Author Tim Riecker, The Contrarian Emergency Manager

2021: Another Horrible National Preparedness Report

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FEMA’s Christmas present to us in 2021, as with the past several years, was the National Preparedness Report. Before I dive in, a few of reminders. 1) You can find my reviews of the reports of prior years here. 2) To get copies of the reports of prior years, FEMA archives these in the unrestricted side of the Homeland Security Digital Library. 3) Each report is derived from data from the year prior, so this December 2021 report actually covers the calendar year of 2020.

The 2021 report covers risks and capabilities, as have the reports of past years. It also covers ‘Management Opportunities’ which “the Federal Government, SLTTs (state, local, territories, and tribes), and the private sector could use to build capability and address capacity gaps.” It offers a slightly different perspective than the prior year’s ‘Critical Considerations for Emergency Management’, but fundamentally offers the same type of constructive commentary.

Keeping in mind that through much of 2020, the US, as with nations across the globe, was managing the COVID 19 Coronavirus pandemic. An observation from this report is that the word ‘COVID’ comes up 222 times in the document. That is a LOT of focus on one particular hazard. While I’ll grant that it impacted everyone, had a number of cascading impacts, and there are some statements made in the document about other hazards and concurrent incidents, I fear that when nearly every paragraph mentions COVID, we seem to lose a sense of all-hazard emergency management in the document and thus in the state of the nation’s preparedness. What I do appreciate, as with FEMA’s new Strategic Plan and other recent documents, there is acknowledgement and discussion around inequities in disaster relief. This is an important topic which needs to continue getting exposure. Related to this they also reference the National Risk Index that was released in 2020, which includes indices of social vulnerability. This is a valuable tool for all emergency managers.

The information on Risk included in the 2021 report is much more comprehensive and informative than that in the 2020 report, though they once again miss an opportunity to provide metrics and displays of infographics. While words are valuable, well-designed infographics tell an even better story. Most numbers given in this section of the report were buried in seemingly endless paragraphs of text, and there certainly were no deep analytics provided. It’s simply poor story telling and buries much of the value of this section.

While the mention of climate change had been forbidden in the past few reports, I would have expected the 2021 report to have some significant inclusion on the matter. Instead, it’s highlighted in two pages covering ‘Emerging Risks’ with very little information given. Climate change isn’t emerging, folks, it’s here.

Capabilities are a significant focus of the Threat and Hazard Identification and Risk Assessment (THIRA) and Stakeholder Preparedness Review (SPR) completed by states, Urban Area Security Initiative (UASI) funded regions, and others. As part of the THIRA/SPR process, stakeholders traditionally identify their own preparedness goals (capability targets) for each of the 32 Core Capabilities outlined in the National Preparedness Goal. For the 2021 report, FEMA limited the capability targets to a given set focused on pandemic-related capabilities. As mentioned earlier, while the pandemic is certainly a principal concern, and many of the capability targets can be leveraged toward other hazards, I think this was a failure of the all-hazards approach. Further, with this focus, the 2021 report fails to provide most of the metrics provided in reports of the past, identifying, in aggregate, where stakeholders assessed their own standing in each Core Capability. This is the most significant gauge of preparedness, and they provide so little information on it in this report that I feel the report fails at its primary goal.

I’ve mentioned in the past that the metrics provided in previous reports are superficial at best and provide little by way of analysis. Unfortunately, the metrics provided in the 2021 report are even more lacking, and what there is only provides a snapshot of 2020 instead of any trend analysis.

What is included in this section of the document that I appreciated were some infographics compiling information on some of the capability targets that FEMA pre-determined. Unfortunately, they didn’t even provide these infographics for all of the limited set of capability targets, and the information provided is still fairly weak. Again, this severely limits the value of this being a national report on preparedness.

The last major component of the document is Management Opportunities. This section similarly provides seemingly endless paragraphs of text, but does approach these management opportunities like a strategic plan, setting goals, objectives, and (some) possible metrics for each opportunity. These offer valuable approaches, which coincidentally dovetail well into the goals of FEMA’s new strategic plan and will hopefully provide some solid value to emergency management programs at all levels. I think this section is really the most valuable component of the entire report. Unfortunately, it’s the shortest. The opportunities identified in the report are:

  • Developing a Preparedness Investment Strategy
  • Addressing Steady-State Inequities, Vulnerabilities, and a Dynamic Risk Landscape
  • Strengthen Processes Within and Better Connect Areas of the National Preparedness System

Overall, while there are some pockets of good content, this is another disappointing report. FEMA still isn’t telling us much about the state of preparedness across the nation; and in fact this report tells us even less than prior reports, which I didn’t think was possible. They attempt to tell stories through some focused discussion on a few capability targets, which has some value, but are providing little to no information on the big picture; not the current state of preparedness and certainly not any analysis of trends. Even the section on Management Opportunities isn’t consistent in identifying metrics for each opportunity.

