Canton on Emergency Management

Is an Economic Crisis an Emergency Management Issue?

During the last recession, a colleague of mine in a neighboring county proposed that his office become involved in planning for the economic impact of the recession on his community. He received considerable pushback not only from his elected officials but especially from a good part of our local emergency management community. The consensus was that since this did not address disaster response, it was not an emergency management issue.

I received similar pushback when my office became involved in a potential garbage strike in San Francisco. I had been asked to provide maps to the mayor’s staff who were planning for the strike and then invited to help select possible collection sites because of my local knowledge. It soon became evident that the planners were faced with a problem in assessing the sites because of the many agencies involved. I suggested they form multi-agency teams and pointed out that this was something our office had considerable experience in doing. Within a couple of hours, our office had created and staged several such teams using our emergency plan. The pushback again came from emergency managers who felt a garbage strike was not an emergency management issue.

This goes back to an issue we have yet to fully resolve in the emergency management community, “What is emergency management?” Emergency managers of my generation frequently came to the profession as a second career. We tend to be comfortable dealing with disaster response and hierarchical organizations and view our roles as primarily response oriented. This is one of the reasons the introduction of the comprehensive emergency management model with its emphasis on mitigation and recovery planning was a hard sell and still has implementation problems. But emergency management is not static and is continually evolving, so maybe it’s time to recognize that we have responsibilities beyond just responding to a major disaster.

If we are truly committed to all-hazards planning, we need to be cognizant of anything that has the potential to harm the communities we serve. I wrote recently of the need to for emergency managers, particularly those in senior positions, to understand political economics. This becomes even more critical as we enter another economic downturn.

While an economic recession may not in itself seem like an emergency management issue, it increases a community’s vulnerability and anything that increases vulnerability should concern emergency managers. People with limited resources are not able to prepare for disaster by stockpiling emergency supplies nor do they have disposable income to afford insurance or to perform repairs to damaged structures. We can also expect to see an increase in the homeless population as people lose jobs and homes, which will place increased demand on shelter and feeding operations following a disaster. There is also the possibility of increased crime and the potential for civil disturbance.

The impact of a recession goes beyond just increased vulnerability of the local population; it will also have a direct impact on our ability to respond. High unemployment and home foreclosures mean a reduced tax base which will result in budget cuts. When a community is struggling to fund essential services, the logical choice is cut contingency services, such as emergency management planning, training, and exercises.

While emergency managers may have a very limited role in dealing with an economic crisis, we need to at least be aware of the issues and proposed response being formulated by elected officials. More importantly, we need to consider the potential impact of such a crisis on our ability to prepare and respond to disaster and to plan for increased vulnerability and reduced resources. Most of all, we need to acknowledge that if we are truly dedicated to all-hazards planning, anything that has a negative impact on the communities we serve is indeed an “emergency management issue”.

Is It Time to Rethink Emergency Operations Centers?

One of the critical elements of disaster response is the emergency operations center (EOC). The concept of the EOC is simple: a focal point that brings together the organizations involved in response and coordinates their activities to avoid inefficiency and duplication of effort. Used effectively, the EOC gathers data from these organizations to create a common operating picture that allows organizations to operate with maximum efficiency.

Good luck with that. Anyone who has spent time in an EOC knows that it’s closer to the tongue-in-cheek definition formulated by emergency communications guru Art Botterell: where uncomfortable officials meet in unfamiliar surroundings to play unaccustomed roles, making unpopular decisions based on inadequate information, and in much too little time. While the EOC is important to an effective response, it is far from efficient and may actually give a false sense of readiness to deal with a major crisis.

One problem with the EOC concept is our assumption that there is such a thing as a “typical EOC”. EOCs evolve based on several variables. Budget and space availability are two main drivers of EOC design. Another is purpose; some EOCs are intended to assume command and control over an operation while others are points of coordination. Corporate culture and the needs of participant organizations also influence design. For example, some EOC teams are organized using the Incident Command System while others choose to organize along the lines of the Emergency Support Function concept. Despite the best efforts of the National Incident Management System and FEMA training courses, while there are similarities among EOCs, there is still a considerable difference among them. Search on the term “emergency operations center” on YouTube and compare the results to see what I mean.

