Tag training

Course Review – RDPC Isolation and Quarantine

Tim Riecker, The Contrarian Emergency Manager Leave a comment

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

© 2016 – Timothy Riecker, CEDP

Emergency Preparedness Solutions, LLC – Your Partner in Preparedness

“No Battle Plan Survives Contact With the Enemy”

Tim Riecker, The Contrarian Emergency Manager 2 Comments

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

© 2016 – Timothy Riecker, CEDP

Emergency Preparedness Solutions, LLC – Your Partner in Preparedness!

Calgary Report on Emergency Preparedness

Tim Riecker, The Contrarian Emergency Manager Leave a comment

Be sure to see the update posted at the bottom of this article!

 

Published in the Calgary Herald (and perhaps elsewhere), Calgary Emergency Management Agency released their 2016 report on the status of preparedness in the city.  While the data contained in the report only has direct relevance if you have interest in the city of Calgary, the concept and themes in the report have some broader relevance to everyone in emergency management.

First, let’s talk about the publication of this report.  I absolutely think this is a best practice and Calgary Emergency Management should be congratulated for it.  The Herald also deserves credit for putting the information out there… we know that media outlets don’t always have the time or ability to publish the information they are provided.  All in all, the information contained in the report should be pretty relatable to most readers.  They detail the hazards, highlight costs of certain past disasters in the province of Alberta, talk about some facts that demonstrate a continued need for preparedness efforts, and they talk about some of their actions and recommended actions for others.  I’m left wondering if these are highlights of a more detailed report.  Either way, it’s a nice bit of information and promotion of emergency management efforts.

Their report starts off providing a list of the top ten hazards and risks in Calgary, with an added bit of information telling what percentage of hazard mitigation efforts are focused on each hazard (I’m not sure what the mitigation percentage is based upon… percent of mitigation budget, perhaps?).  While much of the hazard list is intuitive, it should certainly serve as a good reminder to businesses and citizens about what can impact the area.  This is also a list that I largely suspect could be replicated in many other municipalities around the world, especially those in the colder reaches of the northern and southern hemispheres.

Another section in the report provides a number of bulleted facts related to preparedness in Calgary.  Some of these seem to have originated from a public survey, others from a survey of businesses, while others, such as the number of critical infrastructures in the city, were likely internal or in collaboration with other agencies.  Regardless of the source, they should be eye opening for people.  They are also, as with other information, fairly representative of many other municipalities around the world.  While the numbers may not be exact, I’m sure the percentages are pretty close.

They follow up their facts with two brief sections on hazard mitigation, one focusing on private sector and business continuity and the other from a broader emergency management perspective.  These are all certainly applicable in any of our locations.  Finally, they list their nine focuses for the year.  These nine areas may very well be pulled from an annual strategic plan update for Calgary Emergency Management and are also very relatable to most of us around the world.  They mention things like leveraging risk assessment, sustainability funding for capabilities, emergency plan revisions, public outreach, training and exercises, and others.

It’s great to see an emergency management agency putting information out to the populations they serve.  It adds context to ‘winter weather awareness week’ or other promotions, and provides more information on what emergency management does.  This report also showed that, while there are some differences based on our relative locations, much of what we are dealing with in emergency management is very similar.

Kudos again to CEMA.

© 2016 – Timothy Riecker, CEDP

Emergency Preparedness Solutions, LLC – Your Partner in Preparedness

~ Update

By virtue of posting this article, I was contacted by Ms. Tabitha Beaton who works for Calgary Emergency Management and was one of the principal authors of this report.  A full version of their report can be found here.

TR

Don’t Just Take It From Me – There are Issues with ICS Training

Tim Riecker, The Contrarian Emergency Manager Leave a comment

The February 2016 edition of the Domestic Preparedness Journal highlighted, among other things, some concerns with ICS training in the United States.  First off, if you aren’t subscribed to the DPJ, you should be.  It’s free and they offer good content, with few extraneous emails beyond the journals.  Check them out at www.domesticpreparedness.com.

The specific article in this issue I’m referencing is Incident Command System: Perishable if Not Practiced, by Stephen Grainer. Mr. Grainer is the Chief of Incident Management Systems for the Virginia Department of Fire Programs.  Steve has a significant depth in ICS and understands all the nuances of preparedness and application.  I first met him when serving on the national NIMS steering committee with him several years back.

