Disaster Operations and Decision Making

Roger C. Huder

• Publisher: Wiley
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9780470927939
• eBook ISBN: 9781118178522
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politik & Internationale Beziehungen
• Subtopic: Terrorismus

The only book to combine emergency management principLEs with proven military concepts

Good disaster plans do not guarantee a good response. Any disaster plan rarely survives the first rain bands of a hurricane or the first tremors of an earthquake. While developing plans is essential, there must be systems in place to adapt these plans to the ever-changing operational environment of a disaster. Currently there is no set of standard disaster response principles to guide a community. The National Incident Management System (NIMS) and the Incident Command System (ICS) provide the framework to implement operational decisions, but they were never designed as operational concepts. The military has developed just such concepts and many of them can be adapted for civilian use.

Disaster Operations and Decision Making adapts those military concepts and combines them with disaster lessons learned to create a new opera-tional paradigm. Emphasizing team building, Emergency Operations Center operational systems, and situational awareness, the book details easily adopted methods. All of these methods are designed to be incorporated into the NIMS and ICS framework to enhance a community's response to any type of disaster.

Disaster Operations and Decision Making is an essential resource for emergency managers, fire chiefs, law enforcement officers, homeland security professionals, public health officials, and anyone else involved or interested in crisis management.

CHAPTER 1

The Emergency Manager: Leading in a Crisis

Leading during a disaster is not easy. How you perform will matter in profound ways across your community. Many will measure their lives in terms of what they were like before and after the event. Perform badly and people will suffer physically and economically; perform well and it will lessen the impact of the disaster on their lives.

Emergency managers rarely speak from a position of power. Instead they are typically layers down from the seats of power in the jurisdiction. Yet when a disaster occurs, it will be their job to step to the forefront and lead a group of people who are not used to working together, who are under tremendous pressures to accomplish the seemingly impossible task of restoring normality as quickly as possible. This is all done under the scrutiny of the press, outside agencies, and the public.

If operations go well and the community returns to normality in a timely fashion, the elected officials will garner all the credit. If operations do not go well, the emergency manager will be blamed and set up as the scapegoat. Yet being an emergency manager in just such a situation can be one of the most challenging and gratifying jobs around. Knowing that you have led your community back from devastation to recovery provides a profound sense of accomplishment. But the kind of leadership needed to accomplish this does not come with a job title. It must be earned over time.

How effective a leader an emergency manager is during a crisis is not determined when the disaster occurs. It is determined long before a disaster strikes by the relationships the emergency manager establishes within the community. An emergency manager holds a unique position within the bureaucracy. He or she is responsible for the response of the entire community to a disaster. Yet he “owns” no single resource needed to accomplish this goal. He must influence departments, agencies, and people across organizational lines of authority if he is to accomplish his job. The ability to develop this kind of cooperation among a volatile mix of organizations and people under stress does not suddenly emerge. The stage is set long before a disaster threatens.

It involves a lengthy process to lay a groundwork of expertise, trust, policies, and procedures. Through this preparation an emergency manager will be able to overcome the chaos that follows a disaster. The process requires patience, courage, expertise, and a stubbornness to overcome the organizational resistance that is natural in any bureaucracy. It is absolutely essential if an emergency manager is to lead the community’s efforts.

Disasters require an unprecedented and completely unique level of coordination both within the community as well as with outside agencies. Not only are everyday lines of authority broken into entirely new organizational structures, but also the organizations themselves and the individuals who run them must work together to accomplish a completely new set of tasks under the added pressure of time and public scrutiny.

This is a new organizational paradigm that calls for a new type of leadership role. A role where the emergency manager has no “official” power over these various organizations, yet his leadership is accepted and recommendations are followed. This new leadership style requires that the emergency manger make recommendations to officials who are their superiors. They must speak truth to power, a skill that comes from trust and is developed over time.

Leonard J. Marcus and Barry C. Dorn of Harvard University, with Joseph M. Henderson of the U.S. Centers of Disease Control and Prevention, discuss this leadership style at length in their groundbreaking 2005 paper “Meta-Leadership and National Emergency Preparedness.” The key points of the paper are distilled into an executive summary, “National Preparedness and the Five Dimensions of Meta-Leadership of the National Preparedness Leadership Initiative,” a 2007 Joint Program paper by the Harvard School of Public Health and the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. There are five major points emphasized in this leadership style.

