Tag emergency planning

Achieving Coordination Through Unity of Effort

Tim Riecker, The Contrarian Emergency Manager Leave a comment

WESA 90.5, Pittsburgh’s NPR News Station, posted an interesting article titled ‘Trump Rally To Blame for Emergency Response Revamp’.  As the articles tells the story, an internal City committee spent several weeks reviewing communications and other information after an April rally in which three were arrested and four police officers suffered minor injuries.  The findings of the committee’s work included the discovery of fractured planning and response within the City of Pittsburgh.  Assuming this has been a regular practice, I’m surprised it took them this long to discover the issue and begin work to address it – although when a jurisdiction functions in a fractured fashion, it’s an easy observation to miss.

The City’s Public Safety Director stated a new system is being implemented in which a ‘unified and streamlined approach to planning’ and a ‘clearer chain of command’ will be put in place.  The article indicates that the City’s Emergency Management Office will have more of a role in coordination.

It’s good to see that Pittsburgh is making some changes to how they plan for and respond to incidents.  This should serve as a role model for a significant number of jurisdictions across the nation – and I’m sure across the world – which have siloed planning and response, with each agency conducting their own activities with little to no coordination.  Proper and safe emergency management requires a team approach, and every team needs someone to coordinate and lead.  This doesn’t necessarily mean that emergency management is in charge – in fact I feel it’s a rare occasion that emergency management should be in charge – but coordination is still an essential element of success, particularly for complex planning and operations.

The term ‘unity of effort’ is gaining more and more traction through the years.  I first heard it probably ten or twelve years ago.  I was pleased to see the intention of adding the term officially to our lexicon in the draft NIMS Refresh document that was released a couple months back.  Although it was just a mention, it was rather encouraging.  Unity of effort doesn’t require an emergency management office or an emergency manager, but having a central point of coordination helps – especially one that isn’t focused or constrained by the mission and tactics of other public safety agencies.  The mission of emergency management IS coordination!

How do you rate the public safety coordination in your jurisdiction?  Is there room for improvement?  While politics are often at play, sometimes it just takes a good measure of facilitation to bring people together in one room and talk about what needs to be accomplished.

© 2016 – Timothy Riecker, CEDP

Emergency Preparedness Solutions, LLC – Your Partner in Preparedness

2016 National Preparedness Report Released

Tim Riecker, The Contrarian Emergency Manager 3 Comments

The fifth National Preparedness Report has been released by FEMA.  The National Preparedness Report is based upon, as the report states, input of more than 450 data sources and 190 stakeholders, including 66 non-federal organizations (which would account for state preparedness report submissions and information from Urban Area Security Initiative regions).  The report is intended as a summary of where the nation stands in regard to each of the 32 Core Capabilities outlined in the National Preparedness Goal.

As mentioned, this is the fifth National Preparedness Report to hit the streets.  While they have some value and demonstrate that the data collection that is done is actually collated, I feel that through the years they are offering less meat and more potatoes.  I appreciate the highlighting of best practices for each mission area, but, to me, there is a missed opportunity if a report is simply providing data and not recommendations.  While it’s understood that the goal of the National Preparedness Report is not to provide recommendations (it would also take longer to publish the report, and the people pulling the data together do not likely have the expertise to create recommendations), I’d like to see FEMA (and stakeholders) have follow up efforts to provide recommendations in each mission area and not miss this valuable opportunity to then apply the findings and look forward.

Below, I’ve included their overall findings with a bit of my own commentary.  Overall, I will say that there is nothing eye opening in this report for anyone who pays attention.  It’s pretty easy to guess those Core Capabilities which are at the top and those which are at the bottom.

