Tag Tim Riecker

Building a System of Response

Tim Riecker, The Contrarian Emergency Manager 1 Comment

On even relatively simple incidents, multiple agencies respond, each with their own priorities, objectives, and authorities.  Even on these small and fairly routine incidents, agencies will complain about one another, typically from a lack of understanding of their role and priorities at an incident scene.  On-scene conflict between police and fire departments is almost cliché, but if you’ve been in this business for a while, you’ve certainly seen it occur.

The number of agencies and interests often expands with great leaps and bounds as the size, duration, and complexity of an incident grows.  While we have incident management systems (such as the incident command system or ICS) which help us to organize and manage the multitude of resources and interests involved during an incident, it’s critical that we have a better understanding and accountability of these agencies and interests before a complex incident occurs.  How can this best be done?

Management Level

Establishing this mutual understanding and accountability is the foundation of a system of response.  From the broadest levels, this is established in the National Response Framework, which is a national-level document describing how the US Federal government organizes to response to large incidents, but also identifies, in general terms, the roles and responsibilities of state, local, tribal, private, nonprofit, faith-based, and community stakeholders; along with how they interrelate during a response.  In the US, states have their own emergency operations plans, which further narrow this perspective within their state, addressing their own unique hazards, resources, laws, and ways of operating.  County and local governments, individual agencies, organizations, and others can and often times do have their own plans with a continually refined focus.

It is through the creation and ongoing maintenance of these planning documents where our system of response is first built.  Dialogue and understanding among the stakeholders are essential.  We must learn who are partners are in emergency response (and mitigation, recovery, prevention, and protection, for that matter) and what their interests and objectives are.  Sometimes those partners are asked to participate, other times they simply arrive on scene, leaving local responders and the person in charge feeling insecure and frustrated.  In your planning efforts, try to anticipate who might be involved in a critical incident so you can better anticipate those needs.

Responder Level

To further this understanding, especially with those who may find themselves working directly with responders of other agencies, it is important to train and exercise together.  Joint training and exercises give responders an opportunity to navigate course and exercise objectives together, leveraging their own knowledge, experience, and capabilities along with those of others; increasing the value of the learning experience as well as their aptitude for joint operations.

Many training courses are well suited for mixed audiences – from the management and planning level to the tactical level.  Incident command system courses, which all responders should take to an appropriate level, are also ideal for this, especially since they should encourage discussion about operational priorities, objectives, and strategies.  Additionally, courses that are heavy in scenario-based training can greatly maximize this synergy, since they are a combination of training and structured exercises.  Courses that use simulation tables are excellent for cross-discipline integration.

Joint training and exercises might not always be practical, especially for those new to their field of practice.  Acknowledging that, consider including information on the other disciplines within the basic or academy-level training that is conducted.  A brief amount of time spent on the legal authorities, priorities, and operational objectives of partner disciplines can be valuable to creating understanding on a complex incident.

Keep it Going

As with all preparedness efforts, ‘one and done’ is not a mantra you want to follow.  To be effective, contemporary, and impactful; you have to build a legacy program.  As the program continues, strive to constantly improve.  Don’t only keep plans up to date, but create procedures on integration that lead to an effective system of response.  Use training to support these plans and procedures and use exercises as both an opportunity for practice as well as an opportunity to identify strengths and areas for improvement within the plans and procedures.  Joint exercises will help identify areas that need to be addressed, such as interoperable communications, conflicting protocols, and competing priorities.  It’s better to identify and address these matters now than during a critical incident.

© 2016 – Timothy Riecker, CEDP

Emergency Preparedness Solutions, LLC – Your Partner in Preparedness

Using Departmental Operations Centers for Incident Management Success

Tim Riecker, The Contrarian Emergency Manager Leave a comment

Increasingly, government agencies and departments are identifying the benefits of establishing and activating departmental operations centers (DOCs) to help manage their responses to incidents.  At the Vermont Vigilant Guard 2016 exercise, which concluded last week, I had some opportunity to discuss the benefits of DOCs, particularly with an agency who used theirs for the first time in this exercise.

For most agencies, a DOC can relieve agency representatives in an EOC from also having to manage and track their agency’s response activity.  In an EOC, an agency representative is largely a conduit for communication and they provide knowledge of their agency and their agency’s capabilities as they contribute to the greater discussions within the EOC.  According to NIMS/ICS, an agency representative should have some decision-making capability for their agency, although political and practical realities often dictate otherwise.  The overall scope of activity for an agency representative in an EOC largely precludes them from also managing the details of their agency’s response, particularly if that response is even moderately complex.

