As some of you know, I left the fire company at the beginning of this year, for complex reasons. Well, now after a series of discussions, I'll be Emergency Management Coordinator for our local area after a short procedural bit of work is done. There's all kinds of interesting and complex planning. One thing that I've immediately noticed is that the template documents they have provided from PEMA (the PA version of FEMA) don't really deal with Internet and SMS messaging well...so I'll be updating the communications plans accordingly. Any other Local Emergency Management Coordinators here, speak up, would love some tips and pointers.

Martin"
Do you have a USFS dispatch center any where in your area? If so go there and ask for the contract equipment list. This will tell you where all the dump trucks, electric genertors,buses and other types of Veh. It will also list porta potty contractors, water trucks, small fire trucks and any other equipment to set up a quick city in the field. You can also get work crews, and camp help. hope this helps.

Martin:
This might interest you http://ncsushi.com/

Nothing in it actually works...that's a shame.

I'm just getting familiar with a similar gig so don't have alot of recommendations, but alot of EM orgs are just opening up to new communications methods, from the Internet to SMS to social networks, blogs and twitter, yours shouldn't be too far off if they haven't accounted for these media yet. Don't worry, it takes someone familiar enough with technology to evaluate and make some recommendations, against some familiar criteria: is it secure (or in certain contexts does it have to be), is it survivable, and is it cost effective (not just in dollars, but does the new comm run on old equipment, ex. twitter or SMS over your existing blackberry devices)? FWIW it may be a generational thing but I can't see the benefit in twitter yet, but a local Red Cross organizer thinks its the bees knees for informing alot of folks quickly. I need to set up an account...

Good luck Martin, let us know how it goes.

Are you looking for generic tips, specific to communications, or both? I would assume both.

Funny I have been useing it for years. I will look around maybe I have a CD of the program if you are interested.

The ONE thing that Twitter is good for is mass notification. It's simple, it works (mostly) and, quite frankly, it's the best way to reach people and to get reports back.

You don't even have to know you're using twitter to subscribe to an announcement stream.

It's definitely great for mass coordination, uses less bandwidth than voice and allows for field operations with minimal setup time.

My biggest challenge is that they give you a NIMS derived ICS template that has in excess of 30 unique job functions painstakingly defined with checklists and action plans.

If I took every single elected official plus the fire chief and myself - that's five people. If I add in all the people who want to work in Emergency Planning, that brings it up to 7. We don't have a police department, a public works department, our local "road department" is 2 part-time guys. We don't have a public school, no public water or sewer.

So I look at the ICS tables with all the ESF designators and "to do" lists for each ESF and I chuckle, because if I actually filled even half of those positions, the administrative staff would outnumber the available volunteers by about 6:1.

So the challenge is collapsing as much of the structure as possible without killing it entirely, delegating up to county where I can and coming up with a more realistic approach than the full NIMS model, which I find to be wildly over-complicated for non-urban environments with 100% volunteer staffing at every level up to and including elected officials.

First off, I'm not an EM Coordinator, but I did stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night (and pursuing a degree in EM, have 5 years volunteer exposure ).

I would say you're on the right track, that's one of the first things I'd do!
Couple of thoughts come to mind (take 'em, or leave 'em):

• ESF's are usually representatives from agencies. You don't have a lot of them, so effectively, they must be covered by the next higher level of government. Also, elected officials usually don't participate in response. Think about the "correctness" of people like a Mayor running an ESF, etc. Separation of branches an issue? I don't know.
• You can assign multiple ESF's to a single entity
• Use Memorandums of Understanding( MOU's) to fill in your gaps, if you can.
• Use your county EM and state EM resources! They're there to help you succeed (I hope!)
• Do a Hazard Vulnerability Analysis [HVA] so you can find out what kinds of disasters/emergencies you'll be up against. You might find that all of the "important" ESF's are on one person!
• Check state law, you may be able to combine your efforts with neighboring jurisdictions, effectively creating a Regional Emergency Management Agency.
• Recruit more volunteers. Normally, big emergencies and big disasters bring commerce to a halt. Work probably won't miss your volunteers when they come to help you. Maybe get an MOU from key volunteers employers.

