Canton on Emergency Management

05/30/2023

Who’s Going to Use Your Plan?

Over my thirty-plus years as an emergency manager I’ve had the opportunity to review numerous emergency plans from a variety of organizations, ranging from small communities and federal agencies in the public sector to private sector companies in a variety of industries. After a while you notice a sameness to them, not surprising as most organizations follow the one-size-fits-all guidance from the federal government. Don’t misunderstand, I’m not against standardization per se and have even encouraged it in many cases. However, many of the plans I’ve reviewed seem to have a common feature: they will be largely useless in an actual crisis.

In his book Mission Improbable: Using Fantasy Documents to Tame Disaster, sociologist Lee Clarke describes plans as “rationality badges” used by organizations to demonstrate that they are in control of a crisis, regardless of their actual level of preparedness. Writing in Disaster Response: Principles of Preparation and Coordination, Erik Auf der Heide devotes an entire chapter to the “paper plan syndrome”, the assumption that because a plan exists, an organization is prepared for crisis. In our rush towards standardization, we have made the development of a “good” emergency operations plan (EOP) the central focus and measurement of our planning rather recognizing that it is a tool we use to coordinate the activities of our crisis management team. If your plan cannot be used by those charged with managing a crisis, you’re not ready, no matter how pretty your plan is.

Why are so many plans useless? I can point to many, many reasons: internal inconsistencies, duplication, excessive length, missing or hard to find critical information, no buy in from key stakeholders – the list is endless. But it all comes down to a simple concept: plans are not written with the end user in mind. Instead, plans are written to please a potential reviewer such as the public, a board of directors, or funding authorities such as state or federal agencies. This results in a plan that contains information not needed by the end user but may be needed to demonstrate that the organization is conformant with specific requirements.

Let me give you an example of what I mean. The base plan is a brief description of the way an organization will approach a crisis. It is a concept of operation that describes overall strategy, relationships, responsibilities, and authorities. It should be brief and contain only essential information. yet many of the plans I have reviewed contain a lengthy description of the incident command system (ICS) to demonstrate that the organization is using ICS. Given that the implementation of ICS includes training for key personnel, the question is, “Who is going to use this?” Personnel who have been trained won’t need it. I submit that someone responding under the plan who is not familiar with ICS will not have time to read this part of the plan and would probably find it inadequate in that it isn’t task specific. If the intent was really to address lack of training, there are better ways of dealing with this problem such is just-in-time training or initial orientations.

One of the problems that I’ve encountered is that planners are not always conversant with emergency management principles and tend to create confusion when creating annexes to the base plan. A key concept in developing your emergency plan is understanding the difference between response generated and agent generated needs. Response generated needs tend to remain relatively consistent among crises while agent generated needs are created by the specific type of crisis. Functional annexes address response generated needs while hazard specific annexes address agent generated needs.

This seems a simple concept, yet I have seen many plans where hazard specific annexes recapitulate much of the information already covered in functional annexes. The problem arises when the separate annexes contradict each other instead of being mutually supportive or completely change the original concept contained in the functional annex. This usually happens when the hazard specific annex is created by a separate planning group and the annex is not vetted for consistency with the rest of the plan. At best it requires the user to switch back and forth between annexes; at worst it creates confusion and the possibility for conflict. Hazard specific annexes are essentially contingency plans based on specific assumptions and should build on the concepts and authorities already identified in functional annexes. Like the base plan, they provide a strategy for dealing with a specific type of incident and are not intended to be separate plans.

Don’t fall into the paper plan syndrome trap. Remember that the EOP doesn’t have to be a single volume that incorporates all the worlds knowledge. Demonstrating conformance with standards can be done through other evidence such as supporting plans, training records, and exercise after-action reports. Detailed information can be included in departmental plans, field operations guides, or manuals. Keep your EOP lean enough that the users can find the information they need without wading through extraneous information that could be better covered elsewhere. The plan is just a tool; it’s your crisis management team that is the important element in dealing with disaster. Make their job a bit easier by giving them a plan they can actually use.