A DOC is the ideal location from which an agency can oversee and coordinate their own response to an incident.  They can deploy and track resources, address internal logistics matters, and coordinate external logistics matters back through their agency representative at the EOC.  DOCs are also an excellent application for large agencies, which may have a variety of technical functions organized throughout, such as a health department or transportation department.  Pulling together representatives from each organizational element within the agency to collectively troubleshoot, problem solve, and share resources, is excellent use of a DOC.  In a way, this application of a DOC could be considered similar to a multi-agency coordination center (MACC).

Does a DOC need to mirror NIMS/ICS (or the new Center Management System) standards?  While there is no set standard for organizing and managing a DOC, there are a lot of applications of ICS that can certainly be applied.  If you look at the main activities of your DOC, you will see where opportunities for integration of ICS principles exist.  Consider that a DOC should have and maintain good situational awareness.  While much of this can be provided by the EOC, the EOC may (should) be looking for some specific information from your agency.  A situation unit within your DOC would certainly be helpful.  Likewise, DOCs often address tactical or near-tactical application, by deploying and directing resources from throughout their agency.  Having a resource unit within your DOC will help tremendously in the tracking of these resources.  Depending on the size and scope, it may be prudent for your DOC to establish an incident action plan (IAP) of its own.

Logistics, mentioned earlier, may be another need within a DOC.  Certainly an element of finance is important for the approval of procurements and tracking of costs within the agency related to the incident.  If resources are being deployed, someone should be in charge of operations.  Lastly, any organization needs to maintain someone in charge.  A DOC Manager would be the ideal generic term for this position.

What are the draw backs of establishing a DOC?  First of all, it’s an additional layer of incident management.  While possibly necessary based on factors discussed earlier, adding layers of incident management can make incident management more complex, especially if roles of each layer and function are not well defined.  The best way to address this is pre-planning!  Staffing can also be a significant concern.  Many agencies may be too small to warrant, much less have staff available, for a DOC.  If such is the case, just as in other applications of ICS, you should be able to collapse down to a manageable size.

An often seen pitfall of DOCs is that they can quickly devolve into a management by committee type of structure; particularly with larger agencies where senior staff, who are used to regular meetings with each other, are now representing their functional interests within the DOC.  I’ve seen this result in what is essentially one endless meeting, interrupted by phone calls and emails which introduce new problems and perpetuate more discussion.  Strong leadership is absolutely required to ensure that a group such as this stays focused and on task, resolving issues on a timely basis.

Overall, the use of Departmental Operations Centers is a smart practice.  Work internally to plan their use, scoping out when and how it will be applied, where it will be located, the organization to be used, and how it is integrated into the overall incident management effort.  Once plans are developed and appropriate training is performed, exercise the plan to identify areas for improvement, turning those into corrective actions, and implementing them for continued success.

© 2016 – Timothy Riecker, CEDP

Emergency Preparedness Solutions, LLC – Your Partner in Preparedness

A Review and 3 Highlights of the DHS Active Shooter Preparedness Workshop

Tim Riecker, The Contrarian Emergency Manager 2 Comments

Last month I had the opportunity to attend a day-long active shooter workshop in Rochester, NY conducted by the DHS Office of Infrastructure Protection.  The focus was awareness of, preparedness for, and response to an active shooter event, with a lean towards a facilities-based audience rather than public safety.

The workshop began with discussions on recognition, then worked through each of the five mission areas (Prevention, Protection, Mitigation, Response, and Recovery).  The primary speaker was excellent, with real-world experience in active shooter situations.  While they referred to the offering as a pilot, the workshop has been around for a few years in various versions.  Understandably, and unfortunately, it’s difficult for the workshop to keep up with lessons learned from recent events.

As mentioned, the workshop weaves through the five mission areas, rather awkwardly trying to also align with the CPG 101 planning process.  I’m not sure that the two really fit well and it was clearly something new to the course, as the primary speaker missed some of the indicators for activities.  The workshop agenda also fell short, with the facilitators clearly offering a higher than usual number of breaks and of longer than usual length to maintain the workshop as a full day.

The activities were table-based, and focused on the primary steps as outlined in CPG 101, with the goal of giving some ideas and structure to the creation of an active shooter preparedness plan for a facility.  Ideas and discussion generated at our table and others were great, as attendees came from a broad array of facilities, such as schools, night clubs, health care, office buildings, and others.  The most disappointing comments were those about roadblocks people faced within their own organizations in planning and other preparedness activities for active shooters.  There is clearly a lot of denial about these incidents, which will only serve to endanger people.

