Tag Emergency Management

Most Disasters are NOT Extraordinary Occurrences – OR Crowdsourcing Volunteers

Tim Riecker, The Contrarian Emergency Manager Leave a comment

I listen to A LOT of podcasts.  While some are focused on emergency management and homeland security, most are pop culture related and have nothing at all to do with EM/HS.  At least not directly.

Listening to a recent podcast, it struck me how often the hosts mention disaster-related occurrences.  During this podcast there were several mentions of disaster related issues including the Louisiana theater shooting (which was breaking news while they were recording) and the Tom Selleck legal drama in California over stolen water (which ultimately relates back to their drought issues).  The same podcasters (one of which is in New England, the other in the National Capital Region) often comment through the year on weather-related incidents which impact them and others including winter storms, flooding, and warmer weather storm damages.

The point is that most disasters are not extraordinary occurrences.  Routine incidents aside, some measure of disaster occurs fairy regularly, certainly around the world and even just within any of our nations.  Turn on the news tonight and see for yourself.  So WHY, I ask, is there such a mentality with the general public (and maybe even with us public safety types) about disasters being out of the ordinary occurrences?  Sure they don’t happen within our own jurisdiction every day, but they happen somewhere EVERY DAY.  I’m not saying we have to be paranoid about it, but I see the COMPLACENCY getting WORSE.  We discuss preparedness often, and the aspect of getting the public better engaged in preparedness almost as much, yet we have yet to see real, meaningful success in this.

We’ve recently seen a bit of a paradigm shift in how we deal with climate change (insert groaning sound here).  For many years we tried to prevent it, as if we could.  The reality is that part of it is influenced by the actions of humanity and part of it by the natural cycle of our planet.  There are things we simply shouldn’t be doing and we still need to work on those, but we have also come to grips with the inevitability of the impacts.  We have realized that they will happen no matter what we do and we have decided that we need to ADAPT in order to survive.

Adaptation is an important realization for us (I’m now speaking in generality – not just climate change issues).  If there are things that we pound our heads against the wall over in futility, such as public engagement, maybe we are doing it all wrong?  I’m not saying that we stop trying to engage the public.  There are certainly successes we have seen, but I don’t think we are seeing the return on investment we should be.

Let’s look at society today.  People seem to have less time ability interest in volunteering or committing to efforts ahead of time.  We have to understand and acknowledge that first and foremost.  Have we turned into soulless uncaring creatures?  No, of course not.  We have just seen a shift in culture.  Trying to fight this culture is foolish.  Instead, we need to adapt.  How do we adapt?

Social media is the greatest embodiment of our need for instantaneous information and feedback.  It doesn’t take much preparation (download some apps, create accounts, find friends).  The vast majority of the information that rolls across the screen is crap, but every once in a while there is a worthwhile nugget that will garner some responses.  Sometimes (usually disasters or a new statement by Donald Trump) information that comes across garners a great deal of attention and people want to take action.  Do they know how to take meaningful action?  Often not.  But they will follow along with the good ideas of others.  (aka leaders).

Let’s broaden this concept within public engagement.  What this essentially comes down to is managing spontaneous volunteers – a concept we have seen much need for in EM for years.  I think we need to emphasize this more than ever.  We also need to update the way we think about it.  These spontaneous volunteers will not only show up at town hall, the fire house, local diner, or house of worship; they will show up online via Twitter and Facebook.  They will be locals, they will be from out of state, across the country, or across the planet.   ALL of them can be engaged.  Let’s crowdsource volunteers in emergency management.  We just need to identify how to engage them.  Identify gaps and figure out how these good natured people can fill those gaps with little no upfront investment of time or effort on their part.  Build plans that address spontaneous volunteer engagement – both in the physical aspect as well as virtual.  Train to these plans and test these plans.  Let’s stop struggling against old ways of thinking.  Improvise, adapt, and overcome.

As always, I’d love to hear your thoughts on this.

