Tag FEMA

Revisiting POETE

Tim Riecker, The Contrarian Emergency Manager Leave a comment

One of my most popular posts has been my original post on POETE from July 2014. In the 11+ years has passed since that post, I continue leveraging the concept in every way I can. In case you’ve not heard of the concept, I certainly urge you to click the link above and read my original post. Briefly, POETE stands for Planning, Organizing, Equipping, Training, and Exercises. These are collectively known as the elements of preparedness. POETE is more than a checklist to me. It’s a strategic lens for realistically building and sustaining capabilities. Whether you are building a new emergency operations plan, launching a new public health preparedness initiative, or refining multiagency coordination activities, POETE offers a structured way to think through what takes to help ensure these endeavors are implementation-ready.

While I’ve written on these in the past, my continued and diverse application of POETE has broadened my perspective on application, so here are some fresh thoughts.

Assessing – On occasion, I throw an A in front of the acronym for Assessing. While assessments are an early activity of Planning, there are also plenty of stand-alone assessment activities which should be regarded of their own accord. Assessments can and should inform everything else we do in preparedness. Good assessments can provide us with justification for certain activities and investments and can often give us a data-driven approach. Along with many of the risk assessments common across emergency management, like the Threat, Hazard Identification, and Risk Assessment (THIRA), I’d also suggest that (well written) after-action reports (AARs) can also do the job. A well-developed AAR for an incident, event, or exercise can provide objective analysis of observed activities or discussions. When writing an AAR, we should always keep in mind that part of achieving the goal of improvement may involve requests and justifications for funding.

Planning – I’ve written a lot on the topic of emergency planning through the years. Overall, my take on most emergency plans is that they suck. Horribly. They aren’t worth the time, money, or effort invested in writing them. So many people go about it wrong. A true plan needs to be a blueprint for action. Good plans are operationally-focused, guiding decisions and actions. They should not just be theory and policy, as so many are. At best, I’d call something like that a framework, but it’s certainly not a plan.

Organizing – Organizing is largely about structure, roles, and responsibilities, but you can’t even get there without first building relationships and partnerships. Everything we do in emergency management is about relationships. It’s about knowing who has the thing you need – be it a physical resource, specialized knowledge, or specific authority. Last week I wrote a new piece on Community Lifelines. The central activity of doing anything with Community Lifelines is building relationships. Once those relationships are in place, then other activities will follow.

Equipping – I’ve always been very big on tools matching the mission. Equipment in this context means any and all resources available to us. The key aspect of this is alignment. Are the tools we use matching up to our threats, our people, and our procedures? While it’s understandable to have to update procedures to match a new resource, we should be very cautious about the resource dictating procedure. Our resources need to work for us, not the other way around.

Training – I feel like we have been gradually moving away from compliance being the center of the training universe. Yes, there is still plenty of training that is required for various purposes – there should be and there will always be. But I’ve been getting more requests from clients to develop custom training because they realize that little to no training exists to meet their needs. More people are realizing, for example, that ICS training is absolutely not the fit for EOC staff. Similarly, they are realizing that existing EOC training might begin to approach their needs, but the implementation of their specific EOC model really requires customized training. Overall, training needs to be role-based. We need to be training people what we want them to do. We need to give them the knowledge to succeed, not just generalized training for a broad group hoping that people will be able to ascertain what pertains to them and what does not. We also need to realize that, since most training in emergency management is response-oriented, the things they are being trained to do are things they don’t do often and/or don’t do them under pressure. So frequency of training and job aids are essential to their success.

Exercises – The thing I do the highest volume of. Luckily, I love to do them! Exercises are about testing our plans and capabilities before they are tested for real. Pay attention to good exercise design and never forget that the end product is a worthwhile AAR. I still see so many softball AARs out there. AARs that pat people on the back for a job well done while only acknowledging the superficial opportunities to improve – often times because they don’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings. I don’t ever write an AAR for the purpose of offending anyone, but if we don’t expose what doesn’t work, the chances of it ever being addressed are so much lower than if we had documented it.

While we have the acronym of (A)POETE, it’s important to keep in mind that it’s not intended to be a linear process. It’s iterative and constantly in need of attention. Each component is informed by the others. While I generally believe that Planning is still the foundation of preparedness and it should heavily influence all other elements, those other elements can still influence Planning. POETE activities should be used to build our capabilities. These activities help us prepare with purpose, focus, and intent.

© 2025 Tim Riecker, CEDP

Emergency Preparedness Solutions, LLC®

Replacing ESFs with Community Lifelines

Tim Riecker, The Contrarian Emergency Manager 1 Comment

I’ve written previously about my concerns with using Emergency Support Functions in many state, local, territorial, and tribal (SLTT) emergency operations centers. The ESF structure was never intended for SLTT use, and while it may have some successes with the largest of the states and metropolitan areas, it’s generally not a good fit.

I’ve also written previously about Community Lifelines and the benefits thereof. Consider, however, that Community Lifelines, while designed originally for the organization of information by FEMA regional offices when they monitor a disaster, can have much broader applicability. We can and should be using Community Lifelines across every phase / mission area of Emergency Management.