With a number of public safety professionals in attendance, there was some great reflection on coordination with public safety in both preparedness and response.  One of the gems of the workshop was the number of audio and video clips provided throughout.  The segments included media and 911 clips, as well as post incident interviews with victims and responders.  The insight offered by these was excellent and they were a great value add.

Three pieces of information resonated above all others in this workshop:

  • Run, Hide, Fight (or variants thereof) was stressed as the best model for actions people can take in the event of an active shooter.
  • The inclusion of planning for persons with disabilities is extremely important in an active shooter situation. They may have less of an ability to Run, Hide, and/or Fight, and this should be accounted for in preparedness measures.
  • Essential courses of action for planning include:
    1. Reporting
    2. Notification
    3. Evacuation
    4. Shelter in Place
    5. Emergency Responder Coordination
    6. Access Control
    7. Accountability
    8. Communications Management
    9. Short Term Recovery
    10. Long Term Recovery

Since the workshop was in pilot form, there were no participant manuals provided, which a number of people were hopeful to have.  They did, however, provide a CD with a plethora of materials, including references, some videos, and planning guides.  Many of these I’ve seen and used before, but some were new to me.  There was a commitment to send us all an email with a link to a download of the participant manual once it was available.  Some of those resources can be found here.

All in all, this was a good workshop.  The mix of an audience (numbering over 60, I believe) contributed to great discussion and the primary speaker was great.  The presentation materials were solid and provided a lot of context.  While I was disappointed in the lack of a participant manual and the inclusion of too many breaks, I certainly understand that this is the pilot of a redeveloped program which they are trying to keep as timely and relevant as possible.  While I already knew of many of the concepts and standards, there was some great material and discussion, especially in the context of facilities rather than public safety response.  This is a good program which I would recommend to facility owners, managers, and safety/emergency management personnel as well as jurisdiction emergency management and public safety personnel.

© 2016 – Timothy Riecker, CEDP

Emergency Preparedness Solutions, LLC – Your Partner in Preparedness

Five Guidelines for Creating Effective Disaster Exercise Injects

Tim Riecker, The Contrarian Emergency Manager 1 Comment

While there is a lot of important and necessary planning that takes place before the development of exercise injects can even be considered, injects themselves are where the proverbial rubber meets the road.  How we craft those injects can often times make or break the conduct of the exercise.  Injects provide context, as if the events of the exercise were occurring in real life.  While we try to avoid delivering injects that directly prompt player responses, injects will often provide information which will lead players to react to the information provided.  Here are five guidelines to help you develop effective exercise injects:

  1. Injects must be purposeful and each one must relate back to one or more exercise objectives. Far too often we see injects that have no real bearing on the objectives of the exercise.  These are simply distractions and lead to busy work.  Keep things focused.  Just a few well-crafted injects can engage a number of players in active discussion or activity.
  2. Realistic injects are a must. While there will always be a grumble from some people claiming that something would ‘never happen that way’, due diligence must go into ensuring that injects are as realistic and grounded as possible.
  3. Be aware of who an inject would actually originate from. A common mistake I see is injects being scripted to originate from inappropriate sources.  This distracts from reality.  Also, injects should never originate from a player.
  4. Be flexible and aware. Sometimes players accomplish what they need to without an inject.  In that event, there may not be a need to use that inject.  Similarly, players may not respond to an inject as expected, so further action on the part of the Facilitators/Controllers/Simcell may be needed.
  5. Always have backups! As you build your Master Scenario Events List (MSEL), maintain a side list of contingency injects that can be used to speed up or slow down the exercise, or to address occurrences where players did not respond as expected.

Thoughts and ideas on these and other guidelines are always welcome!

© 2016 – Timothy Riecker, CEDP

Emergency Preparedness Solutions, LLC – Your Partner in Preparedness!

An Open Letter to LinkedIn Discussion Group Moderators

Tim Riecker, The Contrarian Emergency Manager 2 Comments

For those of you tuning in for your (somewhat) regular fix on emergency management and homeland security commentary, I apologize for this quick detour.  I encourage you, however, to read on and provide your thoughts and feedback on a matter which relates to how you are able to view my posts.  There are a few inconvenient practices out there which I feel a need to address.

While I have a humbling and ever growing number of people who follow my blog directly at www.triecker.wordpress.com, many read my posts through a variety of LinkedIn discussion groups.  Some of these groups were created and simply exist publicly, while others are members-only and diligently maintained by moderators who do great work to keep certain posts out of their group, such as those that are largely irrelevant and those which blatantly serve no other purpose than to market products and services.  As a member of several of these discussion groups, I am greatly appreciative of the time and effort these moderators put in.  I do, however, have some important feedback.