I do want to take a moment to thank my followers and readers – something I don’t do enough of.  Your support and comments are greatly appreciated.  Also, if you like my blog, spread the word.  Please feel free to forward/repost/retweet to friends, family, colleagues, and complete strangers.

©2015 – Timothy Riecker

EMERGENCY PREPAREDNESS SOLUTIONS, LLC

WWW.EPSLLC.BIZ

We need to talk MORE about Emergency Management

Tim Riecker, The Contrarian Emergency Manager Leave a comment

My company is currently finishing a contract which involved almost two dozen site visits to local government entities (cities and towns) to meet with local officials (emergency management, police, fire, EMS, schools, elected officials, public works/highway, etc.) to discuss certain emergency management and homeland security needs they may have.  The topics we needed to address were set in conjunction with our client and the meeting times were capped at 4 hours.  Based on the discussion generated by those we met with, discussions took anywhere between an hour and a half to all four hours.  At the end of most of these meetings, many people who we met with thanked us for bringing them the opportunity to discuss emergency management with such depth.

At first I was a bit puzzled about this gratitude… the meeting was intended for us to gather information from them, so it was us who thanked them for their time and input.  Why would they thank us?  They could talk about this stuff any time they wanted to, right?  In theory, yes.  In practice, NO.

Looking back at the project in retrospect we saw the value in the opportunity we provided these local stakeholders.  Absent a recent disaster or a specific issue of concern, it’s a rare occasion that local leadership takes the time to convene and discuss emergency management and homeland security matters.  We, rather serendipitously, provided them with an opportunity to do talk about many facets of EM/HS, to share thoughts and ideas, and to identify needs.

In many local government meetings (town/village/city council, selectboard, etc.) the topic of emergency management (or anything related to it) is generally not on the agenda.  Some may have a formal briefing by department heads, which would include the fire department or police department (if they have one), but these are usually fairly general statements.  Because of the depth of discussion that can take place, I don’t even think that these monthly governance meetings are the right venue for most discussion.  I would suggest that jurisdictions have a separate meeting, at least quarterly, to discuss emergency management in depth, with all department heads, elected officials, and others present and participating.  Preparedness should be discussed across the spectrum of all mission areas.

Many of the jurisdictions we met with had seen tropical storm impacts within the last few years – and that was the last time, for many of them, that the impacts and lessons learned were discussed.  What of their corrective actions?  Aside from a few largely individual efforts, little progress had been made.  Stakeholders self identified this gap, some commenting directly about the necessity to meet more often.  Many brought up gaps that were identified after the tropical storm, or even more recently, which were never addressed.

Along with the success of our intended project, we hope that at least some of those jurisdictions were able to get energized and organized to revisit some of those past concerns and move forward to make some progress with preparedness and mitigation efforts.

What do you do in your jurisdiction to prompt more discussion about EM/HS?

© 2015 – Timothy Riecker

Emergency Preparedness Solutions, LLC

WWW.EPSLLC.BIZ

Incorporating Social Media Into Your Exercises

Tim Riecker, The Contrarian Emergency Manager Leave a comment

Incorporating Social Media Into Your Exercises, a post within the idisaster.wordpress.com blog.

This blog was first brought to my attention through the most recent DHS Capacity Building Webinar Series episode called Innovating with Disaster Drills and Exercises (also available on iTunes, which is how I usually listen to them).  The blog’s primary writer, Kim Stephens, is very well spoken and well versed in using social media in emergency management (#smem).  Claire Rubin, who I’ve referenced several times before, also guest posts on the idisaster blog.  I’ve spent some time looking through the blog and find it to be well written and very informative – they certainly gained a new follower!

Be sure to check out both idisaster.wordpress.com and the DHS Capacity Building Webinar Series.