  • Planning; Public Health, Healthcare, and Emergency Medical Services; and Risk and Disaster Resilience Assessment are the three Core Capabilities in which the Nation has developed acceptable levels of performance for critical tasks, but that face performance declines if not maintained and updated to address emerging challenges.
    • My commentary: BULLSHIT.  If these Core Capabilities are at ‘acceptable levels’, then our standards must be pretty low.  Planning is the one that disturbs me most.  We continue to see plenty of poor plans that are not realistic, can’t be operationalized, and are created to meet requirements (which are typically met by formatting and buzzwords).  Have we improved?  Sure.  But I wouldn’t say we are at ‘acceptable levels’.  As for Public Health, Healthcare, and Emergency Medical Services, we are struggling in certain areas to simply keep our heads above water.  While we are fairly solid in some areas of public health, one only needs to look at the Ebola incident to view how fragile our state of readiness is.  The findings for Planning and Public Health, to me, are nothing but shameful pandering and we need to get realistic about where we are at and the challenges we face.  Gold stars won’t stand up to the next disaster.  As for Risk and Disaster Resilience Assessment I have admittedly less experience personally.  I do know that we have some pretty incredible tools available that can help us determine impacts of various hazards for any given area under a variety of conditions, which is an amazing application of technology.  My concerns here are that there are still many who don’t know about these tools, don’t use them, and/or don’t follow the findings of information from these tools in their hazard mitigation actions.
  • Cybersecurity, Economic Recovery, Housing, and Infrastructure Systems remain national areas for improvement. Two additional Core Capabilities – Natural and Cultural Resources, and Supply Chain Integrity and Security – emerged as new national areas for improvement.
    • My commentary: NO KIDDING. While we have made a great deal of progress on Cybersecurity, we are still far behind the criminal element in most respects.  It also needs to be fully recognized in the National Preparedness Goal that Cybersecurity is a Core Capability common to all five mission areas.  Economic Recovery will always be a challenge, as every community impacted by an incident has a certain way it heals, essentially along the lines of Maslow’s Hierarchy.  A strong local economy is important to this healing, ensuring that the community has access to the resources it needs to rebuild and a return to normalcy.  While I’m sure studies have been done, we need to examine more closely how the economic recovery process evolves after a disaster to identify how it can be best supported.  Housing is the absolutely most challenging Core Capability in the National Preparedness Goal.  While I don’t have a solution for this, I do know that our current approaches, philosophies, and ways of thinking haven’t moved us an inch toward the finish line on this one.  We need to change our current way of thinking to be successful.  As for Infrastructure Systems, I could go on for days about this.  I’ve written previously, several times, (as have many others) on the critically fragile state of our infrastructure.  It’s no big secret.
  • States and territories continue to be more prepared to achieve their targets for Response Core Capabilities, while they are least prepared to meet their targets in the Recovery Mission Area.
    • This is another NO KIDDING. While we must always have a greater focus on Response, as that’s where lives are saved and the immediate danger is addressed, we can’t lose sight of Recovery.  Some recovery activities are more clear cut than others, and FEMA often muddies the waters more by inadvertently intimidating state and local governments when it comes to disaster recovery, as the focus becomes centered more on reimbursable activities vs doing what needs to be done.  The report included some interesting findings (take a look in the Recovery Mission Area drop down on the web site) on ‘mixed trends in exercising recovery capabilities’.  Again, this is nothing earth shattering, but it’s nice to see the matter addressed.  Yes, we clearly need to exercise Recovery Mission Area Core Capabilities better and more often.

These reports are always worth looking through, even though much of the information is generally known by those of us in the profession.  There are always little nuggets of learning available, and data from the report may be used to support your own endeavors for additional funding or resources for your own program.

As always, I’m interested in your insights and thoughts on this post and the National Preparedness Report.

© 2016 – Timothy Riecker, CEDP

Emergency Preparedness Solutions, LLC – Your Partner in Preparedness

 

Taking Another Look at Mass Casualty Incidents

Tim Riecker, The Contrarian Emergency Manager 2 Comments

In case you missed it, the NTSB issued their findings and recommendations relative to the derailment of Amtrak 188 in the City of Philadelphia last May, which resulted in the loss of eight lives and injuries to over 200 other passengers.

The NTSB surmised that the engineer was distracted by reports over Amtrak’s radio of a nearby train having rocks thrown at it, which is apparently a common occurrence on a certain stretch of tracks through Philadelphia.  His distraction resulted in him speeding up the train, rather than slowing it prior to heading into a curve.  Taking the curve at high speed led directly to derailment of the train.  It has been pointed out that the presence of an automatic Positive Train Control system, not installed on many trains, would have slowed the train and likely prevented the derailment.  A rail industry union consortium indicated that the presence of two engineers on the train may have also mitigated this incident.

What I found most interesting in the report was that after listing findings and recommendations related to the derailment itself, the NTSB report identified issues beyond the crash.  The report states that

“…as a result of victims being transported to hospitals without coordination, some hospitals were over utilized while others were significantly underutilized during the response to the derailment.  The NTSB further found that that current Philadelphia Police Department, Philadelphia Fire Department, and Philadelphia Office of Emergency Management policies and procedures regarding transportation of patients in a mass casualty incident need to be better coordinated.”

