Month March 2021

A Few Thoughts on Emergency Planning

Tim Riecker, The Contrarian Emergency Manager 3 Comments

A conversation I find myself having fairly often is about people not using plans. It’s amazing that we invest so much time, money, and effort into building plans to never see them used, even if the opportunity presents itself. Why is this? I see four primary reasons:

1. People don’t know the plans exist. There is really no excuse for this one. I find it shameful and wasteful, especially if these people are identified as action agents within that plan. There was practically no point in even developing the plan no one knows about it and their respective roles identified within. Socialization of plans once they are developed is extremely important. Minimalist effort can be made by simply sending the plan or a link to the plan, but I consider this to be inadequate as many people will dismiss it, never get to reviewing it, or not understand what they are reading. Structured briefings are the best way to initially familiarize people with the plans and their roles. It helps to have refresher training as well as ensuring that new hires are similarly trained. This can even be done as a recorded presentation or webinar, though providing a contact for questions is important. Along with socializing, remember the importance of exercises, not only to validate plans but also to help people become more familiar with plans their respective roles by taking a scenario-drive dive into the content. Does everyone in your organization or jurisdiction who has a role in a plan know about it?

2. People don’t remember the plans exist. This one is a bit more forgivable, especially for newer plans, rarely implemented plans, or for personnel who are used to “doing things the way they’ve always been done”. Still, I find these excuses to be weak at best. People’s inability to remember the plans, even granting them the distraction of the incident itself, means that the plans haven’t been socialized and reinforced enough (see item 1 above).

3. People don’t care if the plans exist. This one has been underscored considerably over the past year related to pandemic plans, point of distribution (POD) plans, and other related plans. We’ve seen many senior leaders and elected officials be completely dismissive of established plans, choosing instead to “do it their way” in an effort to exert greater control or to ensure that their name is front and center. Since this one involves a lot of ego, particularly of senior leaders and elected officials, it can be difficult to work around. That said, this underscores the importance of ensuring that elected officials and newly appointed senior leaders are adequately briefed on the existing plans when they take office, and given confidence in the plans and the people identified to implement them, as well as the important roles of elected and appointed officials.

4. People think the plans are faulty. This option is the likely more well-intentioned version of #3, where people are intentionally not using the plan because they feel (maybe true, maybe not) the plan is inadequate and feel that “winging it” is the better option. Part of this lack of confidence may be unfamiliarity with and/or validation of the plans (see item 1 above re socialization and exercises). This could be a difference of opinion or even something intentionally obstructionist. Along with socialization and exercises, I’ll also add the value of including key people in the planning process. This gives them a voice at the table and allows their input to be heard and considered for development of the plan. While you can’t include everyone in the planning process, consider that the people you do choose to involve can serve as representatives or proxies for others, especially if they are well respected, giving less reason for others to push back.

A separate, but somewhat related topic (mostly to #4 above) is about people being often dismissive of or lacking confidence in plans by expressing the saying of “No plan survives first contact with the enemy”. This saying is credited to nineteenth century Prussian military commander Helmuth van Moltke. We see this saying tossed around quite a bit in various circles, including emergency management. While I understand and respect the intent of the phrase, I don’t think this necessarily holds true. I’ve seen great plans fail and mediocre plans be reasonably successful. Why? Circumstances dictate a lot of it. Implementation as well (this is the human factor). What we need to understand is that plans provide a starting point and hopefully some relevant guidance along the way. If a plan is so detailed and rigid, it is more likely to fail. So should our plans not be detailed? No, we should put as much detail as possible into our plans as these will help guide us in the midst of the incident, especially if certain activities are highly technical or process-oriented; but we also need to allow for flexibility. Consider a plan to be a highway. Highways have exits which take us off to different places, but they also have on-ramps to help us return. A deviation from a plan does not mean we throw the plan away, as we can always get back onto the plan, if it’s appropriate. It’s also smart to build in options, as possible, within our plans to help minimize deviations. 

