Tag Emergency Management

Hazard Analysis – Looking Beyond Your Borders

Tim Riecker, The Contrarian Emergency Manager Leave a comment

In the radiological emergency preparedness niche field of emergency management we conduct a lot of preparedness activities for a hazard which may not even be within our jurisdiction.  The emergency planning zone (EPZ) for a nuclear power plant often times transcends multiple towns, cities, villages, counties, and even state lines.  While I have some issues with the effectiveness and implementation of radiological emergency planning, they at least address the reality of the hazard crossing the artificial borders we humans have established.  For other hazards, this premise usually does not hold true.

In January of this year a chemical leaked from a storage tank at a coal processing facility in Charleston, West Virginia.  This chemical leaked into the Elk River and both directly and indirectly impacted hundreds of thousands of citizens, businesses, and governments requiring evacuations and preventing water use for several weeks. The DHS Lessons Learned Information Sharing (LLIS) website has posted a brief by The Joint Commission on this incident with specific citations on the impacts to area hospitals, mostly through contracted laundry services.

In the private sector, we often encourages businesses to examine the vulnerabilities of suppliers and distributors as part of their hazard vulnerability analysis (HVA) and business impact assessment (BIA).  This is not something often considered by governments.  For example, in my town, there is only one very small gas station, so due their limited hours (fuel is not available 24/7) government services and the town’s contracted fire company must leave the town for fuel.  That is a significant dependency on a supplier outside the jurisdiction.  I’ve sure there are many other suppliers used by the town which lie outside their borders.  Additionally, what are the potential impacts of an incident that occurs in a neighboring jurisdiction?  Such an incident could either directly impact you, such as a chemical plume entering your jurisdiction; or would require your jurisdiction to address sheltering, traffic, or mutual aid needs.

I would suggest, as part of the hazard analysis phase of your planning process, that you obtain copies of the hazard analysis of neighboring jurisdictions.  The hazards they indicate may be quite eye-opening to you and may require you to better prepare for a hazard beyond your borders.

©2014 Timothy Riecker

Talking Turkey – Point of Distribution (POD) Exercise

Tim Riecker, The Contrarian Emergency Manager Leave a comment

I recently read an article (although I can’t find it) about a health department who conducted a point of distribution (POD) exercise during the holidays.  Instead of handing out Tic Tacs or some other silliness, they did something great for their community – they distributed turkey dinners to those in need.  As I don’t have the article to reference and I had only skimmed over it the first time through, I don’t have the details of how they pulled this off, but having participated in the planning of POD exercises (particularly those that have a direct impact on the community, such as one that distributed preparedness kits and information) I can surmise how they did it.

As most of my readers know, emergency management is a collaborative process.  While local health departments are responsible for medical points of distribution, they can’t do it alone.  These are massive efforts to inoculate or prophylax hundreds if not thousands of persons within a narrow time frame.  These efforts require cooperation and support from emergency management, law enforcement, fire service, EMS, hospitals, volunteer organizations, and the private sector.  Commodity PODs can also be established, not necessarily run by the health department, with the intent of distributing needed commodities – such as tarps, food, or water – to the populace.  Health departments, however, are required to exercise their POD plans, which requires registration, intake, education, and inoculation of citizens.

In the example I linked to in the first paragraph regarding the preparedness kits, the health department was able to purchase most items and utilized a mix of staff and volunteers to run the POD, with support from other agencies to address traffic, parking, and other needs.  In the turkey dinner exercise, I imagine they were able to pay for some items and had others donated for this worthwhile effort.  It’s a great way of supporting the community with an immediate need while preparing for a future need.  Kudos to that community!