Why is the NTSB providing recommendations on how mass casualty incidents are handled?  These recommendations are, in fact, fully within the scope of their mission statement as they address, ultimately, how victims are cared for.  The NTSB has also brought us best practices that extend beyond crashes, such as Family Assistance Centers.

The recommendations the NTSB provides in this report are spot on.  Mass casualty incidents MUST be coordinated.  Triage, treatment, and transport.  We’ve all heard of these three key activities.  Yes, it’s excruciatingly difficult to not ‘Scoop and Run’ when we encounter an injured victim, but let’s consider a few reasons why we shouldn’t:

  1. Patients with certain injuries, such as those to the cervical spine, are not being stabilized, and could have their injury worsened.
  2. A patient could ‘crash’ from a multitude of causes, which require the resources of an ambulance and paramedic to address, absent being in a hospital.
  3. Scoop and Run violates the concept of triage, which is intended to provide care and transport for the most critically injured first.
  4. The emergency personnel and vehicles involved in Scoop and Run may be otherwise needed at the scene.
  5. Depending on the incident, victims may be contaminated. Scoop and Run can endanger personnel who are not aware of this.
  6. Scoop and Run circumvents patient tracking and accountability, which is important for on-scene operations, liability and insurance, post-incident medical monitoring, and investigation.
  7. Scoop and Run, as the NTSB report pointed out directly, doesn’t account for spreading patients among receiving hospitals, meaning that some patients can end up at hospitals unequipped for their type of injury as well as overcrowding of hospitals.

While the City of Philadelphia did a great job overall, this gave them cause to take another look at their mass casualty plans and procedures; resulting in Philadelphia Office of Emergency Management asking for better coordination of the multiple entities involved in a mass casualty incident.  While this incident provided some great lessons learned for the City of Philadelphia, it also provides lessons learned for all of us.  It’s a good opportunity to convene your mass casualty planning group and give a review of your plan.  Any jurisdiction can be susceptible to a mass casualty incident.

In need of a structured plan review, planning, training, or exercises involving mass casualty incidents?  Emergency Preparedness Solutions can help!  Contact us now!

© 2016 – Timothy Riecker, CEDP

Emergency Preparedness Solutions, LLC – Your Partner in Preparedness!

A Decontamination Game Changer

Tim Riecker, The Contrarian Emergency Manager 13 Comments

Last week, the way we remove chemical contamination from victims of a terror attack or chemical accident has changed… well, not quite yet, but it should soon.  A partnership between the US Department of Health and Human Services’ (HHS) Office of the Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response (ASPR) and the University of Hertfordshire in England and Public Health England found that “…removing clothes removes up to 90 percent of chemical contamination and wiping exposed skin with a paper towel or wipe removes another nine percent of chemical contamination.  After disrobing and wiping with a dry cloth, showering and drying off with a towel or cloth provides additional decontamination, bringing contamination levels down 99.9 percent.”

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Essentially, what they discovered was that despite recommendations for doing so, victims have often not been required to disrobe for decontamination.  When victims would progress through a decontamination (water spray down), much of the chemical they have been exposed to remains in the clothing and trapped against the skin.  Clearly this is not effective.

I see this new methodology being a significant change to how we decontaminate victims.  As the study hypothesizes, decontamination is much more effective when the chemical is wiped from the body after the victim disrobes.  Following this, they may progress then through a water spray.  This, essentially, adds a step to the typical protocols used in North America, Europe, and other locations.  I’m told the wipe methodology has been used in Japan for some time now.  I also believe that wipes have been in use by the US (and other) military forces for units in the field.

Links of interest:

HHS Press Release on the study.

Implementation of new protocols in the UK and other European nations

Many thanks to my colleague Matt for passing this information on to me.

As with any new procedure, the devil is in the details.  Standards must be established and adopted, supplies and equipment must be identified and obtained, personnel must be trained, and exercises must be conducted to validate.

I’m interested to hear opinions on these findings and recommendations, as well as thoughts on implementation in the US and abroad.

© 2016 – Timothy Riecker, CEDP

Emergency Preparedness Solutions, LLC – Your Partner in Preparedness

 

Battling Wild Fires and Perspectives

Tim Riecker, The Contrarian Emergency Manager Leave a comment

Hello readers!  Apologies for my absence over the past couple of weeks.  I’m grateful, especially as a founder and company partner, that we’ve been so busy as of late.  The design, conduct, and evaluation of a couple of great exercises for one client; the design of several impactful training courses for another; along with preparations for two new contracts have had our small business buzzing with activity.  We will be recruiting a lot of people for one of those contracts, so stay posted on the blog (www.triecker.wordpress.com), my LinkedIn profile, and both my personal (@triecker) and our company (@epsllc) Twitter accounts, as well as the company website (www.epsllc.biz) for more info.