I'm sure some of this is obvious, and stuff you've thought of. If you want to toss around a couple of ideas, PM me. There are people I can ask too, one who has 40+ years in Fire/EMS/EM and has his own consulting firm.

Martin: Try this site for I-Suite The one I gave you was the OLD page. The one thing that you will like about it, no mater how big or how small the problem this will cover it.

http://isuite.nwcg.gov/About_ISuite/index.html

Martin,

Starting at your local unit, get to know your National Guard folks as far up the chain as you can. (Assuming they are not deployed.)

You already know you will be working with them in the future, right? Go the official route through the chain of command, and then notice who the full time NG guys are. The full timers are the ones who make stuff happen daily.

Next go the unofficial route. Watch for the guys who have been around for some time and seem to know how to make the "system within the system" work (Usually E-6 and above). These are the fellows who are going to be able to get you what you want/need when the official system says it isn't available.

Trust me on this one, I was one of the head "unofficial" fellows in another life and made call-outs for many natural disasters (tornados/floods) and the Oklahoma City Bombing.

+100! Absolutely!

Well, you see, we had three massive river floods in two years here, so we learned quick that there are three agencies you NEED. 1. National Guard. 2. Your local DOT. 3. Red Cross. We love our national guard folks. they brought water tanks and stuff. Very good people.

[quote=ki4buc]

• ESF's are usually representatives from agencies. You don't have a lot of them, so effectively, they must be covered by the next higher level of government. Also, elected officials usually don't participate in response. Think about the "correctness" of people like a Mayor running an ESF, etc. Separation of branches an issue? I don't know.
• You can assign multiple ESF's to a single entity
• Use Memorandums of Understanding( MOU's) to fill in your gaps, if you can.
• Use your county EM and state EM resources! They're there to help you succeed (I hope!)
• Do a Hazard Vulnerability Analysis [HVA] so you can find out what kinds of disasters/emergencies you'll be up against. You might find that all of the "important" ESF's are on one person!
• Check state law, you may be able to combine your efforts with neighboring jurisdictions, effectively creating a Regional Emergency Management Agency.
• Recruit more volunteers. Normally, big emergencies and big disasters bring commerce to a halt. Work probably won't miss your volunteers when they come to help you. Maybe get an MOU from key volunteers employers.

Our HVA is long completed...risks are (each is half as likely as the previous)

Winter Storm (Ice), River Flood, Wildfire, Land-Based Hazmat, Aquatic Hazmat, Military Aircraft Crash (we get a lot of training traffic from Willow Grove), Pandemic.

In addition, there is a need to refine the Mass Casualty Incident plan for a school bus accident and we also need to look at the plans for the private elementary school in terms of evacuation - it's nowhere near the flood zones, but if they have a fire and need to get the kids out, we don't have anywhere to send them.

Let's see, what else...we have no commerce to speak of in the area. The largest employer in the township is a private school with about 25 employees, then the concrete production plant/quarry, with maybe 10 people working there, and after that I think the next biggest employer is the 3 people working at the post office. Maybe the real-estate office has 4 people, I doubt it. You could print a list of all the businesses in our township on two sides of a sheet of paper.

As far as "work missing people" during the last floods, when I was in the fire company, we had a bunch of guys who showed up to help - and all of them suffered consequences at work ranging from loss of vacation days to docked pay AND lost vacation days. By the 3rd flood, the number of volunteers dropped by 75% and those who did come tended to arrive after work.

As far as elected officials, here's the verbatim from the PEMA Documents:

A. The elected officials are responsible for the protection of the lives and property of the citizens. They exercise primary supervision and control over the four phases (prevention, preparedness, response and recovery) of emergency management activities within the municipality.

B. A local Emergency Management Coordinator (EMC) shall act on behalf of the elected officials. An Emergency Operations Center (EOC) has been designated by the municipality, and may be activated by the EMC or the elected officials during an emergency. A Deputy EMC and Alternate EOC have been designated to function in case the primary EMC and/or EOC are not available.

