Em mag aug07

inside: Assessing our warming world | Colleges heighten security | Educating displaced kids

Summer 2007

WITH ATTENTION FOCUSED ON NATURALDISASTERS, CRITICS SAY PREPARATION FOR A BIOTERRORISM ATTACK HAS BEEN MISHANDLED.

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BIOHAZARD

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_______ Designer _______ Creative Dir.

_______ Editorial _______ Prepress

_________ Production _______ OK to go

Pg100 Blue Ravine RoadFolsom, CA. 95630916-932-1300

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Solutions for the Public Sector

Ask a public sector professional why he loves his BlackBerry.

Whether I’m dealing with emergencies or everyday issues involving citizens and

constituents, communicating wirelessly – and securely – at virtually all times is

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Exclusive Offer.Visit www.blackberry.com/firstresponse

© 2007 Research In Motion Limited. All rights reserved. Research in Motion, the RIM logo, BlackBerry and the BlackBerry logo are registered with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, and may be pending or registered in other countries. These marks,images and symbols are owned by Research in Motion Limited. All other brands, product names, company names and trademarks are the properties of their respective owners. Screen images are simulated. * Certain features are available on select devicesonly. Check with your wireless-service provider for service plans, supported features and services before purchasing.

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Contents

F E A T U R E S

30A Changing RealityWhat does global warming mean to emergency managers?

3Emergency Management

36Cracking the BooksEducation programs for emergency management professionals are growing nationally and internationally.

20BlindPreparationPublic health experts say lack of a national vision for disaster preparedness cripples biological and chemical readiness in government.

O N T H E C O V E R

PHOTO BY JON ANDROWSKI

40Educating the UprootedSupporting children displaced from Hurricane Katrina — another lesson learned.






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4

A p u b l i c a t i o n o f

Publisher: Tim Karney [email protected]

Executive Editor: Steve Towns [email protected]

EDITORIALEditor: Jessica Jones [email protected]

Associate Editor: Jim McKay [email protected]

Managing Editor: Karen Stewartson [email protected] Writers: Andy Opsahl, Chad Vander Veen Chief Copy Editor: Miriam Jones [email protected]

DESIGNCreative Director: Kelly Martinelli [email protected] Designers: Crystal Hopson [email protected] Michelle Hamm [email protected] Joe Colombo [email protected]: Tom McKeith [email protected] Director: Stephan Widmaier [email protected] Manager: Joei Heart [email protected] Director: Jude Hansen [email protected]

PUBLISHINGVP of Strategic Accounts: Jon Fyffe [email protected] Sr. Director of Sales: Pam Fyffe [email protected] Midwest, Central

Regional Sales Directors: East Leslie Hunter [email protected], Central Shelley Ballard [email protected] Managers: Melissa Cano [email protected] Krista O’Sullivan [email protected] Erin Hux [email protected] Director of Marketing: Andrea Kleinbardt [email protected] of National Sales Administration and Organization: Tracey Simek [email protected] Sales Administrators: Nancy Glass [email protected] Sabrina Shewmake [email protected]. of Custom Events: Whitney Sweet [email protected] Events Manager: Lana Herrera [email protected] Events Coordinator: Karin Prado [email protected]. of Custom Publications: Stacey Toles [email protected] Publications Associate Editor: Emily Montandon [email protected] Development Director: Glenn Swenson [email protected]’s Executive Coordinator: Sarah Lix [email protected] of Web Products and Services: Vikki Palazzari [email protected] Coordinator, Web Products and Services: Michelle Mrotek [email protected] Services Manager: Peter Simek [email protected] Web Administrator: Julie Dedeaux [email protected] Coordinator: Gosia Ustaszewska [email protected]

CORPORATECEO: Dennis McKenna [email protected] VP: Don Pearson [email protected] VP: Cathilea Robinett [email protected]: Lisa Bernard [email protected]: Paul Harney [email protected] of Events: Alan Cox [email protected]

Government Technology’s Emergency Management is published by e.Republic Inc. © 2007 by e.Republic Inc. All rights reserved. Opinions expressed by writers are not necessarily those of the publisher or editors.

Article submissions should be sent to the attention of the Managing Editor. Reprints of all articles in this issue and past issues are available (500 minimum). Please direct inquiries to Reprint Management Services (RMS): Attn. Tonya Martin at (800)360-5549 ext.157 or <[email protected]>.

Subscription Information: Requests for subscriptions may be directed to subscription coordinator by phone or fax to the numbers below. You can also subscribe online at <www.emergencymgmt.com>.

Canada Post Publication Mail Agreement 40048640 , undeliverables 2-7496 Bath Road, Mississauga, Ontario L4T 1L2

100 Blue Ravine Road, Folsom, CA 95630 Phone: (916)932-1300 Fax: (916)932-1470<www.emergencymgmt.com>

Contents

F E A T U R E S

44Safe Haven No LongerCollege campuses seek increased security in the wake of shootings.

48Safely OutPreparation is key to evacuating special-needs populations.

R E S T O F T H E B O O K

6Contributors

12Seismic ExplosionsFifty years ago, two gas-fueled explosions ripped through Reno, Nev., but new technologies make a similar scenario today unlikely.

8Editor’s LetterTragic Disconnect

10In the Field

16EM Bulletin

18In the News

14Major PlayerAaron Kenneston, Washoe County, Nev., Emergency Manager

58Last WordEmergency Exit

56Products

O N L I N E E X C L U S I V E S

<www.emergencymgmt.com>

A Florida county goes above and beyond code in raising one fi rehouse from the rubble.

Workplace violence is growing — and should be mitigated and prepared for as its own kind of disaster.

Bulking Up Th e Human Disaster

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Contributors

Weidling is a writer living in Sacramento, Calif., and has written for Capitol Weekly, a newspaper covering California politics.

6

Jones is also the assistant editor of Public CIO, a bimonthly journal, and Government Technology maga-zine. She was the education reporter for the Hollister (Calif.) Freelance.

Jessica Jones Editor

McKay is also the justice editor of Government Technology magazine. He has spent more than a decade as a writer, editor and contributing writer for publications including Th e Fresno (Calif.) Bee, Th e Vacaville (Calif.) Reporter and Th e Ring magazine.

Yannello is a journalist based in Sacramento, Calif., where she writes for several publications. She has spent nearly 20 years covering California politics, health care and health-care reform, issues of homelessness, and the public policy and treatment issues surrounding mental illness.

Amy Yannello Contributing Writer

Harris is a regular contributor to Emergency Management magazine,and has written for Adventure Sports Journal, Surfer’s Journal, Information Week, Government Technology and Digital Communities magazines. He is the former editor of Shout Out newspaper.

Chandler Harris Contributing Writer

Andy Opsahl Staff Writer

Opsahl joined Govern-ment Technology as a staff writer in October 2005. He has written exten-sively on government IT outsourcing and pri-vate-sector solutions in government. Opsahl also writes for Government Technology’s Public CIOand Texas Technology.

Jim McKay Associate Editor

Jessica Weidling Contributing Writer






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See how CBS News uses VBxStream to respond to Breaking Newswww.VBrick.com/CBS

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8

Th e idea is that the more information available and

circulated among law enforcement, the better the

chances of protecting the public from bad guys.

When it comes to law enforcement’s ability to track

guns used in crimes, however, the only protection

aff orded is to gun dealers, thanks to the Tiahrt

Amendment, which has been tucked into a spending

bill since 2003 and become increasingly restrictive.

Chiefl y the bill prevents the federal government

from releasing data about guns used in crimes to local

police and prosecutors. According to the Mayors

Against Illegal Guns Web site, the provisions of the

current 2006 amendment:

· prevent the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms

and Explosives (ATF) from publishing reports that

use trace data to analyze the fl ow of guns nationally;

· limit local governments’ access to ATF trace data;

· prevent law enforcement from accessing trace data

outside the agency’s jurisdiction;

· generally prevent law enforcement agencies from

sharing trace data with one another; and

· prevent trace data from being used as evidence in

any state license revocation, civil law suit or other

administrative proceeding.

It’s pretty clear when you look at those provisions

just who they’re designed to protect. And it’s a disgrace.

Guns are far too easy to get in this country — legally

and illegally — and too many in Congress lack the forti-

tude to stand up to the National Rifl e Association in the

name of the public good.

Th e rationale that a viable solution to the plague of

handgun violence is to allow every citizen to pack a piece

is asinine and will simply lead to more bloodshed — and

maybe more tragedies like the Virginia Tech shootings. We

can protect the rights of legitimate hunters and still make

it more diffi cult to obtain handguns. And we should.

One way is to demand automated criminal history

records by state so background checks on gun buyers are

more complete. According to reports aft er the Virginia

Tech tragedies, Seung-Hui Cho, the shooter of 32, should

never have been allowed to buy a gun under federal law

because he had been declared mentally ill by a judge.

Another way to limit handgun circulation and save

lives is to allow law enforcement to track gun sales

back to the dealers who funnel guns to criminals.

Repealing the Tiahrt Amendment, or at least parts of it,

would allow law enforcement to fi nd illegal gun dealers.

New York City Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly

recently wrote in Th e New York Times that his depart-

ment has been successful in using crime data to identify

patterns and detect trends in criminal activity. It’s com-

monly referred to in law enforcement as intelligence-led

policing. Yet, Kelly said, when law enforcement tries to

obtain gun data from the federal government to fi nd out

where the illegal guns are coming from, they are blocked

by the Tiahrt Amendment.

Th ere’s nothing intelligent about that. k

Tragic Disconnect

Editor’s Letter

Questions or comments? Please give us your input by contacting our editorial department at <[email protected]>, or visit our Web site at <www.govtech.com/EM>.

L E A D , F O L L O W O R G E T O U T O F T H E W A Y .

I

Jim McKayAssociate EditorEmergency Management

It’s a common theme throughout law enforcement: the vital need to share information, to connect the dots — some call it intelligence-led policing.

B E S T N E W P U B L I C A T I O N






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10

In the FieldGlobal warming is causing an increase in heavy precipita-

tion, violent storms and intense droughts. Th ough scientists may not agree on some of global warming’s possible eff ects, they agree it’s happening. Offi cials say emergency managers should start looking at how climate changes might aff ect their region and prepare for those eff ects.

To read the full story, turn to page 28.

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12

Fifty years ago, two gas-fueled explosions ripped through Reno, Nev., but new technologies make a similar scenario today unlikely.

Rebounding

Feb. 5, 1957, began like every other day for Jerry Fenwick, who worked at his family’s paint and art supply store in downtown Reno, Nev. Yet on this day, Fenwick decided not to check on his prize 1957 Dodge Custom Royal Lancer, which was being modified at the local repair shop a few blocks away, as he usu-ally did on his lunch break.

Th e decision most likely saved his life. Fenwick’s usual stroll would have put him at the corner of First and Sierra streets right around the time of a deadly blast.

Alerted by complaints of strong gas odor, a crew of fi ve fi refi ghters had converged on the intersection, evacuating surround-ing buildings. Moments later, at 1:03 p.m., two gas-fueled explosions 30 seconds apart shook downtown Reno, completely de-stroying two buildings, killing two people and injuring dozens. Fenwick, still at work two blocks away, said he had no injuries, and that most of those harmed were on the same block as the blast.

Th ough the explosions were at ground level, they were strong enough to regis-ter seismic reverberations equivalent to a 1.5-magnitude earthquake, according to the University of Nevada’s Mackay School of Mines.

“I felt a terrible loud thump like some-thing had been dropped,” Fenwick said. “I turned around and saw the old-fashioned door jam lift ed off the post three inches. Th at’s when I knew something radically was wrong. I looked down the street and saw huge pieces of roof drift ing down.”

Th e blast was so strong it shattered win-dows in a block-and-a-half radius, said Jim Paterson, who at the time of the blast worked at Paterson’s — one of the buildings that was completely demolished.