Although I’ve not been blogging for the last couple of weeks, I’ve still been keeping up on current events.  The wildfire in Fort McMurray, Alberta, Canada has been consistently one of the biggest stories as the fires still continue to spread, having caused massive devastation to property and the environment, and having displaced around 100,000 people.  Hundreds of vehicles were abandoned during evacuations, either due to mechanical trouble or lack of fuel.  The Canadian Red Cross, partnering with federal and provincial governments, is providing tens of millions of dollars in direct aid to impacted individuals and families.  Thousands of workers are being evacuated from the oil sands area north of the Fort McMurray, stalling more than a million barrels of production each day.  Firefighters, law enforcement, military personnel, and other resources are battling dry conditions, high temperatures, and winds in this massive and constantly shifting fire.  Other provincial and local governments and even citizens are helping to shelter and care for evacuees, many of which have lost much of their property.

One thing I often find interesting is the difference between perspectives, especially between public safety and citizens.  While our focus in public safety is… well… to make sure the public is safe, we always have to keep tabs on perception.  Take the seemingly conflicting reports of these two articles, for example.  The first article, published Thursday May 5, tells the story of residents evacuated from an area who are questioning the organization of response efforts and general preparedness of officials.  One individual tells of no police officers to guide evacuees out of town.  The second article, published on Saturday May 7 tells of military and police overseeing evacuations across the incident.  I believe I read these two articles back to back, causing the dichotomy of the two to really jump out at me.

Truth, of course, likely lies in both articles.  Yes, thousands of public safety and military personnel are involved and doing what they can.  Some evacuation orders, as indicated in the first article, are sudden, based upon rapidly changing factors, giving public safety little time to mobilize to the new area.  There must also be a consideration that evacuation orders may have been issued without proper coordination of resources.  Any of these things are possibilities, especially in the fast moving environment of wild fires.  Still, they provide opportunities for us to learn and improve.  Not knowing the details of what may or may not have transpired, I am always reluctant to speculate.  As with all incidents, events, and exercises, however, once the work is done, we have an excellent opportunity to review and evaluate information in a collaborative manner to identify strengths and areas for improvement.  Organizing these notes creates a corrective action plan, the implementation of which will, over time, make us better at what we do.

© 2016 – Timothy Riecker

Training EOC First-Timers

Tim Riecker, The Contrarian Emergency Manager 2 Comments

If you’ve worked in an EOC, you’ve certainly seen it.  The deer-in-the-headlights stare of an EOC first-timer.  There is so much to take in and a lot going on.  A room full of work stations with people typing, people on the phone, and others talking to each other.  While all these people might be wearing vests or name badges, some are in a shirt and tie, some lost the tie hours ago, some in a polo shirt, and others are in uniforms.  Walls are covered in screens, some showing the news, some weather, and some with a list of information on shelters or road closures.  Where do I sit?  What do I do?  How do I dial an outside line???

Remember, though, we were all once that first-timer, too.

Lucien Canton, one of the most prolific consultants and bloggers in the field of emergency management, just posted a great article in his regular newsletter titled ‘Just in Time Training: Tips for Orienting EOC Newcomers.’.  In it, he lists some great ideas on how we can better prepare for these inevitable first-timers and help ensure they become productive members of the EOC team quickly.  Check it out.  Oh, and if you aren’t subscribed to his newsletter (you should be!), info can be found here.

– TR

DOT Releases New Emergency Response Guidebook

Tim Riecker, The Contrarian Emergency Manager Leave a comment

PHMSA 05-16
Tuesday, April 26, 2016
Contact:  Artealia Gilliard
Tel.: 202-366-4831

DOT Releases New Emergency Response Guidebook

2016 ERG Cover

More Than 1.5 Million Free Copies to First Responders Nationwide

WASHINGTON – The U.S. Department of Transportation’s (USDOT) Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA) today released the 2016 Emergency Response Guidebook (ERG2016), providing first responders with an updated go-to manual to help respond to hazardous materials transportation accidents during the critical first minutes.

