Tag emergency preparedness

Emergency Management and Public Safety Should Prepare Like a Sports Team

Tim Riecker, The Contrarian Emergency Manager Leave a comment

When and how did a once-annual exercise become the standard for preparedness?  I suppose that’s fine for a whole plan, but most plans can be carved into logical components that can be not only exercised to various degrees, but training can also be provided to support and compliment each of those components.  There are a lot of elements and activities associated with preparedness.  Consider how sports teams prepare. They are in a constant yet dynamic state of readiness.

Sports teams will review footage of their opponents playing as well as their own games.  We can equate those to reviews of after-action reports, not only of their own performance, but also of others – and with high frequency.  How well does your organization do with this quiz?

  • Do you develop after action reports from incidents, events, and exercises?
  • Are they reviewed with all staff and stakeholders or just key individuals?
  • Are they reviewed more than once or simply archived?
  • Are improvements tracked and reviewed with staff and stakeholders?
  • Do your staff and stakeholders review after action reports from other incidents around the nation?

Planning is obviously important – it’s the cornerstone of preparedness.  Coaches look at standards of practice in the sport, best practices, and maybe come up with their own innovations.  They examine the capabilities of their players and balance those with the capabilities of the opposing team.  They have a standard play book (plan), but that may be modified based upon the specific opponent they are facing.  Their plans are constantly revisited based upon the results of practices, drills, and games.  Plans let everyone know what their role is.

  • Do your plans consider the capabilities of your organization or jurisdiction?
  • Do they truly include the activities needed to address all hazards?
  • Are your plans examined and updated based upon after action reports from incidents, events, and exercises?
  • Are your plans flexible enough for leadership to call an audible and deviate from the plan if needed?
  • Is your organization agile enough to adapt to changes in plans and audibles? How are ad-hoc changes communicated?

Training is a tool for communicating the plan and specific roles, as well as giving people the knowledge and skills needed to execute those roles with precision.  Sports players study their playbooks.  They may spend time in a classroom environment being trained by coaches on the essential components of plays.  Training needs are identified not only from the playbook, but also from after action reviews.

  • Is your training needs-based?
  • How do you train staff and stakeholders to the plan?
  • What training do you provide to help people staffing each key role to improve their performance?

Lastly, exercises are essential.  In sports there are drills and practices.  Drills are used to hone key skill sets (passing, catching, hitting, and shooting) while practices put those skill sets together.  The frequency of drills and practices for sports teams is astounding.  They recognize that guided repetition builds familiarity with plans and hones the skills they learned.  How well do you think a sports team would perform if they only exercised once a year?  So why do you?

  • What are the essential skill sets your staff and stakeholders should be honing?
  • What is your frequency of exercises?
  • Do your exercises build on each other?

I also want to throw in a nod to communication.  Even if you aren’t a sports fan, go attend a local game.  It could be anything… hockey, baseball, soccer, basketball, football… whatever.  It doesn’t necessarily have to be pro.  Varsity, college, or semi-pro would certainly suffice.  Even if you don’t stay for the whole game, there is a lot you can pick up.  Focus on the communication between and amongst players and coaches.  Depending on where you are sitting, you might not be able to hear or understand what they are saying, but what you will notice is constant communication.  Before plays, between plays, and during plays.  Sometimes that communication isn’t just verbal – it might be the tapping of a hockey stick on the ice, clapping of hands, finger pointing, or a hand wave or other silent signal.  Coaches are constantly talking to each other on the bench and with players, giving direction and encouragement.  There is a lot going on… strategy, tactics, offense, defense.  What lessons can you apply to your organization?

Lastly, accomplishments should be celebrated.  In public safety, we tend to ignore a lot of best practices not only of sports teams, but also in general employee relations.  Because of the nature of emergency management and other public safety endeavors, it’s easy to excuse getting stuck in the same rut… we get ready for the next incident, we respond to that incident, and we barely have time to clean up from that incident before the next one comes.  Take a moment to breathe and to celebrate accomplishments.  It’s not only people that need it, but also organizations as a whole.

What lessons can you apply from sports teams to your organization?