The title of the article is a bit deceptive – it’s not just focused on the issue of the training being perishable.  Right up front, Mr. Grainer, who is a longtime supporter and advocate of ICS, outlines a few shortcomings and constraints related to the application of ICS and ICS training.  He states that “little attention has been given to developing the students’ ability to recognize an evolving situation in which more formalized implementation of the ICS should be undertaken”.  This underscores one of my main points on the failings of the ICS curriculum.  We teach people all about what ICS is, but very little of how to use it.

After giving a few case studies that reflect on the shortcomings he highlighted, Mr. Grainer expresses his support for continued training, refresher training (something not currently required), and opportunities to apply ICS in ways that public safety and emergency management don’t do on a regular basis.  He summarizes by stating that not only does training need to continue to address succession and bench depth, but also the need to address how to maintain competencies and address misunderstandings in NIMS/ICS.

Yes, training does need to continue, but it must be the RIGHT training!  We continue doing a disservice by promoting the current ICS courses which fall well short of what needs to be accomplished.  Mr. Grainer’s mention of the need for our training to address better implementation of ICS, particularly beyond the routine, is perhaps a bit understated, but nonetheless present.  Refresher training also needs to be incorporated into a new curriculum, as these skills are absolutely perishable – particularly the aspects of ICS typically reserved for more complex incidents.

In the event you aren’t familiar with my earlier posts on ICS and my crusade for a better curriculum, check out these posts.  As I’ve said before, this isn’t a pick-up kickball game… this is public safety.  We can do better.

Shameless plug:  Assessments, Planning, Training, Exercises.  Emergency Preparedness Solutions does it all.  Contact us to find out how our experience can benefit your jurisdiction’s or organization’s emergency and disaster preparedness.  We are your partner in preparedness.  www.epsllc.biz.

© 2016 – Timothy Riecker

Emergency Preparedness Solutions, LLC

ICS: Who doesn’t need it?

Tim Riecker, The Contrarian Emergency Manager 16 Comments

In a recent discussion thread, someone shared some material for a new program that promotes resiliency for disaster housing.  While the intent of the program is good, there was one thing that struck me – it stated that it was based on the incident command system (ICS).  My question – why?

ICS is a great system.  It’s proven to be effective WHEN APPLIED PROPERLY.  That’s the catch, though, isn’t it?  A great many after action reports (AARs) identify areas for improvement relative to various facets of ICS after incidents, events, and exercises.  The organizations that the AARs are usually focused on are professional response organizations – fire, police, EMS, public works, public health, emergency management, etc.  These are organizations that generally get LOTS OF PRACTICE in applying ICS.  So what’s the problem?

The problem is that most organizations that do use ICS don’t get enough practice in applying ICS beyond smaller incidents.  So if responders, who are using ICS, have difficulty with expanded application despite some practice and more advanced training, how are organizations who don’t use it all expected to be able to remember it much less apply it properly on even the most basic of incidents?  (More on my issues with ICS training here, in case you’ve missed posts over the last year or so.)

So back to the main topic of this post – who doesn’t need ICS training?  I would suggest that those persons and organizations that don’t fit the broad definition of responders DON’T NEED IT.  While this may be blasphemous to some, consider the time and effort wasted on getting people trained to understand ICS who will NEVER USE IT.  “But what if they do need it?” you ask?

I’m challenged to really find that need.  Why does the management of an apartment complex need to know or understand ICS?  I find the thought of that foolish and wasteful.  Sure, they can be a partner in disaster preparedness, response, and recovery.  Does that make them a responder?  No. Will they become part of the ICS organization?  NO!  Is there any reason why they would need to use ICS to manage their own organization?  NO!!! They manage their organization every day through what should be a very effective model for them.  Why the hell do we want to change that?  We need to stop pushing our complex shit on other people who don’t need it.

I’m of two thoughts on this… One, there are people who are so gung-ho over including everyone under the sun into emergency management that they feel compelled to bring them into the profession.  News flash people – if they wanted to be emergency managers, they would.  There is no practical reason for them to be trained in the vast complexities of emergency management.  Two, there are people who don’t really understand the applications of emergency management themselves, and therefore try to make adaptations of the system for every variety of stakeholder out there.  This is something I’ve struggled with very often as people try to adapt ICS to their organization and, in doing so, change the foundational principles of ICS (span of control, terminology, organizational structure, etc.).  Further, every organization thinks they have an INCIDENT COMMANDER.  STOP!!!

