An after action report that does not mince words..

The National Center for Security and Preparedness are in the midst of compiling an After Action Report on Sandy and New State OEM's response...words are not minced:

"NOTE: Blue-bolded and italicized texts contain information intended only for the Commissioner of the New York State Division of Homeland Security and Emergency Services. 

"OEM is extremely understaffed. By comparison, Iowa's emergency management agency, serving a state with the same area as New York but only a sixth the population, is as large as OEM. The profound demands on an overtaxed staff during its many activations, as well as under performance by a vocal and unmotivated minority have severely degraded morale and compromised effectiveness. Designating emergency management staff as nonessential personnel to facilitate early retirement and a subsequent failure to fill empty positions has further eroded OEM’s capabilities.  ""

One of the biggest revelations was the New York State OEM's staff has been reduced by 50% since 2011, from 125 to approximate 65 post-Sandy.

The report blasts Staff management, morale, outdated technology, strategy and response planning, etc...The report is clear, concise, and highlights vulnerabilities that will / have impacted recovery and New York State's ability to respond to future events. 

Sandy "Notes" After-Action Report by Casey Seiler

Northridge 20 years later

At 4:31am 20 years ago residents of Southern California were jolted awake by a 6.7 magnitude quake that lasted for 30 seconds. What was soon dubbed the Northridge Earthquake was a reminder for many residents that Southern California is firmly between the cross hairs of the San Andreas Fault.

The ABC coverage above shows what happened: neighborhoods on fire, no electricity, no water, elevated freeway collapse, and a lot of uncertainty. But that was 20 years ago, that couldn't happen now...could it? 

In this article "Buildings Vulnerable 20 years after Northridge Quake" Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti is quoted as saying:

"We're as well prepared as any city in America, which is to say we're unprepared...I don't think anybody in America is very well prepared ... There's always going to be an earthquake we can't be prepared for."

And while that isn't the resounding vote of confidence you hope for from the Mayor of a city with more than 12 million people a stone's throw from the San Andreas fault...you have to wonder, if the Mayor has this type of attitude, then why are hundreds of thousands of dollars being spent annually to fund Regional Catastrophic Planning Teams ($857,000 in 2011/2012 (see pg 106) and upgraded Emergency Operations Centers ($400,000)?

If you look at my completely unscientific method of earthquake prediction you'll notice that the last major earthquake before Northridge was the Sylmar quake in '71--a 6.6 in the foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains. Sylmar was roughly 20 years before Northridge and today marks the passage of 20 years since, and it feels like disaster amnesia has wholly enveloped Southern California...so much so that the mayor seems to have a "well...what can ya do?" mindset.

Growing a culture of preparedness in a diverse region of 12+ million people is no small feat, but when a significant number of residential structures continue to remain at risk 20 years later, the supply chains and infrastructure that criss-cross the San Andreas remain vulnerable, and preparedness is a foreign concept to a generation of people that weren't alive in '94, it becomes apparent that there is a lot to do and it feels like we're living on borrowed time.

So unless you're an engineer or have deep pockets and can throw money at this, I encourage you to take a few simple steps to help prepare:

• Buy some MRE's (Meals ready to eat)
• Get some Water: 1 gallon / day / person (3-5 day supply -- more is better)
• Flashlights and batteries (candles tend to burn homes down during aftershocks)
• A hand crank radio for news updates and if needed, a charge of your phone
• Have some cash, preferably smaller bills (not all ATM's will be knocked out but why take that chance?)
• Extra Medication / eye glasses 
• Know where your water and gas meters are and how to turn them off (fires will be a major problem)
• Create a meeting point with your friends / family so that if you're separated you know where to go and when to be there

There is more you can and should do, but this is a start. Listen to the podcast below for 2 surprising facts about the most common injuries after Northridge and how you can prevent them from happening to you.

Being an alarmist never does anyone any good, but you also want to be ready...an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.

Failure isn't a four letter word

When we fall short of reaching our goals we tend to quietly sweep it under the rug and move on; no one shouts from the rooftops about how they missed the mark, which is both surprising, and not.

It’s not surprising because no one likes admitting when things don’t go according to plan, especially when there are expectations associated with the outcomes: donor, beneficiary, volunteer, and otherwise.

It is surprising however, in light of the talk about “professionalizing” the disaster response sector. In working for a smaller disaster-response non-profit I was forced to do more with less, as a result, I needed to know a little about a lot. Because I’m kind of a dork, I started reading management books to help broaden my horizons and understanding around non-profit type things, books like: ‘the 5 dysfunctions of a team’, and ‘the 4 secrets every great manager should know’, etc… And while there were a lot of commonalities, the one thing that was repeatedly said was: don’t be afraid to fail, and failure is the greatest teacher.

If that’s true, why is it that the business world is embracing failure and being rewarded for it through innovation and massive profits, while we in disaster response manage to avoid the subject entirely and have to fight for dollars? If we’re serious about “professionalizing” what we do, I believe open and honest conversations about where gaps persist are needed so that planning can take place, benchmarks can be set, and communication can be directed to ensure accountability in our evolution as a sector of practitioners.

