fire developed very quickly. It therefore became necessary to evacuate all the residents of the property.
The residents were evacuated to an evacuation center set up by the Greater Copenhagen Fire Department. +