© 2019 – Timothy Riecker, CEDP

Emergency Preparedness Solutions, LLC℠

More Podcasts for Emergency Managers

Tim Riecker, The Contrarian Emergency Manager 2 Comments

It was a few years ago that I started listening to the Dukes of Hazards podcast and have enjoyed it ever since.  (I wrote about their show here).  Since then, I’ve sampled a variety of other EM-relevant podcasts, some appealing to me and others not.  Here’s who I’ve been listening to lately, along with their iTunes links:

Disaster Politics Podcast

Hosted by Jeff Schlegelmilch, this podcast centers on some great guests and panels, discussing all manner of emergency management policy, politics, regulation, and legislation.  Jeff arranges some really great and insightful discussions that are relevant to current application across a wide range of emergency management.

EM Weekly’s Podcast

This podcast is hosted by Todd DeVoe, bringing in guests to discuss current topics in emergency management.  There is a lot of relevant discussion on programs that are thought provoking and scalable, examining both big-picture issues as well as community-level solutions.

The Spear

The Spear is a podcast from the Modern War Institute at West Point.  While not usually directly relevant to emergency management topics (though there are a couple of great episodes covering the 9/11 attacks on the Pentagon and WTC), these are inspiring stories of people in combat that often underscore leadership, initiative, and the value of preparedness, sometimes even reflecting on how lessons learned have been applied afterwards.

The Security Studies Podcast

This podcast is produced by the Georgetown University Security Studies Program.  They cover a lot of topics related to domestic and international security, including terrorist groups and activities, critical infrastructure security, and more.  Some really great interviews and topics.

How I Built This

This NPR produced podcast has nothing at all to directly do with emergency management, but what it does have is inspiring stories of determination, improvisation, and innovation from people who built their own companies – many of which you are familiar with.  There are a lot of takeaways for emergency managers in these shows… not necessarily on starting your own business, but on the resolve and creativity we need to show more of in our own profession.  Lots of inspiration to be found here.

 

I hope you take some time to sample my recommendations, and of course, if you like them, be sure to follow them on social media, subscribe to their podcast feeds, and leave them reviews.  As a podcaster myself, I can attest to how important these things are!

What podcasts do you listen to?

In terms of a bit of self-promotion for my blog, if you like what you are reading, please be sure to share it with others.  Re-blog, re-tweet, re-post, etc.  I always appreciate comments and feedback, either on the WordPress site, LinkedIn, or Twitter.  Thanks very much and have a great new year!

 

© 2019 – Timothy Riecker, CEDP

Emergency Preparedness Solutions, LLC

The National Strategy for Countering Weapons of Mass Destruction Terrorism

Tim Riecker, The Contrarian Emergency Manager Leave a comment

Earlier this month, the White House released a short document titled The National Strategy for Countering Weapons of Mass Destruction Terrorism.  This is a document I’m not sure we needed, and certainly does not meet the expectations of a national strategy document.  While it does outline eight distinct ‘lines of effort’ (objectives), which identify the priorities of this overall strategy, it provides no new approaches and very little substance, even for a national strategy document.

Those Lines of Effort are:

  • Deny terrorists access to dangers materials, agents, and equipment
  • Detect and defeat terrorist WMD plots
  • Degrade terrorist WMD technical capabilities
  • Deter support for WMD terrorism
  • Globalize the counter-WMD fight
  • Strengthen America’s national defenses against WMD terrorism
  • Enhance state, local, tribal, and territorial preparedness against WMD terrorism
  • Avoid technological surprise

The lines of effort are solid and practical, but are activities which are already taking place and are generally proven best practices.  Though most of the descriptions for each of the lines of effort are a page or less, making the whole document read more like an executive summary.  Most strategic plans usually identify some key activities (strategies) associated with each objective, which in this document are uninspiring and buried in narrative.  As mentioned previous, there are also no new information or novel approaches in this document.  It seems like it was prepared by an intern who was directed to synthesize some background information for a meeting.  A well-developed strategy is something that can be referenced in future related activities, but this document is so unremarkable, it really doesn’t seem to matter much.  Had direction been given to the National Security Council or the Department of Homeland Security, I’m confident that their subject matter experts could have developed a document that is much more meaningful.  This document was a swing and a miss, providing us with nothing new or tangible in our efforts to counter WMD.