We push for transparency around: financial stewardship, the communication of program impacts, our role within community response and recovery, etc...However, I’ve yet to read an article by an organization about a time where they didn’t accomplish what they set out to do. Is that due to a fear that if we tell funders that we came up short that we won’t get grants renewed and funding will dry up? Is it complacency? Is it a lack of definition around roles and responsibilities? Or is it that we’re just not failing? Of course I don’t want our Search and Rescue personnel to fail, nor do I want to prolong a communities recovery so that we can "figure things out", but if we continually come to the same conclusions as to the challenges and gaps faced when conducting response and recovery operations, why aren’t we as a sector jumping on the failure bandwagon by trying new things and seeing what works?

Recognizing the need for an open dialogue/forum on the subject of failure, Engineers without Boarders began the site: www.admittingfailure.com. A place where stories of magnificent flops can be shared and what was learned as a result. After watching the Occupy Sandy debrief trailer the questions of why we aren’t embracing failure as a sector keep coming up in my head.

So maybe we don't need to shout it from the rooftops, but how about we submit 3 things we could've done better as response transitions to recovery in Moore, OK and the surrounding communities. Submit them to NVOAD to begin a base of institutional response knowledge, put them into a hat, pull them out, and talk about them so that we can figure out ways to ensure that the next time we respond that the same challenges don't persist. 

Honesty is the best policy and failure is the best teacher...if we can't be honest with each other enough to admit where we can be better, how are we going to learn from our mistakes in an effort to avoid making them again in the future?

A Lesson in Sharing

We talk about learning from the past so that we don't make the same mistakes in the future, systems are setup to help facilitate the sharing of lessons learned...but how effective are we at actually sharing?

How many of you know what LLIS.gov is? More importantly, how many of you actually have access to it? That repository of information is an example of a body of "best practice" that sits under-utilized due to access issues. LLIS is the "Lessons Learned Information Sharing site hosted by DHS. Lessons learned do no good when they're locked away...especially when there are communities out there thirsty for information; for better or worse, the sharing of what we do needs to be done better.

Lessons tend to be shared at conferences amongst smaller groups of people who have a lot of the same experiences and knowledge base. Given the variety of individuals who are getting involved at a local level and the growth of local actors in response activities, the need to know what's working and especially what isn't, has to be pushed out on a broader scale. The folks at Occupy have created a mini-documentary chronicling what worked and didn't and I would imagine that based on the success of their operations, many will watch and try to replicate what they did when a disaster strikes in their community. By Occupy chronicling what they did, how they did it, and intentionally pushing it out to the world, they are taking a more aggressive approach to transparency then I've seen the response community do in the past. And while it may not be perfect, I imagine it will be honest, straightforward and will resonate with those would-be responders in communities preparing for the next event.

I look forward to watching the full length production from Occupy and am hopeful that it isn't a prescriptive "how to" video but more of a chronicle of their experiences for others to learn from. Either way, I think the sharing of this information is a step in the right direction and hope that it spurs conversations about how it can be done better by more people in all facets of disaster.

...and Hurricane Season is upon us

As if the non-stop tornados, heavy rains, flooding, red flag warnings, and general misery mother nature is throwing at us at the moment wasn't enough...today marks the beginning of a 5 month period known as Hurricane season -- joy.

Hurricane Prep Week Topics

With the build up and aftermath of Superstorm Sandy still fresh in the minds of those in the mid-atlantic region where repair and rebuild activities are just beginning to hit their stride, Hurricane Season is an unwelcome reminder of still healing wounds.

And while the peak month of August is still 60 days away, FEMA and local emergency management agencies spent the last 7 days reinforcing best practices in preparation for what NOAA is forecasting to be an above average season for Hurricane activity.

Given the prep, the forecasting, the grant dollars available, and cyclical nature that the next 5 months represents...why aren't at risk states better prepared? I ask because during Hurricane Isaac, a storm that made landfall 7 years to the day, more or less in the same areas where Hurricane Katrina made landfall, areas where there should've been a plan forged in the chaos and horrible tragedy that was Hurricane Katrina, was disarray and confusion. There was uncertainty around roles and responsibilities, around the best ways to coordinate response activities, and an overwhelming sense of disbelief.

Disasters by their nature are confusing, chaotic, and stressful...but with the seemingly endless practice that the emergency management community is getting, and ultimately the opportunities to share what's working and what's not via: conferences, papers, LLIS.gov, and picking up the phone and talking to someone who's gone through it, it isn't a herculean leap to want to see improvements.

I know that disaster response doesn't follow a linear progression and that the best laid plans are often tossed aside because the [insert disaster type here] doesn't adhere to the construct of the plan. With that said, we've been doing this long enough that instituting some sort of benchmarking system to measure response and recovery could be created. Not to shame or chastise, but to learn what works for a particular community and grow it, integrate it into future planning to help mitigate the threat of a groundhog day scenario as communities stare down the next 5 months of potential Hurricane activity.

It's not all doom and gloom, some communities are adapting and adopting mechanisms that will allow for the tracking and sharing of a detailed recovery plan. The Recovery Diva posted this re: The Joplin recovery; lots of good information here and I encourage you to read the fact sheet, a great tool and template I hope other communities adopt...communities that may be facing the daunting task of picking up the pieces following a similar situation now and in the future.