What remains a mystery to me is that it takes a full year to develop this report. The metrics I allude to throughout my commentary are largely easy to obtain and analyze, as much of this information comes to FEMA in quantifiable data; also making trend analysis a rather easy chore. Last year’s report, while still severely lacking, was formatted much better than this year’s, which lacked a vision for story telling and communication of data.

Simply put, emergency managers and other recipients of this report (Congress?) should not accept this type of reporting. Despite coming in at 94 pages, it tells us so little and in my mind does not meet the spirit of the requirement for a National Preparedness Report (this is defined in Presidential Policy Directive 8). States, UASIs, and others who complete and submit THIRAs and SPRs should be livid that their efforts, while certainly (hopefully) valuable to them, are being poorly aggregated, studied, analyzed, and reported as part of the National Preparedness Report. In fact I feel that the 2021 report is telling a story that FEMA wants to tell, supported by select data and case studies; rather than actually reporting on the state of preparedness across the nation, as informed by federal, state, local, territorial, tribal, private sector, and non-profit stakeholders.  

As always, the thoughts of my readers are more than welcome.

Happy New Year to everyone!

© 2022 Tim Riecker, CEDP

Emergency Preparedness Solutions, LLC®

FEMA’s New Strategic Plan

Tim Riecker, The Contrarian Emergency Manager 1 Comment

FEMA recently released their 2022-2026 Strategic Plan. The goals of the new strategic plan hit two themes that have been getting a lot of worthwhile attention lately, along with a third theme that needs to remain evergreen. In the document, each of these goals are broken down into objectives for implementation. The goals are:

  1. Instill Equity as a Foundation of Emergency Management
  2. Lead Whole of Community in Climate Resilience
  3. Promote and Sustain a Ready FEMA and Prepared Nation

Equity in emergency management has been a hot topic lately as more and more is unveiled about how poorly emergency management programs as a whole have been meeting the needs of several underserved populations. While much of this has been seen in disaster recovery efforts, there is distinct evidence of not adequately supporting these populations and communities in all phases and mission areas. In this goal, FEMA commits to applying attention, resources, and assessment of programs and policies to eliminate disparities. Included in the implementation objectives is the need for a diverse workforce, as representation of the communities we serve will help us serve them better.

I was pleased to see FEMA’s second strategic goal addressing climate resilience. Obviously, this is a notable return to science after the previous administration’s directive to federal agencies to fundamentally ignore climate change. I’m also happy to see that this goal addresses ‘resilience’. It’s an important acknowledgement that we can’t stop or prevent climate change. While efforts to reduce it should continue across every sector, in emergency management our focus must be on adapting and mitigating. The implementation objectives rightfully include efforts to increase climate literacy among emergency managers, and further promoting climate resilience efforts primarily through hazard mitigation activities.

The last goal is much broader, encapsulating the mission of FEMA and emergency managers as a whole. The narrative of the goal reinforces continued advancement of the profession and mentions training several times. The metrics for the first implementation objective of this goal make mention of ‘new baseline standards for emergency managers.’ The narrative of the objective states “The growth of the emergency management community necessitates a clear definition of the competencies required to become a qualified emergency manager. Like other professions, emergency management must standardize its career paths.” This is a pretty powerful statement, and hopefully an initiative that sees action. I firmly believe FEMA should be leading an effort, in partnership with others, to identify a standard set of emergency management qualifications. This supports a documented standard (which should be independent of a membership-driven organization), and can help focus training, education, and professional development efforts. I’m very excited about what this can bring for our profession.

Another component of the third goal worth mentioning is an effort to develop ‘a framework that continually assesses FEMA’s readiness and provides a systematic approach for prioritizing resources and mitigating risks to critical functions during large or long duration events.’ This is a worthwhile initiative, but with abundant complexity. It’s difficult to assess anything internal to FEMA without considering the capabilities and capacities of other federal agencies as well state and local governments (which the strategic plan seems to acknowledge), along with the landscape of threats and hazards. FEMA has tried to measure much of this through the years with the THIRA, State Preparedness Reports, and National Preparedness Reports. The National Preparedness Reports (of which the 2021 report should be released soon) have largely upheld a tradition of mediocrity in data, analysis, and reporting. For FEMA to develop any type of ‘Readiness Indicator’, which I think is a great idea, they first need to address how they are measuring preparedness and gaps, which has been a woefully inadequate effort to date.