Lately I’ve been having more and more conversations about Community Lifelines with clients, at conferences, and with others who are interested in learning more about them and how to use them. Across emergency management we often find or are provided with approaches to problems that are single-use. We should regularly explore opportunities to expand those single-use applications, increasing the utility of the concept at hand. Given the shortcomings of ESFs for most jurisdictions and the much broader applicability of Community Lifelines for every jurisdiction under the sun, I suggest that Community Lifelines cannot only be operationalized to be a viable replacement for ESFs, they can do so much more. Here are my arguments in support of replacing ESFs with a Community Lifelines – driven organization in SLTT EOCs as well as emergency management programs as a whole:

  1. Community Lifelines are community-focused and more comprehensive of the needs of a community, whereas ESFs are driven by functions which may have limited capabilities or capacities in any given jurisdiction.
  2. Community Lifelines can be operationalized just like ESFs, with primary and support agencies and organizations.
  3. Community Lifelines are focused on stabilizing critical services with built-in mechanisms for assessing impacts and establishing priorities.
  4. Community Lifelines more directly support the inclusion of the private sector, along with government, NGOs, and quasi-government owners/operators.
  5. Community Lifelines provide better preparedness and resilience initiatives.
  6. Community Lifelines provide us with a basis for measuring progress across all phases or mission areas. The only thing we can measure in an ESF is what we might have available to leverage in a response.
  7. Community Lifelines connect resilience, response, and recovery since they are the focal point. While the National Response Framework and National Recovery Framework still have national relevance, the transition from ESFs to Recovery Support Functions (RSFs) is challenging at best.
  8. The inclusion of Community Lifelines in our EOC structure is easy and agnostic to the organizational model used in the EOC. ESFs include functions that are part of the typical overhead management of an EOC, such as ESF 5 (Information and Planning), ESF 7 (Logistics), and ESF 15 (External Affairs), which is an awkward integration.
  9. Community Lifelines lend to better partnerships and preparedness. The ESF plans of most jurisdictions are truly little more than a general scope of the ESF with a list of participating agencies and organizations.

We need to change our mindset of emergency management being centered on response. Yes, response is the big shiny thing. It’s the thing we practice for and anticipate. A more wholistic and comprehensive approach is available to us, however, by using Community Lifelines as the foundation of our work. I suggest that jurisdictions develop Community Lifeline Implementation Plans, which are fundamentally strategic plans identifying how Community Lifelines can be used in Prevention/Protection/Mitigation, Preparedness, Response, and Recovery. Consider how the relationships forged with the owners/operators of Community Lifeline partners can support each of those phases and activities, increasing the resiliency of our community as a whole by making each partner more resilient; and by understanding and preparing for the response and recovery needs of our community through the collective effort of Community Lifeline partners.

Emergency management is more than response. It is a comprehensive effort to support our communities before, during, and after disaster.

© 2025 Tim Riecker, CEDP

Emergency Preparedness Solutions, LLC®

Why Aren’t We Asking Questions and Demanding Answers?

Tim Riecker, The Contrarian Emergency Manager Leave a comment

Having been on the road practically every week this year has made blogging a bit of a challenge. I’ve had some engagement on LinkedIn, often in discourse on the issues facing disaster and emergency management brought on largely by the current administration.

You’ve probably heard of the concept of mushroom management, right? Keep people in the dark and feed them shit. That’s what we’re getting regarding the future of FEMA, which makes it extremely difficult for practitioners to chart a course ahead for this field. The only information we receive is poorly communicated intent and obfuscation. Those who are supposed to be representing the profession either aren’t asking the right questions or are being ignored.

Let’s take a look at this horrible bit of journalism from earlier in the month (I’ll note that most news outlets have been using the same quotes and generally haven’t brought us anything new either).

I’ll break this down a bit. First, the headline: Trump and Noem detail planned FEMA changes: ‘We’re going to give out less money’. Commentary: There is NO detail in the article or in anything the administration has communicated about this. Simply stating that they are going to give out less money leaves a whole lot of questions. Much of the narrative has been around funds associated with declared emergencies and major disasters, but there is a whole lot of other funding that FEMA manages. More on this later.

A quote early in the article: “We want to wean off FEMA and we want to bring it down to the state level… We’re moving it back to the states.” Commentary: If I’ve not made this abundantly clear before, DISASTER MANAGEMENT HAS ALWAYS BEEN A STATE (and local, tribal, and territorial) ISSUE. What exactly is being moved back to the states? Further, as I’ve stated in a previous article, I’m not opposed to a ‘weaning off’ of federal funds, but there should be a plan in place for this which is implemented over time and communicated with enough lead time to allow state, local, tribal, and territorial governments to begin adjusting budgets. Also, this again begs the question of exactly what funding is being changed. We need information so this can be addressed.  

The next quote in the article: “We’re going to give out less money… It’s going to come from the President’s Office” Commentary: How, exactly, is it coming from the President’s office? The Stafford Act assigns FEMA with the responsibility for coordinating federal disaster assistance. So are we changing the law?

The next item I want to poke at is a quote from Secretary Noem in the article, which reads “the administration is building communication and mutual aid agreements among states to respond to each other so that they can stand on their own two feet…”. Commentary: Does she mean the Emergency Management Assistance Compact (EMAC)? The same EMAC that has its roots going back to 1992 and was ratified by Congress in 1996 as a nation-wide system of state-to-state mutual aid and used very effectively since then? That mutual aid system? Or is the administration building something else? This seems to be a greatly misinformed quote.

With no apology for my language, what in the actual fuck is going on here?

I pointed out the article as being a horrible bit of journalism because it’s simply reporting quotes and NO ONE IS ASKING QUESTIONS. (Or if they are, they aren’t being answered). There are a lot of questions that need to be asked and answered. This is a big issue. A complicated issue. It requires a whole lot of clarity. The problem is, it seems that those making decisions really don’t know anything about the topic or what they are doing.

Over the past couple of months we’ve seen leaked budget proposals that impact emergency and disaster management grants, public health emergency preparedness grants, and the like. Those grants that aren’t being completely cut in these proposals are being reduced by tens of percentage points, equating to tens, and sometimes hundreds of millions of dollars. Regardless of the long-term impacts of these decreases, this is massively disruptive in the short term. Disruptive to the point that entire programs will be gutted and our collective ability to respond to disasters will be dangerously impacted. Again, I ask what is the plan or is the administration simply hacking and slashing away at things? As no existence of a plan, much less a strategy, has been mentioned, I can only believe this to be arbitrary and uninformed.