Posted by Lucien Canton on 05/30/2023 | Permalink | Comments (0)

04/30/2023

Rethinking the Emergency Operations Center: Five Points to Consider

Besides earthquakes and fires, California can have very severe rainstorms. This is normally not a problem for San Francisco but 1997 was one of the worst El Nino years we experienced, with all California counties receiving federal disaster declarations. In San Francisco concern over a potential hillside collapse that might require evacuation of a residential neighborhood, a closed major highway that stranded motorists in the city, and a large homeless population at risk for hypothermia prompted the decision to open a series of emergency shelters.

Like many jurisdictions, we had always assumed our emergency operations center would accommodate all our key personnel. However, when we included supporting agencies, voluntary agencies, and community groups, our shelter branch alone numbered over 50 people, completely filling our operations room. If we had also needed to respond to the hillside collapse, we would have exceeded the capacity of our EOC.

This highlights one of the dichotomies of our current approach to EOC’s. Establishing a permanent EOC, even one of modest size, is expensive, not only in initial construction and equipping but in upkeep and maintenance. This limits the size of many EOCs to one that is sufficient for small emergencies but totally inadequate for major disasters.

Add to this the fact that many of us have rarely considered how many people will need to be accommodated in the EOC. This is partly because many EOCs are activated for local events and emergencies that seldom go for more than a few hours, serving more as command posts supporting tactical operations rather than operational coordination. Our exercises run for a few hours and rarely involve shift changes or activation of alternate sites. This creates a false expectation that EOC staffing will be of a manageable size and all functions will be able to be performed there.

The reality of a major disaster will be quite different. All the senior department heads who were too busy to come to an exercise? They’ll be there looking over the shoulders of the department representatives you trained. Community organizations and business leaders will all want access to your information. Representatives from state and federal agencies, liaison officers from mutual aid agencies, teams from volunteer agencies, the list is endless. And don’t forget the media. This won’t be just the local reporters with whom you probably have a good working relationship; we’re talking about national media who have no interest beyond getting a story that plays well on the national news channels, preferably one that highlights your perceived failures.

Think I’m overstating the problem? Following the loss of their EOC on September 11^th, the New York Office of Emergency Management established a new EOC on a vacant pier. The original EOC was designed to house 68 local agencies. I couldn’t find figures for how many people were at Pier 92 but the company that provided the emergency management software supporting the EOC reported more than 1,700 users, representing over 150 federal, state, and local agencies, as well as public and private companies. Could your EOC handle even a fraction of these people?

I’m not suggesting that we eliminate EOCs completely nor am I in favor of building mega-EOCs that might never be used. I am suggesting, however, that we should seriously consider how we can use them more effectively and what other facilities will be needed to support response operations. We need to accept several key facts that we tend to ignore:

The organizational chart we put in the Emergency Operations Plan is not how the EOC will be staffed. Have you ever counted how many people it would take to fill those neat little boxes? Your organization probably doesn’t have enough people on the payroll to do it. Similarly, the teams and positions described in the multiple resource typing documents issued by FEMA probably won’t be there. Be realistic in your planning and who you actually need in your EOC.
The EOC is a point of coordination, not necessarily where work is performed. This, of course, depends on the size of your organization and how you plan to use your EOC, but we already recognize this concept using department operations centers (DOCs). Teams may be more effective if collocated with the lead agency with supporting coordination done through their representative at the EOC. Alternatively, they may need to operate from a location separate from the main EOC.
The EOC may be where you initiate operations before moving to an alternate site capable of housing more personnel. You need to identify alternate sites and exercise your ability to activate and conduct operations from these sites. During the COVID emergency, the San Francisco Department of Emergency Management established an operations center at their alternate site at the Moscone Convention Center that housed over 400 city workers and representatives of city government.
With decentralized operations, technology becomes critical, both for sharing a common operating picture and creating ad hoc task forces to deal with emerging problems. Parallel communications systems and multiple options for internet access are essential.
Databases are more important than hardware. This was a key lesson learned from September 11^th. Hardware can be replaced relatively quickly, either through purchase or through personal laptops, tablets, and cellular phones. Plan for both access and connectivity rather than stockpiling hardware

Remember that what makes emergency managers so effective is our ability to react quickly to the unexpected by creating ad hoc task forces and adapting plans as needed to solve the problem. Plan your response to maximize this ability and don’t get too attached to a single facility. An EOC is not a building; it’s the EOC team that makes the difference in a crisis.