Now if I can only find that article…

~~~~~

6/17/14 Edit… I found a reference!

LLIS posted an ‘Innovative Practice’ bulletin about this exercise.  It can be found here.  To clarify/correct, it was actually an SNS exercise.

 

© 2014 Timothy Riecker

Verizon Ready for Storm Season

Tim Riecker, The Contrarian Emergency Manager Leave a comment

Great article from the Wall Street Journal on Verizon’s preparedness efforts for hurricane season.  The article seems to indicate all the right preparations, from planning and exercises to equipment and staging, response teams, and their own corporate EOC.  Much of our critical infrastructure is owned and operated by the private sector – it’s good to see the measures of preparedness Verizon takes responsibility for.  It’s certainly a model for other companies and industries – and even local governments.

-TR

Creating Operational Emergency Plans

Tim Riecker, The Contrarian Emergency Manager 2 Comments

I was inspired for this article from an email I received earlier today from Lu Canton, a rather prolific emergency management consultant who has branched a bit into consulting consultants.  His email today (a forward from his blog) was about making emergency plans ‘real’.  His point was that many planners focus on checking the boxes of the list of planning requirements (those prescribed by law, regulation, etc.) rather than focusing on ensuring that you have a plan that can actually be implemented.  He conducted a webinar over a year ago which I had blogged about.

Planning requirements are important, as they largely stem from lessons learned from earlier incidents.  Granted, some of these requirements come about being translated through the eyes and ears of politicians whose staffers write the legislation and don’t understand emergency management at all – resulting in convoluted, contradictory, and poorly focused requirements.  Requirements lead to standards, helping to ensure that emergency managers are addressing the needs of their jurisdiction and best practices in the industry.  To help guide us through this, many higher level agencies provide templates.  I’ve pontificated in the past about the danger of templates, which have a place in reminding us of these requirements and help us with format and flow, but are often misused by individuals who simply seek to fill in the blank with the name of the jurisdiction and claim they have a finalized plan.

How do we avoid falling into this trap?  Follow the planning process!  FEMA’s Comprehensive Preparedness Guide (CPG) 101 provides an overview of this process for creating emergency operations plans.  The two initial steps – forming a planning team and conducting a hazard analysis – are absolutely critical to the integrity of the process and ensuring a quality plan that meets the needs of your jurisdiction by addressing your threats and hazards.  Planning teams then need to consider these threats and hazards, make reasonable assumptions about their impacts (using a credible worst case scenario), then identify resources and strategies the jurisdiction will undertake to solve the problems they will face.

Does all this mean that a plan needs to be written from scratch?  Of course not!  In fact I strongly encourage people against it.  It’s practically guaranteed that you will forget a critical element.  One of the greatest things in the emergency management community is how we learn from each other.  You can reference templates you find, examine plans of your neighboring jurisdictions or jurisdictions similar to you, check out what is on LLIS.  There is plenty of great content you can examine and apply for your own use.  Just ensure that you carefully review and consider how it applies to you.

As you write the plan, think the details through.  This will help ensure that your plan is operational, not just meeting requirements.  Discuss with your planning team what is expected of each assisting and cooperating agency for each incident type.  Who will be in charge?  What resources will be necessary and where will you get them from?  What would the objectives be and what processes and decision points must be conducted to accomplish those objectives.  As you create the plan, map out these processes and ensure that you’ve considered the who, what, where, when, and how of each step in each process.  Recall that you are planning at a strategic level, not a tactical level.  Planning at a tactical level is nearly impossible with a pre-incident (aka ‘deliberate’) plan.  Tactics will be addressed during the actual response, hopefully referencing the EOP/CEMP you are writing now, and implemented through an incident action plan (IAP).

Remember, though, the proof is in the pudding, as they say.  Your plan needs to be tested to ensure viability.  Use a table top exercise to test policy and decisions, then a functional exercise to test the implementation of the plan and higher level tactics.  Full scale exercises and drills can test the tactical implementation of plans.  Good evaluation of the exercises will lead to planning improvements.  For insight on the exercise process, you can check out my exercise management series of posts referenced here.

Remember: when it comes to planning – keep it real!

Tim Riecker

Critical Infrastructure Vulnerability – Water Delivery Systems

Tim Riecker, The Contrarian Emergency Manager 3 Comments
Picture of the Baltimore Water Main Break, July 18, 2001

40-inch Water Main Break, Baltimore July 18, 2001. Source: Baltimore Sun