Overall, I think this Strategic Plan, if implemented, will help further FEMA’s mission as well as emergency management as a whole. I’m excited about the direction and changes this promotes across the entire profession, supporting traditionally underserved populations, science, and the profession.

What are your thoughts?

© 2021 Tim Riecker, CEDP

Emergency Preparedness Solutions, LLC®

State of Emergency and Emergency Orders

Tim Riecker, The Contrarian Emergency Manager 3 Comments

In times of disaster, many jurisdictions will declare a state of emergency, often without fully realizing the potential of what that emergency declaration can do. Many jurisdictions might also NOT declare a state of emergency, similarly because they don’t realize the potential of what it can do. In the US, state laws provide for certain powers of governors and local officials, which include the ability to declare a state of emergency (or similar language). State laws typically provide for a formal procedure for the declaration, which generally include certain notifications to other government officials and the public. Issuing a state of emergency can be one of the most important things that elected officials can do to support response and recovery efforts. While declaring a state of emergency is itself important, it’s really what you do with it that counts.

Most state officials are fairly well versed in emergency declarations, but many local officials really don’t know what an emergency declaration is or does, much less how to actually issue one. Because of the differences in state laws, this is really on state emergency management agencies to promote to their local governments. Many do a good job of it, including it in training and orientation materials for new local emergency management officials, as well as guidance for local elected officials. While I strongly feel that emergency managers should be advising elected officials on state of emergency declarations, many jurisdictions obviously don’t have their own emergency manager. I’ve also seen many emergency managers simply not communicate the information with their local elected officials until they feel it’s necessary. Obviously this isn’t the way to go. Elected officials with this authority should be well aware of it, how it’s done, when it should be done, and how it’s done well ahead of any disaster – even if the EM wants to (and should) be advising when the time comes.

So what can the declaration of a state of emergency get you? First of all, it makes an important statement that there is a serious situation probable or at hand. Most state laws seem to allow for the situation to be from an incident or event, and arising from a natural hazard, technological hazard, or human action. The declaration provides a notice to the public, surrounding jurisdictions, and the state that there is a danger to the public and/or property. I’ve seen disaster declarations for a specific property, a neighborhood or other geographic area, or for entire jurisdictions; any of which can be valid depending on the situation at hand. Unfortunately, this is where I see a lot of emergency declarations stop. They simply aren’t utilized any further than this.

Some states require local emergency declarations to support a request for state assistance, while others do not require one to be in place. While state laws have some differences, one of the most significant doors that an emergency declaration opens is the ability for emergency issuance or suspension of local laws. These can, again depending upon specific state laws, allow for things such as:

  • Establishing a curfew and/or limiting traffic or access to and within certain areas
  • Order prolonged evacuation of buildings and areas
  • Closing places of amusement or assembly
  • Limiting or suspending the sale, use, or transportation of alcoholic beverages, firearms, explosives, or other hazardous materials
  • Establishing emergency shelters or other facilities
  • Suspension of local laws, ordinances, or regulations (in whole or in part) which may prevent, hinder, or delay disaster response or recovery actions.

Over the past nearly two years, we’ve seen emergency orders issued regarding limiting density in certain locations, the requirement of masks, requirement of vaccinations, etc. Unfortunately, the political divisiveness of the pandemic has caused emergency declarations and emergency orders to become political, with many state legislatures pushing to make changes to state laws to restrict the ability of governors and local elected officials in this regard. While checks and balances are important, we need to be very careful in how we may inadvertently hinder a response and life safety actions. These matters must be carefully reviewed with multiple perspectives and scenarios studied.

Declaring a state of emergency should be a consideration in your emergency plan. It’s an important tool for incident management, and just like most tools in higher level incident management, we don’t do it with enough frequency to remember how to do it. Ensure that emergency operations plans include information on declarations, including a job aid for issuing a state of emergency and associated emergency orders. As with all aspects of our plans, it should also be exercised. It’s a great item to include for discussion in a tabletop exercise and to go through the motions of in a functional exercise.