As I have been blogging for a few years now and cross posting to several LinkedIn discussion groups, I’ve encountered some practices with moderators with which I disagree.  Most recently, a discussion thread which originated from one of my blog posts was, inexplicably, shut down and closed to further comment.  The discussion in the thread was lively, with several people contributing to an excellent dialogue.  There didn’t appear to be any nastiness or inappropriate behavior, and all comments were on topic.  The thread was shut down with no notice, publicly or privately.  I’m not aware of there being any automatic limits on replies, but if there are, I don’t see a reason why.  This was an unfortunate occurrence which limited productive dialogue of your members.

Second, there are several of these groups that have an anti-spam feature.  On the surface, this is excellent!  In practice, especially for someone who appreciates active dialogue with those who comment, it’s a royal pain in the ass.  Essentially, after I reach some magic number of replies within a discussion thread, my replies will then go off into the ether, awaiting approval by the moderators before they are posted.  This process severely stalls great dialogue.

Lastly, many of these groups have certain rules which disallow posts which include blatant marketing content.  This is a great rule, as many of us have received notice from open groups with posts which are 100% pure marketing – which is not a reason why most people join these groups.  That said, these rules have been applied a bit too strictly and without common sense.  I’ve had moderators contact me (and some who don’t), refusing to post an article, simply because I include the name of my company and a link to our webpage at the bottom of my blog.  I’ve had others refuse to post an article because I include a sentence or two at the end of my blog about the services my company provides.  Allow me to make a few points with this… 1) The vast majority of my blogs run from 500-800 words.  The inclusion of my company name/web address, or a sentence or two at the end of that post related to the services my company provides does not make my post an advertisement.  I’d like to think there is still plenty of intellectual value to what I’m writing about.  2) This is LinkedIn.  It’s a social media platform for professionals.  That means that a certain amount of professional promotion should be expected.  3) Having given plenty of presentations for trade shows and membership groups, their guidelines regularly allow the ‘soft sell’, which means that while the bulk of your presentation is not directly about marketing your business, they usually allow a minute or two at the end to mention what your company does.  This is a pretty fair courtesy which I think is quite reasonable for discussion groups to apply.

Final words – Moderators, I greatly appreciate the time you put in and what you do.  Seriously.  You help keep a lot of crap and spam away from our inboxes and notifications.  I implore you, however, to remember what the intent of LinkedIn is, and with that in mind apply the rules of your discussion groups to maximize dialogue for the benefit of your members.

  • Thank you.

<no marketing message posted here>

Timothy Riecker, CEDP

ICS Training (Still) Sucks… One Year Later

Tim Riecker, The Contrarian Emergency Manager 13 Comments

Just over a year ago, I posted my article Incident Command Training Sucks, which to date has been viewed almost 2000 times on the WordPress blog platform, alone.  Since then, I’ve written several more times on the necessity to change the foundational ICS training curriculum in the US to programs that are focused on application of ICS in initial and transitional response instead of just theory and vague instruction.  I am greatly appreciative of all the support these articles have received and the extra effort so many have taken to forward my blog on to the attention of others.  These posts have led to some great dialogue among some incredible professionals about the need to update ICS training.  Sadly, there is no indication of action in this direction.

A recent reader mentioned that it often ‘takes guts to speak the truth’.  It’s a comment I appreciate, but I think the big issue is often complacency.  We settle for something because we don’t have an alternative.  Also, I’ve found that people are reluctant to speak out against the current training programs because there are so many good instructors or because the system, foundationally, is sound.  My criticisms are not directed at instructors or the system itself – both of which I overwhelmingly believe in.  I’m also not being critical of those who have participated in the creation of the current curriculum or those who are the ‘keepers’ of the curriculum.

Much of the existing curriculum has been inherited, modified from its roots in wildfire incident management, where it has served well.  While adjustments and updates have been made through the years, it’s time we take a step away and examine the NEED for training.  Assessment is, after all, the first step of the ADDIE model of instructional design.  Let’s figure out what is needed and start with a clean slate in designing a NEW curriculum, instead of making adjustments to what exists (which clearly doesn’t meet the need).

Another reader commented that ‘The traditional ICS courses seem to expect the IC to just waive their hands and magically the entire ICS structure just would build beneath them’.  It is phrases we find in the courses such as ‘establish command’ or ‘develop your organization’ that are taken for granted and offer little supporting content or guides to application.  The actions that these simple phrases point to can be vastly complicated.  This is much of the point of Chief Cynthia Renaud’s article ‘The Missing Piece of NIMS: Teaching Incident Commanders to Function on the Edge of Chaos’.  We need to train to application and performance – and I’m not talking about formal incident management teams, I’m talking about the responders in your communities.  The training programs for incident management teams are great, but not everyone has the time or ability to attend these.