What are your thoughts?

© 2018 – Timothy Riecker, CEDP

Emergency Preparedness Solutions, LLC

EOC Training is Coming from FEMA

Tim Riecker, The Contrarian Emergency Manager Leave a comment

Last week I posted an article espousing the lack of emergency operations center (EOC) content in the most recently updated ICS-100 course.  In response to this article, I heard from someone at FEMA’s Emergency Management Institute (EMI) letting me know about two courses which are currently in development, focusing on EOCs.  The first is IS-2200: Basic EOC Functions.  This is being designed as a four-hour online course.  The second is E/L/G-2300: Intermediate EOC Functions.  This course is being designed for a three-day long classroom delivery.  These courses are both expected to release in the spring of 2019.

For those who aren’t familiar with FEMA’s course codes…

IS: Independent Study (web-based delivery)

E: In-resident course, typically delivered at EMI

L: A course delivered on-location by FEMA personnel anywhere around the nation

G: State-delivered courses

Personally, I’m thrilled to get definitive word that courses are being developed and that we have a timeframe for deployment.  I’m a big proponent of the roles EOCs can play in incident management, yet so much of the training conducted for EOC personnel for so many years has been ad-hoc at best.  Hopefully this will further move us toward standardization and common implementation of best practices.

© 2018 – Timothy Riecker, CEDP

Emergency Preparedness Solutions, LLC

Incident Management vs Incident Command

Tim Riecker, The Contrarian Emergency Manager Leave a comment

As I was writing my thoughts on the updated ICS-100 course in my previous post, I got to thinking that it may be prudent to reinforce the difference between incident management and the incident command system (ICS).  ICS is a specific application of incident management, while incident management is, in all, much broader than ICS.  Incident management includes field responses, emergency operations centers (EOCs), activities of secondary and tertiary organizations, funding streams, public information, and even the mechanics of politics focused on that disaster response.  Ideally, we would prefer these to all be orchestrated, such that they operate lock-step, but rarely, if ever, do we see such a thing.  It would be as if a chorus, band, orchestra, stage performers, ushers, concessioners, stage hands, lighting and sound operators, and custodial staff were all working on the same performance and conducted by one person.  They don’t.  It just doesn’t happen that way.  That’s why incident management systems, such as ICS, were developed.

Knowledge and application of systems, like ICS, are certainly important.  The beginning of every ICS class tells you why, so I don’t need to get into that here.  But to continue with my oft criticized analogies, if ICS is the trees, incident management is the forest.  And, as it turns out, many people can’t see the forest for the trees.  While ICS may be concerned with putting out the fire, stopping the bleeding, or catching the proverbial bad guy, incident management is about so much more.  Even doctrinally, consider that the National Incident Management System (NIMS), comprised of key elements, such as resource management, command and coordination (this is the ICS piece, and more), and communications and information management.  We also need to consider incident management beyond these, in as broad a scope as possible.

Incident management is a deliberate series of actions taken to solve problems associated with incidents and disasters.  There are a lot of problems that can be caused, directly or indirectly, by whatever issue we are dealing with, be it flood, fire, or hostile event.  Incident management needs to prioritize these problems and take action to address them.  While it may sound like our incident command system structures do the same type of thing, they are often concerned with immediate effects and actions that save lives and stabilize the incident, as they should be.  But that focus, necessarily, is narrow in scope and doesn’t address all the ancillary and important issues that an incident may cause.

Consider FEMA’s Emergency Support Function (ESF) structure and the matters they address.  Here are a few:

  • Transportation
  • Communications
  • Public Works and Engineering
  • Mass Care, Emergency Assistance, Housing, and Human Services
  • Public Health and Medical Services
  • Agricultural and Natural Resources
  • Energy
  • External Affairs