Meta-Leadership

1. A meta-leader has the ability to instill confidence in other leaders within his community through his expertise or “frame of reference.” He is able to present the correct “choice points” so the best decisions for the organization and community are made.

2. A meta-leader has situational awareness; with often incomplete information he creates a broad frame of reference for the team as a whole, thereby presenting the team with the proper choices at the proper point in time. The leader is able to chart and present the progress of those decisions so a continuous situational awareness is retained even in a fast-moving and confusing environment.

3. Meta-leaders lead their silo—they develop subordinates into similar leadership roles within their spheres of responsibility so they have a team of people who foster the same types of relationships with their counterparts.

4. Meta-leaders lead up—they guide their bosses. Not by political manipulation or bureaucratic maneuvering but by becoming a “fair witness” by speaking the truth to power from a point of accepted expertise and not self-interest. If a leader trusts a subordinate to give recommendations that are in the community’s best interest, then he will follow those recommendations. During a disaster what is best for the community as a whole is best for the any elected or appointed official.

5. A meta-leader leads cross-agency connectivity. Long before a disaster strikes, a meta-leader establishes relationships of mutual respect with other departments, bureaus, and agencies by respecting the expertise of these individuals and the need for that expertise during a disaster. The emergency manager clarifies their roles and establishes relationships that will function during a disaster.

These five tenets are the guiding principles for emergency managers if they are to become effective leaders during a disaster.

HOW TO BECOME A CRISIS LEADER

This roadmap for an emergency manager to create a place in the community had not been articulated when I began my career in emergency management. Prior to the landmark disasters that came to define emergency management—Hurricane Hugo, Hurricane Andrew, 9/11, and Hurricane Katrina—emergency management was a sleepy backwater in a busy bureaucracy. Resources were scarce or nonexistent; little attention and just plain indifference surrounded the job. Despite my jurisdiction being located in Florida, it had been over 30 years since a hurricane directly struck our community, and the intuitional memory of its effects had been lost. The city was unprepared and complacent about any disaster, much less a hurricane.

Yet it became my job to prepare my city for such eventualities. With no models to follow I approached the job using strategies that seemed to make common sense. Without knowing it I used meta-leadership tenets as defined by Marcus, Dorn, and Henderson in their groundbreaking paper to crave out a respected leadership role in disasters and disaster preparedness.

The meta-leadership definition distills years of my own lessons learned. This style of leadership is not one that will be bestowed on the emergency manager upon his appointment; rather it is one that will be earned by creating such a role in an existing organization. It will require time, effort, and patience. It is not an organizational style that will necessarily be rewarded. The value of the role will only become apparent when a disaster or crisis threatens.

Ideally an emergency manager would report directly to the most senior elected official of a community. More typically the office of emergency management is buried in another department. In my case it was the fire department. Fire departments are one of the more common departments for emergency management at the local level, but it can be located in almost any department. At the writing of this book the Florida Division of Emergency Management is under the Department of Community Affairs. The placement of most offices of emergency management under another department and not in direct control of the jurisdiction’s response resources is the reason the meta-leadership model works so well for any emergency manager.

The fire chief had the official title of emergency manager for the city, and he reported to the mayor. I worked directly for him, and it was with his voice that I spoke when I went to meetings or coordinated with other departments. To be able to represent an appointed official, you must develop a good working rapport. When the chief appointed me as the emergency manager, he added it to two other jobs I already performed for him.

There is no set model across the county; it will vary from state to state. In Florida counties are required to have an emergency manager. Cities are not required to do so, but depending on their size some feel the need to have one. Unless they are required to have one, most communities do not have the money to fund a full-time emergency manager. So, as in my case, it is given to someone as a second responsibility.

Once he appointed me I was able to spend enough time discussing emergency management with him to develop an approach that we both felt comfortable with. That did not mean we spent a large amount of time on the subject; he expected me to spend the time needed to accomplish the tasks, then brief him on the progress. Planning and developing relationships with other departments was up to me. He literally had other fires to put out as well as budgets, the union, and the administration all competing for his time. No matter what department an emergency manager works for, it is critical that he develop a working trust with the head of that department. It also must be known that the manager represents the department head on the subject. It provides him with the cachet needed to begin developing the needed relationships.

While being a designee was important, it was only the first step. It did not give me the respect as a leader with other departments that would be needed during a crisis. That level of respect was going to have to be earned over the next months and even years. This lack of respect is not out of pettiness; instead it came from a realization that should a disaster strike, the careers of these officials would be on the line. Until I proved myself as a trusted advisor, they would be reluctant to take recommendations from someone when their performance and their department’s performance would be so closely scrutinized. That respect would have to be earned.

