As our nation engages in the middle east confict, loss control professionals are facing additional challenges. Employee safety now includes planning for bioterrorism, terrorist acts, and possible chemical exposures in industries that did not formerly have this threat.

http://securebuildings.lbl.gov/ This awesome website, run by Lawrence Berkeley National Library, is intended for emergency personnel and building operators. It provides current advice for dealing with a biological or chemical release into a building due to a terrorist attack. I particularly enjoyed the animation showing how the HVAC system spreads contamination through-out the building.

http://medepi.org/bt/ This website is operated by the San Francisco Department of Public Health. It provides accurate and timely information about the prevention and control of biological threats to populations from natural disasters, accidents, or terrorist acts. The primary target audience is healthcare providors and facilities. I recently used the website links to obtain the latest information on the mystery illness SARS.

http://www.freetranslation.com I used this website to assist my clients in developing safety topics for Spanish speaking employees. It has a feature that allows one to translate documents up to 1800 words for free! My 3 pages of notes were translated in 5 seconds flat. Now thats "muy rapido!"Other languages in it's database are French, German, Italian, Dutch, Portugese and Norwegian.

Surf Dog Tip: Windows Hibernation

Windows has a feature called hibernate. It shuts down your computer and saves everything exactly as you left it. It even bypasses the startup for quicker entry into Windows. Here's how to do it on Windows XP:
1) Click start, then select shut down.
2) Press the shift key and watch the standby change to hibernate.
3) For this to work, you must have hibernate enabled in power options of the control panel.

Until next time, here's a thought to ponder......... Why do drive-thru ATM consoles include braille???

WOOF-WOOF

Ray Alba and Joe Bosso
Aka The Surf Dogs
April 2008