So many people are acknowledging there are issues with FEMA and that addressing them can be good, and I won’t dispute that, but that’s as far as they go. It’s a statement, a justification, an excuse, but it’s not a conversation. This needs to be a conversation. Uninformed change is bad. Misguided change is bad. Change for the sake of change is bad. As I stated in a recent LinkedIn post, emergency managers need to get their shit together. While the usual pace of government and bureaucracy can be frustratingly slow at times, we have systems in place for a reason. Change at this level must be well considered with input garnered from across the practice. The rhetoric and bull in a China shop approach might excite those who are easily impressed with superficial, performative bullshit; but it shouldn’t for those of us with some intelligence and background in this. We have a lot of smart people in emergency and disaster management, but I’m not hearing a lot of voices.

Who should ask questions? What percentage of elected officials at the federal level even know what the Emergency Management Performance Grant (EMPG) is? I’m betting it’s pretty low. Do they even realize there are prevention, preparedness, and hazard mitigation funds and programs or do they only know about assistance after a disaster? It’s easy for us to point a finger at the membership organizations for not doing enough advocacy and outreach (are they?), but that job isn’t theirs alone. It’s on ALL of us to get elected officials to understand what these programs are and why they are necessary, or at least advocate a better way to enact cuts. If you don’t know how to contact your members of Congress, start here and tell them the current approach is unacceptable. Likewise, if you haven’t contacted your state elected officials, you need to do so as well. The writing seems to be on the wall that these significant cuts in funding are coming and they need to discuss (with practitioners!!!) how to deal with it.

Regardless of the outcome of FEMA’s status and that of federal program funding, disaster management will continue, but the impacts may very likely be severe, and not just in the short term. There will be lasting impacts which will need to be addressed through years to come and at a much greater cost than delaying this politically-driven action in exchange for a more thoughtful approach.

TR

Cutting Grant Funds Cuts National Practices

Tim Riecker, The Contrarian Emergency Manager Leave a comment

As some rumors become reality for the current fiscal year and budget memos are leaked for the coming fiscal year, one thing is clear – states, local governments, tribal governments, and territories (SLTTs) will be receiving significantly less federal grant funding for preparedness. While some programs are expected to be outright eliminated, others are being reorganized and refocused with significant budget cuts. While not all change is bad, there is a significant shift in preparedness priorities that is largely politically motivated and lacking foundations in reality. I wrote last month on the Future of the US Emergency Management System, which focuses mostly on FEMA-centric topics, but we are also seeing and expecting major cuts to public health emergency preparedness (PHEP) grant funds, the elimination of certain PHEP programs, and indirect impacts to PHEP from cuts to other public health programs.  Similar cuts are also expected with the Hospital Preparedness Program (HPP). While I don’t think preparedness funds will be completely cut, the impacts will be significant until SLTTs are able to adjust their own budgets to address what priorities they can.  

Grant funding, however, is not only to the direct advantage of the recipients. Compliance with grant rules has long supported national standards (note that I use this term loosely. See this article for more information). FEMA preparedness grants, PHEP grants, and HPP grants, among others, have required the adoption of the National Incident Management System (NIMS), the use of the Homeland Security Exercise and Evaluation Program (HSEEP), national focus on certain threats or hazards, and reasonable consistency in building and sustaining defined capabilities. Grants have been the proverbial carrot that encouraged compliance and participation. While some of the results have been poorly measured (see my annual commentary on the National Preparedness Reports), the benefits of others have been much more tangible. Keeping things real, compliance with many of these requirements by some recipients may have been lackluster at best. Enforcement of these requirements has been practically non-existent (despite rumors of the “NIMS Police” circulating for years), which I think is a shame. That said, I think most recipients worked to meet most requirements in good faith; perhaps partly because someone’s signature attested to it, but I think mostly because many of these requirements were viewed as best practices. As such, while the requirements may be going away if there is no carrot for compliance, I think many jurisdictions will continue implementation.

All this, however, looks at past requirements. But what of new practices that would benefit from nation-wide implementation? I fear that without practices being required as part of a grant, adoption will be minimal. We would have to count on several factors for adoption to take place.

1) Emergency managers would need to be informed of the practice and the benefits thereof. Let’s be honest, most emergency managers are not well informed of new practices and concepts. Often, they simply don’t have the time to do any more than what they are doing, but unfortunately some may not care. Agencies like FEMA have also been notoriously bad at circulating information on new programs, practices, and concepts.

2) Emergency managers would have to agree that the practice can be beneficial to them.

3) Emergency managers would need the resources (time, staff, funds, etc.) to actually implement the practice.

4) In a multi-agency environment, partner agencies are more willing to support activities if they are told it’s a grant requirement – even if it’s not their own grant requirement. They may be reluctant to commit resources to something that is simply perceived as a good idea.

There are certainly a number of challenges ahead for emergency management in the broadest of applications. What I discuss here only scratches the surface. Let’s not lose sight of the benefits of best practices and standards, even if no one is telling us we need to adhere to them. That’s a hallmark of professionalism. We need to collectively advocate for our profession and the resources necessary to perform the critical functions we have. We need to take the time to advocate and to be deliberate in our actions. We need to secure multiple funding streams from every level of government possible. We need to identify efficiencies and leverage commonalities among partner agencies. Yes, lend your voice to the national organizations, but know that it’s up to you to advocate in your municipality, county, and state – and those efforts are now more important than ever.

©2025 Tim Riecker, CEDP

Emergency Preparedness Solutions, LLC®

The Future of the US Emergency Management System

Tim Riecker, The Contrarian Emergency Manager 5 Comments

It’s been a stressful time for emergency management as of late. Obviously, a lot of attention is focused on the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and its unknown future. This unknown future stems from criticisms of efficiency and effectiveness, and accusations of fraud. Some have said FEMA is a bloated, overly bureaucratic agency that isn’t agile enough to have optimal efficiency. While some claims may have substantial truth to them, other claims are exaggerated, while some have been proven false. Changes are being enacted, discussed, and speculated.

A council is being formed to advise on the future of FEMA, but changes are already occurring. The National Advisory Council has been disbanded; FEMA’s Emergency Management Institute and partner National Fire Academy have had their operations suspended pending a review of curricula (by who and for what seems to be unknown); employees have been laid off; documents and other information have been removed from the FEMA website; and orders are in place to remove all references to certain concepts and programs related to things such as climate change and equity – which are relevant and important to what we do.