Do your plans address these issues?  And by plans, I mean real, actionable plans.  Many jurisdictions have functional annexes to their plans, most following the federal ESF structure, which do little more than state what agencies participate in each of the jurisdiction’s ESFs and what their primary goals are.  Let’s be honest… these are aren’t plans.  They are fully inadequate to be plans.  These are prose I might use for the introduction of a plan, but certainly not the substance of the plan itself.  This is exactly why we are missing the mark when it comes to incident management.  We talk a lot about ICS, ICS is in our plans, we train people in ICS (though not as good as we should be), emphasize ICS in exercises, and focus on ICS when an incident occurs, but how much attention is given to broader incident management?  Typically far too little.  I’ve actually had conversations with local public safety officials, asking them how well they feel they are prepared for the next disaster, and they responded that they are fine because they are trained in ICS.  I’ve received this response in more than one jurisdiction.  That’s pretty scary, especially given the lackluster condition of their plans.

Can ICS be applied to broader incident management issues?  It sure can.  It’s simply a management system that can be applied to anything you want.  But the problem is that people conceptualize ICS as something to only use ‘in the field’ and during the more urgent initial period of response.

The take-away from this is that we need to identify what our issues are and how we are going to manage them.  These are essential parts of the planning process.  Write good plans.  Invest time, effort, and likely some money into it.  Do you need to use the ESF structure?  No, but certainly make sure that all concerns are addressed.  Think about the cascading impacts of an incident.  Leverage stakeholders from across the community to ensure that you are getting input from multiple perspectives and interests.  Doing so will help you be better prepared to manage the entirety of the incident.

As always, thoughts are appreciated.

© 2018 – Timothy Riecker, CEDP

Emergency Preparedness Solutions, LLC

Updated IS-100 Course: Missing the Target

Tim Riecker, The Contrarian Emergency Manager 1 Comment

Earlier this week, FEMA’s Emergency Management Institute (EMI) released course materials, including student manual, handouts, instructor guide, and visuals, for the updated IS-100/ICS-100: An Introduction to the Incident Command System.  Note that this update (IS-100.c) has been available online since the summer.  The release of materials, however, included no errata, so absent comparing the previous version to this, I can’t speak specifically to what the changes include, though I’m aware from their release of the online course several months ago that there were adjustments to account for some of the revised content of the third edition of the NIMS doctrine, released in October of last year.

Those familiar with my running commentary for the past few years of ‘ICS Training Sucks’ are aware that much of my wrath was focused on the ICS-300 and ICS-400 courses.  That said, with the release of the third edition of NIMS (my review of the document can be found here), there were some needed additions to incident management fundamentals and my realization that the ICS-100 and ICS-200 courses are ignoring a significant population of professionals in their content.  While ICS itself was largely built for field personnel working within a command (vice coordination) structure, over the years, the prevalence of various forms and types of emergency operations centers (EOCs) has grown significantly.  One of the biggest additions in the most recent version of the NIMS document was, in fact, the inclusion of much more meaningful content on EOCs and their potential organizational models.  While still a minority compared to first responders, there is a significant audience of people taking ICS-100 because of their assignment to a local, county, state, or organizational EOC.  Yet, the ICS-100 materials have scantly more than ONE SLIDE talking about EOCs.

Yes, we do have courses such as the ICS/EOC Interface course and others that dive deeper into EOC operations and how they coordinate with each other and with command structures, but the introduction to all of this is often the ICS-100 course, which all but ignores EOCs and the audiences who primarily serve in them.  In fact, there are many jurisdictions that require EOC personnel to have ICS training (smartly), which starts with the ICS-100 course (why?  Because it’s the best/only thing generally available to them), but I’m sure many people taking the course are a bit confused, as it doesn’t speak at all to their role.  While I feel that ICS training for EOC personnel is important, an introductory course like this should include a bit more on EOCs.

As with my original writing on ICS Training Sucks, I bring this back to the fundamentals of instructional design, which is focused on the AUDIENCE and what THEY NEED TO LEARN.  It’s evident that these fundamentals are being ignored in favor of a quick update, which might change some content but does not improve quality.  Let’s actually look at who are audience groups are and either incorporate them all into the course, or develop another course and curriculum to meet their specific needs (aka EOC-100).  Otherwise, they are simply ignoring the fact that what is currently available is like fitting a square peg into a round hole.  Sure it fills a lot of space, but there are also some significant gaps.