If there is no typical EOC, how can we be sure our EOC will be effective? The two indicators we use are exercises and activation for actual events. These are important and I don’t mean to make light of them. However, since a major crisis is, by definition, unexpected and exceeds local resources, I submit that we need to think beyond these methods of assessment. They are not true indicators of your ability to handle a major crisis. Instead, we need to think on a larger scale and think about what happens in a large crisis. Research shows that organizations fail in a crisis not solely because of the crisis but by an inability to manage the influx of resources and assistance.

We invest a lot of resources in an EOC. What we don’t always acknowledge is that no matter how big it is, your EOC is too small. EOC design is usually based on expected occupancy by the organizations expected to be present in the EOC. We also assume that everyone that is participating in the response will be present in the EOC. During my time in San Francisco, our EOC operations room could handle about 80 people. During a major storm we activated only our shelter team and found that we needed seats for 50 just for that one working group. During the COVID response, San Francisco responders realized the EOC was inadequate and took over a convention center to have all the necessary city agencies under one roof. The same experience occurred in New York after September 11^th. Because the New York EOC was destroyed in the attack, the emergency management team re-established a new one on a pier that allowed them to accommodate the city agencies and supporting federal agencies.

This suggests that if we are truly to be ready for a major crisis, it may be time to rethink EOCs. There are three principal areas that I believe we should consider immediately:

1. We need to think about how we coordinate decentralized operations. We already understand the need for department operations centers but the strength of EOC operations has always been the ability to create ad hoc task forces to deal with specific issues. The challenge will be how to create them in a decentralized environment, where to locate them on short notice, and how to coordinate their operations.
2. Secondly, we need to rethink the resources available in the EOC in a view to making them deployable rather than fixed assets. We need to be able to relocate quickly to accommodate loss of the main EOC or the need to expand available space.
3. Finally, we need to be prepared to integrate outside agencies, both in terms of integration into the local incident management system and into communications technology.

EOCs are not buildings, although we frequently think of them as such. They are the organizations and people who respond to the crisis.  We need to stop over-investing in fixed assets and instead consider how the work of response really gets done and how we can best support it. I’m not suggesting we do away with fixed EOCs but that we instead leverage what we have to support a larger decentralized operation that makes full use of all our supporting resources.

Political Economics and Emergency Management

When I left active duty for graduate school, my sister asked me why I was making such a radical change. When I told her how fascinated I had become with the interactions among European countries over history, she said, “You need to take a course in political economics.” Now these were two words in which I had no interest, but since she was the smart one in the family, I took her advice. I was fortunate to have an incredible professor who became a friend and mentor and found a whole new interest. Over the years I have become more and more convinced that emergency managers could benefit from an understanding of political economics.

I’m not suggesting that this became a mandatory field of study for the average emergency manager. I’ve maintained for years that one of problems is that we view emergency management as monolithic and have never developed a competency framework to define our profession. Emergency management has several career paths that require specialized knowledge and has a range of competency levels roughly equating to tactical, operational, and strategic issues. Political economics, although beneficial at all levels, is most relevant to the strategic level.
So why should senior emergency managers understand political economics? The answer is that it affects everything we do. Political economics is the study of the interrelationships between individuals, government, and public policy and how economic theory drives public policy. It creates the environment in which we operate by affecting vulnerability and hampers our ability to successfully recovery from disasters.

A classic example of the impact of poor public policy on vulnerability is the history of “redlining” in the United States that restricted the neighborhoods in which Black Americans could live. The effect of this policy was to both limit the acquisition of wealth and to create low-income neighborhoods in the least desirable parts of communities. From an emergency management perspective, this greatly increases the vulnerability of these communities. I witnessed this in my own city of San Francisco when “urban renewal” destroyed the vibrant Black community in the Fillmore District and moved the residents to Hunter’s Point, an industrial area that include a power plant later closed for excessive pollution and a former shipyard that is a superfund cleanup site.

This increased vulnerability ripples into recovery as well. I have mentioned previously the research done by Dr. Junia Howell, Dr.John Mutter, and others that demonstrate how wealth inequality has a negative impact on disaster relief. Because properties are of low value and in undesirable areas, the amount available for repairs (based on value of the property) is often insufficient to fund adequate repairs. Additionally, the neighborhoods will most likely have a very low priority for rebuilding or be candidates for government buyouts at low prices. The ultimate impact is the destruction of the pre-disaster community and the scattering of the residents.