I’ve written several posts in the past on the vulnerabilities of our electrical infrastructure – both to natural and human causes.  Yet, our electrical infrastructure is not the only element of critical infrastructure that is vulnerable to failures and attacks.   We have a very old water infrastructure in our nation, with many areas still maintaining Civil War era cast iron pipes, with an estimated useful life of 150 years (at the time of installation).  How often does your area experience a water main break?

According to the US Conference of Mayors “A major symptom of the aging water infrastructure includes 300,000 water main breaks in North America as result of the widespread corrosion problems adding up to a $50.7 billion annual drain on our economy. Leaking pipes are also losing an estimated 2.6 trillion gallons of treated drinking water annually (17 percent of all pumped water in the US), representing $4.1 billion in wasted electricity every year.”

This aging infrastructure has also failed us when we needed it most.  You might recall the Howard Street Rail Tunnel fire in Baltimore, MD on July 18, 2001.  I’ve designed exercise scenarios based upon this incident and have even received feedback from participants about the scenario being unlikely – they are rather surprised to learn that it is based on an actual event.

From the USFA Report on the incident:

“At 3:07 p.m. on Wednesday, July 18, 2001, a CSX Transportation train derailed in the Howard Street Tunnel under the streets of Baltimore, Maryland. Complicating the scenario was the subsequent rupture in a 40-inch water main      that ran directly above the tunnel. The flooding hampered extinguishing efforts, collapsed several city streets, knocked out electricity to about 1,200 Baltimore Gas and Electric customers, and flooded nearby buildings. The crash interrupted a major line associated with the Internet and an MCI WorldCom fiber optic telephone cable.

Throughout the incident, fire officials were plagued with three problems: fighting the fires in the tunnel; the presence of hazardous materials; and the weakening structural integrity of the tunnel and immediate surrounding areas.”

In reading the report you will see that the water main break both help and hurt the response.  The 40-inch main flooded streets and nearby businesses, but also was allowed to flow into the tunnel for a period of two hours, helping to decrease the temperature in the tunnel.  While no reports seem to indicate the impact of the water main break on nearby hydrants, I do include that impact in my exercise scenarios.

Water main breaks plague many areas around the nation.  The lack of potable water resulting from them creates a public health concern, resulting in many businesses and public buildings shutting down and households advised to boil water.  These breaks impact our ability to fight fires and, as a result of undermining, they can cause sink holes and damage to roadways.

In speaking to public works officials through the years, I’ve been told that every water system has leaks of varying severity.  Minor leaks often go undetected for a great period of time.

 

Securing our water supply is important as well.  Much of our water storage is in reservoirs, open and vulnerable to intentional contamination.  Most reservoirs have some measure of passive security (fences) and some even take more active security precautions.  However, we know that people who are determined can overcome these systems.  Luckily the sheer volume of water in most reservoirs would severely dilute any contamination introduced to them, but there may be agents so concentrated as to inflict harm.  The City of New York, for example, has a massive water supply system, with reservoirs as far north as the Catskills.  Their aqueducts, made famous in the third Die Hard movie, are massive.  The New York City Department of Environmental Protection is charged with securing the City’s water supply and does so through both active and passive security measures as well as active and on-demand water quality sampling.  Most areas, however, don’t have these law enforcement or public health resources available in such abundance.

Water is a critical component of our infrastructure and therefore must be protected.  It’s important not only to business and industry, but is also essential to human life, agriculture, and food production.  Similar to our roadways and electrical infrastructure, our water systems need a plan for restoration and funding to put that plan into action.  Beyond some more capable and financially stable municipalities, most water systems are implementing ad-hoc fixes and are only able to replace small sections of the system each year.

Does your plan account for water system failure?

Tim Riecker

FEMA Public Assistance Thresholds aka Do Your Research

Tim Riecker, The Contrarian Emergency Manager Leave a comment

I just received my April edition (number 627) of the Natural Hazards Observer (NHO), a bi-monthly publication of the Natural Hazards Center of the University of Colorado at Boulder. As of my posting of this article, they have not yet posted the April edition on their website, but they are likely to do so shortly.  My desire with this particular post is to encourage a thorough analysis of the topic at hand rather than an extremely narrow perspective as was published in the NHO.