BECOME THE EXPERT

Part of the answer to becoming a crisis leader in your community is to become the authority on disasters and how to respond to them. If you are appointed, you must have credentials, but that does not necessarily make you an expert in the eyes of others in your community. You become an expert in the eyes of others by continuing to learn, by striving for more certifications and education. The continued pursuit of additional education and training creates the image of someone truly interested in their subject matter.

But simply accumulating more training, education credits, and degrees is not enough. You must go above and beyond what may be considered normal qualifications. One way is to read as much about the histories of disasters as you can lay your hands on. (See the reading list in this book for some good titles to start with.) History is context. Look for detailed histories filled with firsthand accounts that are rich in detail. The kind of detail that can be translated into specific impacts a similar event would have on your community. These details will become recognizable issues for your community that you will be able to use to plan and emphasize during training. These historical details will make the training more compelling and relevant.

A couple of excellent examples that should be on every emergency manager’s reading list are The Great Influenza by John M. Barry and City on Fire by Bill Minutaglio. The Great Influenza is a richly detailed account of the pandemic that ravaged the world in 1918. It describes specific details of its impact on society and the disruption it caused in cities across the world. The authors go into the particulars of how some cities took precautions and were able to ameliorate the impact of the disease, while others did not take those same precautions, with terrible consequences. It was a source of more useful information than any other during the Bird Flu and Swine Flu scares.

City on Fire details the explosions of two cargo ships carrying ammonium nitrate in the Texas City harbor just after World War II. The devastating effects are the closest you will ever come to understanding the impact of terrorist use of a tactical nuclear weapon on a U.S. city. This book should inform any emergency manager responsible for developing plans for such a contingency.

Another rich source of information are the reports of lessons learned created after major disasters. They are not consistently produced, but there are some excellent resources with the kind of detail that will provide you with rich information. The Internet is your primary source for these reports; searching on the type of disaster will bring up a range of sites that can be farmed for what you need. Find them, read them, print then out and start a library. If they are detailed enough to include timelines, and specific minute-by-minute accounts, they are an excellent source of ideas and information for the creation of exercises and training.

When you teach a class or lead an exercise, referring to specific problems or consequences in previous disasters only adds weight to your point. It also quiets the “that would never happen” skeptics who always seem to be included in any audience. So when they question an issue or problem because it could not really happen, you can simply quote the source and explain why you included it in your training. This is also a tactic that works well in meeting rooms as you fight for money and resources; few can argue with actual events. Your knowledge of past disasters also reinforces your role as an expert.

Whenever you use an example from a previous disaster, make sure you make the point that our society is becoming more and more fragile and susceptible to to disruptions caused by a disaster. Any disruptions in power will be magnified significantly. An example is included in a study done by the Urban Institute of the University of North Carolina at Charlotte on the effect of Hurricane Hugo on that city. They found that 80 percent of the businesses in the city had been severely or moderately affected by the hurricane. The top cause of this damage was loss of electrical power. Something as simple as the long-term loss of power leads to severe impacts on businesses and emphasizes the fragility of today’s society and the fact that the historical impact will be magnified by the complexity and interdependence of today’s world.

While you should read widely about disasters, do concentrate on your community’s most common or direct threat. In Florida our most common threat is, of course, hurricanes. So I became a weather geek. I read everything I could on hurricanes and the affects they had on communities. I taught myself how to read the hurricane products created by the National Hurricane Center. I found some of the earliest software online that showed the modeling of the storms and how the forecasters used...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title page
• Title page
• Copyright page
• Dedication
• Preface
• Introduction
• Chapter 1: The Emergency Manager: Leading in a Crisis
• Chapter 2: Crisis Decision Making
• Chapter 3: Disaster Operations: The Art of Operations
• Chapter 4: Decision Graphics: The Green Light System
• Chapter 5: The Emergency Operations Center
• Chapter 6: The Press, Friend and Foe
• Chapter 7: The National Incident Management System and the Incident Command System
• Chapter 8: Technology and Social Media
• Chapter 9: Building the Team: The Core Liaison Group
• Chapter 10: Training the Team
• Chapter 11: Resources: Decision Aids and Worksheets
• FEMA Glossary
• Suggested Readings
• Index