I want to stress that so far, we have been talking about largely unintended consequences based on past poor public policy. Unfortunately, the situation after a disaster is even bleaker. In her landmark book, The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism, Naomi Klein demonstrates how in times of crisis people are in such a state of shock that governments can implement economic and social policies that would never have been acceptable in normal times. Among the examples is the conversion of almost all the public schools in New Orleans to charter schools following Hurricane Katrina. The results of this “market-based reform” are mixed and depends on who is doing the analysis.
This brings us back to the need for senior emergency managers to understand political economics. Clearly, there are issues here on which we can have negligible impact. However, there are things we can do:

1. We can study the history of our communities and understand where that history has created specific inequalities and vulnerabilities.
2. We can consider inequalities and vulnerabilities as we develop our plans for response, mitigation, and recovery.
3. We need to be advocates for at-risk communities when public policy is being formulated. This has been a constant theme for me: we need to be trusted advisors to our elected officials with a seat at the policy table.
4. We need to support reform of our disaster relief programs and policies on a national level.

Political economics is not by any means everyone’s cup of tea. But we must understand the impact of economic theories and public policy on vulnerability and our ability to restore the communities we are charged to protect.

Does The Private Sector Really Need ICS?

Since its development in the California wildfires in the 1970’s, the Incident Command System (ICS) has emerged as the default mechanism for managing crises. Mandated for use in the public sector under the National Incident Management System (NIMS), ICS has seen growing application in the private sector. However, while ICS has been relatively successful in the public sector where organizations tend to be hierarchical, is it really the best choice for the private sector?

To be sure, ICS has an impressive track record as an incident management system. It has been applied in small local incidents up to Presidentially Declared Disasters. It has been adapted to unusual situations such as organizing recovery efforts following Hurricane Katrina. But even in the public sector, we find problems. In a 2014 paper, The United States’ Experience with the Incident Command System: What We Think We Know and What We Need to Know More About, researchers Jessica Jensen and William L. Waugh Jr. suggested that, despite what we may believe, ICS is not applied consistently among jurisdictions. While ICS has often been used as designed, it has just as often been ignored, partially used, underused, misused, and used in organizations and jurisdictions in ways that are 
necessarily compatible with the way the system is used in other organizations and jurisdictions.
If the organizations that are best suited to employ ICS have trouble maintaining consistency, what can we expect when ICS is applied to the private sector?

There are certainly good reasons for a private organization to adopt ICS. As I mentioned, the system has been proven to be effective and adopting it would simplify integration with public sector agencies. The problem is that many organizations, in both the public and private sector, adopt ICS in name only and don’t understand what it is they are committing to.

When my corporate clients suggest organizing under ICS, my first questions is always about their corporate culture. ICS was designed to work as a hierarchical structure, something that can be foreign to many organizations. I once reviewed a plan for a major high-tech organization written by a colleague. It was a beautiful plan, well-reasoned and logical, based on ICS. The problem was that the client was a chaotic organization with no organizational structure, policies, or processes. ICS was not something they could even understand.

This highlights the key problem with ICS for many private sector organizations: the imposition of a system for managing crisis that varies considerably from their day-to-day operating systems. This becomes critical when one understands that people under stress default to what they are used to doing. That is, they rely on their trusted leaders and try to use the systems they are used to. To overcome this barrier requires considerable training. Jensen and Waugh note that ICS training has three important dimensions: frequency, depth, and specificity, and that success is often a factor of the time between the crisis and the last training session. In my experience, private sector organizations do not fully grasp the training burden required to implement ICS and are rarely willing to commit to it.
The second major problem with ICS in the private sector is common to the public as well: equating the Incident Command System with the ICS operating structure. Research suggests that denying flexibility in response by slavishly following standard operating procedures or using a structure that cannot be modified to meet an evolving situation is counterproductive and that it is more useful to adapt resources and tactics to the situation.

I am not, however, suggesting discarding ICS completely. Instead, I advocate using the system rather than the structure. By this, I mean incorporating ICS principles, such as unity of command, management by objectives, and incident action planning into your crisis management planning and focusing on the five management functions of Command, Operations, Planning, Logistics, and Finance/Administration. Using this as a foundation, your crisis management team can be structured in a way that is most consistent with your corporate culture. The closer the crisis management team resembles day-to-day operational management with managers and teams performing accustomed roles, the more effective it will be.