While a number of jurisdictions have identified this need and developed their own EOC training, there are a lot of standards and fundamentals that could be addressed by FEMA in a national curriculum.  This is certainly a missed opportunity, and one that makes many of our responses less than what they should be.

© 2018 – Timothy Riecker, CEDP

Emergency Preparedness Solutions, LLC

CDC Releases New Public Health Emergency Preparedness and Response Capabilities

Tim Riecker, The Contrarian Emergency Manager Leave a comment

The CDC recently released its updated Public Health Emergency Preparedness and Response Capabilities.  While this is certainly important for public health preparedness personnel, these are something that most emergency management professionals should also be aware of.  Public Health is an incredibly integral partner in emergency management and homeland security.  Last year I did a review of the new HHS ASPR Health Care Preparedness and Response Capabilities and also included the previous version of the CDC Public Health capabilities in my discussion.

The new CDC standards, at a glance, are the same as the previous version.  All 15 capabilities have been continued.  Upon closer examination, there has certainly been some refinement across these capabilities, including some adjustments in the functions, or primary activities, associated with each capability; as well as a better look at preparedness measures for each.  As with the previous version, they front load some guidance on integrating the capabilities into preparedness and response activities.

For those keeping track from the previous version, each capability narrative includes a summary of changes which were adopted from lessons learned over the past several years.  Similar to the previous version, each capability is broken into functions and tasks, with suggested performance measures.  For those of you who remember the old Target Capabilities List and Universal Task List, it’s a similar, although more utilitarian, concept.

So what do emergency managers need to know?  Fundamentally, be aware that these capabilities are what public health will be primarily focused on rather than the National Preparedness Goal’s 32 Core Capabilities.  These aren’t mutually exclusive to each other, though.  In fact, the new CDC document references the National Preparedness Goal.  There are some public health capabilities that cross walk pretty easily, such as Fatality Management.  The public health capability, however, has a strong focus on the public health aspects of this activity.  Some public health capabilities don’t necessarily have a direct analog, as many of them would be considered to be part of the Public Health, Healthcare, and Emergency Medical Services Core Capability.

My recommendation is to have a copy of this document handy.  Review it to become familiar with it, and, depending on how heavy your involvement is with public health, you may be making some notes on how these capabilities compare with and interact with the 32 Core Capabilities.

© 2018 – Timothy Riecker, CEDP

Emergency Preparedness Solutions, LLC℠

Reviewing The 2018 National Preparedness Report

Tim Riecker, The Contrarian Emergency Manager Leave a comment

The 2018 National Preparedness Report was released last week.  For the past few years, I’ve provided my own critical review of these annual reports (see 2017’s report here).  For those not familiar with the National Preparedness Report (NPR), it is mandated by the Post-Katrina Emergency Management Reform Act (PKEMRA).  The information is compiled by FEMA from the State Preparedness Reports (SPR), including the Threat and Hazard Identification and Risk Assessment (THIRA) data submitted by states, territories, and Urban Area Security Initiative (UASI) – funded regions.  The data presented is for the year prior.  The SPRs and NPR examine the condition of our preparedness relative to the 32 Core Capabilities identified in the National Preparedness Goal.

Overall, the NPR provides little information, certainly nothing that is really shocking if you pay attention to the top issues in emergency management.  Disappointingly, the report only covers those Core Capabilities identified for sustainment or improvement, with no more than a graphic summary of the other Core Capabilities.

Core Capabilities to Sustain

Operational Coordination was identified as the sole Core Capability to sustain in this year’s report.  I’ve got some issues with this right off.  First of all, they summarize their methodology for selecting Core Capabilities to sustain: ‘To be a capability to sustain, the Nation must show proficiency in executing that core capability, but there must also be indications of a potentially growing gap between the future demand for, and the performance of, that capability.’  To me, what this boils down to is ‘you do it well, but you are going to have to do it better’.  I think most EM professionals could add to this list significantly, with Core Capabilities such as Planning; Public Information and Warning; Public Health, Healthcare, and EMS; Situational Assessment; and others.  Distilling it down to only Operational Coordination shows to me, a severe lack of understanding in where we presently are and the demands that will be put on our systems in the future.