First, I feel a need to mention that The Natural Hazards Observer and I have a tenuous on again, off again relationship. I’ve become rather disenchanted with their articles in the past; occasionally disagreeing completely with authors’ premise and approach (not that everyone is necessarily agreeable to mine). I’ve even written the NHO about the fact that a University center whose goal is to research disasters has presented articles that, to me, come across at times as unprofessional and not well thought out. I’m not really knocking the NHO nor is my intent to pick a fight, rather I’ve been trying to be constructive with them.  Given their foundation, I think their readers expect a more scholarly approach. While there is certainly plenty of good information to find in the NHO, some seems questionable. One of their tag lines is ‘Disaster Research News You Can Use’. I often find that their articles have little to do with research, such as the one I cite below, and are really more of a media regurgitation. There are other, more appropriate forums for that – like blogging – rather than a publication that advertises research.

That said, my particular beef with this edition is the first article, titled ‘All’s Not Fair: Illinois Battles Over Being Too Big To Feel FEMA’s Love’. I encourage you to read the article for yourself and form your own impressions. To sum up the general idea of the article, folks in Illinois are questioning FEMA’s Public Assistance (PA) program thresholds for disaster recovery. Specifically, they take issue with these thresholds being based on per-capita amounts. They argue that larger, more populous, states are discriminated against (their words); and further stating that a larger population doesn’t necessarily equate to a state’s ability to self-fund disaster recovery efforts.

Public Assistance (PA), by the way, is focused on recovering public infrastructure (roads, bridges, public buildings, etc.), whereas Individual Assistance (IA) provides direct assistance to individuals to help cover uninsured losses.

When first reading this, two particular issues stood out to me. 1) They don’t mention the fact that FEMA will also examine a county’s per-capita damages for potential declarations, and 2) High populated states quite frequently receive disaster declarations.

The Texas Department of Public Safety has a great document which summarizes the state and county thresholds for 2014. The NHO article makes no mention of the county threshold, which is where most PA declarations are decreed – for a county or counties, rather than the entire state. While the county threshold is higher, it would generally be easier for a localized disaster to be declared (PA) than the entire state, which is mostly unaffected.

As for state declarations, FEMA provides a great summary by state of major declarations (this is the specific number to look at in this case), emergency declarations, and fire management declarations. By scanning down the list, you’ll see that states like Texas, Florida, California, New York, and Louisiana are among the top contenders for declarations. Other large and more populous states, such as Illinois, are not far behind them. This pretty much blows a hole in the premise that larger, more populated states are ‘discriminated against’. Having been in this business for a while, I know that sometimes you win (the request for a declaration) and sometimes you lose. It makes a significant argument for states to have disaster reserve funds.

All that aside; are there issues of fairness in this traditional per-capita assessment of damages within the disaster declaration process? There may certainly be. The assumption of the current process is that a more populous state has a greater tax base from which to draw funds for disaster relief. This assumption, at a glance, makes sense, but may not be the most fair way of determining if a state warrants assistance.  The most significant arguments against this seem to be 1) A lower relative mean income as compared to other states translates into a lower tax base, and 2) Is the tax base even a fair measure of need/capability for a state?

An interesting read on this is a GAO report from 2012. It seems to me, a guy who is not a FEMA disaster recovery expert – but I’ve been around the block a few times – that there are some issues of fairness and perhaps better ways to assess a state’s true need for Federal assistance. A fair discussion of this topic, however, requires having a 360 degree perspective of all the issues involved. Perhaps it’s a good topic for a research journal?

Managing an Exercise Program – Part 9: Conducting an Exercise

Tim Riecker, The Contrarian Emergency Manager Leave a comment

This post is part of a 10-part series on Managing an Exercise Program. In this series I provide some of my own lessons learned in the program and project management aspects of managing, designing, conducting, and evaluating Homeland Security Exercise and Evaluation Program (HSEEP) exercises. Your feedback is appreciated!

Managing an Exercise Program – Part 1

Managing an Exercise Program – Part 2: Develop a Preparedness Strategy

Managing an Exercise Program – Part 3: Identify Program Resources and Funding

Managing an Exercise Program – Part 4: Conduct an Annual Training & Exercise Planning Workshop.

Managing an Exercise Program – Part 5: Securing Project Funding

Managing an Exercise Program – Part 6: Conducting Exercise Planning Conferences

Managing an Exercise Program – Part 7: Develop Exercise Documentation

Managing an Exercise Program – Part 8: Preparing Support, Personnel, & Logistical Requirements

