Tag preparedness

Effectiveness and Efficiency in Incident Management – Resource Tracking

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

Incident Check In

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

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

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

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

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

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

© 2015 – Timothy Riecker

Emergency Preparedness Solutions, LLC

WWW.EPSLLC.BIZ

What is Your Emergency Management Agenda?

Tim Riecker, The Contrarian Emergency Manager 2 Comments

We often hear, usually through the media, the term ‘agenda’ thrown around, usually in relation to political parties, corporations, and the like.  I think it’s time that we each have an emergency management agenda.

First of all, this isn’t exclusive.  Everyone can have their own – local, county, state, and federal emergency management agencies, and emergency managers with private and not for profit entities.  I’d also argue that we need a national emergency management agenda – every nation should.  And perhaps even a global emergency management agenda.  Why?  We need deliberate, purpose driven direction.  Too often we are scattered, doing some recovery from the past few disasters, and some mitigation and preparedness projects then WHAM! we get hit with another disaster.  After the disruption from that disaster, we usually fall back into the same groove or make up a bunch of new things we think will solve all of our problems.  So much of what we do is knee-jerk, despite the planning efforts we spend so much time on.  I really think we can do much better.

Part of doing better is having some longer-term goals and implementations to achieve those goals.  That’s really what a programmatic agenda is all about.  Much of this parallels a strategic plan, but people often roll their eyes at strategic planning, either because they have no time for a complex process or they have been through enough cheesy group think strategic planning sessions in their careers.  Strategic planning may also not be practical for many emergency management shops which are one or two person entities, especially at a local or county level or within a small corporation or not for profit.  I’m not knocking strategic planning, it has a lot of value (if followed through), but formulating an agenda is generally simpler by necessity.

Let’s consider components of an agenda:

  • Purpose/goal – what is the big picture of what you want to accomplish? This is also your elevator pitch.  It should simply state what you want to accomplish, in realistic terms.  This is not lofty like your corporate mission or vision statement, this is a programmatic goal.
  • Who will participate – who are your internal and external stakeholders and partners? Consider all the people and entities you need cooperation from to make this happen.
  • Expected outcomes – what benchmarks do we want to achieve? Write these like objectives – remember SMART: Specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, and timely.
  • Timeline – what is the timeline for each expected outcome and the goal itself? Set realistic timeframes.
  • Obstacles – what stands in our way of success internally and externally? Things like funding and personnel issues are obvious, but reach further while still being realistic.  Recognize that local disasters can be setbacks but can also create opportunity; and that many national-level disasters tend to result in politicians hitting a giant national reset button, changing the way we have been doing things (for better or worse) and stalling our momentum.

Of course this can all be revisited and adjusted as needed, but this agenda will help you lay the groundwork for future activities, giving you a path to follow instead of a series of ad-hoc activities.  Get it on paper and post it on the wall in your office where you will see it every day and can easily reflect on it, what it contains, and your progress in moving through it.

With that all said, I’m curious to know what the emergency management agenda is for the US (and every nation).  Yes, FEMA has a strategic plan, and while they are at the pointy end of the emergency management stick, they do not embody all that is emergency management.  Where do we, as professionals, see emergency management in this nation evolving to?  What do we (broadly) need to accomplish?  We tend to know the agendas of political parties and the politicians that are part of them, yet we don’t have a solid grasp on the direction of the emergency management enterprise.  Does this give you reason for concern?

© 2015 – Timothy Riecker

Emergency Preparedness Solutions, LLC

WWW.EPSLLC.BIZ

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

Tim Riecker, The Contrarian Emergency Manager 2 Comments

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

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

A Choose Your Own Adventure book

A Choose Your Own Adventure book

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

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

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

© 2015 – Timothy Riecker

Emergency Preparedness Solutions, LLC

WWW.EPSLLC.BIZ

National Planning Frameworks: National Engagement Webinars

Tim Riecker, The Contrarian Emergency Manager Leave a comment
FEMA is hosting a series of 60-minute engagement webinars to discuss the update of the National Planning Frameworks. All webinars are open to the whole community, which encompasses—individuals (including those with disabilities and others with access and functional needs), businesses and nonprofits, faith-based and community groups, schools, and all levels of government. The sessions are scheduled for:

• Monday, May 18, 3:00 PM EDT
• Wednesday, May 20, 11:00 AM EDT
• Wednesday, May 27, 12:00 PM EDT
• Thursday, May 28, 10:30 AM EDT

Because each engagement webinar will cover the same information, please choose the session most convenient for you. Advance registration is required due to space limitations. Registration is on a first come, first serve basis. To register, please visit: https://www.vjpo.org/private/ppd8/events/frameworksupdate.