It’s also important to note that state laws may allow for various entities to declare a state of emergency. For example, in New York State, a county Sheriff can declare a ‘special emergency’. Doing so provides the Sheriff with specific authorities to support the management of an emergency. While I always appreciate having several avenues available to tackle a problem, I’m regularly concerned with duplication of effort, or, even worse, conflicting information. It certainly could occur that the emergency orders of a Sheriff’s declaration of a ‘special emergency’, the orders of a county executive, and those of local governments could conflict or not be consistent. This is why relationships and ongoing coordination are important.

What best practices have you seen for issuing a state of emergency and emergency orders?

© 2021 Tim Riecker, CEDP

Emergency Preparedness Solutions, LLC®

Diversity and Inclusion in Emergency Management

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There have been a number of efforts to further the expansion of diversity and inclusion in Emergency Management recently. A great step forward has recently been made by the Virginia Department of Emergency Management (VDEM), by organizing their own internal Office of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (ODEI) within the agency. Their press release states it is the first of its kind across the nation dedicated to reducing barriers to assistance and equality in disaster relief and emergency management. They will provide subject matter expertise, strategic leadership, and technical assistance to VDEM and other Emergency Management partners.

Diversity and inclusion are equally important internally to Emergency Management as they are externally. It starts with deliberate intent from leadership and inclusion in the strategic plans of the organization, with personnel across the organization made familiar with goals, specific approaches, and given examples of what to do and how to do it. Whether you establish a specific unit within your Emergency Management organization or not, the effort must permeate the entirety of the Emergency Management practice, regardless of those efforts originating with the Emergency Management agency or elsewhere. Consider your own internal matters, such as hiring, partner agencies and organizations, and your own personnel practices and relationships. Large agencies should ensure that their staff reflect the demographics of the communities they serve. It’s not just a matter of race and gender, but ethnic and cultural background, languages, disability, and other factors.

We need to examine how we deliver programs. When I took over a state training and exercise program, I had the realization that many of the training locations we used across the state were not accessible. The most basic but significant barrier being that facilities were either up flights of stairs or down flights of stairs, with no elevators. While we didn’t have any complaints, it was still wrong; not to mention in violation of the federal funding used for training which required adherence to the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). I sought the advice of an organization that advocates for persons with disabilities and developed ADA-consistent standards for the selection of our training facilities. Those not meeting those standards were immediately discontinued.

Community outreach efforts, which may also crosscut to other lines of effort such as training, hazard mitigation, and disaster recovery; need to be inclusive. We must always consider our audiences and how they will be reached and communicated with. There is no single solution, therefore multiple solutions should be made available. We need to not only consider languages and accommodations for hearing impairments, but also the inherent distrust that some cultures, particularly refugees, may have of government. We need to address technological barriers as well – not everyone is on Twitter, much less following your account. Even the simple ability to relate is important. While it’s important to dress professionally (I’m seeing some EM agencies wearing tee shirts… which I think is far too casual), a suit and tie is often too intimidating, too ‘government’, and too impersonal when working with community members.

Our planning efforts must identify, acknowledge, and address the diverse audiences and communities we have, the barriers they may have relative to the plan, and how we will work toward supporting those communities. Hazard mitigation and disaster recovery efforts are where some of our biggest gaps are when it comes to diversity and inclusion. Our existing policies and procedures are great, and applicable to a large percentage of the situations and people who need help, but they also unintentionally (I’m being optimistic) leave some people behind. We need to ensure concerted efforts to assess and meet the needs of traditionally underserved populations, which not only includes vulnerable and small rural communities, but urban communities as well. We also need to consider a customer service perspective in these efforts; remembering that while WE know the rules, policies, and procedures, the people impacted often do not. Persons impacted are confused, overwhelmed, and traumatized. This requires special care, deliberate outreach, and helping them through the bureaucracy we seem to thrive in. In regard to hazard mitigation, the long-established standard of community participation is important to ensuring that we are not only meeting needs we may not fully be aware of, but also not creating unintended consequences by any of our approaches to addressing known problems. Reflecting back on our community outreach efforts, we all know that most requirements for advertising public meetings do NOT reach across the entire community. We need to make better efforts.

Diversity and inclusion should somehow be on the agenda of most meetings. We should always consider who we are aren’t including or not reaching and how we can do better, regardless of the activity. Do we need to do something different internally? Is there an external partner that can support our efforts? Are we unintentionally creating barriers? If someone is not able to go through the process as we have prescribed it, is there an alternate means of doing so? We also need to recognize where law and regulation create barriers, and work with elected officials to advocate for meaningful changes.