ICS is not for everyone.  I’m not being elitist or exclusionary, I’m being practical.  That’s not to say that certain stakeholders shouldn’t at least be familiar with what it is, but still not every stakeholder or partner, and they certainly don’t need to know how to actually apply it.  For many, simply having a point of contact with certain departments or through the 911 center is enough.  Certainly if some have an interest in it they can ask, or take a class either in person or online.  (I would never withhold a training opportunity from anyone.)  This should certainly give them enough to satisfy their curiosity.

Along with my crusade to make better ICS training for responders (even non-traditional ones), I would suggest that we need to do a better job of advising other organizations about how they interact with the system.  Simply throwing ICS training at them DOESN’T WORK.  It creates false expectations and generates more confusion.

So please, fire away with your thoughts.  Who do you think shouldn’t have ICS training?  What would you change about the current ICS training model/requirements? 

Shameless plug time: Need ICS training or training in other areas of emergency management?  How about meaningful and practical emergency plans you can actually implement?  Exercises to test those plans and give staff an opportunity to practice implementing plans?  Emergency Preparedness Solutions can help!  Link to info below!

© 2016 – Timothy Riecker

Emergency Preparedness Solutions, LLC

Emergency Management: Coordinating a System of Systems

Tim Riecker, The Contrarian Emergency Manager 1 Comment

Emergency management, by nature, is at the nexus of a number of other practices and professions, focusing them on solving the problems of emergencies and disasters.  It’s like a Venn diagram, with many entities, including emergency management, having some overlapping interests and responsibilities, but each of them having an overlap in the center of the diagram, the place where coordination of emergency management resides. That’s what makes the profession of emergency management fairly complex – we are not only addressing needs inherent in our own profession, we are often times doing it through the application of the capabilities of others.  It’s like being the conductor of an orchestra or a show runner for a television show. It doesn’t necessarily put emergency management ‘in charge’, but they do become the coordination point for the capabilities needed.

Presentation1

 

This high degree of coordination depends on the functioning and often integration of a variety of systems.  What is a ‘system’?  Merriam-Webster offers that a system is a “regularly interacting or interdependent group of items forming a unified whole.”  Each agency and organization that participates in emergency management has its own systems.  I’d suggest that these broadly include policies, plans, procedures, and the people and technologies that facilitate them – and not just in response, but across all phases or mission areas.  Like the Venn diagram, many of these systems interact to (hopefully) facilitate emergency management.

There are systems we have in many nations that are used to facilitate components of emergency management, such as the National Incident Management System (NIMS), the Incident Command System (ICS) (or other incident management systems), and Multi-Agency Coordination Systems (MACS).  These systems have broad reach, working to provide some standardization and common ground through which we can manage incidents by coordinating multiple organizations and each of their systems.  As you can find indicated in the NIMS doctrine, though, NIMS (and the other systems mentioned) is not a plan.  While NIMS provides us with an operational model and some guidance, we need plans.

Emergency Operations Plans (EOPs) help us accomplish a coordination of systems for response, particularly when written to encompass all agencies and organizations, all hazards, and all capabilities.  Likewise, Hazard Mitigation Plans do the same for mitigation activities and priorities.  Many jurisdictions have smartly written disaster recovery plans to address matters post-response.  We also have training and exercise plans which help address some preparedness measures (although generally not well enough).  While each of these plans helps to coordinate a number of systems, themselves becoming systems of systems, we are still left with several plans which also need to be coordinated as we know from experience that the lines between these activities are, at best, grey and fuzzy (and not in the cuddly kitten kind of way).

The best approach to coordinating each of these plans is to create a higher level plan.  This would be a comprehensive emergency management plan (CEMP).  Those of you from New York State (and other areas) are familiar with this concept as it is required by law.  However, I’ve come to realize that how the law is often implemented simply doesn’t work. Most CEMPs I’ve seen try to create an operational plan (i.e. an EOP) within the CEMP, and do very little to actually address or coordinate other planning areas, such as the hazard mitigation plan, recovery plans, or preparedness plans.