Posted by Lucien Canton on 04/30/2023 | Permalink | Comments (0)

04/01/2023

03/31/2023

Politics and the Emergency Manager – Part 2

Last month I wrote about the importance of emergency managers understanding and being involved in their local political process. However, that’s only part of the issue. Local and state politics are more immediate but national politics can have long range implications for local emergency management programs. While an emergency manager will naturally be more focused on local political issues, it is critical that they also be cognizant of what is happening at the national level.

To understand why participation in national politics is important, we need to understand that our current emergency management system is not the product of intelligent design. Instead it is a collection of programs and directives resulting from legislation driven by what sociologists refer to as “focusing events.” A focusing event is a disaster that is so serious in its consequences that it creates sufficient public concern to force politicians to make changes to policies and laws. In other words, bad things happen and public outrage forces politicians to react, or in many cases, overreact.

In 2007, sociologists Claire Rubin and Irmak Renda-Tanali and attorney William Cumming prepared a series of disaster time lines that charted major focusing events and their outcomes. The timelines show the events, significant reports on consequences, directives and statutes developed as a result, and actions taken by the federal government. The timelines are a brilliant illustration of how our emergency management system has developed through reaction to events rather than through careful risk analysis and strategy development.

Unfortunately, public concern and elite panic have often produced an overreaction to focusing events. The most glaring example of overreaction in recent history was the fallout from the September 11^th where the policy of fighting terrorists outside the continental United States was implemented at the expense of increasing resilience within the US infrastructure and strengthening emergency management capabilities. The result was the debacle of Hurricane Katrina.

A second reason why national politics should be on an emergency manager’s radar is the disruption to plans and policies following a Presidential election. Key positions, such as that of the FEMA Administrator, are political appointments and change at the whim of the new President. Policies, directives and budgets and even reporting lines can change. During the Clinton administration, the FEMA director was part of the President’s Cabinet, in the Bush administration that followed, the director reported to the Secretary of Homeland Security rather than directly to the President. Of more concern is that changes in administration can result in policy changes driven by politics. President G.W. Bush’s FEMA director cancelled the poplar Project Impact program that provided minimal seed money to increase community resilience and proposed cuts to the National Flood Insurance Program.

Politics also play out in disaster declarations. We sometimes forget that disaster declarations are discretionary. A request is not automatically granted but is at the discretion of the President. In a 2003 study of disaster payments, researchers Thomas Garrett and Russell Sobel found that states politically important to the President had higher rates of declarations and that the mean level of declarations tended to be higher in certain election years than in non-election years. A similar study by researcher Andrew Reeves in 2007 found, “a highly competitive state can expect to receive over 60% more presidential disaster declarations than an uncompetitive state …these decisions have the intended electoral benefits… A president can expect a 1.7% increase in a statewide contest in return for a single presidential disaster declaration.”

What can a local emergency manager do? Clearly, with the demands of the job, national politics are the last thing on your mind. But there are things you could and should do:

Educate yourself on the political process. A good place to start is Richard Sylves excellent book, Disaster Policy and Politics: Emergency Management and Homeland Security.
Get to know your local congressional staff. Remember that politicians rely on their staff to help them formulate positions on legislation. Building a good relationship with a congressional staff person may well be more useful to you than a brief meeting with a politician.
Know your local government’s process for lobbying federal representatives and taking official positions on legislation.
Support the International Association of Emergency Managers. IAEM monitors national legislation so you don’t have to and lobbies for emergency management interests on proposed bills. They have successfully fended off significant cuts to emergency management funding and work hard to educate congressional staff on emergency management issues.
Make use of your local constituency: volunteer organizations, community groups, professional associations. A handful of personalized messages from local community members carry more weight than a score of copied email messages or preprinted postcards,

Emergency managers tend to avoid politics and rightly so. Otto von Bismarck is famously quoted as saying, “Laws are like sausages. It is better not to see them being made.” Unfortunately, we need to ensure that our positions are heard on legislation that affects us. Politics is a numbers game, and we need to make sure we’re counted.