If you require accommodations to participate in these events, please provide details in the Disability Related Accommodations field on the registration page or contact us at PPD8-Engagement@fema.dhs.gov.

To review the draft National Planning Frameworks, please visit http://www.fema.gov/learn-about-presidential-policy-directive-8. To provide comments, please complete the feedback form and submit to PPD8-Engagement@fema.dhs.gov. Comments made during the webinars are considered to be for discussion purposes only and may not be adjudicated formally.

The National Planning Frameworks, which are part of the National Preparedness System, set the strategy and doctrine for building, sustaining, and delivering the core capabilities identified in the National Preparedness Goal. They describe the coordinating structures and alignment of key roles and responsibilities for the whole community and are integrated to ensure interoperability across all mission areas.

This update of the National Planning Frameworks focuses on discrete, critical content revisions, and confirming edits as a result of comments received on the National Preparedness Goal. Additional changes in the current draft of the Frameworks are the result of the lessons from implementing the Frameworks and recent events, as well as the findings of the National Preparedness Report.

Questions can be directed to FEMA’s NIC at: PPD8-Engagement@fema.dhs.gov.

For more information on national preparedness efforts, visit: http://www.fema.gov/national-preparedness.

The Aussie Model of Disaster Recovery

Tim Riecker, The Contrarian Emergency Manager 2 Comments

I had recently found a reference to the Emergency Management Victoria Disaster Recovery Toolkit for Local Government.  I’m always curious to see how other nations approach emergency management and even more curious to see the tools and resources they develop to accomplish their goals.  While there is a great deal of consistency between the US model of Disaster Recovery (documented primarily through the National Disaster Recovery Framework), one of the more interesting differences was in the focus areas of each.  While our National Disaster Recovery Framework identifies six recovery support functions (RSFs): Community Planning and Capacity Building, Health and Social Services, Infrastructure Systems, Economic, Housing, and Natural and Cultural Resources; the Aussie model identifies five environments of wellbeing: Natural Environment, Agricultural Environment, Social Environment, Economic Environment, and the Built Environment.

Australian Five Environments of Wellbeing

Australian Five Environments of Wellbeing

While there are certainly commonalities between the two models, each offers a unique perspective on the focus of disaster recovery and what is needed to support communities.  The Disaster Recovery Toolkit for Local Governments, referenced earlier, identifies that local governments are required through legislation to ensure wellbeing to be maintained in each community through each of these environments.

What interesting perspectives have you discovered looking at emergency management globally?

© 2015 – Timothy Riecker

Emergency Preparedness Solutions, LLC

WWW.EPSLLC.BIZ

EM, HS, and Politics

Tim Riecker, The Contrarian Emergency Manager Leave a comment

As the mechanizations of election season warm up their engines, let’s be sure to identify the standing of candidates in regard to emergency management and homeland security policies.  While we will never get a fully accurate picture of their intentions in these programs this early on (I’m sure few candidates are even thinking about EM/HS policy aside from immigration), we can get some indication of what their thoughts are and, once primary season is over, who the final candidates might be considering to head important agencies such as DHS and FEMA.

Any examination of this history of emergency management shows that politics seem to shape the direction of what we do as much as significant disasters do.  If you are interested in reading up on this, there are two great sources I’d recommend – Emergency Management: The American Experience 1900-2010 (Rubin. 2012.) provides good summaries of benchmark disasters and legislation through the years; and Next-Generation Homeland Security: Network Federalism and the Course to National Preparedness (Morton. 2012.) provides an in-depth look at this history with detailed references to the administrations, agencies, and people involved.

Rubin and Morton References

Rubin and Morton References

While we have certainly seen an overall positive trend of progress in emergency management (which is heavily influenced and sometimes dictated by federal policy), this has come despite some political actions which have either slowed progress or sometimes fully did away with positive and effective programs.  Having major changes in policy and programs every few years has become unsustainable for our practice, especially at the local level where EM/HS programs are often coordinated by one person.  Change isn’t always bad, but changes should be put in place only after being thought-through and reviewed by professionals to ensure they are effective and sustainable – not just politically motivated.  FEMA has been doing a great job in the last several years by providing public comment periods on new and major changes to guidance.  I hope this continues.

© 2015 – Timothy Riecker

Emergency Preparedness Solutions, LLC

WWW.EPSLLC.BIZ 

Cybersecurity – What is the Government’s Role with Business and Industry?