“Th e blast took the roof off the build-ing where I worked and dumped it on the street,” Paterson said.

Reno fi refi ghter Bill Shinners was out-side Paterson’s when the blast hit; when he looked up, the sky was red. Shinners and

other fi refi ghters fought the fi re for about 36 hours without any sleep. Aft er the fi rst seven hours, Shinners stole a needed break on top of the aerial fi re ladder.

“I got up there to relax and started to shake uncontrollably,” Shinners said. “I think I was in a state of shock.”

Th e explosion was caused by a ruptured gas main that fi lled an undetermined area with gas before igniting. Damage from the blast was estimated to be more than $7 million, according to the Reno Gazette-Journal.

Fast-ForwardFift y years later, new technologies,

added safety precautions for emergency responders, more stringent building codes and stricter gas line controls imposed by energy companies have lessened the chances for another gas-fueled explosion in Reno, said Marty Scheuerman, division chief of the Reno Fire Department and emergency manager of the city.

Seismic ExplosionsChandler Harrisby

Rebounding

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This close-up of the area where the explosion occurred shows the twisted steel framework of the brick building that resulted from the explosion’s force and the fi re’s heat.

COLLECTION OF NEAL COBB

The explosion occurred in the Nevada Shoe Factory, which is the collapsed burning building on the left.

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13

Today, fi refi ghters’ technological arse-nal includes devices that detect the pres-ence of fl ammable vapor in the air and lower and upper explosion limits of gases, which determine if a structure or area is safe from potential explosions, Scheuer-man said. Firefi ghters also carry an assort-ment of equipment for plugging gas line leaks, and are trained on how to approach and contain pressure leaks.

Gas line maps and computerized build-ing schematics have improved fi refi ght-ers’ ability to shut off potentially deadly gas lines if a leak is detected or before approaching a fi re, Scheuerman said. Sierra Pacifi c Power, the local gas and electric company, also has extensive map-ping systems of gas lines and excess fl ow valves that automatically shut gas fl ow off when a leak is detected.

Reno now has a large natural gas pipeline that fl ows from Canada, which is equipped with infrared monitors that detect the presence or leakage of fl ammable vapor.

Even with more advanced technology and mapping, however, another gas-fueled explosion isn’t entirely improbable, especially in mountainous areas, like Reno where the use of propane gas is prevalent.

“Th ere’s always a chance when there is a structure fi re with a potential for gas leak, that it could ignite,” Scheuerman said. “Th ere’s always potential, but I don’t think the potential is as high as it was in 1957.”

Forming PartnershipsAbout 30 miles west of Reno, the town

of Truckee, Calif., has experienced its share of gas problems.

In 1989, a three-story building was lev-eled in downtown Truckee because a pro-pane leak ignited, and in 2003, a large-scale propane gas leak lasted for several months, with an estimated 22,000 gallons of propane seeping into the ground. Th e gas didn’t ignite, but a school, businesses and homes in the area were evacuated for weeks at a time. Donner Pass Road, a major thoroughfare, was also closed while fi refi ghters and energy offi cials attempted to locate the leak.

Th e gas leak was fi nally pinpointed to Amerigas, a company that provides pro-pane gas to the area. Th e leak was caused by a damaged gas line whose coating had been scraped off and was weakened by corrosion, said Gene Welch, public safety and information offi cer for the Truckee Fire Department. Th e area of the leak was covered by asphalt, Welch said, so the gas traveled a longer distance before being dif-fused in the air.

“It’s not uncommon he said, because of the territory we live in and conditions of the area for snow to build up and damage gas lines,”

When a leak is detected, fi re crews fi rst evacuate a home or building, and then shut off all power to reduce the number of ignition sources, Welch said, adding that the safest and fastest way to handle a pro-pane leak is to cut off the source and let the propane dissipate naturally.

Homes in Truckee powered by natural gas are required to have a “two-state regu-lator” that helps prevent gas leaks. In areas

with freezing temperatures, regulators oft en freeze, requiring two regulators in propane valves. Homes are also required to have two propane shut-off valves: one inside the house and one outside, near the propane tank.

Strong partnerships between gas com-panies and emergency responders can help avoid such disasters. Both the Reno and Truckee fi re departments work closely with gas companies when gas leaks oc-cur and share information about gas lines. When a leak occurs, agencies work together to fi nd the leak and prevent another devastating blast like the one that occurred 50 years ago in Reno.

“Our techniques are better, our equip-ment is better, our ability to detect gas is better,” Scheuerman said, “and quality of gas mains is a lot better.” k

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sion k of on’s

This fi re truck was damaged from the explosion’s heat and debris. It was out of service for some time, but eventually was returned to service.






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Could you outline the different planning phases for an emergency response and discuss why it’s important to break down training into phases? I describe the four phases of emergency management as mitigation, planning, training, and response and recovery. Th ere are some variations on the names of these phases and actions, for example the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) oft en replaces the term mitigation with “prevention.”

I use mitigation because FEMA [the Federal Emer-gency Management Agency] requires every jurisdiction to prepare a hazard mitigation plan. Th is is the basis of all actions, identifying and ranking hazards in the community and collaboratively developing strategies to reduce the impact or eliminate these hazards.

Planning and training are the ways we test our written emergency plans for validity, identify areas for improvement, and ensure that our procedures are practiced and fresh in the minds of public safety offi cials and fi rst responders.

Th e response phase involves coordinating the actions of the various response agencies and disciplines, provid-ing strategic guidance and material support to incident commanders, as well as coordinating resources from the state and federal government.

Recovery takes the longest period of time and begins with preliminary damage assessment, includes indi-vidual and public assistance, and continues until every mitigation project approved as a result of the disaster is complete.

Of course, these phases can be concurrent and are a continuous process.

During your tenure as emergency manager for Washoe County, which disaster made you the most nervous or was the most diffi cult to manage? In the few short years I’ve been a civilian emergency man-ager, our county has experienced about a half-dozen local, state and federally declared disasters. We had a major winter storm on New Year’s Eve 2004-2005, and the very next New Year’s Eve we experienced a 50-year fl ood.

Both events had federal disaster declarations, and taxed state and local resources to the maximum. But it also brought out the best in our region and caused our response community to work together even more closely on emergency preparedness. k

Aaron Kenneston is responsible for all-hazards training, response and recovery. He served in the Army National Guard for nearly 25 years, retiring as a colonel. During his career, Kenneston

ran a military emergency operations center, and responded to fl oods, civil unrest, state-level security events, and search and rescue missions.

Kenneston has served during major emergencies, including a local fl ood, a snow emergency, a fi re and the Hurricane Katrina evacuation. He holds two master’s degrees.

Major Player

Jim McKayby

Aaron KennestonEmergency manager of Washoe County, Nev.

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To read more on Kenneston’s experiences, visit <www.govtech.com/em>.






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ESRI Homeland Security GIS Summit

November 5–7, 2007Adam’s Mark HotelDenver, Colorado

1-800-447-9778

Plan now to attend the 2007 ESRI Homeland Security GIS Summit in Denver, Colorado, and see how government, business, utilities, and other organizations are deploying geographic information system (GIS) technology for home-land security. Learn from leaders who set priorities for their organizations and use GIS to collect, analyze, and commu-nicate complex data for the protection of people and critical infrastructure.

The ESRI Homeland Security GIS Summit is a forum for management teams to evaluate levels of readiness in collaborative partnerships, technology strategies, and geographic information management for

The ESRI Homeland Security GIS Summit offers an opportunity to discuss methods to integrate disparate data and serve geographic analysis and content in real time to create a common operating picture. Participants will also be able to share information on current projects, information networks, and collaborative opportunities that extend the GIS framework for situational awareness.

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For speaker, panel discussion, and sessioninformation, visit www.esri.com/hssummit.

Call for Papers

Submission Deadline:

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ESRI Homeland Security GIS Summit

Copyright © 2007 ESRI. All rights reserved. ESRI, the ESRI globe logo, @esri.com, and www.esri.com are trademarks, registered trademarks, or service marks of ESRI in the United States, the European Community, or certain other jurisdictions. Other companies and products mentioned herein may be trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective trademark owners.

Identify critical infrastructures and calculate risks using buffer zone analysis

3D Visualization of Social and Critical Infrastructure

The Geographic Advantage: Turning Knowledge into Actionable Information

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16

EM Bulletin

Campus WarningTHE UNIVERSITY of Mary Washington in Fredericksburg, Va., can notify stu-dents, staff , faculty, campus security and university offi cials across its 175-acre campus — and a nearby graduate and professional studies campus — during a crisis or routine incident in seconds using the Roam Secure Alert Network, deployed in late June. Th e system can reach any text-enabled device, and was procured via the Virginia Department of Homeland Security’s Statewide Alerting Network contract. To read more about how other universities are focusing on campuswide communication, turn to page 46.

Disaster FundingTHE U.S. GOVERNMENT is off ering $968 million in grants to help state and local public-safety agencies buy sophisti-cated radios and technology for commu-nications during disasters, according to the Department of Commerce.

Th e program aims to equip police and fi re departments, and other emergency agencies in all 50 states, with more depend-able and interoperable communications.

Funding for the grants will come from expected proceeds of the Federal Com-munications Commission’s 700-megahertz spectrum auction, scheduled for later this year. — Reuters






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Foiled AttemptIN THE EARLY HOURS of June 29, UK police dismantled a car bomb found out-side a nightclub packed with hundreds of people near London’s Piccadilly Circus. Th e incident prompted a manhunt for the driver of the green four-door Mercedes, abandoned about 1 a.m. local time. Th e car held a large bomb made from gas can-isters, containers of gasoline and nails, and was likely to be set off by mobile phone, according to police, who manu-ally defused it.

Explosive material was also found in a second car in London near Trafalgar Square, which offi cials say was linked to the fi rst car.

Th ough early investigations showed no link between the fi rst car bomb and any terrorist group, further investigation showed the opposite, according to offi -cials, who also said their initial inquiries yielded no suspects and no defi nitive de-scription of anyone leaving either vehicle. Th e second car had been towed because it was illegally parked, and was later found to contain the explosives, offi cials said.

So far, eight suspects have been detained in connection with the two bombs. — Bloomberg News

International WatersPOURING RAINS BATTERED China, killing 94 people and displacing more than half a million in early July. As of July 10, fl oods and landslides left at least 25 people missing, ruined crops, destroyed 49,000 houses and caused economic losses of 3.8 billion yuan ($500 million) in seven prov-inces, according to the People’s Daily. Th e paper also reported that downpours in the central province of Henan and the eastern provinces of Anhui and Jiangsu have left the huge Huai River overfl owing at alarm-ing levels. More than 326,000 people were mobilized to monitor embankments along the river. — Reuters

Lake Tahoe TroublesIN JUNE, severe wildfi res destroyed 3,100 acres of land and more than 250 buildings in South Lake Tahoe, Calif. As of July 2, fi refi ghters had the blaze fully contained, and allowed the 2,000 evacuees back into their homes. More than 2,100 Forest Ser-vice personnel worked the Lake Tahoe Basin fi re, but with new fi res breaking out in other parts of the county, 500 were deployed elsewhere.

Lifetime SentenceFOUR MEN WERE EACH given life sen-tences for taking part in a botched sui-cide attack on London’s public transport system on July 21, 2005, two weeks aft er bombers murdered 52 commuters.

Muktar Said Ibrahim, Yassin Hassin Omar, Hussein Osman and Ramzi Moham-med were convicted by a jury in London on July 9 of conspiracy to murder. Th e men were charged with attacks on three trains and a bus. No one was hurt when the explo-sives failed to detonate completely.