Posted by Lucien Canton on 03/31/2023 | Permalink | Comments (0)

02/28/2023

02/27/2023

Politics and the Emergency Manager

“I don’t play politics!” How many times have you heard this expression or said it yourself? I know I have. Emergency managers like to consider themselves apolitical, that we provide relief to those in need and base our planning on the best available evidence without regard to political agendas. The truth is that politics is an integral and necessary part of the emergency manager’s job. You may not think you play politics, but it certainly plays you.

Leaving aside national politics, which is in itself a major topic for discussion, consider the fact that many local emergency managers work directly for elected officials. For example, in California the defacto director of emergency services for a county is the sheriff unless otherwise stipulated by law. My own position in San Francisco was as a political appointee to the mayor. In such a situation, the minimum expectation is that you at least support the policies of the elected official for whom you work. There may also be pressure to take an active part in political campaigns.

And don’t think that because you’re in the private sector that you’re immune. Although different from public sector politics, corporate politics can be just as mean and ruthless. I once lost a position with a private company because my boss became unwillingly embroiled in competition for the presidency of the company and the ultimate winner decided to replace us with his own team.

Assuming you can reconcile your responsibilities with the expectations of your elected officials, understanding the political process becomes essential for two important reasons. The first directly impacts your ability to get your job done: budgeting. In any organization, public or private, there is always competition for resources, usually money. You need to understand how budgets are formulated and how you can influence the process. This means knowing who the key players are and how they can be influenced. My colleagues in California and I challenged the state’s formula for distributing grant funding by showing a united front and leveraging our relationships with our federal elected officials.

A second major reason for understanding the political process is the ability to influence legislation that can either improve resilience or may have a detrimental effect on public safety. One of our Board of Supervisors intended to improve environmental conditions by eliminating the monthly generator tests performed by many organizations. The expectation was that this would save fuel and reduce harmful emissions. My office ended up working with a lobbyist hired by our local hotels, who were understandably concerned about the impact of not regularly testing generators. Together we were able to educate the supervisor as to why these tests were essential and he withdrew the legislation. Having the consensus between the hotel group and our office was the key to our success.

Influencing local legislation is not the only situation in which you may find yourself. Your jurisdiction will have a process to take an “official” position on state and, in some cases, federal legislation. In my case, this meant appearing before a working group of key executives to explain the reasons for requesting an official position. Once the group agreed and the mayor concurred, the city would instruct our lobbyists in the state and federal capitols as to our position. And before you say, “Hey, that’s not really my job,” it’s part of the Emergency Management Accreditation Program (EMAP) Standard:

3.5.2 The Emergency Management Program has a process for identifying and addressing proposed legislative and regulatory changes.

So how do you deal with politics when you’re not a politician and really don’t want to get involved? Here are the five things I suggest:

Accept that it’s part of your job – You may not like it but you need to accept that monitoring the legislative process and intervening as appropriate is an important part of your job. Changes to policy and the allocation of resources frequently will require legislation and you need to be part of that process. You need to be aware of when legislation will affect how you perform your program, whether for good or ill.
Learn the process – To influence legislation, you need to know how laws are made and the best time to intervene. The most effective way is to educate legislators while the legislation is being developed and before it is introduced. It is much easier to change a politician’s mind before they have taken a public stand. You can learn the process by reading municipal codes or by consulting the clerk of your legislative body.
Build a consensus - My old boss, Mayor Willie L. Brown, Jr. writes in his biography, Basic Brown: My Life and Our Times, “No matter how righteous your cause, you’ve got to do heavy political lifting to secure the consensus you need to get anything done in the actual political arena.” Emergency managers are at a disadvantage as we have a very small constituency. However, we can muster support from other department heads, citizen volunteer groups, the community, and businesses depending on the cause. It is not the size of the constituency that matters as much as how many people show up at a public hearing to support your position. Seek allies wherever you can find them.
Understand motivation - Unfortunately, most politicians are looking for short term wins that aid in reelection, so be prepared to answer the question, “What’s in it for me?” We were able to get funding for a mitigation program to limit residential hotel fires because we found an ally in a new supervisor who was looking for a cause and was willing to listen to our proposal.
Do your homework - Just because your cause is righteous isn’t enough. Be prepared to answer how much your proposal will cost and suggestions for how it will be funded. Conversely, if you’re opposing legislation, have solid reasons why it should be modified or withdrawn such as cost, political consequences, and quantifiable risk.