– TR

Effectiveness and Efficiency in Incident Management – Resource Tracking

Tim Riecker, The Contrarian Emergency Manager 4 Comments
Incident Check In

Incident Check In

I recently took part in the management of an exercise in which a Type 3 incident management team (IMT) was among the players.  As part of their initial set up they immediately recognized the importance of checking in and tracking resources.  This is an activity which is often overlooked at the onset of an incident and is a royal pain to catch up on once the need is realized.  There were a few things which they could have improved upon, though, which seriously impacted their effectiveness and efficiency.

  1. They spent time checking in each vehicle as equipment. Not every vehicle needs to be tracked in an incident.  Generally, the sedan, pick up, or SUV you come in on isn’t special enough that it requires tracking.  Huge waste of time, people, and effort.  Consider the nature and capability of the equipment that is coming through your access point.  Is it a specialized resource?  Will it be applied tactically?  Will it be supporting logistical needs?  Is it rented or leased?  These are the conditions that should be considered when deciding what equipment to track.
  2. They marked equipment using bottled shoe polish. Not a bad idea, except it rained all week, and within hours of application most of the markings couldn’t be read.  Windshield markers, similar to what car dealerships use, are cost effective, waterproof, and clean off easily with mild window cleaners.
  3. Equipment that was checked in was never logged in detail. What’s the difference between E-01234 and E-01235?  We will never know as no descriptions were entered into their tracking system.
  4. As vehicles flowed in to the staging area, people will directed to check in at the command post. This is obviously excellent, except to get to the command post people had to pass by the main access to the incident site.  This meant that many people did not check in as directed.  They got distracted by the incident and associated response activity and never made it to the command post to check in.  This severely impacted the effectiveness of accountability.

Sometimes people would try to explain these things away by saying “It’s just an exercise”, but exercises are an opportunity to do things the right way, not skimp and cut corners.  While their intent was good, their process and results were quite poor.  If we are supposed to train the way we fight, as they say, this team has a ways to go to be more effective with resource accountability.  On the surface resource tracking looks easy… but it’s not.  There is a lot of complexity, variables, and attention to detail that must all work together well in order to be successful.  The Resource Unit Leader has one of the hardest jobs in the Incident Command System.

Being who I am, I’m left wondering why this all happened.  I have little choice but to blame poor planning and training.  Planning is to blame for a lack of clear procedures, guidance, and decision models.  The training which people receive tends to be just as vague.  By now, most, if not all of you are familiar with my opinions on the current ICS training.  While the referenced article does not go into the IMT/position training curricula, from what I recall of the courses I’ve taken, there are certain things taken for granted.  It’s easy to put an item on a checklist that says ‘Establish check in’.  OK… how?  Where?  When?  What?  Why?  The answer to those questions, or guidance to help answer those questions, should be provided through training.  Let’s tell people not only why check in is important, but what people and resources should be checked in, where to establish check in (what to look for and what to avoid), etc.  Once we’ve trained people on it, let’s provide job aids… not just the ICS forms, but job aids that will actually help people do their jobs.  While it may seem like minutia and unnecessary detail, keep in mind that we are training people to operate in austere and chaotic environments which they are trying to establish order over and only do these activities on rare occasion.  Those conditions signal the need for detailed training and job aids to support sustained performance and limit the degradation of the training they received.

Bottom line – let’s take a step back, fix what we have to based upon what we’ve learned, and proceed forward so we can operate more effectively and efficiently.

Thoughts and comments are always appreciated.  What have you learned or observed from incidents or exercises that needs to be addressed foundationally?

© 2015 – Timothy Riecker

Emergency Preparedness Solutions, LLC

WWW.EPSLLC.BIZ

FEMA Releases a Consolidated Online Training Course Catalog for First Responder Training

Tim Riecker, The Contrarian Emergency Manager Leave a comment

This is a great resource I discovered last week that has just been officially announced this week. It is comprehensive and easy to use. Check it out and see what’s out there! – TR 

(Official release follows)

FEMA released a consolidated online training catalog for the First Responder Training System, including courses available through the Emergency Management Institute (EMI), the Center for Domestic Preparedness (CDP), the National Domestic Preparedness Consortium (NDPC) and the Continuing Training Grant (CTG) program. The site was developed in response to customer requests and is known as the “National Training & Education Online Course Catalog.” It allows users to search for all FEMA preparedness training initiatives in one location.  