Emergency Management has always been about engaging different stakeholders through our coordination activities. Diversity and inclusion then seem an easy bridge to cross, yet far too many Emergency Management agencies and efforts continue to be dominated by able-bodied white men. It’s (mostly) not a knock on that demographic (of which I am a part), but we need to recognize the benefits of the different perspectives offered by others, as well as the need to better serve those who have consistently been underserved by our efforts, through error or omission. We have long espoused ‘whole community’ in our efforts, yet we often aren’t practicing what we preach.

I think the VDEM ODEI may serve as a model for other states and larger local Emergency Management offices. I hope to see them spreading lessons learned, speaking at conferences, and being embraced by FEMA as a new standard of practice in Emergency Management. For those Emergency Management organizations that are perhaps too small to include a new organizational component for this, they can still incorporate the concepts into what they do, along with establishing partnerships with organizations that can support these efforts. We can and must do better!

What other efforts toward diversity and inclusion does Emergency Management need to engage in?

© 2021 Timothy Riecker, CEDP

Emergency Preparedness Solutions, LLC®

Climate Change Exercise Resource Guide

Tim Riecker, The Contrarian Emergency Manager Leave a comment

Aside from the significant challenge of educating climate change deniers, climate change provides us with challenges of adaptation and resilience now and into the future. To meet this challenge, we need to meld various aspects of emergency management, science, engineering, theory, and some educated guesses to our applications. We are further challenged with certain preparedness activities which have always been difficult for us because of the less tangible and more dynamic nature of what we are dealing with. I wrote a few years ago on the difficulties we have in designing exercises for long-term recovery. That difficulty, along with the fact that recovery isn’t deemed as sexy as response, are why we rarely have exercises in set in the recovery phase of disaster. But how about exercises in the mitigation mission area?

Exercises focused on the mitigation mission area are also not commonplace, yet the application absolutely makes sense. Yes, we have science, engineering models, and historical data that help support hazard mitigation planning and other related tasks, but in emergency management we don’t seem to take the time to actually talk through some of the scenarios we may be faced with. Exercises help us not only to validate plans, but also help us to identify viable approaches for our plans.

Most people know climate change as an ethereal concept, something they hear about with increasing frequency, but don’t really understand what could happen in their own communities. They also likely view climate change as something too big for them to deal with. Climate change is no longer a theory of what may happen hundreds of years from now, rather it’s happening right now and we will see those impacts increase exponentially even within our own lifetimes. We need to make these discussions as commonplace as any other hazard (and actually WITH other hazards since climate change tends to exacerbate the frequency and impact of other hazards), and exercises offer an ideal structure for those discussions, helping to maintain focus and document outcomes in a consistent fashion.

To help support these efforts, FEMA has released the Long-Term Community Resilience Exercise Guide, along with a packet of reference documents from exercises around the nation which give some ideas on how this can be applied. These are available on the Homeland Security Exercise and Evaluation Program (HSEEP) website and are another important tool available to us. From the HSEEP website, the Guide is intended to provide:

  • A dictionary with common terms to ensure a shared understanding of climate-related terminology and principles before an exercise
  • Tools and template for planning and conducting climate-focused exercises
  • Resources including funding opportunities, risk assessments, and training programs

Now that the federal government is again allowed to use the term ‘climate change’, I’m hopeful we will see more resources made available. I also appreciate that FEMA is asking users to submit their best practices for using this new guide; which they will hopefully use to continue improvements and share with others.

© 2021 Timothy Riecker, CEDP

Emergency Preparedness Solutions, LLC®

Soft Skills Are Hard to Find

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Across emergency management, dependent upon specific jobs, we certainly need to apply a lot of technical skillsets. So often, though, soft skills are dismissed, which is quite ironic given that soft skills are really the foundation of what emergency managers need given our emphasis on communication, collaboration, and coordination.

If you aren’t familiar with the term, soft skills are things that are generally applicable to various types of work. These include things like communication, writing, leadership, teamwork, problem solving, organizing, time management, and others. These are skills generally expected of any working professional. They can be honed, but often require some innate ability. Soft skills are different from hard skills, which are those that tend to be more technical and industry specific. These are also generally something acquired more through learning and less dependent upon innate ability.