For those that would argue that this is not “pure” ICS, I would respond, “So what?” There are very few occasions where private sector organizations and public agencies operate under a unified command, which is the only time similar operational structures become relevant. NFPA 1600 Standard on Continuity, Emergency and Crisis Management requires only the establishment of a crisis management capability that assigns responsibilities and establishes processes; it does not specify that the organization use ICS. If the organization bases this capability on sound ICS principles and can respond effectively to a crisis, I believe this is a better approach than trying to force an ICS structure on people who have limited training and experience when the organization is trying to respond to a major crisis.

So, the answer to the question, “Does the private sector need ICS?” is a qualified “Yes, but…” with the “but” being the need to integrate ICS principles with corporate culture. Don’t create a new structure that will solely be used for crisis; build on existing processes that have already demonstrated success in problem-solving. Disasters are qualitatively different from day-to-day problems, but your chance of success in a crisis increases the more you take advantage of existing processes and leadership rather than relying on a system for which your team is not adequately trained or prepared.

It Is Time to Rethink Emergency Management

The emergency management system in the United States is without question one of the best in the world. I, like many of my colleagues, have always been proud of my association with it. It’s not perfect, by any means, and there have been some colossal failures, usually influenced by politics. However, it’s an excellent system.

But not, unfortunately, for everyone.

Our emergency management system has been at its best when dealing with response. If one considers how the system developed from its roots in civil defense and the early influence of managers drawn mainly from the military, fire, and police, this is understandable. However, the mission of emergency management is not emergency response; it is the restoration of communities. That means our focus must ultimately be on recovery. Historically, recovery planning, along with mitigation, has not been adequately addressed by emergency managers, as evidenced by my colleague Valerie Lucas-Mckuen’s 2005 analysis of the Emergency Management Accreditation Program baseline assessments and the absence of recovery plans in many jurisdictions.

Over the past few years, there’s been a growing understanding for many of us in emergency management that recovery is biased against those who most need our help in time of disaster. This point is made very strongly in a recent book by Dr. Samantha Montano, Disasterology: Dispatches from the Frontlines of the Climate Crisis, a book that should be required reading for emergency managers and elected officials. Despite the title, the book is about the emergency management system and its failure to meet the needs of disaster victims during recovery. It’s about the intersection between emergency management, social justice, and climate change and how each affects the other. Most importantly, it demonstrates why we are not prepared to deal with the consequences of climate change.

One of the key points that Dr. Montano makes is that while it is important that we work to limit the effects of climate change, climate change is not something that will happen in the future. We’re already seeing increased erosion that is affecting coastal communities. Fire seasons in the western United States are growing longer, floods, tornados, and hurricanes are becoming more frequent and more destructive. This increased frequency of events has stretched the capabilities our emergency management system to the breaking point. COVID-19 created a situation where emergency management offices in all states were activated simultaneously. If we are to respond effectively to more frequent and destructive events, we must drastically improve our emergency management system.

This brings us back to the need to understand why we are failing in recovery. Our system is designed to reward those who have resources rather than those in need. Several months ago, I highlighted the research by Dr. Junia Howell on racial and economic inequality in disaster recovery that demonstrates that much of recovery funding goes to affluent neighborhoods rather to those most in need. Part of this is the result of historical discriminatory practices, such the redlining housing policies that resulted in the segregation of vulnerable populations, mainly people of color, into less desirable areas that are more vulnerable to the impacts of disaster. Federal policies intended to prevent fraud can also create convoluted application processes that are barrier to applicants less well educated than those in affluent neighborhoods. Lacking resources, those most vulnerable to disasters are slow to rebuild, a situation exacerbated by the fact that recovery funding is predicated on property value rather than on actual cost to rebuild.

This marginalization goes beyond recovery. People who lack the resources for day-to-day necessities do not have the capacity for mitigation or preparedness measures. They may lack the ability to comply with evacuation orders. They may be unable to afford necessary medical care. This creates a reliance on government assistance and increases the stress on the emergency management system at the time of disaster.