I’m hoping that my articles continue to draw attention to this need.  Perhaps the changes that come as a result of the final NIMS refresh will prompt this; hopefully beyond just a simple update to the curriculum giving us a real, needs-based rewrite.  As I’ve mentioned before, this is public safety, not a pick-up game of kickball.  We can do better.

© 2016 – Timothy Riecker, CEDP

Emergency Preparedness Solutions, LLC – Your Partner in Preparedness

Achieving Coordination Through Unity of Effort

Tim Riecker, The Contrarian Emergency Manager Leave a comment

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

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

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

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

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

© 2016 – Timothy Riecker, CEDP

Emergency Preparedness Solutions, LLC – Your Partner in Preparedness

How Prepared are US Households?

Tim Riecker, The Contrarian Emergency Manager 3 Comments

Within the 2013 American Housing Survey, the United States Census Bureau asked US residents how prepared they were for disasters.  They assembled a great infographic on their findings, which can be found here.  Thanks to Jason S for posting this on LinkedIn last week! (commentary below)

Measuring America: How Ready Are We?

I find many of the numbers to be interesting, and am quite honestly skeptical of several of them.  I’m sure the methodology of the Census Bureau’s survey is sound, but I question some of the results based upon my own interactions with the public regarding preparedness.  I’d be interested in seeing the questions.  I did a bit of digging around and found the Census website for the American Housing Survey, which is located here.  There are a variety of data tables available, including breakdowns related to these preparedness questions, but nothing that I can find that specifically provides the questions.  From what I’ve seen, it appears the survey was only conducted in major metropolitan areas around the US.

Emergency Water Supply: 54.3% of households state that they have at least three gallons of water for each person in the household.  This number seems high to me.  I’m left wondering if some people may have thought this included tap water?

Non-Perishable Emergency Food: 82% of households said they have enough non-perishable food to sustain their family for three days.  Have you looked in your pantry lately?  I fully agree with this number.  You may not be able to make full meals or have them be nutritionally balanced, but I do believe that most pantries can provide adequate sustenance for a family for three days.

Prepared Emergency Evacuation Kit: 51.5% of households say they have one.  Really?  I’m not convinced.

Emergency Meeting Location: 37.4% of households say they have an identified emergency meeting location.  While the number still might be a little high, I think it’s within a realistic range.

Communication Plan: 33% of households say they have a communication plan which includes a contingency for the disruption of cell service.  Same as the previous item, perhaps a little high, but I think it’s in the ballpark.

Evacuation Vehicles: 88.6% of households say they have a vehicle or vehicles able to carry all household members, pets, and supplies up to 50 miles away.  I did a bit of digging around, and this number seems accurate, as about 90% of US households have vehicles.  I’m a bit surprised about how high the number is considering that this survey canvassed major metropolitan areas, though.

Evacuation Funds: 69.8% of households said they have access to up to $2000 in the event of evacuation.  In all, between cash and credit, I can believe this number.  They may have to get out of the disaster area, however, to access funds electronically.

House or Building Number Clearly Visible: 77.5% of households said they have this.  Having worked as a firefighter and EMT for many years, I’d agree that somewhere between 2/3 to ¾ of building numbers are visible.

Generator Present: 18.3% of households say they have a generator present.  All in all a sound number, I believe, but perhaps a bit high for urban areas.

Access to Financial Information: 76.8% of households say they have access to their financial information.  This is a question I’d like to see the wording on, but aside from taking time to dig through old bills, I’m skeptical.  Emergency Financial First Aid Kits are a great idea and should be maintained regularly.

I’m hopeful that many of these numbers are reflections of reality, but even if they are we have a long way to go.  One of the best resources out there is WWW.READY.GOV.  Everyone should check it out and make some progress toward individual and family preparedness.  First responders and emergency managers – this means you, too!

What are your thoughts on these statistics?  Those of you in other nations – what kind of preparedness data have you seen for your country?

Stay safe!

© 2016 – Timothy Riecker, CEDP

Emergency Preparedness Solutions, LLC – Your Partner in Preparedness

 

2016 National Preparedness Report Released

Tim Riecker, The Contrarian Emergency Manager 3 Comments

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

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

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

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

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

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

© 2016 – Timothy Riecker, CEDP

Emergency Preparedness Solutions, LLC – Your Partner in Preparedness

 

Taking Another Look at Mass Casualty Incidents

Tim Riecker, The Contrarian Emergency Manager 2 Comments

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

© 2016 – Timothy Riecker, CEDP

Emergency Preparedness Solutions, LLC – Your Partner in Preparedness!