Further, the review provided in the report relative to Operational Coordination is pretty soft.  Part of it is self-congratulatory, highlighting advances in the Core Capability made last year, with the rest of the section identifying challenges but proving little analysis.  Statements such as ‘Local governments reported challenges with incident command and coordination during the 2017 hurricane season’ are put out there, yet their single paragraph on corrective actions for the section boils down to the statement of ‘we’re looking at it’.  Not acceptable.

Core Capabilities to Improve

The 2018 report identifies four Core Capabilities to improve:

  • Infrastructure Systems
  • Housing
  • Economic Recovery
  • Cybersecurity

These fall under the category of NO KIDDING.  The writeups within the NPR for each of these superficially identifies the need, but doesn’t have much depth of analysis.  I find it interesting that the Core Capability to sustain has a paragraph on corrective actions, yet the Core Capabilities to Improve doesn’t.  They do, instead, identify key findings, which outline some efforts to address the problems, but are very soft and offer little detail.  Some of these include programs which have been in place for quite some time which are clearly having limited impact on addressing the issues.

What really jumped out at me is the data provided on page 9, which charts the distribution of FEMA Preparedness grants by Core Capability for the past year.  The scale of their chart doesn’t allow for any exact amounts, but we can make some estimates.  Let’s look at four of these in particular:

  • Infrastructure Systems – scantly a few million dollars
  • Housing – None
  • Economic Recovery – Less than Infrastructure Systems
  • Cybersecurity – ~$25 million

With over $2.3 billion in preparedness funding provided in 2017 by FEMA, it’s no wonder these are Core Capabilities that need to be improved when so few funds were invested at the state/territory/UASI level.  The sad thing is that this isn’t news.  These Core Capabilities have been identified as needing improvement for years, and I’ll concede they are all challenging, but the lack of substantial movement should anger all emergency managers.

I will agree that Housing and Cybersecurity require a significant and consolidated national effort to address.  That doesn’t mean they are solely a federal responsibility, but there is clear need for significant assistance at the federal level to implement improvements, provide guidance to states and locals, and support local implementations.  That said, we can’t continue to say that these areas are priorities when little funding or activity is demonstrated to support improvement efforts.  While certain areas may certainly take years to make acceptable improvements, we are seeing a dangerous pattern relative to these four Core Capabilities, which continue to wallow at the bottom of the list for so many years.

The Path Forward

The report concludes with a two-paragraph section titled ‘The Path Forward’, which simply speaks to refining the THIRA and SPR methodology, while saying nothing of how the nation needs to address the identified shortcomings.  Clearly this is not acceptable.

~~

As for my own conclusion, while I saw last year’s NPR as an improvement from years previous, I see this one as a severe backslide.  It provides little useful information and shows negligible change in the state of our preparedness over the past year.  The recommendations provided, at least of those that do exist, are translucent at best, and this report leaves the reader with more questions and frustration.  We need more substance beginning with root cause analysis and including substantial, tangible, actionable recommendations.  While I suppose it’s not the fault of the report itself that little improvement is being made in these Core Capabilities, the content of the report shows a lack of priority to address these needs.

I’m actually surprised that a separate executive summary of this report was published, as the report itself holds so little substance, that it could serve as the executive summary.  Having been involved in the completion of THIRAs and SPRs, I know there is information generated that is simply not being analyzed for the NPR.  Particularly with each participating jurisdiction completing a POETE analysis of each Core Capability, I would like to see a more substantial NPR which does some examination of the capability elements in aggregate for each Core Capability, perhaps identifying trends and areas of focus to better support preparedness.

As always, I’m interested in your thoughts.  Was there anything you thought to be useful in the National Preparedness Report?

© 2018 – Timothy Riecker, CEDP

Emergency Preparedness Solutions, LLC

Finding Local Hazard Information

Tim Riecker, The Contrarian Emergency Manager Leave a comment

Among all the information shared across the internet, something that would be of great assistance to many stakeholders is local hazard information.  It surprises me how inaccessible this information is.  Typically, in most places around the US, ‘local’ will mean a city, village, or town, and depending on the structure of government in the state, counties (or other similar governmental units) may also be considered local.  Specific to this discussion, I’m referencing the most local level of government which has an emergency management function.