C. This plan embraces an “all-hazards” principle: that most emergency response functions are similar, regardless of the hazard. The EMC will mobilize resources and personnel as required by the emergency situation.

D. The EMC and elected officials will develop mutual aid agreements with adjacent municipalities for reciprocal emergency assistance as needed.

E. The municipality will embrace and utilize the National Incident Management System (NIMS) and the Incident Command System (see below).


Anyway I have NIMS and ICS training already, from my national firefighter certification testing and other training I've done, so the basic concepts of ICS are clear...I just think that the org chart and responsibilities I'm creating is rather funny...all the NSF functions and ICS roles are crunched. No problem with the span of command exceeding 7 people!

Of course, the county has resources, as does the state...none are local, and as we learned in the floods, all of the MOU's with agencies and municipalities matter nothing at all when you don't have people to actually do the work. Notebooks and clipboards don't do evacuations, don't do river rescues, don't pump out basements, don't deliver medicine and can't deliver supplies - only people can do that. So that's going to be the focus of the planning round one - getting the pool of people who can help and who want to help and then getting them their roles and stuff defined. There's going to be at least 2 tabletop exercises before this plan is finalized.

OK, are you sitting down?

Get this.

The Township does not have a computer (much less an internet connection).

got it!

time for a goverment grant???

At lest a laptop for Emergency services with a telephone up- link would help.

sorry Martin I did not realize it was THAT small. at least with a laptop you could put out a APB for help.

I have enough hardware here in the basement that I could build 3 or 4 systems quick enough...but they're gonna run Ubuntu, no way I'm going to pay for a set of XP licenses. Monitors are the only thing in short supply, as all the old CRT's have passed through the recycling process and I'm not getting any "old" flat panels these days (but the VGA-only 17" flat panels ought to be cycling out eventually).

I did get my budget done - it's for printing, binders, dividers and toner for my laser printer. $325. For the rest of 2009.

I have my own computer equipment I'll use for now, but it tends to be Linux and the government world seems to be all IE/ActiveX-ish. Strange that they wouldn't use open standards .



Hello FEMA grant?

Yes, right now I am dealing with a nasty rash of IE6/activex/JRE compatibility issues. Apparently BG didn't intend that IE6 would play so nice with the rest of the world, and won't provide any service pack upgrades for it. Basically you upgrade to IE7, or you play hit and miss with getting JRE dedicated applications to work.

Oracle and Primavera lost the City and County of Denver as cleints forever thanks to their obstinate and insolent attitude about providing product support, or more appropriately the lack thereof. Guess I will be recommending SAP from now on to our client base. Apparently Oracle has got so big they are no longer concerned with providing customer service, kinda like another software giant I know. Hmm...

Martin,

I think Florida is the model for the end that has money. I think you're going to be the model for the other end of the spectrum that doesn't have people.

I think you will be setting the example of what to do with very little resources. I think you'll have to approach your "community" and tell them straight up, you do not have people and there isn't any money. You're all in it together. I have no idea how that would work, but, you're not going to be able to hide behind "we've got it all covered" for long. Well, I don't know you, you might. Start with training the school staff with basic disaster stuff (evacuation, first aid, etc).

All I can say is good luck, and I'm sorry I cannot be more help. It seems you've covered all of the initial things I could think of. If I think of something, I'll let you know.

Martin,

I figure you already know the following information is available, but thought just in case:

FEMA Information for Professionals

You might also want to look at:

Emergency Management Training


Pete

I think CAP has an aircraft at Quakertown it may be worth talking to the unit commander there if it it near you.
All of the emergency services people in CAP now are suposed to have at least ICS-100, 200, 700 and 800 and the unit leaders now have to have ICS 300 (just finished mine). There may be somwe resources that you can tap there.

FEMA Training Website

Martin,

I am sure you already read this from the other thread, but I am almost certain that you need to add this to you "to-do" list for your new job.


Morgan Hill Fiber Cut

I would almost bet everything your area is set up much the same way. Most rural areas are. Seems I remember you mentioning the LEC's infrastructure is somewhat limited.

You might add the local telephone man to your new Christmas card list along with the National Guard.