The main entry page of the combined catalog briefly describes each training organization—EMI, CDP, and the National Training and Education Division—while providing a list of training courses in each catalog, along with links for scheduling and individual websites for each training organization. First responders can access the consolidated course catalog by clicking directly at www.firstrespondertraining.gov/NTE. 

The catalog itself is searchable and can be viewed in full or by the individual NTE training entities. Users are able to filter by organization and/or training provider, delivery type, discipline, core capability and mission area at www.firstrespondertraining.gov/ntecatalog.

Course catalog feedback can be sent to firstrespondertraining@fema.dhs.gov.

Emergency planning – A linear approach or ‘choose your own adventure’?

Tim Riecker, The Contrarian Emergency Manager 2 Comments

When creating deliberate emergency operations plans, and especially the associated standard operating procedures/guidelines (SOPs/SOGs) that accompany them (you do develop these, right?) there is always a consideration for how to progress through the written plan – chronologically or topically.  There are pros and cons to both approaches you should be aware of.

Chronological progression of your planning efforts assume that an incident starts at A and progresses to Z, in a particular order.  At a glance, this is a lot of structure for emergency management, but an analysis of most incidents will show that they generally tend to progress in this fashion.  It’s human nature for us to like order and to try to put things into a logical progression.  There are, of course, the outliers – those incidents which have tangential or cascading impacts which don’t necessarily have a linear progression.  It’s these unknown factors that make us stumble a bit.  How do we account for these disruptions of our orderly progression?  We have to skip around in the plan.  If our plan isn’t designed for skipping around, it can be rather awkward and not easy to use.

A Choose Your Own Adventure book

A Choose Your Own Adventure book

The other side of the coin argues that if you are likely to skip around in the plan anyway, why not build a topical, or ‘choose your own adventure’ style, plan?  Remember choose your own adventure books?  The story always starts the same, building a foundation for the adventure you will face, but you, the reader, eventually get to decide what the main character will do.  At some point, you will be faced with a choice.  Should your hero take the left tunnel or the right?  If you take the left, go to page X, if you go right, turn to page Y.

Non-linear planning will chunk the content of your plan so individual sections focus on each potential impact and major activity – be it hazard-specific or function-specific – with reference back to a core plan, kind of a hub and spoke approach.  (By the way, ‘chunking’ is an actual term.  We use it primarily in instructional design).  It can make for some flipping around through the plan, and sometimes a bit of redundancy if each section starts with the same concept of operations (thus the need to reference back to a core plan), but it more easily accommodates the unknowns of an incident by looking at separate impacts or major activities as individual components related to a central response.

What are your thoughts?  Do we try to keep things orderly, or do we give in to a modular, ‘choose your own adventure’ approach?  Which do you think is more complex?  Which do you think is more effective?

© 2015 – Timothy Riecker

Emergency Preparedness Solutions, LLC

WWW.EPSLLC.BIZ

Finally – an Emergency Management Podcast Worth Listening To!

Tim Riecker, The Contrarian Emergency Manager 5 Comments

I’m a bit of a podcast addict.  I listen to them all the time – at the gym, mowing the lawn, long drives, etc.  There are podcasts out there for all interests.  I’ve struggled, however, these last few years, with finding a good emergency management podcast.  Sure, I’ve found a few, but I find them to generally have limited relevancy and also to be boring as hell.  Yes, I want to learn, but I also want to be entertained.  Last week, after seeing a tweet from Brandon Greenburg about guesting on a podcast, I was immediately intrigued.