How we develop plans is strongly related to step 2 of CPG-101, and that is “Understand the Situation”. Without an understanding of the situation, we can’t account for the various factors involved and may not account for the circumstances for which we must develop contingencies or options. And while this assessment is part of the planning process, as well as training, exercises, and other facets of preparedness, I feel that a wholistic assessment also has value. I’ve written a lot about the POETE preparedness elements and have begun advocating for APOETE, with the A standing for Assessment. This assessment is broad based to help guide our overall preparedness activity but is not a replacement for the element-specific assessments.

My last thought is about pandemic and POD plans. I’m curious about who has used their plans during this pandemic, and if not, why not? Of course many of the assumptions we used for pandemic planning weren’t realized in this pandemic. Does this mean our pandemic plans were faulty? Not entirely. Clearly there should have been many content areas that were still useful, and even though some of the assumptions we had didn’t apply to this pandemic, they may still hold true for future public health emergencies. We’ve also learned a lot about our response that needs to be considered for plan updates, and we need to weigh how much of the reality of political blundering we should account for in our plans. In the end, what I caution against is developing a pandemic plan that centers on the COVID-19 pandemic. Preparing for the last disaster doesn’t necessarily prepare us for the next one.

Those are some of my thoughts for the morning. As always, I welcome your thoughts and feedback.

© 2021 Timothy Riecker, CEDP

Emergency Preparedness Solutions, LLC®

What Actually is Emergency Management?

Tim Riecker, The Contrarian Emergency Manager Leave a comment

Many people have a concept of what emergency management is, typically shaped by their own experiences or aspirations, but it is so much more. I think a part of the seeming identity crisis emergency management suffers as well as the issues expressed by some that emergency management isn’t a recognized profession stem from that the fact that so much of emergency management is actually a unified effort of an amalgamation of other professions. So let’s consider what emergency management actually is. The list below is not exhaustive and is largely formed around common professions, major activities, and areas of academic study.

  • Grants management
  • Accounting
  • Procurement
  • Logistics
  • Equipment Maintenance
  • GIS
  • Information Technology
  • Planning
  • Document Development and Publishing
  • Marketing
  • Communications
  • Public and Media Relations
  • Community Outreach
  • Volunteer Management
  • Instructional Design and Delivery
  • Data Analysis
  • Engineering
  • Project Management
  • Policy and Political Science
  • Business/Public Administration
  • Organizational Management and Leadership
  • Consulting and SME
  • Academics and Research
  • Physical Sciences (Geology, Meteorology, Earth Science, etc.)
  • Social Sciences (Sociology, Anthropology, etc.)

These are all distinct functions and major activities/professions I’ve seen in emergency managers and emergency management agencies. Many emergency managers do a lot of these, while some focus on a few or even just one. Some of these activities may be outsourced to other agencies or to the private sector. Yet any of the items on the list taken out of the context of emergency management are then no longer (at least directly) emergency management. This may be a permanent state for someone holding one of these positions, or perhaps they are brought into the realm of emergency management on more of an ad-hoc or temporary basis. On the other hand, the application of these activities within emergency management often requires them to have knowledge of the areas of emergency management in which they are being applied.

Defining what emergency management is and does without the context of these other professions/activities is difficult. There is a big part of emergency management that is less defined and tangible, filling in the gaps and connective tissue between and among all of these; harnessing and focusing the collective capabilities toward distinct efforts across preparedness and the five mission areas, by way of a highly complex effort which we encapsulate with one simple word – coordination. So oddly enough, emergency management is all of these, yet it is also something else.

I think the recognition of this will go a long way for us, helping to progress the profession while also being less rigid in our approach to pigeon-hole what an emergency manager is.