Th e July 21 attack came as London-ers were recovering from the deadliest attacks on the city since World War II and the fi rst suicide bombings in West-ern Europe. On July 7, 2005, four others blew themselves up, killing commuters in attacks also aimed at three trains and a bus. — Bloomberg News

PHOTO BY DAVID ILIFF






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18

In the NewsThe U.S. Geological Survey estimates

there’s a 62 percent chance a major earthquake will hit the San Francisco Bay Area in the next 26 years — but only about 17 percent of local residents say they are prepared for such an emergency. So earlier this year, the American Red Cross Bay Area Chapter designed a campaign to “shock, force people to think, and then take action to get prepared.”

The campaign consisted of images on mobile billboards — as well as on TV and in print publications — of destruction from an earthquake that toppled downtown high-rises and reduced buildings to hollow shells and clouds of ash.

“The only thing that seems to get people’s attention is when a catastrophic event takes place somewhere in the world,” said Harold Brooks, chief executive offi cer of the Bay Area Chapter, in a press release. “So we wanted to do something that would stimulate people to get prepared even during peacetime.” k— Stuart Hales, manager, Redcross.org

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20

BLINDPREPAR

IF A FAMILY ENTERS AN EMERGENCY ROOM WITH INFLAMED LESIONS COVERING THEIR

BODIES, ACCOMPANIED BY FEVERS AND DEBILITATING WEAKNESS — SYMPTOMS OF A

CHEMICAL OR BIOLOGICAL ATTACK — THE ADMITTING HOSPITAL SHOULD KNOW WHO TO

CALL AND HOW TO TREAT EACH FAMILY MEMBER.

THAT WOULDN’T ALWAYS HAPPEN, HOWEVER. ALMOST SIX YEARS AFTER 9/11 —

AFTER SPENDING BILLIONS OF TAX DOLLARS ON DISASTER PREPAREDNESS — MANY

CITIES REMAIN UNPREPARED TO RESPOND TO A BIOLOGICAL OR CHEMICAL ATTACK,

ACCORDING TO SEVERAL LEADERS IN THE PUBLIC HEALTH COMMUNITY.

A LACK OF COHERENT NATIONAL POLICY ON BIOLOGICAL AND CHEMICAL WEAPONS

PREPAREDNESS HAS PRODUCED A HODGEPODGE OF INITIATIVES AT THE LOCAL LEVEL,

ACCORDING TO CRITICS. YET OTHERS SAY NATIONAL STANDARDS FREQUENTLY ARE

INEFFECTIVE AT DICTATING LOCAL ISSUES.

PUBLIC HEALTH EXPERTS SAY LACK OF A NATIONAL VISION FOR DISASTER

PREPAREDNESS CRIPPLES BIOLOGICAL AND CHEMICAL READINESS IN GOVERNMENT.

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“When you talk about emergency prepared-ness and disaster response, the important thing to keep in mind is that most of that work is done at the state and local level,” said David Quam, director of federal relations for the National Governors Association (NGA). “National solutions sound easy and important, but it is their implementation and their respect for the diff erent roles at the diff erent levels of govern-ment that really become the most important.”

A lack of a clearly defi ned, long-term, national consensus on what a prepared America is, he said, cripples the nation’s biological and chemical preparedness eff orts.

RHYME AND REASONTh e U.S. Department of Health and Human

Services (HHS) handles most biological and

chemical preparedness initiatives for the federal government, which in turn spends hundreds of millions on such initiatives for state and local government. Th e HHS currently funds activities the public health community typi-cally advocates, like state and local pandemic infl uenza preparedness, hospital equipment upgrades and similar initiatives.

Th e problem, according to some public health offi cials, is that the type of preparedness funding Congress allows seems to shift with whatever preparedness priorities are politically chic at the time.

“Th ere is no long-term plan. Th ere’s not even a fi ve-year vision. Everything is just reacting to the political issue of the moment,” said Tara O’Toole, who was assis-tant energy secretary for Environment, Safety

and Health during the Clinton administration, and currently is the CEO of the Center for Biosecurity at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center. “Aft er Katrina, it was, ‘What happened to FEMA? Let’s elevate FEMA in the hierarchy so it can report to the Homeland Security secretary during a crisis.’”

Th e federal government began ramping up disaster preparedness during the Clinton administration, said O’Toole.

“Congress fi rst started putting money on the streets to train fi rst responders,” she said. “But they didn’t really think through what we were responding to, or who the fi rst responders were, so all police and fi re got a piece of the pie.”

Th at money, she said, was used to purchase a lot of equipment that is largely useless.

“Th ere were constraints against spending it on people,” O’Toole added. “You had to buy equipment. Th ey bought a lot of test kits to diagnose whether a powder was anthrax, which didn’t work very well. Th ey bought suits to protect against chemical attacks, some of which were OK, some of which were just kind of sitting in lockers moldering away.”

Suited in protective gear, police set up in formation for a

tactical entry into a terrorist-occupied building during a

weapons of mass destruction drill.

Photo by Jon Androwski

22

A Los Angeles County Sheriff’s HAZMAT deputy dons protective gear during a Southern California weapons of mass destruction exercise. Photo by Jon Androwski






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Th ere was no rhyme or reason to what people bought, she said, and there weren’t any standards to guide agencies on what type of equipment to purchase. “Some people bought good stuff ,” she said. “Other people bought low-quality or unre-liable stuff . It was all over the place.”

Lack of a cohesive plan for those involved in incident response may have cost the nation an opportunity, said Elin Gursky, principal deputy for biodefense in the National Strategies Support Directorate of ANSER, because future funding availability is diffi cult to forecast. “We’ve wasted a lot of money that we may not see again because of competing fi scal priorities,” she said.

What would help local governments receive federal medical equipment funding on a more systematic basis, Gursky said, is a clearly defi ned national vision for disaster preparedness.

“Do I expect every local community to have biological containment and negative pressure medical facilities?” she asked. “Probably not, but they don’t need to.”

Th ey may not need a negative pressure facility, which uses a ventilation system to keep contaminated air from escaping to other parts of a medical facility, but they need a systematic process for routing patients to nearby hospitals that have those facilities.

“We have 5,000 acute care hospitals that are stretched to the limit. We need to recognize where we can stretch further, or what reason-able expectations are that we build greater capacity at a regional level, and not a commu-nity level,” Gursky said, adding that a national

vision would also ensure better use of prepared-ness equipment funding.

Immediately aft er 9/11, local governments received such funding on a somewhat equal basis, she said, adding that Congress began funding more strategically since then, but needs to make more progress.

“Two-thirds of our local public heath depart-ments treat populations of 50,000 or less. Th at’s

not the best distribution of resources,” Gursky said. “Let’s look at vulnerabilities, population densities, and plan accordingly.”

In addition, Congress funds parts of biode-fense preparedness on a year-to-year basis, so the HHS is unable to develop sturdy, mature programs capable of growth, O’Toole said, and public health departments don’t know if they can rely on future funding.

In addition to a biological attack, the 2005 National Intelligence Estimate also identifi ed a nuclear attack as one of the gravest threats to the United States. Such an attack lacks federal attention, said Tara O’Toole, CEO, Center for Biosecurity, University of Pittsburgh Medical Center. She added that emphasis on nuclear weapons should favor prevention, rather than response.

“The appropriate strategic approach to a nuclear attack, in my opinion, and virtually everybody else’s, is to prevent it from happening,” she said. “By the time you get a nuke in a city, there’s not a lot you can do because it’s so devastating.”

The consequences of a nuclear detonation would be so overwhelming that devising a response plan would be virtually unrealistic, O’Toole said, and the focus should be on securing loose fi ssile materials in other countries, which are essential to activating a nuclear bomb. Many of these fi ssile materials originated in the former Soviet Union.

“I’ve been in Russia at a nuclear weapons site,” she said. “Their sites and our sites have got a lot of stuff in them. I’m pretty well persuaded that our stuff is tied down. Their stuff is a lot less assuredly secure, to put it mildly.”

NUCLEAR ATTACK

During a weapons of mass destruction drill, a Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department HAZMAT deputy leads Los Angeles Fire Department HAZMAT deputies into a building where in the staged scenario, occupants registered as a fumigation company are a front for a terrorist cell producing sarin nerve gas. Photo by Jon Androwski

“WHEN YOU START TALKING ABOUT NATIONAL SOLUTIONS TO WHAT ARE REALLY LOCAL ISSUES,

YOU HAVE TO BE VERY CAREFUL BECAUSE ALMOST ALWAYS, ONE SIZE WILL NOT FIT ALL.”

— David Quam, director of federal relations, National Governors Association






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26

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Congress should commit to multiyear funding for all biodefense activity, she said, the way it funds Department of Defense (DoD) projects.

When the DoD decides it’s ready to deal with a new threat, O’Toole said, it has a specifi c planning process that assesses what its budget will look like for the next few years, so it can commit to training more special forces troops, for example.

“Nothing like that is happening in the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), or in the HHS, for biodefense,” she said. “And HHS is where most of the bio stuff lives.”

Biological and chemical response is not intended as a primary issue for the department, according to Larry Orluskie, a spokesman for the DHS.

Marc Wolfson, HHS public aff airs specialist, said the agency gets some multiyear funding for preparedness and response programs. Specifi -cally Congress set up a special reserve fund for Project BioShield, the program to identify and acquire medical countermeasures against chemical and biological threats identifi ed by the DHS. Th e special reserve fund for BioShield is available for 10 years — from 2003 to 2013.

Also, funding for the strategic national stock-pile (SNS) can be carried over from one fi scal year to the next. Th e HHS uses the SNS to store and deliver medical supplies, equipment, vaccines and other drugs during a public health emergency.

Th e United States, O’Toole said, needs to rethink some of its national security funding priorities. “Why are we spending more than $10 billion per year — and have been doing so for decades — on missile defense, when a covert bioattack would be more devastating, and is thought by the National Intelligence Council to be more likely?”

ASSESSING THREATSBecause Mother Nature strikes the United

States more oft en than terrorists, some think preparedness for natural disasters should receive more funding than biological and chemical preparedness.

Th ough O’Toole said she agrees natural disaster preparedness needs attention, it shouldn’t receive more consideration than chemical and biological weapons.

“Unless it’s California falling into the Pacifi c, a natural disaster is not going to take down the

country,” she said. “A thinking enemy, and in particular, our current adversary, al Qaeda, is determined to take down the country. I think a bioterrorist attack could do it. I also think a nuke going off in an American city could totally transform people’s willingness to live in cities.”

Th ough the NGA and U.S. Conference of Mayors are working to solve the lack of preparedness issue, Gursky said, state and local governments need to establish preparedness benchmarks to enable eff ective congressional oversight.

“Congress needs to know its investment is paying off ,” Gursky said. “We have to put some metrics in place and fi gure out if people are meeting these — and, if not, why.”

Th is lack of a national vision for preparedness makes any catastrophe — natural or manmade — more feasible, Gursky said, and groups like the U.S. Conference of Mayors and the NGA should initiate collaboration involving federal agencies to create standards.

Th ere also needs to be strong leadership that articulates what a prepared America is, she said, adding that the executive branch and Congress must encourage state and local governments to develop that national vision.

Th e problem, Gursky said, ultimately stems from a foggy defi nition of homeland security — the DHS needs to shift more of its emphasis toward disaster response.

“Th ere has been so much attention paid to borders, issues of watch lists, tracking terrorists and connecting the dots that the response issues have gotten much less attention,” O’Toole said. “[Th e DHS is] mostly a giant police organiza-tion, focused on borders, the Coast Guard and that kind of thing, with a tiny little directorate of science and technology stuck on the side.”

Establishing national standards would likely be diffi cult for the United States, Gursky noted, given that the Constitution lets states plan independently of their neighbors. But that doesn’t mean national standards shouldn’t be created.

“Diseases do not respect borders. Hurricanes do not respect borders,” she said. “We have to develop a focused eff ort to harmonize our capa-bilities across geopolitical boundaries.”

If an anthrax attack occurred in Sacramento, Calif., O’Toole said, the governor would have diffi culty evaluating the number of attacks, their size and who was infected. Some of those who

“WE’VE WASTED A LOT OF MONEY THAT WE MAY NOT SEE AGAIN

BECAUSE OF COMPETING FISCAL PRIORITIES.”