To be successful, we MUST have each of those component plans in place to address the needs they set out to do so.  Otherwise, we simply don’t have plans that are implementation-ready at an operational level.  Still, there is a synchronicity that must be accomplished between these plans (for those of you who have experienced the awkward transition between response and recovery, you know why).  The CEMP should serve as an umbrella plan, identifying and coordinating the goals, capabilities, and resources of each of the component plans.  While a CEMP is generally not operational, it does help identify, mostly from a policy perspective, what planning components must come into play and when and how they interrelate to each other.  A CEMP should be the plan that all others are built from.

Presentation2

I’m curious about how many follow this model and the success (or difficulty) you have found with it.

As always, if you are looking for an experienced consulting firm to assist in preparing plans or any other preparedness activities, Emergency Preparedness Solutions is here to help!

© 2016 – Timothy Riecker

Emergency Preparedness Solutions, LLC

H.R. 4397 – The Rail Safety Act

Tim Riecker, The Contrarian Emergency Manager 2 Comments

A few days ago I came across a notice of the introduction of HR 4397, aka the Rail Safety Act.  Text of the bill can be found here: https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/114/hr4397/text.  This bill was introduced by Rep. Ron Kind (D-WI) and had been assigned to House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure on January 28th.  The essence of the bill… “To direct the Administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency to provide for caches of emergency response equipment to be used in the event of an accident involving rail tank cars transporting hazardous material, crude oil, or flammable liquids.”

If you follow the link provided above, you will get the full text of the bill, which honestly doesn’t tell much more.  I’m rather ambivalent about things like this.  We have a history of pre-positioning equipment and supplies for a variety of disasters.  Organizations such as the American Red Cross function this way, as do various agencies of the US federal government.  In 1999 the National Pharmaceutical Stockpile (NPS) was expanded to preposition medical supplies around the nation as a preparedness effort for a biological or chemical attack.  This program expanded in 2003 and became the Strategic National Stockpile (SNS).  In 2006, FEMA/DHS developed a program to pre-position disaster supplies (mostly mass care types of supplies) in certain disaster prone areas around the nation.  While we also have a variety of specialized teams, that’s a slightly different matter.

One key struggle of prepositioning supplies and equipment largely boils down to who will be responsible for them.  Supplies and equipment need to be secured and maintained.  This requires some regularity of check in to ensure they are ready to be deployed at a moment’s notice.  Each location needs a deployment plan, identifying how these assets will be deployed.  As part of this planning, there must be a trigger mechanism for requesting these supplies.  The supplies must deploy and reach their destination in such a time frame to be effective.  Of course upon arrival of the cache, responders must be familiar with what is there, take time to unpack it and inspect it, and be readily able to use it (therefore they must be pre-trained in the use of the equipment).  So who will be responsible for these caches?  State governments?  Local governments?  Rail carriers?  First responders?

Hazardous materials response is one of the most highly regulated aspects of public safety.  It is governed in the US by the Occupational Health and Safety Administration (OSHA) regulation 1910.120.  There is a strong emphasis on preparedness and protocol.  Only individuals trained to certain levels can conduct certain actions in a hazardous materials response.  Most responders, due to the fairly low ranking hazard of a major hazardous material release in their jurisdiction, do not have the degree of training needed to utilize some of what I expect would be in a cache of supplies as ordered by the Rail Safety Act.  That said, every jurisdiction in the US has access to a hazardous materials team – either from a nearby jurisdiction or from the state.  These teams have the specialized training and equipment needed to address a hazmat incident.  Now that we’ve gotten to that, what, exactly, is the need that the Rail Safety Act is addressing?

Sure, these caches of supplies may provide more of whatever is needed, but there are a few issues here.  First of all, it will take people to examine what is being delivered, to unpack it, and to ready it for deployment.  Often, the biggest issue on a response such as this is a lack of trained personnel.  Second, will the materials being provided by the cache be interoperable with what the hazmat team is using?  While we have gotten better at standardizing equipment, there are still many issues out there.  Tab A requires Slot A.  Slot B simply won’t work.

I suppose what I’m really interested in here is a definition of need.  Has there been any type of needs assessment or feasibility study conducted for this?  I’m doubtful.  Most bills are generally introduced at a whim by well-intentioned but ill-informed politicians.  The last thing we need is another requirement to work within that does us little good – even if it is to be funded by the rail carriers.

