I don't know, but since I'm doing this thing in Houston I'm going to dig around. Stay tuned.

I just checked all the links and they seem to be working. The link to the manual may have been overwhelmed yesterday. Pretty quick today though.

"A state of emergency places control of all government operations soley in the hand of the Chief Elected Official for the political subdivision..."

O...M...G! Queen Christine with unlimited power!

RUN! RUN FASTER! FASTER!

Sue

Absolutely correct and a part of the National Incident Management Plan. It's a long read, but worth a look:

http://www.fema.gov/emergency/nims/

NIMS is a defacto alternative governance plan for the USA.

I tried, I honestly did try to read the FEMA NIMS documents but quickly came to the conclusion that the USA would be pretty much doomed in a full scale National Emergency based on the difficulties encountered by the emergency services during the London terrorist 7/7 attack response. NIMS it would appear is nothing more than graduate management gobbledygook speak. Combine the management speak gobbledygook with the reliance on poorly designed thin client based Internet based management and reporting tools (probably Oracle and Siebel) and flaky communications together with having some lawyers and politicians (show business for ugly folks) poking their noses in and you have a recipe for a much wider disaster.

'Ok chaps, it now looks like we have a major incident and we all now need to move to the Gold Command control room'

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-12598785

Lets hope the pens still work.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xR3YvrNpssM

Off topic, but I'm pretty sure all males still have to sign up for it. Difference is, I joined willingly. It's easier to get the job you want that way!

But..but...with NIMS you'll have accurate, up-to-date and legally defensible paperwork about all the people you didn't have time to help because you were writing sitreps...and everyone has an internet-connected laptop with them at all times when they are pulling people out of a flooded river...

Some folks did give NIMS some credit in the I-35 collapse

http://officer.com/publication/article.jsp?pubId=1&id=40238&submit_comment=y#commentform

There is a saying: amateurs talk tactics while professionals talk logistics. Enthusiasm, common sense, good-ol American know-how, and can-do spirit will get you through a situation with a small number of people. As soon as you break a dozen souls, perhaps two dozen if you have a lot of ability and a good memory, you start to need organization, documentation, and some sort of bureaucracy.

The bureaucracy needn't be large. Three people; executive, adjutant, record-keeper can cover a lot of situations. How you divide up responsibility isn't important as long as all the slots are covered.

Once you get to a disaster involving hundreds of thousands it is documentation, paperwork, that saves you. And yes, the difference between people living and dying is planning and logistics. Neither of which happen without some sort of documentation to quantify and localize the issues.