But it’s not just FEMA that will feel current and potential impacts. FEMA has a great deal of impact on emergency management systems across the nation and abroad. Policies, directives, funding, programs, and ideas that FEMA implements, even if not intended to be applied at a state, local, tribal, and territorial (SLTT) level, often are. FEMA’s mission is comprehensive, supporting preparedness through doctrine, training, exercises, and grants; disaster response through coordination of resources, specialized teams, and incident management; and disaster recovery and mitigation through doctrine, processes, and grants. And these are just broad examples. FEMA is also not the only federal agency that does emergency management. A vast majority of federal agencies do. While some have their own inherent authorities, FEMA’s job is to coordinate them all, and not just for the benefit of SLTTs, but also for all branches of the federal government.

The changes that have occurred already within FEMA and other federal emergency management partners, such as the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and components of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), along with the specter of changes to come has led to an abundance of speculation across emergency management. Some of this speculation seems reasonable, while other speculation seems greatly misinformed and shows that even some who work in emergency management don’t understand emergency management. (example: The Director of the Louisiana Governor’s Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness stated that “disaster response is generally organized into three stages – each with different levels of oversight. Local officials handle the initial response during the first 72 hours after a disaster, the state then handles the second phase from 3 to 14 days after the event, and FEMA’s role typically begins after two weeks”. This is not an emergency management concept in the US. If it were, it would be outlined in the National Response Framework.)

A common complaint in this mess of rhetoric is that local governments don’t have enough control before, during, and after disasters. These statements are clearly made by those who are misinformed on the emergency management system in place in the United States. Again, I point to the National Response Framework, which clearly reinforces that emergency management broadly and disaster response specifically is supposed to be a locally executed program, supported at the state and federal level. States’ rights are a significant part of our Constitution, and most states are home rule states. Even those states which are governed by Dillon’s Rule (where local governments have only the powers explicitly granted to them by law) still have local governments with significant responsibility for their communities. In the United States, emergency management, like other functions, operates under a federalist construct, meaning that SLTTs have primary authority and responsibility for managing emergencies. The federal government then serves to provide support when SLTTs are overwhelmed. This is the foundation of the National Response Framework.

On March 4th of this year, a Congressional Subcommittee on Emergency Management and Technology convened a hearing entitled “Future of FEMA: Perspectives from the Emergency Management Community”. Leadership of the subcommittee seemed to not be certain of the purpose of this hearing as there were two differing statements of purpose given at different times – the first was to assess the current role of FEMA. The second was to solicit feedback from stakeholders which can guide the White House council in what areas can be reformed. While there may be some overlap between these two statements of purpose, they are yet very different. The hearing included very brief testimony from four witnesses engaged in emergency management. Speaking to the first statement of purpose, while most of the testimony given was thoughtful and relevant, I’d barely say that four brief statements (plus some Q&A) qualify as an assessment. As for the second statement of purpose, given that the White House’s council hasn’t even been formed, I’m not sure that anything from this hearing would be submitted to or considered by the council. Even if it were, I think specific statements may require more context, substantiation, and explanation.

One common theme I’ve heard from many, including some of those who gave testimony at this Congressional Subcommittee, is that FEMA’s disaster recovery funding is overly bureaucratic and takes too long to get into the hands of local governments. Many have been promoting the replacement of this funding system with block grants, which would give grant recipients (SLTTs) quicker access to funds and more control over how they are used. A current example of such a program is FEMA’s Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities (BRIC) grants administered by FEMA’s hazard mitigation program. If you are interested, pros and cons of block grants are detailed fairly well in this GAO report and this CRS report.

While I agree that block grants can deliver the funds faster and allow for more flexibility in spending, there are some concerns I have with accountability, especially since there seems to be little standard in how block grants are audited. Block grants can also be strongly subjected to political pressures, which can result in disparities of effectiveness of the intent of the grant. While I acknowledge that FEMA’s disaster recovery grant program is highly bureaucratic, it is so for a reason – checks and balances. For example, the Public Assistance program imposes checks at every step before, during, and after a project, ensuring that the grantees are in fact even eligible to receive the funds; reviewing and approving a detailed project plan to ensure that the project is reasonable given disaster damages, that the project will improve upon what was previously in place; that the project follows applicable codes and standards; and that the project undergoes environmental and cultural impact reviews; among other things. Each of these items is verified during and after project implementation. These are all activities necessary to ensure that the project is a good investment of taxpayer dollars. Block grants tend not to have these kinds of checks and balances associated with them, which leads to a lot of concern.

I certainly acknowledge that most things can be improved upon. There are almost always efficiencies to be gained, but agencies and systems should be reviewed by those who have knowledge of those functions and why those systems are in place. Cuts should not be indiscriminate. I’ll also suggest that for any wholesale changes to things such as disaster recovery, laws, such as the Stafford Act, may need to be changed. This cannot be done at the whim of an administration. I’ll also agree that, even within the bounds of a federalist system, SLTTs should be more responsible, resilient, and invested in their emergency management programs. For decades SLTT emergency management programs have been funded at significant levels by grant programs such as the annual Emergency Management Performance Grant (EMPG). This causes significant concern for sustainability and continuity, and it has been a recent worry by many that grant programs like this will be summarily done away with (note that other SLTT programs like public health have similar grant funding streams). Obviously, this would decimate emergency management programs which were not prepared to shoulder these budgets, resulting in losses of numerous component programs, jobs, and capabilities across all phases of emergency management. With these grant programs in place for decades, there was rarely any incentive for SLTTs to self-fund these programs to any significant extent, so I think SLTTs and elected officials should be held blameless for not doing so. If there were to be a disengagement of federal funding, in whole or in part, for these programs, I suggest that it should be a phased approach, giving SLTTs a period of time, perhaps even ten years, to assess funding needs and develop budget plans to incrementally absorb these costs. Doing so will help ensure the sustainment of programs and services for their communities and stakeholders.