There are two barriers that we need to overcome. The first is deciding what role government must play in disaster recovery. Historically, there has been resistance from Congress to providing recovery funding. Our system has evolved piecemeal overtime in response to focusing events, high visibility disasters that created a demand for political change, and through any coherent strategy to provide assistance to the most vulnerable. The pushback has always been the concern that substantial post-disaster government assistance will serve as a disincentive to pre-disaster preparedness and mitigation.

The second barrier is what Stanford professor Michele Landis-Dauber refers to as “moral blamelessness,” the concept that disaster victims must be viewed as innocent of creating the need for assistance before being receiving aid. Prejudice against the poor and people of color play into stereotypes that generate considerable public resistance against a “government giveaway.”

These two barriers to recovery assistance are inextricably linked and raise the question, “How do we provide assistance to the most vulnerable in a way that is fiscally responsible and will not encourage an over-reliance on government assistance?” There are no easy answers to this question as it must ultimately be determined by politicians, not emergency managers. This suggests that we need to rethink emergency management from a social justice perspective that focuses on those truly vulnerable to disasters. It also means that we must be vocal advocates and, to a certain extent, activists. Politicians seldom listen to emergency managers, but they will pay heed those with strong community support. Encouraging and supporting community action means, as Dr. Montano suggests, truly applying the Whole Community concept.

Integrating Response and Continuity Planning

Recently I wrote about the importance of integrating response and continuity operations. This makes sense conceptually but, like so much in emergency management, the devil is in the details. Response and continuity have different objectives that have the potential to conflict with each other and the planning and execution of each involve different actors and leadership. How then do you integrate such disparate operations?

The answer is not as complex as one would think but it is difficult in execution. Over the years I have developed some rules of thumb that I share with my clients.

• Recognize that successful resilience requires an enterprise-wide approach. Response and continuity are not discrete functions but are inter-related and co-dependent. Actions taken in one will have an impact on the other. If you have a successful response but no plans for continuity your organization will most likely one of those that fail after a disaster. Alternatively, if response fails, there’s no need for continuity; you won’t have the resources to continue as an effective organization. Response often relies on the restoration of key systems while decisions made during response may have long-term consequences for the organization.
• Be clear about your priorities. Priorities drive strategy which in turn drives operational planning. Priorities are not always obvious. I was once asked to assist a non-profit in developing their command center to communicate with their clients immediately after an earthquake and to coordinate with public agencies. They were on the verge of committing some serious funds on radios and satellite phones until I asked the simple question, “Why?” This eventually led to a discussion as to their mission. It turned out they had no resources or technical assistance to offer clients during the first 24 hours following an earthquake. Their mission was to provide emergency funding once their clients had identified the need for the funds in a formal request. The organization’s priorities shifted from establishing a command center to continuity operations that would position them to deal immediately with client requests for funding.
• Centralize coordination and decentralize planning. Unless your organization is small, putting everyone in the same room to develop plans can be counterproductive. As Scott Adams, the creator of Dilbert points out, the IQ of a meeting diminishes with each member added. Be comfortable with a variety of task forces and working groups trying to solve specific problems but have a mechanism for reviewing and integrating their end products. This mechanism should have sufficient authority to identify and resolve issues such as duplication of effort and competition for scarce resources.
• Identify your leadership structure. The question of who’s in charge always arises sooner or later, so nip it in the bud right up front. Decide how you will coordinate your planning process. Will you use a committee or a single executive? Who has final say on key decisions? Note that this is about strategy development and planning, not operational leadership. That can be developed later as part of your planning.
• Be inclusive. There is a tendency to top load committees with managers and senior supervisors. However, the expertise you need in a crisis is usually found in the employees that work with critical processes on a daily. Remember that one of the characteristics of successful high-risk organizations if deference to expertise; do not hesitate to include people who know how to deal with a crisis, regardless of their rank in the organization.
• Formalize your planning structure. Create an administrative plan that defines roles, responsibilities, and authorities and formalizes the process for developing workplans and deliverables. The role of an administrative plan is twofold: it clarifies what is expected of stakeholders and, by their agreeing to it, fosters commitment to the planning process.  