PHMSA will distribute more than 1.5 million free copies of the guidebook to firefighters, emergency medical technicians and law enforcement officers across the nation.  Emergency first responders will use the ERG2016 to identify specific risks associated with compromised hazardous materials, and the recommended safety measures and procedures they should take to protect themselves and contain the incident as quickly as possible.

“We take the safety of this nation and its emergency responders very seriously,” said U.S. Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx. “Our goal is to make sure that these first responders have the most current and accurate safety guidelines possible for use during that initial phase of a hazmat incident.”

The ERG contains an indexed list of dangerous goods and the associated 4-digit United Nations identification numbers. The ERG also identifies the general hazards those dangerous goods pose and  recommends safety precautions in remediating a hazmat incident. For example, if emergency first responders arrive at the scene of an overturned tractor trailer displaying a USDOT hazardous material placard, they would use the guidebook to identify the material associated with the placard and how best to respond.

“The ERG is an invaluable tool during the initial stages of any hazmat transportation emergency. Taking the proper action during those critical first minutes impacts the safety of both the first responders and the people they serve,” said PHMSA Administrator Marie Therese Dominguez.

The 2016 version of the ERG includes general revisions, expanded sections and added guide pages for absorbed gases. Updated every four years as a collaborative effort of the USDOT, Transport Canada and Mexico’s Secretariat of Transport and Communications, the ERG2016 is available free to public safety agencies in all states, territories and Native American Tribes through designated state emergency management coordinators’ offices.

PHMSA has also partnered with the National Library of Medicine (NLM) to provide a free Smartphone version of the ERG2016.  NLM also develops and distributes the Wireless Information System for Emergency Responders. The mobile application will be available this spring.

A copy of the new ERG2016 is posted online at: http://phmsa.dot.gov/hazmat/outreach-training/erg.  Print copies of ERG2016 are available for sale to the general public through the U.S. Government Printing Office Bookstore athttp://bookstore.gpo.gov and other commercial suppliers.

The mission of the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration is to protect people and the environment by advancing the safe transportation of energy and other hazardous materials that are essential to our daily lives.  PHMSA develops and enforces regulations for the safe operation of the nation’s 2.6 million mile pipeline transportation system and the nearly 1 million daily shipments of hazardous materials by land, sea, and air. Please visit http://phmsa.dot.gov or https://twitter.com/PHMSA_DOT for more information.

Exercising the Recovery Mission Area

Tim Riecker, The Contrarian Emergency Manager 2 Comments

It doesn’t happen often, but when it does, I get pretty excited about it – I got a blog request!  Last week, Darin, a LinkedIn connection, messaged me with a request to post my thoughts on exercising the recovery phase (or mission area) of emergency management.  His idea, as he expressed it to me, came from discussion at a Public Health Preparedness conference he was attending, where they were discussing ESF 8 (Public Health and Medical Services) continuity of operations and recovery exercises.  Challenge accepted!

When it comes to Recovery exercises, my first thought is that they are horribly underutilized.  We conduct a lot of exercises in the Response mission area, but it’s a rare occasion that we even mention Recovery.  The reasoning here is pretty easy – Response is sexy.  It’s the lights and sirens, saving lives, put out the fire, pull people from the wreckage kind of stuff that makes a big impact.  Recovery is often viewed as slow, tedious, bureaucratic, engineering kind of stuff.  Well… yeah… but there is a lot more to it.  Since when we plan exercises, one of the first things we do is to identify what Core Capabilities will be tested, let’s look at the Core Capabilities of the Recovery Mission Area.  Within each, I’ll mention some ideas you can incorporate into exercises.

The Big Three – Planning, Operational Coordination, and Public Information and Warning.  These Core Capabilities are found in every mission area and are sometimes applied differently.