Change is coming. As stated in my post from a few weeks ago, we must take advantage of the opportunity, whether we like the circumstances or not. I also recognize that we may not have much control of what happens. While it’s long been the concept that where FEMA goes, so does the nation (at least in terms of emergency management), we may be forced to disengage from that concept. We may need to forge our own path forward. Depending on the direction taken and the leadership that may rise, we may see a new era in emergency management. Will emergency management as a function fail? No. It won’t. We will find a way. We must keep in mind that governance is a marathon, not a sprint.

I’m reminded of a statement by Calvin Coolidge which I’ve reflected on for much of my adult life:

Press on. Nothing in the world can take the place of perseverance. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. Press on!

©2025 Tim Riecker, CEDP

Emergency Preparedness Solutions, LLC®

Taking the Reins

Tim Riecker, The Contrarian Emergency Manager 4 Comments

Through the past several years of my blog, the central theme of my posts has really been to ask ‘why?’. Why do we do the things we do in emergency management? Why do we accept things as they are? Why haven’t we endeavored to change, update, or improve upon some of these things that range, at best, from mediocracy to, at worst, absolute crap?

A boss of mine many (so many) years ago taught me the concept of ‘ask why five times’ if you want to get to the root of anything. Of course, you need to seek the proper people to ask or sources to conduct your research, but the concept still stands – often we can’t just ask ‘why’ once and expect that one answer to explain everything for us.

Our field of practice is filled with so many things which can be considered standards. They may be true standards, such as NFPA 1660, or simply a de facto standard – something that has become widely accepted in practice, such as CPG 101.

Standards are a double-edged sword. On the better side, they give us commonality. We can expect that, if reasonably applied, the outputs will have substantial similarity and will, at minimum, meet a base-line expectation. Consistency is generally viewed as good and beneficial in largely any application. On the other hand, standards can stifle innovation. They can encourage laziness. They often promote shortcuts like templates, which, while there are benefits, largely remove the inclination of critical thinking from the work that is done and assume that all applications can fit within someone else’s concept of how things should be.

As we face a significant possibility of a number of de facto standards from FEMA no longer being maintained due to changes in focus and reduction in force – things like the homeland security exercise and evaluation program (HSEEP), CPG 101, and even the National Incident Management System (NIMS) – how will things be done in what may become a new era of emergency management?

There are some that are shilling the downfall of emergency management. While I don’t think this extreme is quite realistic, there will most certainly be some significant changes and impacts to which we must adapt. In the realm of standards (and likely other gaps created), I feel the profession will realize the need to take care of itself, taking a path of self-determination and filling a role that has been, most successfully, done by FEMA. Early on, in the absence of a central coordinating entity (FEMA) maintaining these de facto standards, we will see several disparate efforts of upkeep, with results likely following a bell curve of quality – most will be deemed reasonable, though outliers will exist on both ends of the spectrum, with one side being garbage and the other fairly inspired and progressive. Here enters opportunity. Opportunity for improvement, innovation, different perspectives, and simply seeking better ways of doing things. Though this process begs some questions – Whose version will reign supreme? And what authority does the author have to publish any given standard? Is some measure of authority even required for such a thing for it to be, even unofficially, adopted by the profession?

I feel that regardless of this circumstance, we must periodically examine our standards of practice. Ask ‘why?’ five times (or really however many times is necessary). This can range from asking the same question over and over until you get to some foundational answer you are seeking, or asking a chain of related questions to poke at different sides of the standard. Consider questions like ‘Why does the standard exist?’, ‘Why does the standard exist as it is?’, ‘How did this standard evolve?’, ‘What are the strengths of the current standard?’, ‘What are the weaknesses of the current standard?’, ‘What can we do better and how?’.

There has been some effort lately (also spearheaded by FEMA) toward the concept and implementation of continuous improvement. Standards should also fit within this movement. Standards need to evolve and change and support the practice, though they should be constructed in such a fashion that does not limit a range of application (i.e. can it be used by states as well as small towns? Does it need to be?) or stifle innovation. And while evolution is necessary, I’ll also caution against wholesale change – unless a truly better way is developed and validated. Standards should not change based simply on someone’s good idea, a different perspective, or political influence. Standards (true or de facto) or any part thereof and in any industry should be peer developed and peer reviewed. Changes need to be carefully considered, but also not feared. While I feel FEMA has been a good steward of our standards of practice, that time may be coming to an end, at least for a while. The standards of practice across emergency management must be maintained if this disruption comes to fruition. This is a challenge. This is an opportunity. This is a necessity. We must rise to the occasion.

© 2025 – Tim Riecker, CEDP

Emergency Preparedness Solutions, LLC®

2024 National Preparedness Report – Another Missed Opportunity

Tim Riecker, The Contrarian Emergency Manager Leave a comment

The annual National Preparedness Report (NPR) is a requirement of Presidential Policy Directive 8, which states that the NPR is based on the National Preparedness Goal. The National Preparedness Goal, per the FEMA website, is “A secure and resilient nation with the capabilities required across the whole community to prevent, protect against, mitigate, respond to, and recover from the threats and hazards that pose the greatest risk.” The capabilities indicated in the National Preparedness Goal are specifically the 32 Core Capabilities.

The 2024 NPR is developed to reflect data and information from 2023. As with previous NPRs, I have a lot of concern about the ultimate value of the document. While I’m sure a lot of time, effort, and money was spent gathering an abundance of data from across the nation to support this report, this year’s report, following the unfortunate trend of its predecessors, doesn’t seem to be worth the investment. As with the others, this report falls short on adequate scope, information, and recommendations. Certainly, there is a challenge to be acknowledged of not only gathering a massive quantity of information from across the country but also examining and reporting this information in aggregate, as most federal reports are burdened to do. That said, I see little excuse to not provide a meaningful report.