— Elin Gursky, principal deputy for biodefense, National Strategies Support Directorate, ANSER

Because it’s so easy to attain, anthrax — a close-up of which is shown here — poses the most likely biological threat to the United States, according to offi cials.






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William Yasnoff, managing partner of the National Health Information Infrastructure, said local governments should agree on standardized descriptions of disasters and responses, and submit them to all local emergency operations centers. “They can put them together in an information system to give those organized in the response, accurate, real-time situational awareness of what’s happening.”

Each local government’s information system would offer responders key data about their area’s resources.

“If it’s a medical problem, you need to know what medical facilities and personnel are available; where they are, what capabilities you have to move them to another location, if necessary,” Yasnoff said. “Then you need to know what’s going on at the locations the problems are occurring. How many cases are there? Where are they located? How serious are they? Where are they being treated?”

He also advocates a national electronic laboratory reporting system, and said a national system would enable the nation’s medical fi eld to immediately detect and isolate biological and chemical infections.

“You can’t have effective early detection of biological attacks, or disease outbreaks, until you have a fully electronic health information infrastructure,” Yasnoff said. “The system needs to produce information that can lead to detection as a byproduct of the ordinary care that people receive.”

The theme running through most solutions for biological and chemical preparedness is standardization. Yasnoff said the absence of health infrastructure IT standards deters many local governments from building interoperable systems.

“Regardless of what the requirements may be, if the information we’re trying to understand and communicate is not represented in a standardized form,” he said, “then it becomes very diffi cult to move that information from one place to another.”

A NEW ROLE FOR TECHNOLOGY

Continued on p.52

were in Sacramento when it happened might travel post-exposure to other places.

And the lack of good diagnostic techniques and data sharing makes it diffi cult for public health offi cials to react quickly and eff ectively to biological threats.

“We don’t have good diagnostic techniques, so a guy who gets sick in San Francisco may not even be recognized as [having] anthrax for a while,” O’Toole said. “Getting a count of how many people are ill, given the incuba-tion period, could be a day, or many days. It’s not going to happen right away. Th at’s going to cause a lot of consternation.”

A lack of that data would severely handicap the response planning.

“If it was the beginning of a campaign of attacks, you wouldn’t want to take all of your best CDC [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention] people and park them in Sacramento,” O’Toole said. “None of this has been thought through. Th is is why a conduct of operations plan — exactly what actions we are going to take if this happens — is important. Th e fact that it’s missing, even for an anthrax attack, is another symptom of our lack of any kind of strategic thinking.”

In addition, the 2005 National Intelligence Estimate identifi ed a biological attack as one of the gravest threats the country faces, and a lack of a national vision for emergency prepared-ness has kept federal agencies from developing eff ective prevention and response programs for biological weapons, O’Toole said.

NO CONDUCTORTh ough she credits the Bush administration

with taking biological threats seriously, O’Toole said the approach needs more specifi cs.

Th e conceptual categories — threat aware-ness, prevention and protection, surveillance and detection, and response and recovery — are a pretty good rendering of the necessary facets in the bioterrorism arena, O’Toole said.

“But it doesn’t say, ‘In fi ve years, the country is going to have achieved this. And these are our top priorities. And this is how much we think it’s going to cost.’”

She said the federal government could more easily produce those specifi cs if it had an offi cial whose sole responsibility was to direct biode-fense for the entire federal government.

“Th ere are some people in DHS who have responsibility [over biological threats] — a

number of people in HHS headquarters,” she said, adding that some are in the National Insti-tutes of Health, the CDC, the DoD and the State Department.

“Th ere’s no conductor of the orchestra. And it’s not clear what sheet of music we’re singing from,” O’Toole said. “Th ey try to coordinate from the White House, from the Homeland Security Council, but there really hasn’t been any clear articulation of our overall strategy.”

And that strategy, she said, needs to include state and local governments.

Many preparedness obstacles in local govern-ment stem from an absence of protocols — how offi cials should respond aft er discovering a biological or chemical weapon emergency, Gursky said, adding that offi cials need estab-lished information fl ows.

If a patient with smallpox — which also poses a great danger to the country due to its contagious nature — enters a doctor’s offi ce, for example, the doctor needs a pre-established line of communication to follow. A communication

fl ow starting at the local level and leading up to state and federal agencies must exist in all local governments, Gursky said.

“If police don’t know how to reach the public health offi cial, and don’t know how to get the mayor, and how to get Transportation or Sani-tation, then there’s a real fundamental problem of information fl ow.”

BUILDING PROTOCOLSTo establish such a protocol, local, state and

federal agencies need to formally gather to form a consensus as to what preparedness means, said William Yasnoff , managing partner of the National Health Information Infrastructure (NHII), an initiative aimed at improving health care in the United States through a network of interoperable information systems.

“You can agree on things such as, ‘We want all emergency responders to be able to commu-nicate with each other. We want local, state and federal offi cials to have real-time situational awareness.’”

28






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A D V E R T I S E M E N T

If you’re reading this, chances are you havealready made a substantial investment to placecomputers in the field. As the mobilecomputing industry matures, many agenciesfind themselves connected, but not necessarilyproductive due to excessive downtime, badergonomics and substandard hardware.

One company in metro Detroit is striving toensure mobile users achieve maximumproductivity through better notebookmounting and docking solutions. As the fastestgrowing company in their industry, LEDCO isleading the way in optimizing mobileworkforce productivity.

So exactly how did a business operatingunder the radar in the Midwest get noticed bythe likes of the NYPD, U.S. Customs and the FBI?

According to LEDCO President Mike Zani, ithad everything to do with their companyculture. “We pushed ourselves constantly togo above and beyond the industry standard.We raised the bar and attempted to exceedexpectations for every client. We settled fornothing less.

“At the end of the day, our clients want tospend less time worrying about how they willget their job done and more time actuallydoing it,” he adds.

LEDCO’s approach is completely dictatedby each client’s needs. When a project starts,all aspects of the mobile environment areanalyzed: from the vehicle’s make, model andyear to the computing platform. A solution isthen created that meets the customer’sneeds—keeping in mind their key issues ofsafety, ergonomics and system reliability.

Comfortable, ergonomic solutionsincrease user productivityDesigned to position the keyboard and screen atthe same height and angle as the traditionaloffice solution, LEDCO’s flexible mountinghardware positions a laptop so that the user cantype more efficiently and with less strain. It’sproven that when people are comfortable, theyare more productive.

High quality solutions maximize device uptimeLEDCO’s products are constantly put throughrigorous testing to continually improve theirperformance. This not only ensures the quality oftheir goods, but substantiates their safety as well.

“Quality is only as good as the weakestlink. We test every product to failure to weedout the weak links so our clients can beconfident that they are protected in thetoughest real world situations,” says Jay Shaw,LEDCO’s Director of Engineering.

Shaw goes on to explain, “We test andbuild to extremes because we want our clientsto know that we also prepare for the worst.”

Safe solutions protect yourassets…people and hardwareLEDCO’s approach to safety takes into accountnot only extreme events, but the day-to-dayactivities of employees and equipment in themobile environment and ways to reduce oreliminate any harmful impact.

Chris Veit, Technical Director of theHurricane Research Center, shares his personalexperience with LEDCO: ”When our computersystems arrived, we were left with a perplexingproblem: how do we mount the devices sothat they don’t become a projectile during anaccident? We had no luck at our vehicledealership. Then we heard about LEDCO. Theymounted the computers in no time flat andgot us up and running.

“Recently their work was put to the testwhen I was hit from behind as I was sitting onan off-ramp waiting for the light to change. Iwas amazed once I shook the cobwebs clearand looked over at my laptop to see it closed,but still firmly in place and still running. Thesepeople make some serious mounts.”

Agencies will continue to search for betterways to maximize their productivity; LEDCO isleading the way with quality mounting anddocking solutions that maximize productivitywith the most comfortable, safest and highestquality solutions. The bottom line is, theirclients really like their work.

LEDCO clients include:

1.877.88LEDCOwww.ledco.net

� New York Police Department� Federal Bureau of Investigation� Palm Beach Sheriff’s Office� Texas Department of Public Safety� Miami Police Department� U.S. Customs & Border Patrol� Chicago Police Department� New York Fire Department� Detroit Police Department� Washington State Patrol� Hillsborough County Sheriff� Ohio State Highway Patrol� Colorado State Patrol� Fairfax Fire & EMS Department

For more information about LEDCO, call 1.877.88LEDCOor visit their website at www.ledco.net.

Maximize your mobile workforceVisionary company is doing just that…






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30

FOR SEATTLE RESIDENTS, RAIN — and lots of it — is a fact of life. But they’d never seen a month quite like November 2006. With 15.59 inches of rain — including snowfall and hail — it set the record for wettest month, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Ad-ministration (NOAA) National Climatic Data Center. In 115 years of record keeping it was the most rain the Emerald City had ever seen in a one-month span.

If that weren’t enough, mid-December brought supercharged winds of 60 to 90 mph that cut power to about 1 million people, some of whom lived in the dark for prolonged periods.

“It wasn’t just for a couple of hours, a couple of days,” said Eric Holdeman, former director of the King County, Wash., Offi ce of Emergency Management. “Th ere were folks without power for 10 days in isolated areas, or even longer than that.”

Th at same month, drought plagued parts of Minnesota, Wyoming, Nebraska, Texas and Oklahoma; thunderstorms and tornadoes whipped through the South; a cyclone lashed

the Eastern coastline from South Carolina to Virginia; and the earliest snowfall on record fell on Charleston, S.C., and Savannah, Ga., accord-ing to the National Climatic Data Center.

Worldwide patterns show an increase in heavy precipitation and intense droughts caused by a warmer atmosphere, increases in water va-por and a rising sea-surface temperature — all results of global warming.

Holdeman, now principal at ICF Inter-national’s Emergency Management and Homeland Security team, holds last win-ter’s unusually hazardous weather events as anecdotal evidence that our weather reality is shifting.

“Whatever the cause is, the weather is chang-ing,” Holdeman said. “Th ere’s been any number of extreme weather events happening.”

Scientists may not agree on some of the possible eff ects of global warming, but most do agree that it’s happening, said Gabriel Vecchi, research scientist at the NOAA Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory in Princeton, N.J.

According to a February report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the nation is already seeing warming eff ects, such as melting snow pack; increased winter fl ooding and summer warming; pests and wildfi res plaguing forest environments; and intensifying heat waves and hurricanes.

Unfortunately any changes related to the planet’s increased temperature will be magni-fi ed in developing countries, where resources won’t be available to delay or minimize eff ects. But in richer nations, like the United States, where the resources are forthcoming, it’s time to adapt and plan for changes we might see, or are seeing now.

Lemming-Like MarchTh e most egregious global warming

eff ects will occur on global warming’s front-lines — at the poles, where there’s damage to ecosystems and thawing of glaciers and ice sheets, and on small islands, where beach ero-sion and storm surges are expected to further deteriorate coastlines, according to the IPCC.

What does global warming mean to emergency managers?

B Y J E S S I C A W E I D L I N G

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Th ough most scientists agree that global warming is happening, the question of how exactly it will manifest remains. Many believe warming oceans may be contributing to more devastating hurricane seasons.

Th e 2004-2005 period was one of the most active 24 months ever witnessed in the Atlantic basin, setting records for number of hurricanes and tying the 1950-1951 record for most major hurricanes with 13.

But hurricanes don’t just endanger lives; they also threaten people’s livelihoods, busi-nesses and homes, and cities’ economies. And because tropical storms tend to hit the United States in its sweet spot — expensive and grow-ing coastal stretches from Texas to Maine — they represent one of the country’s gravest storm challenges.