I’m curious if anyone out there happens to know about this bill or any need supporting it.

© 2016 – Timothy Riecker

Emergency Management – Who Knows About Your Plans?

Tim Riecker, The Contrarian Emergency Manager 1 Comment

In emergency management and homeland security we put a lot of emphasis on planning.  Plans are important, afterall.  We need to take the time to identify what our likely hazards are and how we will address them.  But what happens when the plan is complete?  We congratulate members of the planning team and send them final copies.  Those copies get filed electronically or end up on a shelf, a trophy of our accomplishment and hard work.  Congratulations!

So… that’s it?  Is that all?

NO!  Of course not!  People need to be trained to the plan.  “Trained?” you ask.  Yes – trained.  Not just sent a copy and told to review it.  Let’s be honest, here.  Even assuming the highest degree of dedication and professionalism, many people simply won’t give it the time and attention it needs.  Very quickly the plan will get buried on their desks or the email will become one of dozens or hundreds in the inbox.  Even if they do give it a look through, most will only give a quick pass through the pages between meetings (or during a meeting!), not giving much attention to the details in the plan.

How effective do you expect people to be?

Sports analogy – when a coach creates new plays, do they simply give them to the players to become familiar with and expect proficiency?  No.  Of course not.  We’re all familiar with the classic, if not cliché, setting of the coach reviewing plays on a chalk board with the players in a locker room.  That’s training.  Then after that training, they go out in the field and practice the plays.

Back to our reality… The first real step of making people familiar with the plan is to review it with them.  This usually doesn’t need to be a sleep inducing line-for-line review of the plan (unless it is a detailed procedure), but a review of the concepts and key roles and responsibilities.  In fact, that’s who you invite to the training – those who are identified in the plan.  This is likely to include people in your own agency as well as people in other agencies (emergency management, after all, is a collaborative effort).  In states with strong county governments, we often see county-level emergency management offices creating plans that dictate or describe the activities of local governments and departments.  Most often, the local departments have no awareness of these plans, much less receive any training on them.  I’m guessing that plan won’t work.

Once you’ve trained these key stakeholders, be sure to conduct exercises on various aspects of the plan.  Exercises serve not only to validate plans, but to also help further familiarize stakeholders with the plan, their roles, and expectations of others.  When we plan, we tend to make many assumptions which exercises help to work through.  Through exercising we also identify other needs we may have.

Need help with planning? Training? Exercises?  EPS can do it!  Link below.

© 2016 – Timothy Riecker

Emergency Preparedness Solutions, LLC 

 

Updating ICS Training: Identification of Core Competencies

Tim Riecker, The Contrarian Emergency Manager Leave a comment

The crusade continues.  ICS training still sucks.  Let’s get enough attention on the subject to get it changed and make it more effective.

If you are a new reader of my blog, or you happened to miss it, check out this post from last June which should give you some context: Incident Command System Training Sucks.

As mentioned in earlier posts on the topic, the ICS-100 and ICS-200 courses are largely OK as they current exist.  Although they could benefit from a bit of refinement, they accomplish their intent.  The ICS-300 course is where we rapidly fall apart, though.  Much of the ICS-300 is focused on the PLANNING PROCESS, which is extremely important (I’ve worked a lot as an ICS Planning Section Chief), however, there is knowledge that course participants (chief and supervisor level responders) need to know well before diving into the planning process.

First responders and other associated emergency management partners do a great job EVERY DAY of successfully responding to and resolving incidents.  The vast majority of these incidents are fairly routine and of short duration.  In NIMS lingo we refer to these as Type IV and Type V incidents.  The lack of complexity doesn’t require a large organization, and most of that organization is dedicated to getting the job done (operations).  More complex incidents – those that take longer to resolve (perhaps days) and require a lot more resources, often ones we usually don’t deal with regularly – are referred to as Type III incidents.  Type III incidents, such as regional flooding or most tornados, are localized disasters.  I like to think of Type III incidents as GATEWAY INCIDENTS.  Certainly far more complex than the average motor vehicle accident, yet not hurricane-level.  The knowledge, skills, and abilities applied in a Type III, however, can be directly applied to Type II and Type I incidents (the big ones).