First off, if you aren’t familiar with Brandon, you should be.  He blogs regularly about disasters and technology, usually together, and has great thoughts and ideas.  Brandon is not only a practitioner, but also an academic, currently pursuing a Ph.D. from GWU in technology and disaster management.  Brandon is one of those colleagues who I’ve never met, yet correspond with via our blogging and social media platforms.  Since he knows EM and he knows tech and social media, anything Brandon would be on immediately gives me cause to pay attention.  For more on Brandon, visit www.disasternet.co or on Twitter @disasternet.

Getting to the podcast, the name is the Dukes of Hazards, hosted by Mitch Stripling and Andrew McMahan.  From their website, the podcast is “… an irreverent (but useful) podcast about disaster response, emergency management, mobilization culture, community resilience, and life in emergency operations.  Also, drones.  Research.  Movie reviews.  Jokes.”  It really is all of that.  And a clever name!

Mitch and Andrew have clearly cracked the secret code of podcasting – talk about any subject (even one that is serious, like emergency management) and make it both informative and entertaining.  They clearly have a good time recording (the beer and cookies probably help with that), they are experienced in EM, and they continue to stay current in the practice.  Their discussion topics are interesting and relevant, and they fully use dialogue – with each other, guests, and written listener feedback – to help you feel engaged in their discussion.

Dukes of Hazards looks at current events in EM, new practices and ideas, and discusses the future direction of different facets of our field.  They even occasionally poke fun at some of our idiosyncrasies and common personality traits, which is a breath of fresh air! There are also some occasional pop culture references like Star Wars and The Walking Dead that make me quite happy.

Bottom line – informative, entertaining, beer and cookies.  Need I say more?

Check out Dukes of Hazards at www.hazardspodcast.com for more info.  You can listen to their podcasts from the website, iTunes, and other outlets.  They can also be found on Twitter at @hazardspodcast. You won’t be sorry.

© 2015 – Timothy Riecker

Emergency Preparedness Solutions, LLC

WWW.EPSLLC.BIZ

@EPS_LLC

Your Complete Guide to the 5 Cybersecurity Bills in Congress

Tim Riecker, The Contrarian Emergency Manager Leave a comment

Yesterday Eric Geller, a writer for The Daily Dot, an online internet culture newspaper, posted Your complete guide to the 5 cybersecurity bills in Congress.  This is a great overview of each of the bills and what they entail.  These bills represent an important progression toward a better cybersecurity policy and implementation in the US.  A worthwhile read.

© 2015 – Timothy Riecker

Emergency Preparedness Solutions, LLC

www.epsllc.biz

News in Emergency Management

Tim Riecker, The Contrarian Emergency Manager Leave a comment

Regrettably I’ve not posted in a few weeks due to a very busy schedule.  While that hasn’t broken, I did want to take some time to ensure that my readers have seen some recent news that has been circulating in emergency management as of late.

First, the FEMA mobile app has updated and is now providing the ability for users to receive weather alerts from up to five locations across the nation.  This is a particularly handy feature for those who have family and friends in other states or those who travel frequently to different areas.  With hazardous weather season upon us, be sure that you use the FEMA mobile app or other state or local alerting service to ensure that you, your family, and organization receive alerts.

Second, DHS has provided an update on the status of the LLIS (Lessons Learned Information Sharing) Libarary.  From the release I received this morning…

Dear LLIS.gov User,

This spring, the Lessons Learned Information Sharing (LLIS) program will make a significant change. The LLIS.gov website will cease independent operations and will consolidate its content with the Naval Postgraduate School’s Homeland Security Digital Library (HSDL.org) and FEMA.gov.