Hurricanes that hit the Gulf Coast region during the 2004 and 2005 storm seasons pro-duced seven of the 13 costliest hurricanes to hit the United States since 1900 (aft er adjusting for infl ation), according to an April 2007 report by the National Hurricane Center in Miami.

According to the NOAA, Hurricane Katrina cost approximately $60 billion in insurance losses to the Gulf Coast region — almost triple the $21 billion in insurance losses from Hur-ricane Andrew, the second costliest hurricane, which struck south Florida in 1992.

Th is year’s hurricane season, from June 1 to Nov. 30, already looks grim. Experts at the NOAA Climate Prediction Center project a 75 percent chance the season will be above normal. Th ey predict a strong La Niña — which favors more Atlantic hurricanes, while El Niño favors fewer hurricanes — will cause three to fi ve major hurricanes.

Also a factor is a phenomenon called “the tropical multidecadal signal” — the notion that two or three decades of reduced storm ac-tivity are followed by two or three decades of increased activity. Since 1995, conditions have been ripe for more hurricanes.

Yet despite signs of a rough hurricane season ahead, a surprising phenomenon is occurring: People are increasingly moving to the Atlantic coast. Census Bureau data shows that in 1950,

10.2 million people were threatened by Atlantic hurricanes; today more than 34.9 million are threatened, according to USA Today.

“Th e areas along the United States Gulf and Atlantic coasts where most of this country’s hurricane-related fatalities have occurred are also experiencing the country’s most signifi cant growth in population,” the National Hurricane Center report confi rmed.

But since coastal communities won’t stop cor-ralling newcomers, the report concluded that communities themselves should take action.

Jim O’Brien, professor emeritus of meteorol-ogy and oceanography at Florida State University, said emergency managers and policymakers should address the hurricane issue by enforc-ing stricter building codes, readdressing evacu-ation strategies and educating people about the imminent problem.

However, more drastic action must be taken to stop people’s risky behavior, according to Kerry Emanuel, an atmospheric scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge.

Realitying






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32

The coastal migration is made possible, he said, through an unwise mix of state and federal policies, like government reg-ulation of property and flood insurance (which covers storm surges), and federal disaster relief given to flooded regions. While such policies help people in the short term, Emmanuel explained, they also enable the risky behavior to continue.

Scientists have long feared America’s vulner-ability to hurricanes because its shores are lined with some of the nation’s wealthiest residents. Emanuel, in conjunction with nine scientists,

released a July 2006 statement about the U.S. hurricane problem: “We are optimistic that con-tinued research will eventually resolve much of the current debate over the eff ect of climate change on hurricanes. But the more urgent problem of our lemming-like march to the sea requires immediate and sustained attention.”

Preparedness Challenge Paul Milelli, director of public safety for

Palm Beach County, Fla., contends that global warming’s eff ects may inherently force people to change their ways.

“If we start having to build homes to meet a 200 mph wind, the cost would probably stifl e some growth,” he said, “and then [there’s] the fear factor of people moving in.”

Because the county uses an all-hazards approach, emergency planning won’t change much with global warming in the equation, he said.

“Th e economy is just going to be aff ected tre-mendously, and that, to me, is going to be the biggest concern. Because we can prepare our people for a hurricane, whether it’s a Category 1 or a Category 5, and how we prepare the peo-ple really doesn’t change — except that as the categories get higher, we start asking people to make their plans earlier and earlier.”

For a statewide evacuation, Floridians would have to begin leaving days before the hurricane hit — a logistic impracticality.

“It’s bigger than me. It’s bigger than what I can plan for as a planner of the county,” said Milelli, whose 31-year emergency management career ends in January when he plans to retire in Wisconsin — far away from hurricanes.

To help combat storm destruction, the Gulf Regional Planning Commission in Mississippi focuses on hurricane preparation as well as planning and redevelopment.

“We’re certainly well aware of the dramatic impacts of climate change and also the need for looking outside of our localized area when we’re starting to talk about the impacts of cli-mate change,” said Elaine Wilkinson, the com-mission’s executive director.

Th e commission is working to build bridges that withstand high winds (similar to the eff ects of an earthquake), and building up seawalls to match the roadbed.

Aft er Hurricane Katrina, the commission took an extra year to engineer its long-range transportation to plan for major storms. Trans-portation planning is important to ensure safe evacuation, she said.

Wilkinson was also involved in a U.S. gov-ernment study on how global warming could aff ect the nation’s coastal transportation sys-tems. Th e study, which just released its fi rst phase for scientifi c review, concluded that with climate change, the sea level is rising and the land is sinking, according to a National Public Radio news report.

Listening to scientists provided a good op-portunity for Wilkinson, who said scientists

Surveys show that when worrying about global warming, people fear hurricanes most, but the scientifi c community has yet to agree on how climate change really impacts tropical storms.

Kerry Emanuel, an atmospheric scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Tech-nology in Cambridge, is one of the scientists who think global warming and hurricanes are connected.

“When we looked at the data, we saw a very strong response in the Atlantic Ocean to global warming,” he said. “The new fi nding was that there’s a strong correlation between hurricane power and ocean temperature.”

His study, documented in a 2005 issue of the journal Nature, found no increase in hurricane frequency due to global warming, but he did see that the energy — through wind speed and storm duration — released by the average hurricane increased by 50 percent since the mid-1970s.

On the fl ip side, Jim O’Brien, professor emeritus of meteorology and oceanography at Florida State University, isn’t convinced that global warming is causing hurricane intensity to increase.

“There is a climate variability that occurs that has to be considered,” said O’Brien, a past state climatologist for Florida and a widely known El Niño expert. He added that climate change trends can’t be derived from hurricane data that’s limited

and only recently has been improved by technology.

Alternatively Virginia Burkett, global change science coordinator for the U.S. Geological Survey, worries the real danger is the intensifi cation of storms accompanied with the acceleration of sea rise.

“Low-lying coastal areas will become more frequently inundated during normal tides and during tropical storm passage,” she said.

Though the disagreements about global warming effects can confuse nonscientists looking for answers, said Gabriel Vecchi, research scientist at the NOAA Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory in Princeton, N.J., challenging of others’ conclusions is an integral part of the scientifi c process.

Vecchi cautions people from reading too much into any one scientifi c conclusion, including his own. His study found that warming waters might actually decrease the number of hurricanes in the Atlantic because of increased wind shear — the difference in speed and direction of atmospheric winds. Wind shear counteracts hurricanes and disrupts the ones that do form.

“In a broad sense, a conclusion from this paper is that the relationship between global warming and hurricanes is certainly complex,” he said. “One can’t just extrapolate out [that] warming temperatures means more hurricanes.”

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Evidence of a progressively warmer planet is “unequivocal,” according to a Feb. 2, 2007, report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a United Nations and World Meteorological Organization effort established to recognize the potential problems of climate change.

This report, the IPCC’s fourth since 1990, also states that human activity — from burning fossil fuels and large-scale deforestation — is “very likely” the culprit of the warming trend over the past 50 years.

Though the warming from trapped carbon dioxide and methane gasses in the atmosphere is a natural and necessary occurrence, the accelerated release of these

gasses from humans helped temperatures creep up nearly three times the average in the 20th century — the Earth’s surface temperature has increased by more than 1 degree Fahrenheit since 1900.

Though most scientists agree coastlines will shrink in coming centuries — from melting ice caps and sea-water expansion — the pace of sea-level rise is still under debate.

If the IPCC is correct, the sea level will rise 7 to 23 inches by 2100, and the climate will continue to rise between 3.5 and 8 degrees Fahrenheit as carbon dioxide reaches twice the amount of its preindustrial levels.

The Likely Culprit

34

must share global warming fi ndings with peo-ple who can eff ect change.

“We need to fi nd a way to bring the scientifi c data into the planning process,” Wilkinson said. “Th at’s something that’ll challenge us. But we’re very much in need of information to make some good decisions.”

Ask the QuestionWorking with science, King County integrated

global warming policies into its government. In October 2005, the county sponsored a

conference to understand Washington’s climate changes in the coming 20, 50 and 100 years, and identify approaches to adapt to climate change predictions.

Th e Climate Impacts Group (CIG), along with King County, developed conference materials, including Pacifi c Northwest climate change scenarios. CIG, which is funded by Washington University’s Center for Science in the Earth System in Seattle and by NOAA, explores climate science with an eye to the pub-lic interest in the region. Th e group is one of eight NOAA teams that assess regional climate change in the United States.

From the conference, CIG and King County established a relationship and jointly wrote Adapting to Global Warming — a Guidebook, to be released this November following a peer review process.

As a resource for regional leaders, the guidebook outlines King County’s global warming approach, addressing its water sup-ply, wastewater and fl oodplain management, agriculture, forestry and biodiversity. Th e county approved an aggressive levee improve-ment plan and adopted a climate plan in Feb-ruary that includes a two-page outline for the King County Offi ce of Emergency Manage-ment to revise its strategies given projected climate changes.

In the guidebook, CIG tells how scientists can communicate climate change information to emergency managers and policy leaders. But government offi cials are also responsible for opening the dialog.

Elizabeth Willmott, global warming co-ordinator for King County, stepped into her position upon its creation in January 2007, and works to coordinate projects, ideas and infor-mation related to the county’s climate change mitigation and preparedness plans.

“What we suggest simply,” Willmott said, “is that regional leaders ask the climate ques-tion, ‘How is climate change going to aff ect my region?’”

Just asking, she said, can plant the issue in people’s minds.

Th ough weather seems to be telling us some-thing about how climate change will impact our future, there’s uncertainty in many circles about what to do to prepare and how to mitigate its consequences.

ICF’s Holdeman said we must focus on fi nd-ing global warming’s regional eff ects and work to lessen them now.

“We end up being so reactive as a society, and certainly the United States is,” he said. “We don’t address issues — like Social Security or Medic-aid. Everybody knows it’s a problem, but we’re not going to do anything about it until it’s staring us in the face, and there’s a trillion dollar defi cit.”

It’s up to emergency managers, he said, to spread the word and ensure global warming consequences are known.

“For emergency managers themselves,” Hold-eman said, “if we’re not talking about it gener-ally and trying to educate elected offi cials about it and the hazards, then you’re counting on them to stumble on it as an issue.” k






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36

In today’s world of emergency manage-ment, a four-year degree is a must, said Aaron Kenneston, emergency manager of Washoe County, Nev., though it’s not

necessarily critical the degree relate specifi cally to emergency management.

“Th e idea is to gain a body of knowledge on common core subjects, undergo the rigors and discipline of academic study, and learn perse-verance,” he said. “Certainly it is a bonus if you can attend an emergency management or homeland security degree program.”

B. Wayne Blanchard, project manager of the Higher Education Project at the Emergency Management Institute, part of the Federal Emer-gency Management Agency’s (FEMA) National

Emergency Training Center in Emmitsburg, Md., agrees that it’s important for emergency managers — or future emergency managers — to get a college education.

“Dealing with hazards, disasters and what you do about them is a very diffi cult task to perform,” he said. “Having the skills one picks up in college puts one on the right track forward in dealing with administrators and policymakers, and the political context within which hazards, disasters and what you do about them are placed.”

Also, Blanchard said, an education in emer-gency management means students start a job with a background understanding of the complexities surrounding hazards, disasters and emergency management.

Learning LessonsWhen the Higher Education Project started

in 1994, Blanchard said, most emergency managers didn’t have a college degree in any subject.

“And most had only, at best, a passing acquaintance with the social science research literature on hazards, disasters and what to do about them.”

Th e goal of the Higher Education Project, according to Blanchard, is to increase colle-giate study of hazards, disasters and emergency management; enhance emergency management professionalism; support development of an emergency management academic discipline; make a long-term contribution to enhanced hazards footing; and support a long-term, greater collegiate role in emergency manage-ment and disaster reduction.

Since 1960, monetary losses from natural disasters in the United States have doubled or tripled per decade, wrote Harvey Ryland, presi-dent of the Institute for Business and Home Safety, in 1999.