In this year’s report, following the introductory materials, is a section on risks, which is largely a reflection of the high impact disasters of 2023 seen across the US; the most challenging threats and hazards; and the intersections of risk and vulnerability. All in all, this is an adequate snapshot of these topics in summary, with some solid points and a level of analysis that I would expect through the rest of the document, which includes trends over time, and identification of factors which influence the findings. There are several maps and charts which provide good data visualization and several mentions of bridging data between agencies such as FEMA, NOAA, and CDC. A good start.

The next section is Capabilities. This section has two areas of narrative – community preparedness and individual and household preparedness. Given the significant efforts to bolster capabilities throughout the federal government and in state, tribal, and territorial governments, it seems these levels are obviously missing if we are to suggest that all local governments are simply communities, so I’m not sure why this is specifically titled community preparedness. Does it not include the efforts of states or others? Page 18 of the report provides a chart similar to what we’ve seen in previous reports which shows how much money was spent on each capability (in communities… again, what does this include or exclude?) for 2023. The chart also indicates the percentage of communities achieving their capability targets.

As with the reports from the previous year, I ask: So what? This is a snapshot in time and lacking context. A trend analysis accounting for at least the past several years would be quite insightful, as would some description of what the funds within each capability were primarily spent on – broadly planning, organizing, equipping, training, and exercises, but I’d like to see even more specifics. There are a few random examples in the narrative, but a lot is still lacking. I’d also like to see some analysis of relative success or value of these investments. In regard specifically to the percentage of communities who feel they have achieved their capability target, I have to eye roll a bit at this, as this is often the most subjective (and sometimes smoke and mirrors) aspect of the Threat and Hazard Identification and Risk Assessment (THIRA). This chart currently has little value other than a ‘gee whiz’ factor of seeing how much money is spent on each capability.

I’ll also include a specific observation of mine here: the Core Capability of Mass Care Services, which in the previous year’s report was indicated as a high-priority capability, continues a trend (I’m only aware of the trend from looking back at previous reports since trend data is not included in the report) of having one of the lowest achievement percentages and investments. I’m hopeful that’s why it’s included in the next section as a focus area.

The other area of narrative in the Capabilities section is individual and household preparedness. All in all, the information presented here is fine and even includes a slight bit of trend analysis, though in 2023 a much more comprehensive reporting of this information was provided under separate cover. I think an improved version of something like the 2023 report should be incorporated into the NPR.

The next section of the NPR is Focus Areas, which includes the Core Capabilities of Mass Care Services, Public Information and Warning, Infrastructure Systems, and Cybersecurity. Each focus area includes narrative on risk, capabilities and gaps, and management opportunities – which all provide great information. There is a brief mention of how these focus areas were selected. While I’m fine with having a deeper analysis of certain focus areas, I think the NPR should still provide a comprehensive review of all Core Capabilities.

While the management opportunities listed for each of the four focus areas are essentially recommendations, the report itself only provides two recommendations which are labeled as such. These recommendations are identified in the document’s introduction with a bit of narrative (and the conclusion with none), that thankfully provides some suggestions for actionable implementation, but I was left feeling both surprised and disappointed that the National Preparedness Report, which really should be providing an analysis of all 32 Core Capabilities which serve as the foundation for nation’s preparedness goal, has only two recommendations for improving our preparedness. Two. That’s it. There should be an abundance of recommendations. This is the information that emergency managers and decision-makers within the field of practice need within federal agencies and state, local, tribal, and territorial (SLTT) governments. Another missed opportunity to provide value.

The 2024 NPR is extremely similar to the past several years in format and general content, and as such I’m not surprised by the lack of value. I continue to stand by my statement across these past several years in regard to this report: the emergency management community should not be accepting this type of reporting. While I recognize that through PPD8, it is defined that the audience for this report is the President and the Secretary of Homeland Security, the utility of such a report can and should have a much broader reach across all of emergency management, and idealistically to tax payers as well, who should be able to access better information on how their tax dollars are spent within preparedness – which impacts everyone. States, UASIs, and other entities who submit information annually for this report should also be disappointed that this is what is published about their hard work, and the emergency management membership organizations should also be demanding better. This report has the potential to be meaningful, insightful, and influential, yet FEMA misses the opportunity every single year to do so. The data exists, and the stories of the activities, accomplishments, and gaps can all be told. With the application of some reasonable analysis and recommendations, the document could be much more impactful.

It’s been said by many that emergency managers are notorious for not marketing well, and this document is proof positive of that. Those of us working in this profession know there is so much more to be examined and described that can tell of not only what we have accomplished but also of the work to be done. We find ourselves in a time where the purpose and value of FEMA is being questioned by a number of people; a time where some inefficiencies, missteps, and even failures are being put under a very critical microscope and seemingly being used to fuel a suggestion of eliminating FEMA. Greater efficiencies can certainly be identified and gaps addressed, but our reluctance to tell the stories of what we do clearly lend to misunderstandings and a severe lack of awareness that exist about our field of practice – one in which there is no organization of greater prominence and importance than FEMA. While the NPR is not at fault for these shortcomings, it is a contributor. When reports like this miss opportunities to do more and be more year over year, that snowballs and becomes a much greater issue. We need to do better.

© 2015 – Timothy Riecker, CEDP

Emergency Preparedness Solutions, LLC®

Five Domains of Incident Management

Tim Riecker, The Contrarian Emergency Manager 3 Comments

Earlier this summer, RAND, under contract to CDC as part of a five-year project related to examining and assessing incident management practices in public health, developed and released the Incident Management Measurement Toolkit. Overall, I think the tool developed is a solid effort toward standardizing the evaluation of incident management. The tool guides a depth of examination into incident management practices. It can be a bit daunting at a glance, but the methodology of evaluation is generally what I’ve been practicing over the past several years for developing incident and event AARs. I’d also suggest that it’s scalable in application.

I feel it’s important to note that incident management teams involved in non-public health applications were also engaged in the research. The outcomes of the project and the inclusion of non-public health incident management practices in the research indicate to me that this tool can be applied broadly and not limited to public health applications.