FEMA’s Professional Development Series (PDS) used to be a cornerstone of emergency management training. Many state emergency management training programs had an emphasis on these courses and the content they provided. The PDS offered soft skills courses, such as Effective Communication, Decision Making and Problem Solving, and Leadership alongside training on topics more so focused on emergency management topics. These courses did a lot to support the professionalism of emergency managers and their abilities to do their jobs in a reasonably comprehensive nature. About 15 years ago FEMA’s Emergency Management Institute made the decision to offer these courses as part of their Independent Study program, a choice that made the content more widely available while also arguably decreasing the effectiveness of the training by removing the dynamics of a live instructor and the learning gained from group activities. While states still had the option to continue delivering classroom versions of these courses, demand severely dropped as people opted to take the courses online.

While the PDS is still available, it’s in a diminished popularity. FEMA’s EMI now offers the National Emergency Management Basic Academy, which provides a great series of courses, and to their credit, they do include some soft skills topics within the courses, especially the Foundations of Emergency Management course. That said, we still need more. Soft skills aren’t a one-off, they need to be built and honed. While FEMA’s EMI isn’t the only provider of soft skills training, they are the go-to provider for most emergency managers.

Having recently had the opportunity to review the participant manual for the new Advanced Planning Practitioner course, I was very happy to see the thought put into providing content on soft skills particularly as they relate to the hard skills involved in emergency planning. Emergency planning at its essence is absolutely a hard skill, with specific technical aspects, but there are several soft skills that are complimentary to the process of emergency planning, without which the planning effort will be less than effective. Consider that so much of emergency planning is consensus building, coordination, meeting management, research, and writing. Communication, facilitation, and public speaking are central to much of this.

I think a lot of people have a tendency to roll their eyes at soft skills, thinking that their abilities are already at peak performance or claiming that they are good because they took a course 15 years ago. As professionals in emergency management, we need to regularly spend time honing our skills. Yes, there are plenty of technical things for us to be trained in and practice such as plan writing, exercises, ICS, etc., but soft skills make us better at doing those things. Both in government service and as a consultant, I see far too many people lacking in soft skills. There may be some highly technical jobs where soft skills have less importance, but soft skills in emergency management are just as important, if not more important, than some technical skills, especially when you consider that one of the greatest values we contribute is our ability to bring people to the table, facilitate discussions, and gain consensus on important decisions before, during, and after disaster. How all that is applied may very well be technical, but we can’t get there without good soft skills.

What do you think are the most valuable soft skills?

© 2021 Tim Riecker, CEDP

Emergency Preparedness Solutions, LLC®

Public Health and Public Safety: Step Up or Step Out

Tim Riecker, The Contrarian Emergency Manager 3 Comments

So here it is. This is what it’s come to. We are over a year and a half into the COVID 19 pandemic. We have vaccines. We have improved treatments on the horizon. Yet we still have a long way to go. Why? Because people who are able to do so refuse to get vaccinated and even refuse to wear masks and practice other precautions. It’s inexcusable among the public, unforgivable for those who work in public health and public safety.

Those who work in public health and public safety are entrusted with the health and safety of the public. In order to do so we not only need to take care of ourselves, but also do what we can to protect each other and the public. We seem to have a rash of issues lately, such as:

  • A state trooper, ‘forced’ to resign because he didn’t comply with a vaccine mandate, signing off of his last transmission with a statement of ‘the governor can kiss my ass’. From all I’ve heard, this trooper had a great career and made a big difference – yet this temper tantrum is what most people are talking about.
  • Hundreds of health workers ‘forced’ to resign or being fired because of their lack of compliance with vaccine mandates.
  • A large number of attendees of a recent emergency management conference not wearing masks during the conference, despite repeated written and verbal instructions from the host organization to do so before and during the conference.
  • Hundreds of corrections officers potentially being ‘forced’ to resign or being fired because of their lack of compliance with vaccine mandates.

Public health and public safety have never been about individual freedoms, rather they are focused on what is good for the public as a whole. Yes, we should be taking precautions to protect ourselves, but we also do so to protect our co-workers and the public we are entrusted with caring for and serving. While some choose to make this a political issue, I have colleagues across much of the political spectrum who have maintained vigilance and care in the office, with the public, with their families, and even off duty by getting vaccinated and practicing other precautionary measures as appropriate. Some choose to make it a matter of religious freedom, yet the leaders of every major world religion are encouraging their followers to get vaccinated and take precautions.

It seems a simple, and respectful thing to get vaccinated and to also take these precautions when on duty and representing your agency, but also as much as possible beyond that. I’ll grant that some social situations can be challenging, but we can and should maintain an appropriate measure of vigilance, again not just for the benefit of yourself, but also for the benefit and respect of others. Doing so isn’t about ‘being a sheep’ or following some fascist rule of law. It’s about health, safety, and respect.

