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.