© 2021 Timothy Riecker, CEDP

Emergency Preparedness Solutions, LLC®

Building Local Incident Management Capability

Tim Riecker, The Contrarian Emergency Manager 2 Comments

Just over a year ago I wrote An Alternate Concept of Incident Management Support, identifying the gap that exists in most local communities and areas for improved incident management capability. While I still think that formal Incident Management Teams (IMTs) are the gold standard, not every community or even multi-county region can support a formal IMT, which requires dozens of personnel and rigorous qualification and maintenance. Over the past year, we’ve seen a lot of use of IMTs across the nation, supporting the COVID-19 response and myriad other incidents. Sitting in over the last few days on the All Hazard Incident Management Team Association (AHIMTA) virtual symposium, there is a lot of exciting evolution happening with IMTs as they continue to enhance their capabilities. And while this is great, I feel we are leaving a lot of areas behind. This isn’t on the AHIMTA, but rather on the emergency management community as a whole. That said, there are certainly some intersections, as a lot of the training available to IMT personnel may need to be made more accessible to those who would be part of the Incident Support Quick Response Teams (ISQRTs) as I came to call them in the article I mentioned from last year, and addressing a fundamental need I’ve been espousing for a long time.

As I’ve soaked in a lot of great information from the AHIMTA symposium about IMTs, the need to build local capability in the absence of IMTs is even more apparent. Some may argue that IMTs are available to deploy to any area if requested. Possibly. Obviously there are a lot of conditions… what are other teams dealing with? What’s the relative priority of the requesting area? EMAC is certainly an option, but States need to approve the local request if they are to put the request into the EMAC system. The state may not agree with the need, may not want to spend the funds for an incoming team for an incident that may not receive a federal declaration, or it may not be practical to wait a couple of days to get an IMT on the ground when the response phase of the incident may be resolved or near resolved by then.   

Fundamentally, every area should have its own organic incident management capability. As mentioned, most areas simply can’t support or sustain the rigors of a formal IMT, but they can support a short roster of people who are interested, able, and capable. This is a situation where a little help can go a long way in making a difference in a local response for a more complex Type 4 incident or the onset of a Type 3 incident – or simply to do what they can for a larger incident where additional help simply isn’t available. I mentioned in last year’s article that the focus should really be on incident planning support, with an Incident Management Advisor to support the IC and local elected officials, an Incident Planning Specialist to help the local response organization harness the Planning Process, a Planning Assistant to support the detailed activities involved in a Planning Section such as situational awareness and resource tracking, and an Operations and Logistics Planner to support local responders who may have great tactical knowledge, but not much experience on operational planning much less forecasting logistical needs associated with this. Largely these are all advisors, who are likely to integrate into the incident management organization, so we aren’t creating new ICS positions, though I still encourage some deeper and deliberate application of incident management advisors.

My big thought today is how do we make something like this happen? First, I think we need to sell FEMA and State IMT programs and or State Training Officers on the concept. That comes first from recognizing and agreeing on the gap that exists and that we must support the organic incident management capability of local jurisdictions with fewer resources, through something that is more than the ICS courses, but less than what is required for an IMT. Part of this is also the recognition that these ISQRTs are not IMTs and not intended to be IMTs but fill an important role in addressing this gap. This will go a long way toward getting this past ICS and IMT purists who might feel threatened by this or for some reason disagree with the premise.

Next is establishing standards, which first is defined by general expectations of activity for each of these roles, pre-requisites for credentialing, then training support. The existing position-specific training is likely not fully appropriate for these positions, but a lot can be drawn upon from the existing courses, especially those for Incident Commander and the Planning Section positions, but there are also some valuable pieces of information that would come from Operations Section and Logistics Section Courses. I’d suggest that we work toward a curriculum to address these specific ISQRT roles. There are then some administrative details to be developed in terms of local formation, protocols for notification and activation, etc. State recognition is important, but perhaps approval isn’t necessarily needed, though coordination and support from States may be critical to the success of ISQRTs, again considering that these are most likely to be serving areas with fewer resources. ISQRTs will also need to work with local emergency managers and local responders to gain support, to be included in local preparedness activities, and to be called upon when they should be. A lot of success can be gained from things such as local/county/regional/state meetings of fire chiefs and police chiefs.

Do you agree with the gap that exists for most communities? What do you think we need to get the ball rolling on such a concept?

© 2021 Timothy Riecker, CEDP

Emergency Preparedness Solutions, LLC®