Managing an Exercise Program – Part 9: Conducting an Exercise

Managing an Exercise Program – Part 10: Evaluation and Improvement Planning

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Since writing Part 8, the new HSEEP guidance (April 2013) was published. Thankfully this update didn’t dictate wholesale changes in the process we’ve all come to be familiar with. There were some subtle changes, such as changing ‘planning conferences’ to ‘planning meetings’, and stressing the involvement of elected officials in the exercise planning process. Similarly, I’m thankful that certain changes weren’t made – one of which was the proposed elimination of terminology of ‘discussion based exercises’ and ‘operations based exercises’. These general identifiers have become commonplace amongst exercise designers for decades. Upon having the opportunity to review a draft version of the new HSEEP guidance, I was quite opposed to that change.

Obviously conducting the exercise is the most exciting part of the process. It’s where all of your hard work comes together. That said, this is where it can all fall apart if you haven’t prepared property in the first eight parts and if you don’t pay attention to detail. I’m breaking exercise conduct down into four smaller parts: Set up, briefings, play, debrief. Remember that my intent with these postings is not to be fully comprehensive, but to emphasize areas where I have learned or have seen others struggle. In all facets of emergency management we need to continue a culture of sharing if we are to be successful.

Set up

The preparations for your exercise should have been finalized in Part 8 where you addressed logistical requirements. You should know where your exercise venue is, how people will be seated/where they will be working, the location and support for a SimCell (if you’re having one), and even matters such as parking, food, restrooms, and audiovisual equipment. Additionally, set up includes having print material available for all participants. When setting up, consider the flow of people, quite literally from the road to the parking lot, from the parking lot to the facility, into the facility through security, sign in, and to their first location for the exercise (this may be their only destination or it may be a large briefing room). Having conducted exercises in locations not familiar to some participants as well as these exercises being larger than the facility’s parking lot can handle, you must ensure that invitation packages have specific directions on how to get to the parking area and how to get from the parking area to the venue. Be sure that signage is prominently displayed. It may even help to have staff directing people. Be sure to also let them know what manner of identification is required to enter the facility. Again, signage is often necessary to get people from the building entrance to check in location and then to the meeting location. Signage for the refreshment area and restrooms may also be needed.

Have everything set up for people before they arrive. Use table tents, if needed, to help identify seating, and have copies of all necessary materials at their seating location. Materials like SitMans and ExPlans have a lot of content, so it’s nice to have these materials available for the early-comers to being reading through.

Be sure to set up early and test EVERYTHING. Make sure AV equipment and communications equipment are tested.

Briefings

Depending on the type of exercise you are conducting, there can be a number of briefings needed to take place before the exercise begins. Some of these briefings may need to take place well in advance, even a day or more before the exercise, depending on availability of audiences for each of them.

The new HSEEP guidance includes a specific briefing for elected and appointed officials. This is something to usually conduct well in advance of the actual exercise to outline the agenda/timeline of the exercise and what will be expected of them. They will likely want to interface with any media and should know what to say about the exercise. They may also want to ‘kick off’ the exercise at the player briefing.

Controllers, evaluators, and SimCell personnel should receive a briefing to ensure they are familiar with the exercise and their rolls. They all need to know what is expected of them and of the players, how and when to interact with the players, and what may need to be reported to their respective leaders and/or to the exercise director. Evaluators will need to become familiar with their assigned EEGs and what the expectations are for evaluating. Additional time will need to be spent with SimCell personnel to familiarize them with the equipment being used, how the MSEL is structured, and how injects will be delivered. If any actors are being used, they will also need to be briefed on their rolls and what their expectations are. Ensure that everyone is familiar with the safety word in the event of the necessity to immediately stop the exercise.