Tim Riecker, The Contrarian Emergency Manager Leave a comment

The National Institute of Standards and Technology was charged by the President with the creation of a framework for improving critical infrastructure cybersecurity, which they accomplished in February of 2014.  This framework and associated documents provides information on critical steps that business and industry, working with the federal government, should take in the protection, prevention, detection, response, investigation, and recovery from a cyberattack.  The importance of this is not only the theft of private information of customers, as occurred in the hacking of Target databases, but most importantly (and the intention of the NIST document) the protection of our nation’s critical infrastructure – most of which is owned and operated by private industry.  What about state governments?  Do they have a role?

Working with various states around the nation, it has been interesting to see how they perceive their role in cybersecurity.  Some are very hands-on, while others are far too comfortable in the back seat.  State governments, it seems, are working to protect the cyber infrastructure they control (their own computer systems and data), but the position they take in respect to the private sector covers the whole spectrum of proactive to wait-and-see.  One wait-and-see-er explains their position away saying that if they don’t own the cyber infrastructure they can’t do anything to protect it.  Interestingly enough, this particular argument came from a larger state which is the recipient of higher cuts of homeland security grant program (HSGP) funds than most and has a significant amount of critical infrastructure, including several nuclear power plants.  They seem to have little interest even working with business and industry to come to common understandings, discuss threat indicators, share ideas, and talk about procedures and priorities.

On the other hand, there are states, both large and small, who see benefit to working with their business and industry to protect critical infrastructure and data interests.  While they acknowledge some challenges with the state not owning the cyberinfrastructure of these companies (nor do they want to), they see nothing but benefits in the formation of cybersecurity working groups and conducting cyber preparedness activities, particularly exercises.  This is the smart approach.

Given the number of cyberattacks that occur every day, it seems inevitable, just like any disaster, that a successful cyberattack on a critical sector of our infrastructure will certainly occur sometime in the future.  Are we prepared?  What are your states doing to prevent, protect, and prepare for such occurrences?  What are we missing?

© 2015 – Timothy Riecker

Emergency Preparedness Solutions, LLC

WWW.EPSLLC.BIZ

News in Emergency Management

Tim Riecker, The Contrarian Emergency Manager Leave a comment

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

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

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

Dear LLIS.gov User,

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

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

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

That’s all for now.  Stay safe.

© 2015 – Timothy Riecker

Emergency Preparedness Solutions, LLC

www.epsllc.biz 

Dispatch Transition to EOC Operations

Tim Riecker, The Contrarian Emergency Manager 2 Comments

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

© 2015 – Timothy Riecker

Emergency Preparedness Solutions, LLC

WWW.EPSLLC.BIZ 

Flooding – ’tis the Season

Tim Riecker, The Contrarian Emergency Manager Leave a comment

In central New York we have experienced 50+ degree (F) weather for the first time in months.  With the warmer weather has come the melting of a fair amount of snow which accumulated through the winter.  Winter temperatures rarely reaching above freezing up here resulting in little melting of snow through the season, so it’s all occurring now. Coupled with spring rains and storms, flood watches and warnings have been issued here and in other locations around the nation.  If you haven’t already, now is the time to prepare for flooding!

Aside from the measures that homeowners, business owners, and facility managers can take (sump pumps, doorway dams, sand bags, and flood barriers), jurisdictions need to be prepared for the impacts of flooding.  If electronic gauges don’t exist in your streams and rivers, be sure to have someone periodically measure and report their depth and progression toward flood stages.  Ensure that culverts are clean and open for the flow of water, and have personnel, equipment, signage, and barriers ready to deploy to address trouble spots and close roads.

Ironically, water and wastewater systems have a significant vulnerability to flooding.  The EPA has issued Flood Resilience: A Basic Guide for Water and Wastewater Utilities that includes worksheets, videos, and flood maps to guide water and wastewater system operators through identifying their flood risk and vulnerability and mitigation options available to them.  Along with that effort, they have issued a Flooding Incident Action Checklist.

Most importantly, make sure that flood awareness is not a unilateral effort.  Involve emergency managers, elected officials, and first response organizations.  Review plans, policies, and procedures and ensure they are up to date.  Consider related actions, such as notification and warning, evacuation, and flood fighting measures.  Preemptive messaging to property owners/residents and business owners to help them be aware and prepared for flooding is also crucial; and make sure everyone knows how to receive local weather alerts so they are aware of any imminent flooding dangers.

Stay dry!

© 2015 – Timothy Riecker

Emergency Preparedness Solutions, LLC

www.epsllc.biz