  • Planning – Yeah, we should have recovery plans. I would argue that we have entered the recovery phase when all or most of the first two incident management priorities have been addressed – Life Safety and Incident Stabilization.  Sometimes these are resolved quickly, sometimes they take some time.  There are some fairly complex issues to be addressed in the recovery phase (many of which we will identify through the Core Capabilities), and we don’t do them often, therefore we should most certainly plan for them.  Remember, we exercise plans and capabilities – therefore our plans (and policies and procedures) are a significant focus when it comes to Recovery exercises.    This Core Capability is where continuity of operations plans will also fall.  Can your organization survive the lasting impacts of a disaster?
  • Operational Coordination – Recovery activities often involve organizations that had little to no activity during the Response phase. Most of these organizations are non-traditional responders who don’t usually operate under more strict command and control models, such as ICS, but in the Recovery phase of a disaster, I certainly advocate that they do.  Many of these agencies, typically the human services types of organizations, are very good at coordination and cooperation, as their daily priorities dictate that working with others is how needs are addressed.  The big challenge we often see here, though, is the introduction of some other organizations – typically those with regulatory responsibilities.  Regulation usually requires bureaucracy.  Bureaucracy usually requires time – lots of time – especially when exceptions are requested.  It’s really important to consider all stakeholders when planning an exercise to ensure that you get a chance to see how they interact, what the information flow and chain of authority looks like, what benefits they bring, and how they can work together in a timely fashion for the common good.
  • Public Information and Warning – We often take for granted the role of public information and warning in the Recovery phase. There are many benefits to keeping external stakeholders informed of what’s going on during Recovery.  Consider elected officials, business and industry, and special interest groups, along with the general public.  Your PIO and possibly your JIC should be just as involved in Recovery phase exercises as they are in those for the Response phase.

Aside from the ‘big three’, the Recovery mission area shares a Core Capability with the Response mission area – Infrastructure Systems.  Long-term restoration and rebuilding of infrastructure can lead to lengthy discussions in a Recovery-focused workshop or tabletop exercise.  What are the priorities for rebuilding?  Who will do it?  How will it be funded?  What are the completion timelines?  Will it be rebuilt the same or differently?  What are the impacts of doing it differently?  Who is impacted by this?  What do we do while we are waiting for it to be rebuilt?  Who makes decisions?  All important things to consider.

The first unique Core Capability in the Recovery mission area is Economic Recovery.  I was recently asked to present at a conference for a niche professional association comprised of professionals found in government, private sector, and non-profits.  While we will be covering topics in Hazard Mitigation and Preparedness, the biggest focus will fall within Economic Recovery.  Economic Recovery involves businesses reopening and people getting back to work to serve customers, make money, and become customers themselves.  After a disaster, it is absolutely vital for a community to get back on its feet, and the center of that is the local economy.  While many disaster impacts may be a relative drop in the bucket for larger companies, smaller businesses may have a hard time recovering – the central pieces of this are infrastructure restoration (see previous paragraph) and cash flow.  The SBA, USDA, and even IRS have mechanisms to assist with cash flow issues.  And don’t forget insurance!  Bring these and other stakeholders to the table to discuss economic recovery.  Consider priorities and mechanisms that must be in place to meet needs to support these priorities.  Your local chamber of commerce and other business associations will certainly want to be part of these exercises.  Does your jurisdiction have a business operations center (BOC)?  If not, consider it.  If you do, exercise it!

Health and Social Services.  This is the heart of all matters related to ESF 8 (Public Health and Medical Services), which Darin mentioned.  While this Core Capability is an extension of the Response mission area Core Capability of Public Health, Healthcare, and Emergency Medical Services; it is also so much more.  ESF 8 activity after disasters can last months or even years, particularly with ongoing issues such as medical monitoring and psychological impacts.  Eventually many of these services are absorbed into the system of regular service providers, but for a time the circumstances of the disaster may require some special coordination or monitoring.  The coordination needed involves an amalgamation of organizations at all levels of government, not for profits, and the private sector.  This can involve ongoing coordination with insurance companies, general practitioners and specialists; and must address the needs of everyone fairly and consistently, regardless of any differences, including their own financial resources or insurance coverage.  Tracking data related to the care and services provided is often important, but consideration must be given to HIPAA and other privacy laws.  Exercises can benefit from scenarios, such as exposures to radiological, biological, or chemical sources, which will drive discussion on the types of services to be provided, who will provide them, at whose cost, and for how long.  Many of these discussions should include topics of how to avoid social stigmatization of clients, sharing information between organizations, and the full range of social services that individuals and families may require.

Housing is typically the hardest nut to crack in all of disaster recovery.  Relative to need, there is little government owned housing stock available.  What is available may require waiting lists and relocation to access.  While many home owners are insured, we know that it takes some time for home owners to receive payment from insurance companies, and insurance is rarely at 100% coverage for losses.  Those that don’t own their own homes are often the left with the most dire situations.  While ‘FEMA trailers’ have provided some medium-term solutions, there are many issues to address.  I posit that plans at all levels are inadequate to address housing needs after a disaster.  If you have a plan, get a good exercise team to write a great scenario to test it.  If you don’t have a plan, conducting a workshop to identify and address major planning issues is the way to go.  A housing exercise is probably going to be one of the more eye opening yet depressing exercises you’ve ever done.