It’s not to say that what is done in a car accident, conceptually, isn’t done for a hurricane, but there is so much more to address.  While the planning process certainly facilitates a proactive and ongoing management of the incident, there are other things to first be applied.  With all that said, in any re-writing and restructuring of the ICS curriculum, we need to consider what the CORE COMPETENCIES of incident management are.

What are core competencies?  One of the most comprehensive descriptions I found of core competencies comes from the University of Nebraska – Lincoln, which I summarized below.  While their description is largely for a standing organization (theirs), these concepts easily apply to an ad-hoc organization such as those we establish for incident management.

Competency: The combination of observable and measurable knowledge, skills, abilities and personal attributes that contribute to enhanced employee performance and ultimately result in organizational success. To understand competencies, it is important to define the various components of competencies.

  • Knowledge is the cognizance of facts, truths and principles gained from formal training and/or experience. Application and sharing of one’s knowledge base is critical to individual and organizational success.
  • A skill is a developed proficiency or dexterity in mental operations or physical processes that is often acquired through specialized training; the execution of these skills results in successful performance.
  • Ability is the power or aptitude to perform physical or mental activities that are often affiliated with a particular profession or trade such as computer programming, plumbing, calculus, and so forth. Although organizations may be adept at measuring results, skills and knowledge regarding one’s performance, they are often remiss in recognizing employees’ abilities or aptitudes, especially those outside of the traditional job design.

When utilizing competencies, it is important to keep the following in mind:

  • Competencies do not establish baseline performance levels
  • Competencies support and facilitate an organization’s mission 
  • Competencies reflect the organization’s strategy; that is, they are aligned to short- and long-term missions and goals.
  • Competencies focus on how results are achieved rather than merely the end result. 
  • Competencies close skill gaps within the organization.
  • Competency data can be used for employee development, compensation, promotion, training and new hire selection decisions.

So what are the CORE COMPETENCIES OF INCIDENT MANAGEMENT?  What are the knowledge, skills, and abilities (KSAs) that drive organizational success in managing and resolving an incident?  Particularly for this application, we need to focus on WHAT CAN BE TRAINED.  I would offer that knowledge can be imparted through training, and skills can be learned and honed through training and exercises; but abilities are innate, therefore we can’t weigh them too heavily when considering core competencies for training purposes.

All in all, the current ICS curriculum, although in need of severe restructuring, seems to cover the knowledge component pretty well – at least in terms of ICS ‘doctrine’.  More knowledge needs to be imparted, however, in areas that are tangential to the ICS doctrine, such as emergency management systems, management of people in the midst of chaos, and other topics.  The application of knowledge is where skill comes in. That is where we see a significant shortfall in the current ICS curriculum.  We need to introduce more SCENARIO-BASED LEARNING to really impart skill-based competencies and get participants functioning at the appropriate level of Bloom’s Taxonomy.

Aside from the key concepts of ICS (span of control, transfer of command, etc.), what core competencies do you feel need to be trained to for the average management/supervisor level responder (not an IMT member)?  What knowledge and skills do you feel they need to gain from training?  What do we need a new ICS curriculum to address?

(hint: this is the interactive part!  Feedback and comments welcome!)

As always, thanks to my fellow crusaders for reading.

© 2016 – Timothy Riecker

Emergency Preparedness Solutions, LLC

Understanding and Using the Core Capabilities

Tim Riecker, The Contrarian Emergency Manager 7 Comments

One of the great features of WordPress (my blogging platform) is that it identifies various statistics and sets of data for me.  One of those bits of data is search terms used to find my blog.  Yesterday there were three that caught my eye:

  • Which of the 31 core capabilities are useless
  • How many of the 31 core capabilities do we really need
  • Are there any of the 31 core capabilities that we can do without

Obviously there is some interest in the Core Capabilities.  These searches are so similar they are very likely from the same person or a group of people, such as college students.  As a side, I have been flattered to find that many of my blog posts have been cited in college papers.  It’s quite an honor.

On to the Core Capabilities.  First of all, with the release of the second edition of the National Preparedness Goal, there are now 32 Core Capabilities.  The Core Capabilities can be viewed as key areas of activity.  Mass Care Services, for example, involves a broad array of activities including sheltering, feeding, hydration, mental and spiritual care, and others.  Each of the 32 Core Capabilities have applicability, although that applicability will vary from location to location.