If observers are expected at the exercise, have a briefing ready for them. I suggest treating them like VIPs when possible (most of them usually are). Don’t just let them walk around to figure things out for themselves. Give them tour guides who can take them throughout the venue and talk about what is happening. Schedule their arrival when possible, and consider having an elected or appointed official there to greet them. Keep in mind that some observers will be very high tier VIPs. Vigilant Guard exercises are often visited by the head of the National Guard Bureau – a four star General. These visits are fantastic and very much emphasize the importance of the exercise, but they can also be a little disruptive. These high-tier VIPs will often come with their own entourage and/or security. They will want a brief tour and will stop often to shake hands and have pictures taken. They may even want a break in the exercise to speak. Try to be aware of these expectations up front if at all possible. If not, just go with the flow and be flexible.

The media is another form of observer. All media should be scheduled. Be sure to make it worth their while, where they can catch some video/picture footage of interesting activities. Maps and wall displays make for great footage as well. Remember operational security! If something is sensitive or classified, it should not be anywhere where it can be seen. The media should also be provided a tour and an opportunity to get a statement from the elected and/or appointed officials. They may also want to interview players. I generally don’t allow this without preparation of the specific player to ensure that the right messages are delivered. Also, be sure to let players know during the player brief that there will be observers and media coming through and what is expected of them.

Lastly, the player briefing. This briefing will introduce players to the purpose of the exercise, the ground rules, the facility, timeline, controllers and evaluators, and expectations. Players should be briefed on how and when to interact with the SimCell if you have one. It should always be reinforced that the exercise is ‘no fault’, and that they, individually, are not being evaluated, rather it is the plans, policies, and procedures they are using that are being evaluated. Lastly, players are briefed on the scenario. Be sure that the ExPlan/SitMan has the detailed scenario for their reference.

Exercise Play

Finally the moment of truth arrives! Remember that the purpose of the exercise is to accomplish the objectives, however, know that you may not accomplish all the objectives in the timeframe you have. Being flexible, and knowing you have to be flexible, are two very important aspects of running an exercise. Regardless of how well we think we’ve written an exercise, the responses to our prompts are entirely up to the players. They may accomplish the objectives faster or slower than you expected. Likewise, they may struggle a bit. This is where good exercise control comes in. Controllers/facilitators should observe the tempo of the exercise. Is everyone engaged? Are they needlessly overwhelmed and frustrated? Are they bored? Are they not following through on activities? All these observations should be reported back to the exercise director and SimCell so the tempo can be moderated.

Be sure to have contingencies in the event that players do or request the unexpected. Additional injects that are held back are always a good idea. You may need them to prompt certain activities in the event that players do not take the initiative to do so. Players may also ask questions or make requests of the SimCell that aren’t expected. While we can’t anticipate every need, we can be prepared for them. Have copies of plans, policies, procedures, and maps available to the SimCell. They may have to take some time to research and come up with an answer then get back to the individual. The SimCell manager should be smart when situations like this arise, however. They should always consider if a potentially inaccurate but reasonable answer is acceptable or if the answer must be completely accurate… or even if the answer is required for exercise play at all. There is no sense having SimCell personnel research an answer if the answer doesn’t much matter within the scope of the exercise.

Multi-day exercises may require the exercise staff to meet at the end of every day for a mini hotwash and to evaluate how the exercise is progressing. Where are the players in respect to where you expected them to be in your design of the exercise? Do you need to retool anything in the MSEL?

On large exercises, it helps for the exercise director to have an aide-de-camp, or assistant. Just like any individual in charge of a large operation, the exercise director is having their attention pulled in many directions and may simply not have the time to address everything, especially in large or multi-venue exercises. Having an assistant is also a great way to train up and coming exercise staff. Certainly consider the use of portable radios to help facilitate communication as well. The exercise director will spend most of their time managing and trouble shooting. They may also have to address some VIP concerns. Be sure to walk around to get a good sense for the exercise as a whole. Are evaluators properly positioned? Are controllers present and visible? Is the SimCell responding to questions adequately? Are players engaged and challenged? Perhaps most importantly, is the boss (the elected/appointed official) happy?

Evaluation is such an important aspect of exercise that I will cover it in its own section – Part 10.

Debriefs

Two significant debriefing activities should take place immediately following the exercise: 1) a player hotwash, 2) an exercise staff debriefing. Players should be led through a facilitated hotwash, reviewing the objectives of the exercise, with evaluators capturing their responses to if/how the objectives were accomplished. Encourage and capture responses both in the positive and the negative: i.e. what did we do well and what do we need to improve upon?