Serving as a foundation for the assessment tool and methodology are five Domains of Incident Management that the project team identified. Provided with key activities, these include:

  1. Situational Awareness and Information Sharing – Perception and characterization of incident-related information to identify response needs.
  2. Incident Action and Implementation Planning – Ongoing articulation and communication of decisions in coherent incident action plans.
  3. Resource Management and Mobilization – Deployment of human, physical, and other resources to match ongoing situational awareness, identification of roles, and relevant decisions.
  4. Coordination and Collaboration – Engagement and cooperation between different stakeholders, teams, and departments in managing the incident.
  5. Feedback and Continuous Quality Improvement – The need for ongoing evaluation and refinement of incident management processes.

In consideration of these domains, I think the activities inherent within them are fairly agnostic of the type of incident management system (i.e. ICS) used. I also think these same domains can be applied for recovery operations, again, regardless of the system or organization being utilized; as well as the principal practice at work (public health, emergency management, fire service, law enforcement, etc.).

I’ve been intending to write about these domains for a while, but each time I considered them, something stood out to me as being a bit askew. I finally realized that these really aren’t domains that encompass all of incident management. Rather, these domains are better associated with an incident management system, such as the Incident Command System (ICS). The first three domains are very clearly applied directly to an incident management system, and the fourth is the general concept of multiagency coordination, which is a common concept of incident management systems. The last domain is simply quality management which is certainly integral across various incident management systems.

While I don’t believe my view undermines the tool’s value, it highlights the need for a clearer understanding of its limitations. An incident management system, like ICS, is just one part of incident management and doesn’t cover all related activities. Some tasks in incident management, such as setting priorities, decision-making, troubleshooting, and dealing with political and social issues, are often not directly related to the tactical management systems we use. Additionally, many important aspects fall within leadership that aren’t covered by the NIMS doctrine or the Planning P. Although organizing resources is a central part of incident management, there are many other activities not addressed in a tactical response that may influence tactical applications but are not part of a defined incident management system. While one could argue these activities fit into the five identified domains, I feel this analysis doesn’t provide a complete picture of a complex response. More information would be needed.

That said, I really like this toolkit. I think it provides a structured mechanism for evaluating common practices of incident management systems, which itself can provide a foundation for a more comprehensive assessment of incident management. That comprehensive assessment, beyond the incident management system, is also more anecdotal and often requires persons experienced in asking the right questions and clarifying perspectives and opinions – things that ultimately can’t be done (or at least done easily) with an assessment tool.

So regardless of what the nature of your incident is, consider using the Incident Management Measurement Toolkit as part of your AAR process.

What are your thoughts on the RAND tool? Have you used it? What do you think of the five domains they have identified?

©2024 Timothy Riecker, CEDP

Emergency Preparedness Solutions, LLC®

ICS: Problems and Perceptions

Tim Riecker, The Contrarian Emergency Manager 4 Comments

Oddly enough, I’ve recently seen a spate of LinkedIn posts espousing the benefits of the Incident Command System (ICS). Those who have been reading my material for a while know that I’m a big proponent of ICS, though I am highly critical of the sub-par curriculum that we have been using for decades to teach ICS. The outcome is an often poorly understood and implemented system resulting in limited effectiveness.

Yes, ICS is a great tool, if implemented properly. Yet most implementations I see aren’t properly conducted. To further muddy these waters, I see emergency plans everywhere that commit our responders and officials to using ICS – this is, after all, part of the National Incident Management System (NIMS) requirement that many have – yet they don’t use it.

So why isn’t ICS being used properly or even at all? Let’s start with plans. Plans get written and put up on a proverbial shelf – physical or digital. They are often not shared with the stakeholders who should have access to them. Even less frequently are personnel trained in their actual roles as identified and defined in plans. Some of those roles are within the scope of ICS while some are not. The bottom line is that many personnel, at best, are only vaguely familiar with what they should be doing in accordance with plans. So, when an incident occurs, most people don’t think to reference the plan, and they flop around like a fish out of water trying to figure out what to do. They make things up. Sure, they often try their best, assessing what’s going on and finding gaps to fill, but without a structured system in place and in the absence (or lack of referencing) of the guidance that a quality plan should offer, efficiency and effectiveness are severely decreased, and some gaps aren’t even recognized or anticipated.

Next, let’s talk about ICS training. Again, those who have been reading my work for a while have at least some familiarity with my criticism of ICS training. To be blunt, it sucks. Not only does the content of courses not even align with course objectives, the curriculum overall doesn’t teach us enough of HOW to actually use ICS. My opinion: We need to burn the current curriculum to the ground and start over. Course updates aren’t enough. Full rewrites, a complete reimagining of the curriculum and what we want to accomplish with it, needs to take place.

Bad curriculum aside… For some reason people think that ICS training will solve all their problems. Why? One reason I believe is that we’ve oversold it. Part of that is most certainly due to NIMS requirements. Not that I think the requirements, conceptually, are a bad thing, but I think they cause people to think that if it’s the standard that we are all required to learn, it MUST be THE thing that we need to successfully manage the incident. I see people proudly boasting that they’ve completed ICS300 or ICS400. OK, that’s great… but what can you actually do with that? You’ve learned about the system, but not so much of how to actually use it. Further, beyond the truth that ICS training sucks, it’s also not enough to manage an incident. ICS is a tool of incident management. It’s just one component of incident management, NOT the entirety of incident management. Yes, we need to teach people how to use ICS, but we also need to teach the other aspects of incident management.

We also don’t use ICS enough. ICS is a contingency system. It’s not something we generally use every day, at least to a reasonably full extent. Even our first responders only use elements of ICS on a regular basis. While I don’t expect everyone to be well practiced in the nuances and specific applications of ICS, we still need more practice at using more of the system. It’s not the smaller incidents where our failure to properly implement ICS is the concern – it’s the larger incidents. It’s easy to be given a scenario and to draw out on paper what the ICS org chart should look like to manage the scenario. It’s a completely different thing to have the confidence and ego in check to make the call for additional resources – not the tactical ones – but for people to serve across a number of ICS positions. Responders tend to have a lot of reluctance to do so. Add to that the fact that most jurisdictions simply don’t have personnel even remotely qualified to serve in most of those positions. So not only are we lacking the experience in using ICS on larger incidents, we also don’t have experience ‘ramping up’ the organization for a large response. An increase in exercises, of course, is the easy answer, but exercises require time, money, and effort to implement.