I’ve seen some disregard vaccinations and precautionary measures because they are not 100% effective, therefore they must be a joke or the science must be wrong. Consider that careful driving, the wearing of seatbelts, and vehicles with airbags aren’t foolproof preventers of injury or death in a car accident., either. Nothing is foolproof, especially when there are so many fools. We do the best we can with what we have and if we want to be true professionals in public health and public safety we need to lead by example.

My disappointment in public health and public safety personnel who flaunt and disregard these standards is high, regardless of their rank, station, or prior accomplishments. As such, I say: step up or step out. If you don’t have a regard for yourself, your family, your coworkers, and the public; then you should likely seek a different profession. If you are in these professions, but aren’t doing what you can to prevent the spread of the pandemic, I’m not sure what you stand for. This is a pandemic. It’s serious. Though it may not cause something as severe or dramatic as people randomly collapsing to their death in the streets, it has caused over 700,000 deaths in the US alone so far, as well as serious and lasting effects for many survivors.

I’ll close with this… I always encourage and welcome dialogue, discussion, and different points of view in response to my posts. That’s not changing, but I will say that science deniers, conspiracy theorists, and those espousing fuzzy math need not respond. Those aren’t informed opinions and certainly don’t lead to intelligent dialogue.

TR

ICS – Assistant Section Chiefs

Tim Riecker, The Contrarian Emergency Manager 2 Comments

Somehow this one snuck past me, but luckily I have some friends and colleagues who brought it to my attention and talked it through with me. The latest ICS curricula (not consistently, however) identifies that Section Chiefs can have Assistants. It’s been a long-standing practice for General Staff to have Deputies rather than Assistants. So where did this come from?

Page 82 of the NIMS document, as pointed out to me by someone at EMI, provides some language that seems to be the root of this. Here are the definitions provided:

Deputies are used at section and branch levels of the incident organization. A deputy, whether at the command, section, or branch level, is qualified to assume the position.

Assistants are used on Command Staffs and to support section chiefs. Unlike deputies, assistants have a level of technical capability, qualification, and responsibility subordinate to the primary positions and need not be fully qualified to assume the position.

None of those I spoke with are aware of the actual source of this change or why it was changed. Of course, I initially balked at it because it wasn’t the ICS I ‘grew up with’. Given some thought, however, it provides some organizational opportunities and certainly doesn’t violate any of the primary tenets of ICS.

There are absolutely some occasions in the past when, as a Planning Section Chief, I could have used this option. Planning Section Chiefs end up in a lot of meetings, and while I always felt comfortable with leaving the personnel staffing the section to their own tasks, it’s good to have another leader there in the absence of the Section Chief, both for the benefit of the section staff as well as the rest of the organization. However, if there was no one technically qualified to be a Deputy Section Chief but still capable of leading the staff and serving as an interim point person for the section, we would be (and have been) stuck in an organizational nuance. By definition, they couldn’t be assigned as a Deputy, but we didn’t have another option. This is a great opportunity to assign an Assistant. This is somewhat like an ‘executive officer’ type of position, whereas they have authority but can’t necessarily fill the shoes of the principal position.

To add to the myriad options for the Intelligence function, I also see the potential in the use of an Assistant, either in Planning or Operations, to be a viable option. This is someone qualified to lead the task, but not necessarily the Section they are organized within. I similarly see possibilities for addressing other defined needs within the incident organization. Sometimes we take some liberties, again for example in the Planning Section, to create Units that are non-standard, perhaps for tasks such as ‘Continuity Planning’, or ‘Operational Planning Support’ – of course being non-standard, you may have some different titles for them. There isn’t necessarily anything wrong with this, as we aren’t violating any of the primary rules of ICS, nor are we creating positions that actually belong elsewhere (as I often see). Planning is planning, and there may be necessity to have personnel specifically tasked with functions like these. Instead of creating a Unit, which could still be done, you could assign the task to an Assistant. Consider something like debris management. There is a significant planning component to debris management, separate from the operations of debris management. This could be tasked specifically to an Assistant Section Chief to handle.

Another consideration, and somewhat tied to my first example of a de facto leader/point of contact for a section in the absence of the Section Chief, is that an Assistant Section Chief seems to carry more authority than a Unit Leader. That level of authority may need some doctrinal definition, but I think is also largely dependent upon the task they are given and the desires of the Section Chief assigning them – though this can make for inconsistencies across the incident organization. Having someone with a measure of authority, depending on the needs of the task, can be extremely helpful, particularly with the bureaucracies that incident management organizations can sometimes evolve into.