After the player hotwash, a similar process should take place with all exercise staff – controllers, evaluators, and SimCell. I like to not only capture their impressions of if/how objectives were accomplished, but I also like to discuss the conduct of the exercise, again capturing what went well and what needed to be improved upon.

 

Familiarizing Elected Officials with their Emergency Management Programs

Tim Riecker, The Contrarian Emergency Manager Leave a comment

Back in October of 2013, in an article in Emergency Management Magazine, David Silverberg discussed the issue of elected officials rarely being educated about emergencies.  Just last month, David Maack published an article in Emergency Management Magazine about how elected officials can prepare for and respond to emergencies.  Silverberg’s article not only identified the issue, but also pointed out strategies used in some places around the country to help orient elected officials to the world of emergency management. 

The premise of both articles is that this familiarization is obviously lacking, and it’s quite imperative that elected officials are familiar with the concepts of emergency management; the hazards, capabilities, and plans of their jurisdiction; gaps and needed improvements; how to support their emergency manager; and state laws governing emergency management where they are.  I’m a firm believer that elected officials do, in fact, need to support their emergency management programs and their emergency manager.  Not only on a day to day basis, but certainly during a disaster.  The emergency manager is a subject matter expert, and while they take direction from the elected official, the elected official needs to take cues from the emergency manager.  The emergency manager needs to be very clear with their boss about what expectations they have, as well.  Maack’s article includes a great list of steps that emergency managers should reference when giving an orientation to their elected officials.  Obviously it all needs to be put in the proper context for each jurisdiction.

Here in New York State, the regional office of the State’s Office of Emergency Management works with the county/local emergency manager to conduct a Public Officials’ Conference.  These sessions, usually conducted in an evening, are intended to not only familiarize elected and appointed officials of a jurisdiction, but to also communicate what is expected of them and to strengthen the role of the emergency manager as a coordinator and subject matter expert.  While there are some usual content areas in these briefings, such as NIMS, a briefing on the local emergency plan, etc., it is flexible based on the needs identified by the emergency manager.  These sessions, through the years of conducting them, are generally very well received.  One of the most important messages is the flow of emergency management.  People need to know how the system works and who is responsible for what. 

Several years back, when teaching an ICS Basic (I-200) course, one of my participants introduced himself as “the town supervisor – you know, the one who would be the incident commander during an incident”.  I made certain, during the course, to point out that elected officials are generally not the incident commander, rather they are the incident commander’s boss.  I then spent some time pointing out what the roles and responsibilities were of this ‘agency administrator’. 

What thoughts do you have on familiarizing elected officials with emergency management?

Situational Awareness – supporting the CEO’s critical decision-making in a crisis

Tim Riecker, The Contrarian Emergency Manager Leave a comment

Great post on situational awareness with many applications for emergency management.

Dominic Cockram's avatarCrisis Thinking

By Dominic Cockram

Situational awarenessThis blog is the second in a series that looks at the challenges of managing information in a crisis and how to ensure the top team gets the information it needs. The first looked at “Managing the Upward Flow of Information in a Crisis – What Matters Most?” Here managing information to build situational awareness is under the spotlight – how to pull together that cohesive and informative picture that gives the boss just what he needs and no more.

It is a fact that almost all crisis teams find information management one of the greatest challenges in responding to an incident. Why does this matter? It matters because effective information management is the bedrock that allows the critical decision-making by the strategic crisis management team that will lead an organisation out of a crisis.

Unlocking the Challenge of Information Management

The key steps to unlock the…

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Infographic on Organizational Continuity

Tim Riecker, The Contrarian Emergency Manager Leave a comment

Great infographic from Entrepreneur.com!

recoverydiva's avatarRecovery Diva

From Entrepreneur.com — Can Your Organization Survive a Natural Disaster; an Infogram re Business Preparedness for Disasters.  You can browse it online or printed it off as a poster, in 6 pages. Apparently the source is Boston University’s School of Management.

This makes a nice companion to the infographic on business continuitythat I cited last fall.

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