One last thing I’ll mention on this topic is about perspective. One of the posts I read recently on LinkedIn espoused all the things that ICS did. While I understand the intent of their statements, the truth is that ICS does nothing. ICS is nothing more than a system on paper. It takes people to implement it. ICS doesn’t do things; PEOPLE do these things. The use of ICS to provide structure and processes to the chaos, if properly done, can reap benefits. I think that statements claiming all the things that ICS can do for us, without inserting the critical human factor into the statement, lends to the myth of ICS being our savior. It’s not. It must be implemented – properly – by people to even stand a chance.

Bottom line: we’re not there yet when it comes to incident management, including ICS. I dare say too many people are treating it as a hobby, not a profession. We have a standard, now let’s train people on it PROPERLY and practice it regularly.

©2024 Timothy Riecker, CEDP

Emergency Preparedness Solutions, LLC®

NIMS Intel and Investigations Function – A Dose of Reality

Tim Riecker, The Contrarian Emergency Manager 1 Comment

Background

Soon after the initiation of the National Incident Management System (NIMS) as a result of Homeland Security Presidential Directive 5 in 2003, the Intelligence and Investigation (I/I) function was developed and introduced to NIMS, specifically to the Incident Command System (ICS). While we traditionally view I/I as a law enforcement function, there are other activities which guidance indicates may fall within I/I, such as epidemiology (personally, I’d designate epidemiology as a specific function, as we saw done by many during the COVID-19 response), various cause and origin investigations, and others. Integration of these activities into the response structure has clear advantages.

The initial guidance for the I/I function was largely developed by command personnel with the New York City Police Department (NYPD). This guidance offered several possible locations for the I/I function within the ICS structure, based on anticipated level of activity, needed support, and restrictions of I/I related information. These four possible ways of organizing the I/I function per this guidance are depicted here, and include:

  1. Placement as a Command Staff position
  2. Organized within the Operations Section (i.e. at a Branch level)
  3. Developed as its own section
  4. Included as a distinct unit within the Planning Section

These concepts have been included in the NIMS doctrine and have been supported within the NIMS Intelligence/Investigations Function Guidance and Field Operations Guide, though oddly enough, this second document ONLY addresses the organization of an I/I Section and not the other three options.

The Reality

Organization of I/I can and does certainly occur through any one of these four organizational models, though my own experiences and experiences of others as described to me have shown that very often this kind of integration of I/I within the ICS structure simply does not occur. Having worked with numerous municipal, county, state, federal, and specially designated law enforcement agencies, I’ve found that the I/I function is often a detached activity which is absolutely not operating under the command and control of the incident commander.

Many of the sources of I/I come from fusion centers, which are off-scene operations, or from agencies with specific authorities for I/I activities that generally have no desire or need to become part of the ICS structure, such as the FBI conducting a preliminary investigation into an incident to determine if it was a criminal act, or the NTSB investigating cause and origin of a transportation incident. These entities certainly should be communicating and coordinating with the ICS structure for scene access and operational deconfliction, but are operating under their own authority and conducting specific operations which are largely separate from the typical life safety and recovery operations on which the ICS structure is focused.

My opinion on this is that operationally it’s completely OK to have the I/I function detached from the ICS structure. There are often coordination meetings and briefings that occur between the I/I function and the ICS structure which address safety issues and acknowledge priorities and authorities, but the I/I function is in no way reporting to the IC. Coordination, however, is essential to safety and mutual operational success.

I find that the relationship of I/I to the ICS structure most often depends on where law enforcement is primarily organized within the ICS structure and who is managing that interest. For example, if the incident commander (IC) is from a law enforcement agency, interactions with I/I activities are more likely to be directly with the IC. Otherwise, interactions with I/I are typically handled within the Operations Section through a law enforcement representative within that structure. Similarly, I’ve also experienced I/I activity to have interactions with an emergency operations center (EOC) through the EOC director (often not law enforcement, though having designated jurisdictional authority and/or political clout) or through a law enforcement agency representative. As such, compared to the options depicted on an org chart through the earlier link, we would see this coordination or interaction depicted with a dotted line, indicating that authority is not necessarily inherent.

I think that the I/I function organized within the ICS structure is more likely to happen when a law enforcement agency has significant responsibility and authority on an incident, and even more likely if a law enforcement representative is the IC or represented in a Unified Command. I also think that the size and capabilities of the law enforcement agency is a factor, as it may be their own organic I/I function that is performing within the incident. As such, it would make sense that a law enforcement agency such as NYPD, another large metropolitan law enforcement agency, or a state police agency leading or heavily influencing an ICS structure would be more likely to bring an integrated I/I function to that structure. Given this, it makes sense that representatives from NYPD would have initially developed these four possible organizational models and seemingly exclude the possibility of a detached I/I function, but we clearly have numerous use cases where these models are not being followed. I’ll also acknowledge that there may very well be occurrences where I/I isn’t but should be integrated into the ICS structure. This is a matter for policy and training to address when those gaps are identified.

I believe that NIMS doctrine needs to acknowledge that a detached I/I function is not just possible, but very likely to occur. Following this, I’d like to see the NIMS Intelligence/Investigation Function Guidance and Field Operations Guide updated to include this reality, along with operational guidance on how best to interact with a detached I/I function. Of course, to support implementation of doctrine, this would then require policies, plans, and procedures to be updated, and training provided to reflect these changes, with exercises to test and reinforce the concepts.

What interactions have you seen between an ICS or EOC structure and the I/I function? What successes and challenges have you seen from it?

© 2024 Tim Riecker, CEDP

Emergency Preparedness Solutions, LLC®