One of the advantages of this move is that LLIS.gov content such as lessons learned, innovative practices, after-action reports, plans, templates, guides, and other materials will be consolidated with the already substantial database on HSDL.org. This change will allow the homeland security and emergency management communities to find relevant information in one place. FEMA’s LLIS program will continue to produce trend analyses, case studies on the use of FEMA preparedness grants, and webinars relevant to the whole community. These products will be available to the public on FEMA.gov.
They don’t give any timeframe for this migration aside from stating that they will provide updates in the coming weeks.  Personally, I think this is a move that makes sense by consolidating some great sources of information.  I’m also happy to hear that FEMA will continue providing some data and trend analysis, although I’m hopeful that the information they provide is of greater value than what I have seen in the past.  I’m also curious if this will be somehow integrated into the new Data.gov site.  It’s unfortunate that LLIS has been pulled down for so long while they have sorted all this out.

Lastly, good news for coastal communities and those who have suffered inland tropical storm damages in the last few years – the prediction for the 2015 hurricane season is that we will have lower than average activity.  A link to the annual predictive analysis can be found here.

That’s all for now.  Stay safe.

© 2015 – Timothy Riecker

Emergency Preparedness Solutions, LLC

www.epsllc.biz 

Dispatch Transition to EOC Operations

Tim Riecker, The Contrarian Emergency Manager 2 Comments

Within the LinkedIn discussion thread of one of my recent posts on applications of ICS, I was prompted to consider that one more awkward element for an EOC operation can be the transition or integration of dispatch with the EOC.  Consider that during ‘routine’ operations, it is dispatch who is supporting field operations and tracking critical actions.  Many jurisdictions encounter a difficulty when activating an EOC locally to support a growing response – what to do with dispatch?

The EOC’s traditional role as ‘expanded dispatch’ aids a field response by providing a greater level of coordination far beyond the tools normally available to most dispatchers by facilitating direct access to agency representatives who are dedicated to supporting the needs of the incident.  Under routine operations, Command (or Logistics) is contacting dispatch directly (usually via radio) to request resources.  Upon activation of an EOC, these requests must be routed to the EOC.  In some jurisdictions, EOCs are co-located with dispatch (at least in the same building), making this transition a bit easier in regard to technology and people, but some jurisdictions have these buildings separated.

How do you solve this awkward dilemma of ICS/EOC interface?  First of all, it needs to be thought through and planned PRIOR to an incident!  This is when we can do our best work, ideally bringing all relevant stakeholders to the table, mapping out processes and procedures, and identifying equipment and technology issues needed to support it.  With everyone together, talk through what you want to do given the circumstances you have.  Each idea likely has pros and cons that have to be weighed.

Some possibilities… Keep all resource orders going through dispatch. In doing so, you are not interrupting the ‘normal’ communications link with field operations.  In this circumstance, though, you need to consider how the dispatcher will transfer the resource request to EOC Logistics.  Since you likely do not want Logistics to be accessing the PSAP system, the dispatcher will likely have to enter the request into another system, such as EOC management software (something they likely don’t use often).  This can be time consuming so it will likely require the dispatcher to be solely dedicated to this incident.  The scope of resources (or ideally missions) is also beyond what a dispatcher usually deals with (thus the reason for activating the EOC), so it would likely require some additional training and use of dispatchers with greater experience.

Another option is to bring the dispatcher into the EOC.  Sometimes physical separation, despite technology, can make things awkward.  If the jurisdiction has the technological ability to bring a dispatcher into the EOC as part of the Communications Unit, they can interact with field operations and facilitate communication better.  The need to enter the resource/mission request into a formal system which is assignable and trackable still exists.

Another option is to pull dispatch out of the incident.  This can cause significant disruption to the incident but is manageable if pre-planned, trained, and exercised.  At this point in an expanded incident the need to use radio communications beyond field operations may be exceeded.  Field Logistics can interface directly with EOC Logistics via phone or other technology to communicate resource requests.  This methodology gets the request directly to EOC Logistics for them to handle.

There are certainly other models and possibilities that exist.  What experiences do you have?  What have you seen work?  What have you seen fail?

© 2015 – Timothy Riecker

Emergency Preparedness Solutions, LLC

WWW.EPSLLC.BIZ