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“And the century’s steady progress in reducing deaths and injuries due to natural disasters had begun to level off ,” he wrote. “Furthermore, there was concern that a single disaster — for example, a catastrophic East Coast hurricane or a repeat of the 1906 San Francisco earthquake — could kill thousands, cost hundreds of billions of dollars, disrupt the national economy, and exhaust the reserves of the insurance industry.”

Th e background problem in the United States, Blanchard said, is that the country isn’t on the right path as far as mitigating disasters. “Th us, it doesn’t matter what kind of cadre you have working in and around emergency management. I’m aware of no one who thinks disaster losses will fl atten out or go down, but I have heard a number of people who do hazard and disaster research give voice to their fears that [the] disaster loss curve is in fact going to steepen.”

Our country would be in a better position, Blanchard said, if those in the emergency management fi eld and in schools focus their studies on emergency management — which is a broad term.

“It could be disaster studies, emergency administration and planning — a wide range of titles I loosely call emergency manage-ment,” he said. “But you put all those things together, and it does justify the leap of faith that the country would be on better footing in the future.”

Th e more college students become aware of hazards and disasters and how to respond to them, and become acquainted with the social science research literature on these topics, the better, Blanchard said.

If only the fi ndings from that research liter-ature were put into practice, Blanchard said, because much — if not most — of disaster loss could have been avoided had knowledge in hand been applied.

“But the fact is, most of the lessons learned, most of the social science — or certainly much of it — is not implemented,” Blanchard said. “Th e lessons really aren’t learned for very long. How long the lessons actually stay in one’s mind depends on how traumatic the disaster is.”

Growing SupportMany colleges and universities, nationally

and internationally, are starting to off er certi-fi cation programs, bachelor’s degrees and even master’s degrees in emergency management.

Boston University, Eastern Michigan Univer-sity and California State University at Long Beach are just a few of the more than 100 schools off ering such education programs. In addition, the International Association of Emergency Managers (IAEM) created its Certifi ed Emer-gency Manager (CEM) Program to raise and maintain professional standards.

“It is an internationally recognized program that certifi es achievements within the emer-gency management profession,” according to the IAEM, which also states that CEM certifi -cation is a peer review process administered by IAEM, and is maintained in fi ve-year cycles.

Internationally the Emergency Management Certifi cate from York University in Canada uses lectures, case studies and class discussions to help students develop an understanding of the Emergency Response Cycle, including hazard identifi cation, risk analysis, risk evaluation and mitigation, preparedness, response and recovery. Students also develop the ability to read, interpret, prepare and implement emer-gency plans, policies and procedures, and learn how to work as team members while providing eff ective leadership, according to the university.

“Emergency managers require strong analytical, communication and integrative skills, which help them establish a meaningful dialogue with experts in a wide range of fi elds and make sense of the complex information they provide,” according to a statement from the university.

“My advice to aspiring emergency managers is to focus on gaining experience, join a profes-sional organization and then become certifi ed,” Washoe County’s Kenneston said. “Experience is

crucial and can be gained through employment with a response agency, participating in mutual aid to a disaster site, or by volunteering with a citizen corps program or nongovernmental organization that provides disaster support.”

It’s very important, he said, that emer-gency management professionals possess a common experience base, such as the Incident Command System and the National Incident Management System.

Th ough important, education alone won’t make a great emergency manager. In addition to education, it takes training and experience to make a professional 21st-century emergency manager, Blanchard said.

Education, he emphasized, must acquaint the student with social science literature. Once the student has graduated — though education continues over his or her lifetime — training comes next, Blanchard said. “Th ere are so many details, procedures and protocols that aren’t the province of education, but are the province of training, and are absolutely necessary.”

Th en there’s the third arm — experience. “It’s sort of a truism,” he said. When you’ve

actually worked a disaster, it’s like an epiphany, it opens your eyes, expands your fi eld of vision. So experience, I think, is essential as well.”

Still, Blanchard cautioned, experience isn’t the be-all and end-all.

“In fact, I know people who’ve had lots of experience and lots of training, and are far from being what I would call a professional emergency manager who’s on the path of helping their community become disaster-resistant and resilient.” k

“The lessons really aren’t learned for very long. How long the lessons actually stay in one’s mind depends on how traumatic the disaster is.”— B. Wayne Blanchard, project manager of the Higher Education Project, Emergency Management Institute

38






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B Y C H A N D L E R H A R R I S After Hurricane Katrina slammed into New Or-leans and effectively shut down the city, Kor-bin Johnson, a resident and local teacher, was one of the thousands of evacuees with no

home to return to. After traveling to New Mexico to stay with family, he

received a call from a friend in Houston telling him that students from Johnson’s former school were found at the Houston Astrodome evacuation area.

Johnson fl ew to Houston along with Gary Robichaux and other staff from the Louisiana offi ce of the Knowl-edge is Power Program (KIPP) — a national 52-school open-enrollment charter system for college-bound kids — to fi nd the students.

“I flew out to see what we could do,” Johnson said. “We weren’t expecting to be there long term but when we arrived, we realized we could serve a need.”

After meeting families at the shelters whose chil-dren were not attending any schools, Robichaux called Mike Feinberg, KIPP co-founder, and said he wanted to help create a KIPP school for the children uprooted by the hurricane.

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PROOTEDEDUCATING

Supporting children displaced from Hurricane Katrina — another lesson learned.






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42

“We recruited kids straight out of shelters,” Johnson said. “We got fl iers, cell phones and contact information, and brought it back to school and put it together as a roster.”

Sense of NormalcyIn October 2005, New Orleans West

(NOW) College Preparatory Academy at Douglass Elementary — the only school for Katrina evacuees in Houston — officially opened as a joint project of the Houston In-dependent School District, KIPP and Teach for America, which is a nonprofit organi-zation trying to narrow the academic gap between children of different socioeconomic backgrounds. Its initial goal was to operate

for one year to educate children transplanted by Katrina.

Housed at a former Houston elementary school that was closed aft er declining enroll-ment, the school had an initial enrollment of 500 children taught by 37 fi rst-year teachers, also displaced from New Orleans. Johnson be-came NOW’s vice principal and Robichaux, also expelled by Katrina, was the school’s principal.

In addition to providing education for chil-dren whose schools were closed or ruined, NOW provided some stability to children trau-matized by the hurricane.

“I think the most important thing we offered to our students was getting back some sense of normalcy and getting back

to a sense of routine,” Johnson said. “In particular, when children are overcoming a traumatic event, they need a routine, and school is that.”

To help children overcome the eff ects of the ordeal they’ve endured, NOW partnered with numerous organizations that provided help, including a group of students from Tulane University in New Orleans, the Houston-Galveston Area Council, Milton Hershey School and Houston Texans football players.

Th e school off ered support groups of parents and teachers where students could express their feelings, art therapy, group counseling and post-traumatic stress disorder studies. Eighty-page workbooks with drawing and writing exercises

Among many lessons, Katrina taught child-care agencies that there’s a lack of evacuation procedures in place to protect children during a disaster or emergency.

After Katrina, representatives from the National Association of Child Care Resource and Referral Agencies (NACCRRA) worked extensively with providers and referral agencies on the Gulf Coast to determine standards for child-care centers.

“One of the things we quickly fi gured out was that most communities and most states have no plan for what will happen and how to respond to child care in planning for a disaster,” said NACCRRA Executive Director Linda Smith.

Most kids in child care are under 4 years of age, Smith said, and they don’t know vital identifi cation information like both their fi rst and last names, which makes them more vulnerable than any other

age group. With no emergency procedures in place, a child separated from a child-care center typically has no personal information, such as medical needs, address or parents’ contact information.

Smith and other NACCRRA offi cials began a review of what information was available to providers and parents to help them create a disaster-planning guide. Based on their fi ndings, the NACCRRA created a guide covering every type of child-care facility in the nation — available for free download at <www.naccrra.org/disaster>.

The organization launched a nationwide effort to train day-care providers, inform parents and partner with government agencies to develop plans for sheltering or transporting young children in the event of a disaster. Smith said she hopes to see every state implement NACCRRA’s disaster-planning guide.

Protecting Our Youths

42

Korbin Johnson, a New Orleans resident and local teacher, is with New Orleans West students at the “Principal’s Luncheon,” which honors those who got straight A’s on their report cards.

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at the school were designed to give children and adults the opportunity to express their feel-ings through words and pictures, and a video program was available for students to create documentary fi lms about their experiences aft er Katrina.

Sense of SecurityKIPP students spend more time learning,

following a rigorous curriculum, attending classes on Saturdays and adhering to strict behavior policies.

In addition to a structured learning environ-ment and a sense of safety and security, Johnson noted that having teachers who shared their experiences was a big help for the students. Aft er Hurricane Katrina, Johnson’s sense of se-curity was washed away along with his home, job and means to provide for his family. He could relate, he said, to how important a sense of security is.

“Making sure kids feel safe is the No. 1 need,” he said. “I understood how important it is for people to feel safe and secure. Without that, you

can’t teach and learn. If somebody feels like they are in danger, it impedes every other process.”

And becoming homeless is the worst thing that can happen to a child, said Michael Supes, acting executive director for the National Coali-tion for the Homeless.

“It’s very diffi cult for an adult to be homeless,” he said, “but for a child to experience homeless-ness at the same time is very traumatic.”

Yet NOW provided a sense of order when all structure from students’ previous living envi-ronments had collapsed.

“All children who are displaced, particularly aft er a disaster, need structure,” said Barbara Duffi eld, policy director of the National Asso-ciation for the Education of Homeless Children and Youth. “School is a place of structure and stability when everything else has been turned upside down. It’s very important psychologi-cally, emotionally, socially. To be supported in school helps them to stabilize and normalize, and to minimize the disruption that happens in a disaster. It’s very important for children’s mental health.”

Children displaced during disasters are tech-nically considered homeless, and thus incur the same rights as homeless children.

Th e federal McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Act, landmark homeless legislation passed in 1986, among many things addresses the rights of homeless children, allowing them to attend school in the district in which they live during their displacement.

In Katrina’s aft ermath, when Houston schools struggled to fi nd space for the estimated 55,000 children who fl ed to Houston, the McKinney-Vento Act was an eff ective protocol for area schools, Duffi eld said.

Under the act, transplanted or homeless chil-dren should immediately enroll in the district where they reside, with or without proof of birth certifi cates, school records, immunization re-cords, proof of guardianship or proof of residency. Also under the act, schools are required to enroll

students with new student fi les based on infor-mation from parents and students. Displaced and homeless students are also automatically eligible for school meals without completing forms or displaying proof of income eligibility.

Nearly half the students who attended NOW in Houston moved back to New Orleans, causing the charter school to close on May 31 — at the end of the 2007 school year — aft er two years of serving children forced out by Hurricane Katrina.

Johnson, who had become principal of NOW last year, will return to New Orleans to start a new school, and he’s hoping to rebuild and oper-ate out of his former school building, which was damaged heavily during the hurricane.

“Although the emergency part of the situ-ation is over, there’s so much to do,” Johnson said. “Th e other side of this is that folks are really having a hard time emotionally, even though we made it through the rough part of the storm.” k

“To be supported in school helps them to stabilize and normalize, and to minimize the disruption that happens in a disaster. It’s very important for children’s mental health.” — Barbara Duffi eld, policy director, National Association for the Education of Homeless Children and Youth

“I think the most important thing we off ered to our students was getting back some sense of normalcy and getting back to a sense of routine. In particular, when children are overcoming a traumatic event, they need a routine, and school is that.” — Korbin Johnson, former principal, New Orleans West College Preparatory Academy

Students from Henderson Elementary in New Orleans lend a hand at the Ozanam Inn, a homeless shelter.

New Orleans West students celebrate Mardi Gras in 2006, which was done to help make the children feel more at home.