Lastly is the Core Capability of Natural and Cultural Resources, which focuses on the recovery of libraries and museums, documents and art, as well as helping to restore our own environment after a disaster.  Activities can range from restoring a historical landmark to major engineering projects to restore a wetland.  These activities can involve a great deal of technical expertise as well as regulation.  FEMA, the EPA, and the National Parks Service are often big players in these types of activities.

As for what types of exercises to conduct, that’s largely dependent upon the status of your plans and if you have conducted exercises on these plans before.  I always suggest starting with discussion-based exercises.  We often forget about seminars, which are more about conveying information than obtaining feedback, but are still valuable for discussing initiatives and new plans.  Workshops not only support the planning process to develop plans, they can also serve to facilitate a detailed review of a plan in its final draft stages.  Most Recovery exercises I have experience with have been tabletop exercises, which use a scenario to provide context to discussion questions for a group of stakeholders.  This is a great way to exercise decision making and to talk through the key tasks associated with plans.  Disaster recovery involves a lot of policy-level decision making, which is ideal for a tabletop.

Operations-based exercises for disaster recovery are found much less often.  Drills can certainly be conducted to test focused aspects of plans and procedures.  Drills in Recovery can help identify strengths and weaknesses of our processes, both for ourselves and for those we are trying to serve.  Functional exercises are broader and more encompassing than drills.  Much can be gained from a Recovery mission area functional exercise, but make sure that it’s grounded in reality.  Most jurisdictions don’t have an EOC activated for Recovery mission area activities. If you don’t, don’t try to run an exercise within that environment.  Some functions, however, may be run, at least for a time, from some sort of operations/coordination center, such as a health operations center (HOC).  With a good scenario focusing on addressing longer-term issues in the aftermath of a response, they can be done successfully.  Be sure to develop a pretty solid ‘ground truth’, however, to support the exercise, as much of Recovery is dependent upon what was done in Response, so players will need this context.  With a bit more complication, a functional exercise could be run virtually, with people participating from their own regular work stations as they often do during Recovery operations.  Testing Recovery plans in full scale exercises is significantly challenging based on the array and type of activities.  Because of the focus of activities, continuity of operations plans are likely among the most suited for full scale Recovery mission area exercises.

I’m curious to hear about your experiences exercising Recovery mission area plans and capabilities.  What ideas do you have?  What best practices have you found?

As always, thanks for reading!

© 2016 – Timothy Riecker, CEDP

Emergency Preparedness Solutions, LLC – Your Partner in Preparedness!

Course Review – RDPC Isolation and Quarantine

Tim Riecker, The Contrarian Emergency Manager Leave a comment

IQLast week I had the opportunity to take two courses sponsored by the Rural Domestic Preparedness Consortium (RDPC), MGT 433: Isolation and Quarantine for Rural Communities and PER 308: Rural Isolation and Quarantine for Public Health and Healthcare Professionals.  These courses together were completed in one day.

First came MGT 433.  This course covered a variety of topics associated with isolation and quarantine, including:

  • Case studies
  • Legal and ethical issues
  • Agencies and entities involved
  • Planning priorities
  • Resources

While the course is intended for rural audiences, which my home area generally is, the issues and considerations associated with isolation and quarantine are still largely the same for more densely populated areas.  While weaving through the various course topics, they mostly all related back to understanding the reasoning behind the use of isolation and/or quarantine as tools to limit the spread of certain communicable diseases and the planning and implementation associated with these activities.  The course did elevate my rather foundational knowledge of isolation and quarantine, and provided some great references for future application.

The second course, PER 308, didn’t really provide much more information than the previous course did, although it allowed an opportunity for a greater degree of analysis and discussion through a guided tabletop exercise.  The tabletop information from the participant manual was supplemented with several video segments which were produced with reasonable quality and help set the stage for many of the issues one would expect from dealing with an isolation/quarantine event.

Both courses were pretty solid, with only a few little tweaks or updates which I provided feedback on to the instructor.  As with most RDPC courses, those from larger agencies and more populated areas shouldn’t be dissuaded from participating – the foundational concepts they present are applicable to any area, rural or otherwise.

The instructor was very personable, professional, and knowledgeable of the course content.  While he didn’t have a public health background, which surprised me given the course topics, he clearly has a great cooperative public safety background.  I’ve found that the RDPC tends to prefer sending only one instructor to teach a course, along with an assistant to handle administrative matters.  While it’s certainly viable to handle the course alone, it’s challenging for both the instructor and the audience.