32 Core Capabilities

NPG 32 Core Capabilities

My company recently completed a state-wide homeland security and emergency management assessment for a client.  This assessment was based upon the Core Capabilities, as they provide consistent definitions of these activity areas and are comprehensive, incorporating all key activities in all phases of emergency management and homeland security and are generally not hazard-specific.

We met face to face with a number of jurisdictions, large and small, to gather input on each Core Capability.  It was no surprise that certain Core Capabilities, specifically Planning, Operational Coordination, and Public Information and Warning were consistently identified as top concerns for stakeholders.  These three Core Capabilities, by the way, are applicable across all five Mission Areas identified in the National Preparedness Goal.

In our study, there were other Core Capabilities which we found to be important to some, but not to others.  Many smaller jurisdictions, especially those without their own law enforcement, saw little applicability to them of those Core Capabilities which are contained within the Prevention and Protection Mission Areas.  As these two Mission Areas are generally focused on criminal and homeland security issues, we found that those not in law enforcement tended to be dismissive of their importance.  Even some law enforcement professionals, at least in the state we were working in, viewed some of these Core Capabilities as being a responsibility of the State Police and generally not a local police activity.

Potential application of the Core Capabilities is quite broad with many possibilities.  Unfortunately, FEMA doesn’t seem to be marketing their applicability very well, which makes the questions about their usefullness quite understandable.  Going back about ten years, FEMA provided us with the predecessor to the Core Capabilities – these were the Target Capabilities.  The Target Capabilities were a good start, albeit a bit complex and unrefined.  The Core Capabilities are a great evolution of the same concept.  When the Target Capabilities were released, there was a big push for their integration into all aspects of preparedness.  FEMA encouraged their consideration in planning efforts, they encouraged training courses to identify what Target Capabilities were being trained to, and for exercises to identify what Target Capabilities were being exercised.  While much of that encouragement has seemed to disappear, there is no reason why we can’t still do it with the Core Capabilities.  And we should.

The most direct application of the Core Capabilities is in the THIRA process.  THIRA stands for Threat and Hazard Identification and Risk Assessment.  Many discussions on THIRA can be found here.  The annual completion of a THIRA is required of every state, territory, and Urban Area Security Initiative (UASI) funded program.  The THIRA is essentially a very thorough and in-depth hazard analysis that other jurisdictions should consider conducting.  The insights revealed from the process and the end product are widely applicable and can fully change the basis for an emergency management program.  The THIRA process centers on the Core Capabilities.

Other preparedness efforts can certainly reference the Core Capabilities, and easily so.  The greatest benefit of the Core Capabilities, from my experience, is consistency.  They provide a concise definition of these key activities.  The definition is broad enough to find applicability to any jurisdiction, which then uses that definition to identify their own capability targets.  Capability targets define how the jurisdiction is going to accomplish each Core Capability.  That is the brilliance of the system – national-level definitions for key activity areas which are then refined by each jurisdiction to identify how they will best apply them.  While the creation of capability targets is part of the THIRA process, any jurisdiction can do it.  These targets help define what they want to accomplish in their emergency management programs.

As with the Target Capabilities, the Core Capabilities can be referenced in planning, training, exercises, assessments, and other activities.  Many of the Core Capabilities may warrant their own planning efforts for many jurisdictions.  Things like Mass Care Services, Fatality Management, Situational Assessment, and Housing can all be planning annexes to a more comprehensive emergency management planning effort.  The HSEEP process still calls for the identification of Core Capabilities early in the exercise design process.  This identification, along with the creation of good exercise objectives, helps define the scope of the exercise and maintain focus.  The same application works for training programs.  From a program management perspective, Core Capabilities should be used to identify areas of focus in a Training and Exercise Plan (TEP).

The definitions that Core Capabilities provide, along with the benefit of jurisdiction-specific capability targets, can help broadly identify what emergency management and homeland security programs are focused on.  The consistency allows for increased understanding, prioritization, and connectivity between activities and programs.  Integrating the Core Capabilities into EM and HS programs is relatively easy and scalable, it just simply requires a slightly different perspective.

Questions?  Comments?

Thanks, as always, to my readers.  As mentioned, my company, Emergency Preparedness Solutions, has great experience using the Core Capabilities and applying them to all areas of preparedness.  Need help?  Give us a call!

© 2015 – Timothy Riecker

Emergency Preparedness Solutions, LLC