If this sounds like I’m recommending developing a full emergency management program, you’re right. Planning for organizational resilience is not a one-time process; it needs to be sustained and revised as situations change. Having a program that identifies priorities and has the capability to translate those priorities into effective operational plans is vital to preparing for a crisis.

Why Emergency Managers Should Care About the War in Ukraine

As I have mentioned many times before, emergency managers tend to have an inward focus on their communities. Geopolitical events, such as the war in Ukraine, are generally not considered something that has any relevance to local communities. This is understandable as our specific charge is the safeguarding of the communities we serve. However, one of the fundamental concepts in emergency management is that events have ripple effects, and those effects can be wide-ranging. This is certainly true of the current conflict in Ukraine and emergency managers would be wise to anticipate possible consequences.

On the surface, a conflict thousands of miles away would seem to have minimal impact on local communities. However, we must consider how the extended impact of the conflict may affect our communities. Here are just a few examples :

• Cyber warfare – Should the conflict escalate further, one of the quickest and cheapest ways for Putin to escalate the war would be through cyber warfare. Russia has an extensive cyber warfare capability and has not been shy about using it. There are rumors that Putin is recruiting hackers to augment this capability and that he may legalize software piracy as a potential threat to the global economy. Disruptive attacks on infrastructure, most of which is privately held in the United States, are also a possibility as are attacks affecting the economy, such as denial of service or ransomware attacks. This is also an election year in the United States and there is credible evidence that Russia has attempted to influence past elections and will continue to do so in 2022. We must also consider the potential impact on public opinion the dissemination of misinformation through social media and the use of state-sponsored teams targeting political blogs, something that is ongoing.
• Supply chain disruption – We’re already seeing some of this with increases in the price of oil, but it can go far beyond this, particularly if China sides with Russia. Russia and Ukraine export 25% of the world’s wheat while Russia exports 7% of the world’s steel. China controls 90 per cent of the world's supply of rare earths vital to industry and exports 15% of the world’s steel. The recent blockage of the Suez Canal, the backlog at the California ports, and the recent supply chain problems as COVID restrictions eased demonstrate the fragility of supply chains and how easily they can be disrupted. These disruptions would not only have a considerable economic impact but could affect the supply of critical components for technological systems.
• Civil unrest – There are several possibilities that can result in civil unrest. We can anticipate pro-Ukrainian demonstrations in major cities, with small but vocal and potentially violent counter protesters. If the economic situation worsens, this could also produce waves of anti-government protests. As an example, consider the widespread anti-war protests during the Gulf Wars or the more recent ones over police and civil rights issues.
• Corporate Attacks - Corporations still doing business in Russia or seen as making excessive profits from the crisis may well find themselves as potential targets. We’re already seeing the targeting of oil companies on social media because of the rise in gasoline prices. While we can expect that some of these will occur overseas, but demonstrations at corporate headquarters or key facilities, targeting of key leaders, and industrial sabotage are also possible domestically.
• Infrastructure disruption – While the possibility of sabotage to infrastructure by Russian agents or sympathizers is possible, another overlooked potential source are pro-Ukrainian groups targeting corporations still doing business in Russia or citizens blaming corporations for a deteriorating economy.
• Hate crimes – If we learned anything from September 11th, it is the willingness of some people to conflate innocent immigrants with an actual enemy. Anything that distinguishes a person from the “average” American, such as skin color, language, or dress, may be sufficient to spark an attack. We’re already seeing posts on social media targeting Russian immigrants and businesses.

As emergency managers, we have a responsibility to assess potential risks such as these and ensure that our response and continuity plans are prepared to deal with them. We may also find ourselves dealing with unusual responsibilities such as personnel evacuation and executive protection, particularly those of us who work in the private sector and global responsibilities.

Who’s In Charge Here? Business Continuity versus Emergency Management

I was speaking recently with a good friend who has taken on the job of building a business continuity program for a major information technology company. Like me, he takes a strategic view of risk management and is experienced in both emergency management and business continuity. His problem at the moment is a common one: the company has separated business continuity and emergency management into separate programs, and he is perceived by the emergency manager as the “new kid” trying to muscle in on his turf.

This separation is not uncommon in my experience. Its root cause is the perception that emergency management and business continuity are discrete functions rather than complimentary components of an enterprise-wide function. The result is frequently a battle over which program should be dominant.