All in all, these are good courses, and I do recommend you keep a look out for them in your area.  Both courses are excellent for furthering your understanding of isolation and quarantine, when to use them, how to use them, and who to involve.  They are particularly good courses for public safety leadership and public health leadership and preparedness staff.

© 2016 – Timothy Riecker, CEDP

Emergency Preparedness Solutions, LLC – Your Partner in Preparedness

“No Battle Plan Survives Contact With the Enemy”

Tim Riecker, The Contrarian Emergency Manager 2 Comments

This quote is credited to a German military strategist named Helmuth von Moltke, who served in several wars in the mid-1800s.  He had a certain theory of war, understanding that several strategies must be identified in planning, as it is difficult to ascertain exactly what will happen after first contact with the enemy.  What can we in emergency management learn from this?

First off, we should all recognize that it’s a rare occasion that anything goes according to plan.  That is a reality which we must identify as a foundation of our planning efforts.  These realities are part of our planning assumptions.  In essence, we simply don’t know exactly what will happen, when it will happen, where it will happen, or what the impacts will be.  We also can never be completely certain about the resources we will have available to us to respond.

Based on these planning assumptions, we should not count on our plans working from the moment an incident occurs.  Very simply, there is always some catch up that we need to account for.  Most importantly, we need to gain situational awareness to determine the scope and magnitude of the incident.  Once we have a reasonable degree of situational awareness (often we never know everything we would like to), we can start making decisions as to how we will respond.  These decisions should be guided by our plans.

Our initial response – what we do when we first run in approach, assess, and begin our initial life saving measures – may not have a solid plan, but the foundation of it does follow a certain algorithm.  Many disciplines, especially the traditional first response ones, often underscore the importance of a scene size up.  While this varies a bit based on our respective disciplines and the nature of the incident, the common themes involve seeking answers to the usual questions – who, what, where, when, why, and how.  As we begin to gain answers and process this information, we request and assign resources.  Our initial response is often unorganized.  We don’t know all there is to know about the incident.  We don’t have all of our resources readily available.  Mentally we are overwhelmed with information, trying to process everything quickly.  Eventually, though, we should begin to transition into our planned response, bringing order to the chaos.

While emergency and incident management isn’t war, there are certainly a number of parallels that can be drawn.  While von Moltke’s statement is often cited in our profession, devaluing the plans we create, I think the perspective of those who cite it is wrong.  We should not intend for our plans to be implemented immediately upon occurrence of an incident.  Rather than sticking a square peg into a round hole by trying to immediately apply our plans, our initial response should deliberately guide us to our planned response.

One of the chief elements of our plans is our organization – the incident command system (ICS) or incident management system (IMS).  Our ability to properly implement our plans is predicated on our ability to manage.  In a complex incident, one person cannot handle all the elements and tasks.  Delegation is necessary and ICS/IMS is the organizational model we should be following.  It is through our incident management organization that we manage resources, hopefully in accordance with a plan, which helps us to manage the incident.  The transition to managing the incident instead of responding to the incident can be a difficult one to make, especially for those not experienced with larger incidents.  Much time can be wasted resisting or struggling through this transition.  The transition, however, is a conscious and deliberate effort.  It won’t happen automatically.  It must be managed.

I’ve referenced in previous blog posts Cynthia Renaud’s paper “The Missing Piece of NIMS: Teaching Incident Commanders How to Function on the Edge of Chaos’.  Much of what I’m talking about in terms of managing our ICS/IMS through the transition of initial response into our planned response has also been cited by Chief Renaud.  The bottom line is that we can do better in our core ICS/IMS training to aid our incident managers in making this happen.  Much ICS training seems to have dropped the essential concept of scene size up/assessment, or simply glosses over it.  How can you make decisions about how to manage the incident if you don’t know what’s going on?  It’s also a rare occasion that ICS training has much mention of the planned response.  The focus is on incident action planning, which is certainly needed to guide us through tactical application, but courses often fail to indicate the indispensable reference of emergency plans when identifying objectives and strategies.  This is a clear disconnect in our preparedness efforts and must be fixed.  We can do better.

If you haven’t yet heard of my crusade to improve our current state of ICS training, there are a number of articles I would direct you toward.  Check them out here.

Of course I’m always happy to hear what you think – comments are welcome!

© 2016 – Timothy Riecker, CEDP

Emergency Preparedness Solutions, LLC – Your Partner in Preparedness!