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PREVENTING SEUNG-HUI CHO FROM OPENING FIRE AT TWO different locations on the Virginia Tech campus in Blacksburg, Va. — taking 32 lives before his own — would have been diffi cult. And it would have been just as diffi cult on most college campuses for a few reasons.

“Because of the open nature of institutions of higher education and because we are dealing with the human psychology,” said Adam Garcia, director of University Police Services at the University of Nevada, Reno. “In less than a decade, we have gone from shooting situations in K-12 schools to terrorism to an adult lone wolf, who are extremely diffi cult to identify in advance.”

When it comes to violent crime, college campuses have long been shrouded in a false sense of security. That mind-set, however, must change to mitigate the effects of another tragedy — or prevent one altogether.

Tragedies like Columbine and Virginia Tech have pushed campuses toward evaluating their security practices and communication procedures, and the aftermath provides

College campuses seek increased security in the wake of shootings.insight as to what took place. The outcome will undoubtedly lead to new measures that make college campuses safer.

Garcia said an event like the one that took place at Virginia Tech would overwhelm just about any community and law enforcement organization. But new issues came to light, and communities should acknowledge that college cam-puses aren’t immune to crime and should be prepared.

“For too long, universities and colleges were seen as safe havens from crime,” Garcia said. “Communities must face the reality that acts of violence and crime can and do occur anywhere.”

NoHavenLonger

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46

Before Chaos EnsuesPrevention is diffi cult, but to gain some

semblance of control over the situation, communication is important. As was evident at Virginia Tech, it’s not easy, and signifi cant plan-ning is involved.

“Th e challenge of communicating with every-body on campus, as well as people outside of campus who have a relationship to what’s going on, is a big challenge, and is really one of the more crucial elements to emergency manage-ment,” said Guy Miasnik, president and CEO of AtHoc, a fi rm that has helped secure facilities at the Department of Defense (DoD) for years.

Virginia Tech offi cials were questioned aft er the shootings as to why the campus wasn’t shut down during the two-hour lull between shoot-ings, and why everyone on campus wasn’t noti-fi ed aft er the fi rst round of shootings in which two people were killed in a dorm room.

“When people don’t know what’s happening, that’s what creates chaos and creates frustration, and potentially creates a tremendous amount of danger,” Miasnik said.

Virginia Tech’s emergency communications system included e-mail, as opposed to text messaging, which could have been helpful since students are accustomed to texting and used it

to communicate amongst themselves during the shootings.

Sources said using multiple means of com-munications during such an event is critical. “Assuming a single channel will work when you need it isn’t suffi cient,” Miasnik said.

As it does aft er these types of events, the University of Nevada is taking a new look at its readiness aft er the Virginia Tech disaster.

“We are evaluating our current state of readi-ness from a law enforcement perspective, as well as a community perspective,” Garcia said. “Redundant lines of communication to faculty, staff and students are being explored.”

Communications methods being examined include cell phones and landline message “dumps,” which are mass communications sent to people who sign up to receive emergency alerts; text messages; Web site improvements; message boards; campus LCD monitors; and reverse 911, said Garcia. Th e school is also considering establishing an emergency critical management group composed of fi ve to seven high-level university offi cials.

Multiple Means of CommunicatingSome lessons learned from years of securing

DoD facilities include quickly making decisions

and disseminating information, having mul-tiple lines of communication, and conveying a consistent message over all of them from a centralized source.

Multiple communications methods must be used to get in touch with necessary people because some methods may not work, and some people may not be reached by certain channels, Miasnik said.

“So by having multiple channels, you really have a much better chance of reaching the people you need,” he said. “Th e second important lesson is being able to centralize the management of the emergency communication, because one consequence of having three or four or fi ve diff erent channels of communication might be that you need diff erent systems to manage each one of them. And that’s not good, because every minute really counts, and you want to have a system that can really communicate and leverage all of these channels of communication at once with a single activation.”

In addition to single activation, single management of the system is critical so a consis-tent message is sent through each channel.

“For example, if you communicate over four or fi ve diff erent channels, but the message you are sending over each is not exactly the same, you may be doing more damage than good,” Miasnik said. “You may be confusing people about what to do.”

Th is type of communication must be second nature; the procedures must be defi ned for each type of event before it happens, and then prac-ticed, Miasnik said.

Requirements for Managing a Campus Crisis

A proper mindset for the community.

For too long, universities and colleges were seen as safe havens from crime. Communities must face the reality that acts of violence and crime can, and do, occur anywhere.Adequate training for law enforcement

offi cers. After Columbine and the 1997 North Hollywood shootings involving two bank robbers, law enforcement began to change tactics from responding, containing the situation and waiting for a tactical squad, to responding and confronting the threat without waiting for a tactical response. Institutional law enforcement

1.

2.

must be prepared with the proper training in an “active shooter” situation.Adequate and proper equipment and

funding for campus law enforcement offi cers are imperative for their self-suffi ciency. Most university and college law enforcement agencies now need to be properly equipped. It’s no longer sensible to wait for other agencies to respond. The minutes it takes for additional help to arrive could mean the difference between life and death for many.Proper notifi cation of those exhibiting behaviors out of the norm, while balancing civil rights of students and others.

3.

4.

Virginia Tech students mourn victims of the attack at a candlelight vigil.

Source: Adam Garcia; director of University Police Services; University of Nevada, Reno

Students in an elementary French class take cover in Holden Hall Room 212 during the attack.

Photo by William Chase Damiano






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“You have to fi gure out, if this happens, this is what I do: I communicate with the following people,” he said. “What are the messages? Who are we communicating with? Who is allowed to communicate? All of that has to be predefi ned as part of emergency procedures.”

Moving ForwardAft er the Virginia Tech tragedy, colleges

across the nation examined what technology and procedures could be implemented to help offi cials confront such an event.

In Illinois, Gov. Rod Blagojevich announced college campus security initiatives that would create a campus security task force and distribute more than 300 Motorola STARCOM21 radios on three college campuses. Th e radios are expected to be in place by the fall 2007 semester, and campus security personnel will be trained to use them.

California State University Fresno, is meeting with vendors to discuss the viability of a cell phone message system that would text volun-teers. University offi cials are studying proce-dures and policies at Virginia Tech and visiting the campus to learn from the tragedy.

Th e University of California at Berkeley recently introduced a system called People Locator, a Web-based application that lets students, faculty and staff securely log in,

report their locations and leave messages during an emergency.

Prior to the Virginia Tech incident, Hampton University in Virginia implemented a prototype security system called Response Information Folder System (RIFS), developed by Alion. RIFS allows emergency responders and school offi cials to quickly access 3-D and 2-D models, panoramic images and glean other facts about the facility. Th e system has GIS capability that helps integrate facts about an event with a geographic context.

RIFS has no emergency warning compo-nent, but possible expansion includes emer-gency alerting via text messaging and e-mail, according to Teresa Walker, assistant provost for technology and director of the Academic Technology Mall at Hampton University.

During the spring, Hampton also imple-mented an Internet fi ltering and monitoring application by 8e6 Technologies called Th reat Analysis Reporter. “It allows us to pull catego-ries that we want to monitor for inappropriate use on the Internet or block altogether,” Walker said. “We are able to immediately gather data on any individual who visits sites deemed as inappropriate or attempts to access sites that we have blocked.”

Such categories include pornography, hate and discrimination, extremist and terrorist sites, and weapons and arms sites, she said, adding that students are aware of this and understand it’s university policy.

As for upgrading campus security, Miasnik advises campuses to look around and see what others are doing, and to take advantage of existing infrastructure.

“Colleges have networks. Th ey’ve invested tremendous amounts of money in networks pretty much everywhere on campus,” he said. “Th ere are wired networks; wireless networks; everybody has a laptop; there are lab kiosks. Leverage what you have in place. For a relatively small investment, you can turn every laptop, every kiosk or even a phone into an alerting device. Th e investment is usually somewhere in the range of 20 to 30 bucks per student per year.

“My No. 1 recommendation is to learn from others,” Miasnik continued. “You can’t reinvent the wheel here. Th ere are organizations that have been dealing with this for decades.” k

47

Under Watchful Eye

Liberty Public Schools in Kansas City, Mo., have had surveillance cameras for years that focused on athletic fi elds, school buildings, parking lots and hallways and sometimes helped identify vandals and trespassers.

Now the cameras are linked to the local police department instead of the district technology staff, and that connection could mean more immediate action on the part of police should there be a shooting or other major event.

Video from the cameras is piped into the police station’s dispatch offi ce and can be broadcast to a laptop. Police can watch an array of cameras simultaneously or a single full-screen camera and can view virtually every common area of the school buildings. Source: Kansas City Star

Flowers, posters and other notes of condolence line the memorial placed on Virginia Tech’s drill fi eld on Sunday, April 22, 2007.Photo by Drew Snyder

People line up on Virginia Tech’s drill fi eld to visit the memorials to those who died on April 16, 2007.Photo by Drew Snyder






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48

Preparation is key to evacuating special-needs populations.

OutSafely B Y A M Y Y A N N E L L O






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Licensed-care facilities are mandated by state and federal law to write and maintain emergency plans. Most states, however, don’t require any

specifi c level of detail, and offi cials oft en fail to check whether such plans are workable.

As emergency management agencies in Col-orado’s north central region learned, many care facilities had what amounted to expanded fi re drill policies masquerading as emergency plans.

“People expect fi rst responders to just show up and take care of everything,” said Tim Johnson, emergency management coordinator for the Douglas County Offi ce of Emergency Management in Castle Rock, Colo. “But guess what? During an emer-gency, they’re a little busy. So it’s important that these facilities know how to take care of their people.”

In Colorado, licensed facilities are required to have an emergency plan, but they’re not required to go further than that, Johnson confi rmed. “It doesn’t say what’s required to be in the plan,” he said. “And what we’ve found is that while most have a plan to get their people out of the building, they don’t know what to do with them aft erward.”

Th is fact was highlighted in a 2005 fi re in Arapahoe County, just north of the Den-ver metropolitan area, in a small, eight-bed assisted living facility, Johnson said.

“Th ey had a fi re and got them out, but there was no plan on what to do with these folks,” he said. “No plan for getting them relocated to another facility … and these people had medi-cal needs. And it became apparent that the fa-cility had just not thought through the whole evacuation process.”

Johnson said the experience prompted a number of cities and counties to band together and start a program to help special-needs facilities strengthen their emergency plans through education and outreach.

Overcoming ObstaclesTh e program began in 2006, and covers

north central Colorado — a 10-county ex-panse with a population of about 1 million. It will target both traditional special-needs facil-ities, like nursing homes and assisted living fa-cilities, as well as private schools and day-care

centers, which have their own special needs during an emergency, offi cials say.

Emergency managers looking to start a sim-ilar program in their own area should fi rst take stock of the facilities in their area they think will need assistance, said Deanne Criswell, emergency management coordinator for Au-rora, Colo., a suburb of Denver with a popula-tion of 310,000.

“We were surprised at how many we had,” Criswell said. “Th en we did outreach to each of them, looked at each of their plans and off ered our help, because it’s easier for us if they’re pre-pared. Th e better prepared they are, the easier our job will be in a catastrophic event.”

Criswell said the biggest obstacles each facil-ity faced is where to take people post-disaster and how to get them there.

“It appeared to us when we fi rst started ap-proaching these places that they didn’t have a good idea of how to do this or what it entailed,” Criswell said. “Transportation is a big piece, but it’s just the beginning piece. Where are you going to take them? Is it short-term shelter or

long-term care? Do you have enough oxygen to make the trip? Do you have enough [staff ] to go with you?”

Criswell encountered hopelessly outdated plans that harkened back to the Cold War and told facility managers to contact their civil de-fense offi ce — a reference to the threat of being bombed by the Russians. Such an offi ce, how-ever, no longer exists.

“Many plans did not take into account homeland security or natural disasters,” Criswell said, “so we’ve tried to make the plans an all-hazard type and not disaster-specifi c.”