It’s important for us to recognize the need for doctrine to evolve based on common sense approaches to addressing identified needs. That means that the ICS we ‘grew up with’ can and should change if needed. As NIMS/ICS (and other standards) continues to evolve, we need to have discussions on these needs and potential solutions. Every change, however, has consequences, or at least additional considerations. I don’t feel this change should have been made without further exploration of the topic and answering questions such as the level of authority they may have, qualification standards, and support staff assigned to them (let’s be honest – things like this were never well defined for Assistant Command Staff positions either).  I also see a lot of value in doctrine offering best practice examples of use. Once doctrinal changes are made, curriculum changes certainly need to follow. In just examining the ICS 300 and ICS 400 course materials, the inclusion of Assistant Section Chiefs is simply not consistent or adequate.

Where do you find yourself on this topic? For or against Assistant Section Chiefs? What potential uses do you see? What potential problems do you see? How can we address these and ensure good implementation?

© 2021 Timothy Riecker, CEDP

Emergency Preparedness Solutions, LLC®

A New CPG – 101 for Emergency Planning (v 3)

Tim Riecker, The Contrarian Emergency Manager 1 Comment

I know I’m a big nerd when it comes to this stuff, but I was really excited to receive the notice from FEMA that the new Comprehensive Preparedness Guide (CPG) 101: Developing and Maintaining Emergency Operations Plans has been published! This has been a long time coming. This update (version 3) replaces the previous version which was published in November 2010. The update process was also rather lengthy, with the first public review occurring in November 2019 and the second in November 2020.

Did a lot change? No.

Is it better? Yes.

Could it be even better? You bet.

The changes that are included in the new document are meaningful, with an emphasis on including accessibility concepts in plans; and references to current practices and standards, such as new and updated planning guides, CPG 201 (THIRA), Community Lifelines, and more. It even highlights a couple of lessons learned from the COVID 19 pandemic. I’m particularly pleased to see Appendix D: Enhancing Inclusiveness in EOPs, which I think is an excellent resource, though more links to other resources, of which there are many, should be provided in this appendix.

The format of the document is largely the same, with a lot of the content word-for-word the same. As a standard, a lot of change shouldn’t be expected. While we’ve seen some changes in our perspectives on emergency planning, there really hasn’t been anything drastic. Certainly “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”, but I think there could have been some better formatting choices, narrative, graphics, and job aids to enhance readability and implementation.  

There is some added content as well as a bit of highlighting of planning approaches, such as the District of Columbia’s services-based emergency operations plan. While I advocated for heavy reference to newer implementations and standards, such as THIRA, into the document (which was largely done) I also advocated for more user-friendly approaches, such as a hazard analysis matrix, to be included. My feedback from both public comment periods heavily emphasized the need to develop a document that will mostly benefit novice emergency planners. To me this means the inclusion of more graphic depictions of processes and tasks, as well as job aids, such as checklists and templates. The new CPG 101 does include more checklists. At first glance these are buried in the document which is not very user friendly. However, they did make a separate Compilation of Checklists document available, which I’m really happy about. It’s not highly apparent on the website nor is it included as part of the main document, so it could be easily missed.

I would have really liked to see a comprehensive library of job aids provided in the appendices to support implementation by new planners. We have other doctrine and related documents that provide rather extensive job aids to support implementation, such as HSEEP and NIMS (and not only the ICS component of NIMS). Not including that kind of supporting material in this update is very much a missed opportunity. Planning really is the cornerstone of preparedness, yet it doesn’t seem we are providing as much support for quality and consistent planning efforts. Given the extent of time between updates, I expected better. While being largely consistent in the format and content between versions is practically a necessity, there really should have been a parallel effort, separate from document revision, to outline practices and approaches to emergency plan development. Integrating that content into the update, ideally, would have done more to support HOW each step of the planning process is accomplished, as well as providing some job aids.

Speaking of implementation support, I’m curious about how EMI’s new Advanced Planning course, which I didn’t get into the pilot offering of, builds on the Emergency Planning course and compliments use of CPG 101.

Be sure to update your own personal reference library with this new version of CPG 101. If you are interested in a review with FEMA personnel, they are providing a series of one-hour webinars. What are your thoughts on the new CPG 101?

© 2021 Tim Riecker, CEDP

Emergency Preparedness Solutions, LLC®