The Emergency Management Accreditation Program’s Emergency Management Standard which provides guidance for public sector emergency managers addresses Continuity of Operations (COOP) and Continuity of Government (COG) as essential parts of an emergency management program, suggesting that business continuity is an emergency management. The Professional Practices for Business Continuity Management promulgated by the Disaster Recovery Institute, International (DRII) identifies incident response, crisis communications, and coordination with outside agencies as key practices, all of which are also parts of a good emergency management program.

So, who should take the lead? The question only has relevance if we continue to treat business continuity and emergency response as discrete functions. If instead we recognize that risk management is an enterprise-wide function, then it becomes clear that emergency management and business continuity must work together, not only in those areas where responsibilities overlap but to ensure that the programs mutually support each other. This is the approach taken in the more general standard NFPA 1600 Standard on Continuity, Emergency, and Crisis Management which incorporates both business continuity and emergency management elements.

To understand why this is so critical, we need to debunk the common assumption that disasters occur in phases. A moment’s thought will show why this is a false assumption. There are actions in any crisis that must occur simultaneously or that can have future consequences if not considered during initial response operations. For example, while mitigation is considered a separate phase from response and recovery, mitigation actions to reduce immediate hazards, such as debris clearance, can occur during initial response. However, uncoordinated debris clearance can prevent assessment of how mitigation measures performed and create issues with future insurance or reimbursement claims during recovery.  Failure to coordinate concurrent actions during response can be extremely costly.

Secondly, there is often an unspoken assumption in emergency plans that facilities and support functions will continue to operate. This is particularly true when we consider our increasing dependency on technology. Business continuity is intended to ensure that these facilities and support systems are available when needed or can be quickly replaced. This is the concept behind the prioritizing systems restoration through recovery time objectives (RTO): the identification of how quickly systems will need to be restored following an event.

Most importantly, parallel operations create competition for resources and personnel and can cause conflict during response operations. This is the reason we developed the concept of unified command in the Incident Command System, a single operational and command structure that reduces conflicts and competition for resources. How you opt to integrate emergency management and business continuity in your crisis management team is immaterial; the important thing is that they are integrated.

Solving this problem shouldn’t be a reach for emergency or business continuity managers; it’s what we do for a living. We create interagency working groups all the time. This is no different. Stop vying for control and worrying about turf. Approach the problem as a team.

Cascading Catastrophes

In an article some years ago, my colleague Bob Jaffin suggested that the difference between homeland security and emergency management was one of focus; while homeland security targeted threats external to the country, emergency managers concentrated on internal threats to the communities they served. This internal focus is completely understandable but can blind one to threats that originate externally but create cascading effects that have an impact on local communities.

The recent eruption of an underseas volcano in Tonga is an example of this problem. Although occurring some 5,000 miles away, the tsunami wave generated by the eruption caused an estimated $6.5 million in damages to the harbor in Santa Cruz, California, and the need for numerous rescues of surfers and sightseers.

 While the damage to the West Coast was slight, events with widespread impact are the literally the stuff of legend:

• There is a hypothesis that the Black Sea may have been formed by a catastrophic rise in sea levels around 5600 BCE, an event that may have served as the basis for the story of Noah’s ark and other legends of a great flood.
• The eruption of the Thera volcano circa 1600 BCE may have led to the fall of the Minoan civilization and the legend of Atlantis.
• A recent report on archeological excavations in Tell el-Hammam, Israel, suggest that an asteroid struck the area around 1650 BCE, possibly giving rise to the biblical story of the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah.

There are numerous examples of global catastrophes in the geological record. Volcanic eruptions occurring some 250 million years ago are thought to have caused an event known as the “Great Dying” that saw the extinction of 70% of land species and 90% of ocean dwelling species. Volcanic events that created “volcanic winters” resulting in global famine are recorded throughout history. An eruption in 535 CE produced what has been considered the most protracted period of global cooling in the northern hemisphere in the past 2000 years. An event in 1257 CE followed several other smaller eruptions is thought to have ushered in the “Little Ice Age” that lasted until the 19^th Century. The eruption of Krakatoa in 1883 was one of the most destructive events in recorded history, with the explosion heard up to 3,000 miles away. It produced a volcanic winter that reduced the global temperature by .72°F and produced record rainfall in Southern California.