If you’re thinking, “If I’d wanted to be a politician, I’d have run for office,” you’re right and I’m in total agreement. But if you want to do the best for your community and your program, if you want the resources you need, if you want to avoid bad legislation, then you have no choice but to get involved in the political process.

Posted by Lucien Canton on 02/27/2023 | Permalink | Comments (0)

01/23/2023

Strategic Thinking

When I first became involved in emergency management back in 1989, things were much simpler. Emergency Management was by and large considered a second career and emergency managers were predominantly male with previous careers in other services such as police, fire, and the military. we were tactically and operationally oriented and our focus was almost exclusively on the development of local emergency plans. The emphasis on civil defense planning that had characterized previous decades was being replaced by the concept of all hazards planning and the focus was shifting from strategic national issues such as nuclear war to planning for local disasters.

Things have changed. While the professionalization of emergency management has continued to increase, so has the complexity of the issues with which we now deal. One of the biggest changes that I have seen in emergency management is the shift from purely operational planning for local disasters to the consideration of more large-scale strategic issues. This is the product of our experience with regional catastrophes such as Hurricane Katrina. The problem is that consideration of strategic issues requires that we put aside personal feelings in favor of an objective assessment of risks that could affect the people we serve.

Consider the over politicized issue of climate change for example. Despite how we may feel about the causes of climate change and on which side of the political debate we come down on, the fact remains that sea rise is occurring and that storms are becoming both increasingly frequent and more violent. Forecasts for 2023 suggest that it may well be one of the hottest years on record continuing the pattern of record droughts across the southwestern United States and affecting agricultural production. As emergency managers we need to deal in facts, not in political rhetoric and we need to be focused on the potential impacts that are occurring.

Another issue of concern is growing political violence within the United States. In her recent book How Civil Wars Start: And How to Stop Them political scientist Barbara Walter traces some 20 years’ worth of research on the issue of civil wars and concludes that the United States may well be close to civil war. She notes that two key indicators of a potential civil war are a 21-point polity scale, with minus 10 being full autocracy and plus 10 being full democracy, and a five-point scale measuring factionalism. On the polity scale the United States went from a + 10 to a +5 after the January 2021 storming of Congress and has since returned to a + 8. Walter notes that civil wars tend to occur when countries become factionalized not based on politics but on other issues such as race and religion and to be initiated by once-dominant groups who are experiencing an erosion of privileges they believe are theirs by right. Her opinion is that the United States is well within the danger zone for potential civil war.

How do we deal with strategic issues of this sort? Our traditional approach has been operational: creating contingency plans based on the military model that we have been using for generations. I suggest instead that we think more in terms of adaptable strategy that considers the risk associated with these issues and determine how we can repurpose what we’re already doing. Climate change clearly demands a focus on mitigation and long-range community planning, something that emergency managers aren’t particularly adept at. Civil war would most likely be targeted political violence, something for which we’ve already been preparing for with the war on terrorism. Our emphasis should not be on producing new plans but rather considering how we can adapt existing plans to these emerging threats.

Strategic thinking requires that we acknowledge potential threats, identify the risks associated with them, and consider what we would need to mitigate, respond, and recover from those risks. Isn’t this what we have always done? This has always been the basis of all-hazards planning. What’s required is to expand your thinking beyond short-term operational response to long-range strategy.

Posted by Lucien Canton on 01/23/2023 | Permalink | Comments (0)

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