So often, we advise businesses and organizations to work with their local emergency managers on preparedness initiatives, yet necessary information lacks in availability or accessibility.  One of the foundational elements of information for all emergency management activities is a hazard analysis.  While every organization should conduct their own to ensure that their own hazards are identified and analyzed, an informed hazard analysis will consider information from other sources.  What better source, we would assume, than the hazard analysis conducted at the most local level of government possible?  Sadly, this information is not often regularly available.

Many governments who conduct comprehensive emergency management activities post plans on their websites, which is a good start.  Often these are hazard mitigation plans and sometimes even emergency operations plans (EOPs).  Both of these plans, if well written, should include hazard analysis information.  Typically, if EOPs include this information, it’s a very brief summary, perhaps only a small chart or table.  Hazard mitigation plans are really centered on a comprehensive hazard analysis, but as I’ve written before, most hazard mitigation plans are not truly ‘all hazard’.  Most commonly, hazard mitigation plans only address and examine natural hazards and some human-caused incidents such as dam failures or hazardous materials incidents.  Because so much effort goes into the hazard analysis conducted for a hazard mitigation plan, many jurisdictions will then only reference this hazard analysis in their preparedness activities, such as developing EOPs.  Fundamentally, this then means that many jurisdictions are not properly preparing for other threats, such as an active shooter/hostile event response (ASHER) incident.

So there are really two issues here, one being that of making information readily available, the other is ensuring quality of information.  Ideally, I’d like to see jurisdictions post hazard analysis information on their websites.  People working for organizations or businesses who are less familiar with emergency management aren’t likely to read through a hazard mitigation plan to find this information.  A stand-alone document with a reasonable summary of this information can easily be provided.  Aside from organizations and businesses, such a practice would also make this information more accessible to the general public.  With so much time and effort spent on telling people they need to prepare, perhaps we should make the information more accessible which tells them what they need to prepare for?

What are you doing to make hazard information more accessible?

© 2018 – Timothy Riecker, CEDP

Emergency Preparedness Solutions, LLC℠

EOC Skillsets and Position Task Books Finalized

Tim Riecker, The Contrarian Emergency Manager 1 Comment

Back in April, FEMA released the drafts of EOC skillset documents and position task books for public comment.  A few days ago, the final versions of these documents were released on FEMA’s National Qualification System (NQS) website: https://www.fema.gov/emergency-managers/nims/components#nqs

While the hub of emergency response is the incident command post, the hub of emergency coordination is the Emergency Operations Center.  While life saving tactics, directed from the ICP, are absolutely essential, a comprehensive and long-term response can’t be sustained without the activities of an EOC.  We have gone far too long in emergency management without having good national guidance on the organization and qualification of personnel in the EOC.

When you crack into the website you may be a bit overwhelmed by all the documents you find.  Don’t look to this as something that must be implemented 100% right away.  Take a deep breath and remember that most things done well in emergency management, ironically enough, are an evolution and take time.  Also remember that while this has been established as guidance, it’s not a requirement.  Implement what you can, when you can.  Focus on establishing a foundation you can build from and do what makes sense for your jurisdiction or organization.

The foundation of everything in emergency management is planning, so whatever you do decide to implement should find its way into plans, which may need to be supported by policy.  While implementing a qualification system with task books can be cumbersome, it can also solve some problems when it comes to having less than qualified personnel working in your EOC.  The position task books are a great way for individuals to see what standards they are being held to and allows them to track progress.  If you don’t feel that the use of position task books will work for your jurisdiction or you are on a slower track to implementation, it’s still worthwhile to examine the skillset documents for each position you have identified in your EOC.  These can support your own developed standards, expectations, and plans; serve as a foundation for training course development; and support exercise evaluation.

Lastly, talk about these with your committees and your peers.  It’s easy to forget about them so keep these visible.  These documents offer an abundance of solid guidance which can strongly support your operational coordination.

What are your thoughts on the EOC skillsets? Do you plan on implementing them in your system?  If so, how?  If not, why not?

Timothy Riecker, CEDP

Emergency Preparedness Solutions, LLC℠