And Criswell’s team ensures facility managers know Aurora has an Offi ce of Emergency Management (OEM), and gives them police, fi re and neighborhood services contacts.

“We created tabletop exercises for them,” she said, explaining that the exercise enhances the fi re department and the facility’s under-standing of each other’s roles in the event of a fi re, for example. “We can re-create that for each agency.” t






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50

Continuity of CareWhen reviewing a facility’s emergency

plan, Johnson said it’s important to put special emphasis on emergency management respon-sibilities versus facility responsibilities

“Ultimately they’re responsible for taking care of their clients,” Johnson said. “But there are a lot of things they haven’t thought about that you need to.”

Chief among the questions to ask facility managers:

How will you take care of your staff ?Do you expect them to stay? Will you bring in replacements?Have you identifi ed the basic equipment to be transported with your patients?

“Transportation and what goes into that is just key,” Johnson added. “If you have a facility with 100 people, you might have a van or two — but that’s not going to get your patients and their medical equipment to another facility. How are you going to do it?

“We encourage them to contact transporta-tion companies prior and make arrangements so that when disaster strikes, [transportation] will come,” he continued. “First responders will help, of course, but there’ll be a limit to that.”

Heather McDermott, emergency manage-ment coordinator for the Adams County, Colo., OEM, said she recommends facilities follow the “rule of three” when creating re-lationships with, and gaining commitments from, similar facilities for the purpose of tak-ing overfl ow patients during a disaster.

••••

One: Find a like facility in the immediate area to evacuate to; two: Find another facility outside the immediate area as another backup; and three: Establish a third backup facility even farther out than that, which can take your patients if needed, she said

“It’s all about building partnerships with people who know your target population’s needs best,” McDermott added.

Special-needs planning is a continuing eff ort, echoed Rick Newman, McDermott’s co-coordinator at the Adams County OEM.

“We’re bringing in the medical community and getting these folks to talk to each other,” he said. “Th ese folks need specifi c equipment and trained personnel, and by forming agreements

and such with other like facilities in the area, you [get] that. So that’s one of the fi rst steps.”

Aft er transportation, staffi ng is another big issue, Johnson and others agree.

“How are we going to require our staff to stay on the scene of an event to take care of our clients? Have we gone over this with our staff ?” Johnson said, adding that not plan-ning for backup staff to come in and relieve tired workers is a common pitfall in many emergency plans.

If patients and staff stay on scene for more than two days aft er a disaster, Johnson said, plans need to indicate replacement workers who’ll play tag team with the original staff so patients can receive uninterupted care.

“You won’t do any good for your clients if your staff walks out,” he said.

Although the term “special-needs” is of-ten used to refer to elderly or disabled pop-ulations, the more apt definition, according to Rick Newman, is “persons who cannot evacuate themselves if the order is given.”

That would explain why the Colorado’s north central special needs facilities plan will reach out to day-care centers, and later, to private schools, according to Criswell.

“The educational component has been modified somewhat, but the overall goal is the same,” Criswell said, “and that is to incorporate all phases of emergency management into their basic planning pro-cess — prevention, preparedness, response and recovery.”

For day-care centers, Criswell said, the primary challenge is to reunite the children with their parents and coordinate commu-nication with parents so they know where their children are during an evacuation.

To emergency managers contemplating a program similar to Colorado’s, Criswell offers this advice: “Be proactive in trying to do community outreach to those facili-ties because it will take a lot of time and resources during an actual incident, so take a lot of time in the planning stages with these facilities.”

Th is, she said, will save valuable time later. k

“Th e educational component has been modifi ed somewhat, but the overall goal is the same, and that is to incorporate all phases of emergency management into their basic planning process — prevention, preparedness, response and recovery.”— Deanne Criswell, emergency management coordinator, Aurora, Colo.

Maj. Stacia Blyeu comforts an elderly patient at the Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport moments before she is evacuated after Hurricane Katrina.

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Achieving agreement on broad matters like those, Yasnoff said, would be an easy fi rst step.

However, not all agree on the necessity of national standards.

Many states are already developing those standards independently, according to the NGA’s Quam, who cautioned against a national approach because it could be a wrong fi t for some local governments.

“When you start talking about national solu-tions to what are really local issues, you have to be very careful because almost always, one size will not fi t all,” Quam said. “At the NGA, we routinely get diff erent groups together to talk about best practices.”

The NGA actively encourages states to collaborate with the DHS when planning, for example, communication interopera-bility initiatives, he said, adding that many statewide interoperability plans are already in the works.

Virtually all decision-makers in state and local government already agree on the need for interop-erable communications systems, he said, even if some didn’t yet know how to establish them.

“Th e Department of Commerce has a billion dollars that it needs to issue for interoperable communications. NGA, working with the DHS, hosted an entire workshop developing state interoperable communication plans,” Quam said. “Th at was all of the states coming together in one place, with the federal government, talking about what these plans needed to reach their objectives.”

Th ough state and local decision-makers may agree on the need for interoperable communi-

cations systems, ANSER’s Gusky said a consor-tium of local, state and federal decision-makers should offi cially establish that all governments need such systems, even if they don’t all need extravagant ones.

“Let’s define the basics,” Gusky said. “The basics are a work force that is trained in a number of different all-hazards problems. The basics are communication systems that let you notify not only the work force, but also the people living in the commu-nities — saying, ‘Close your windows. Do not allow ventilation in because there is a plume of some chemical that was inadver-tently released.’” k

Continued from p.28

During the weapons of mass destruction exercise, fully armed police offi cers dressed in protective gear stand on guard during a staged terrorist-occupied building search. Photo by Jon Androwski

Members of the Los Angeles Fire Department and Sheriff’s HAZMAT team go through decontamination after the Southern California weapons of mass destruction drill. Photo by Jon Androwski

52

“YOU HAVE TO BE VERY CAREFUL BECAUSE ALMOST ALWAYS,

ONE SIZE WILL NOT FIT ALL.” — David Quam, director of federal relations, National Governors Association






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September

16-18

Proceeding in Partnership

September 16-18, 2007 | Westfi elds Marriott & Conference Center | Chantilly, Virginia | www.covits.org

Hosted by Secretary of Technology Aneesh P. Chopra on behalf of Governor Timothy M. Kaine

The 9th Annual Commonwealth of Virginia Innovative Technology Symposium

Keynotes on Virginia’s Strategy for Global Competitiveness, the Innovation Imperative, Taking Transformation Out for a Spin, the Intersection of Innovation and Operational Excellence

The Strategic Plan for IT in Action – Best practices among executive branch agencies, local governments and educational institutions across all fi ve pillars of the plan

Discover what’s in Virginia’s $800M IT project portfolio, where leveraging a substantial federal investment presents opportunities – and challenges – for state and local governments.

Understand the link between R&D and IT in the Commonwealth – Energy, Modeling & Simulation, Semiconductors, Public Safety, Health IT

Universal AccessREAL ID

Homeland Security – Advancing Interoperability

next-generation search technology$800M IT project portfolio

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Energy – IT as Resource Hog?

Federally funded, state-administered prioritiesIPv6 apps

2006-2011 Strategic Plan for IT

Consortia Models for Enterprise Applications

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Taking Transformation Out for a Spin

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last-mile broadband

Promoting Science and Technology Education

Identity Management

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intelligent transporationclassrooms of the future

. . . more at www.covits.org

The Intersectionof Innovationand OperationalExcellence







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We’d like to thank all of the emergency management professionals who lead our country in times of crisis. This magazine is a testament to you.

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Editorial Excellence – Best New Publication

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56

Products

All-Weather Paper

Rite in the Rain products allow fi rst responders and emergency managers to take notes in the fi eld no matter the conditions. Rite in the Rain paper is created specifi cally for writing in wet weather. Created by the J.L. Darling Corp., Rite in the Rain off ers notebooks, binders and fi eld desks for incident command system reporting, fi re and emergency medical services professionals, and fi eld inspectors. For a full list of products, visit <www.riteintherain.com>.

Incident ImagesPowerPhone has developed the fi rst system that helps 911 centers manage camera phone images sent by callers. Incident Linked Multimedia (ILM) — a soft ware utility for emergency and nonemergency call centers — provides a mechanism for collecting image media from mobile devices. Utilizing the Multimedia Message Service and a proprietary Message Priority Engine, ILM supports the transmission and receipt of multimedia messages. ILM taps exist-ing technology and network infrastructure to bring the benefi ts of incident specifi c images to 911 centers today, according to PowerPhone. See <www.powerphone.com> for more details.

Disaster-Proof StorageTh e ioSafe R4, powered by ReadyNAS, is a disaster-proof disk network attached storage device that protects against server failure, fi re, water, theft and building collapse. Th e device features stand-alone backup and disaster recovery for remote and branch offi ces; and rapid regulatory compliance for critical data. At a recent conference, the R4 was placed in a viewable fi re chamber and torched to 1,700 degrees Fahrenheit by a propane fi reball. Aft er hosing down the ioSafe R4 with water and removing the four hard drives, ioSafe offi cials successfully restored the digital data within minutes. For more information, visit <www.iosafe.com>.

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Emergency Exit

Last Word

On a recent fl ight to the Ready.gov conference in Washington, D.C., I found myself — as is my custom — sitting in the emergency exit aisle. Over the years, I’ve gravitated toward these seats knowing I can handle an emergency should it arise. As a private pilot, I’m concerned about airline safety, and in particular, passen-gers using emergency exit aisles for lei-sure purposes.

I was seated next to a couple of 18-year-old females who were busy compar-ing fashion notes and vacation schedules. Aft er we became airborne, the young lady next to me noticed the Emergency Man-agement trade periodical I was reading and asked if I was a cop. I described my positions with the Fire Department and Emergency Management.

I then posed a question to her: “Would you please close your eyes and tell me how to open that emergency exit door?”

At first, she looked at me in aston-ishment and then complied. After just a few seconds, she admitted she could not remember how to properly open the door, nor did she know how heavy the door was. I asked her friend the same question, but by that time, she had looked at the door and was reading the instructions to me.

Having their attention, I explained what happens when a plane crashes and described the emergency procedures to take immediately aft er the plane comes to rest.

I then explained how investigators have found bodies stacked next to emer-gency exits with the door still intact. I admit I placed the icing on a little thick, but I was trying to drive home my point of the seriousness of sitting in these aisles.

By now, I had the attention of most of the folks around us as well. I explained how exiting an aircraft during an emer-gency is critical, but knowing exactly when to egress is more important.

An older gentlemen sitting next to me replied, “Well, the fl ight attendant would be there to assist!”

I stated that these individuals may be busy with other duties or could possibly even perish during an emergency.

“Never thought of that,” he said. My goal during this “lecture” was never

to scare the passengers, but to educate them about the responsibility that goes along with sitting in these seats.

We can learn a great deal from these young ladies. Th ey chose the seats for

comfort never realizing the responsibility that comes with that choice.

As emergency managers and fi rst responders, we must continue to edu-cate the public over preparedness issues. Th ese two young ladies were on vacation with their minds focused on relaxation — never realizing, or imagining, what could have happened.

As we left the aircraft , a sweet little senior citizen approached me, gave me a hug and said, “Th ank you for protecting us.”

I just smiled and hugged back.Are we really prepared for disasters, or

do we just want more legroom? k

58

Ed Kostiuk is an Oklahoma Certi-fi ed Emergency Manager with the Cashion, Okla., Fire Department.

b

As emergency managers and fi rst responders, we must continue to educate the public over preparedness issues.

Ed Kostiukby






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Standard 51-250 user license, 1-year subscription $19.19 CDWG 1191627 Advanced 51-250 user license, 1-year subscription $23.11 CDWG 1191635

Trend Micro™ InterScan™ Messaging Hosted Security

CDW•G EXCLUSIVE

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Em mag aug07

Business

Transcript of Em mag aug07