Catastrophic events that produce cascading effects are not limited to pre-20^th century history, of course. The eruption of Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines 1991 produced a volcanic winter that reduced overall global temperature by .7°F, reduced the ozone layer, and may have contributed to the Midwestern floods of 1993. In 2010, the eruptions of Eyjafjallajökull in Iceland created the highest level of air travel disruption since the Second World War when it forced the closure of European airspace for several days.

Clearly many of the historical events I have cited are extreme and beyond the capability of local emergency management response. However, smaller events are both predictable and within our ability to prepare for and mitigate, as the Eyjafjallajökull and Tonga events demonstrate. The cities and towns on California’s West Coast, for example, recognize the tsunami threat and plan for evacuation, building on existing plans and public warning protocols.

Emergency managers know that disaster planning is driven by limited budgets and consequently there is a need to prioritize those events that present the highest risk. How then do we plan for cascading events produced by catastrophes that may occur on the other side of the world? I suggest a two-pronged approach. First, acknowledge the possibility that such an event could occur and recognize the significance of events that occur outside your jurisdiction. Factor this into your hazard identification and risk assessments. Second, build flexibility into your existing plans based on that risk. You don’t necessarily need specific contingency plans for these events, but you should be able to recognize and react to emerging threats by adapting existing plans. Consider the problem of ash cleanup after the Mount St. Helens eruption in 1980 and the application of existing debris removal plans by local jurisdictions.

Remember, all-hazard planning doesn’t mean have a plan for everything, it means consider risk and be prepared to respond to threats, even those that take us by surprise.

Why Your Emergency Plan Will Fail: Ignoring Inclusiveness

Some years ago, I was tasked with reviewing the evacuation plan for a large metropolitan area. The plan looked pretty good and seemed to address all the critical issues. Things began to fall apart quickly when I started asking questions about how the plan was developed. It turned out that the plan had been written by a single individual in two weeks on the orders of his department head. None of the agencies tasked to support the plan were aware of it or had ever been consulted. In addition, the plan effectively ended at the county line; none of the adjacent counties had been consulted as to how they would support a major evacuation. The plan was well written but totally worthless, the classic example of a “paper plan.”

This is an extreme example of failing to include stakeholders in the development of an emergency plan. Few planners would fail to include coordination with other agencies in their plans. However, these same planners frequently neglect to include non-response-oriented stake holders in their planning process.

The first time I recommended a declaration of emergency to our mayor in San Francisco, the process almost suffered a significant delay when the City Attorney’s staff insisted on reviewing the standard format included in the emergency plan. It seems they had never been consulted on the plan and new nothing about the declaration process or recovery programs, despite the city still being heavily involved in recovery from the Loma Prieta earthquake. Within a few weeks, we had designated attorneys assigned to our EOC team who received training in emergency management legal issues. Other examples of frequently neglected agencies that we worked with are the risk manager (risk analysis and insurance issues), the personnel department (personnel reassignment, volunteer management, union issues), and the department of the environment (holistic recovery issues).

As neglected as non-response agencies are, the situation is even worse when we consider community organizations. The big-name organizations, such as the Red Cross and Salvation Army, are generally included but lack of input from other community-based organizations can lead to significant problems in a disaster. One of our most embarrassing lessons learned from Hurricane Katrina was that the planners who developed emergency supply lists had completely neglected to include items for women such hygiene products and supplies for nursing mothers. In 2011 the City of Los was found liable for failing to include people with functional needs in their emergency planning. Other issues that have emerged are often related to cultural norms such as those surrounding the handling of remains. Even food can be an issue: I learned the hard way that there is a significant difference between long grain and short grain rice when a vendor shipped the wrong type to several Pacific islands during a typhoon relief operation.

Inclusiveness is of critical importance in emergency planning. But what does that really mean? I often get pushback from planners that “we can’t include everybody”. This is based on the erroneous assumption that all stakeholders are equal. Being included does not necessarily mean that everyone gets a vote and veto rights. What it does mean is that all stakeholders should be able to have input to the planning process and have that input at least considered as the plan develops. This can be accomplished in many cases by providing an opportunity to review working drafts and to comment on those drafts. The key to success in that their input must be acknowledged and responded to, even if the issues raised will not be addressed in subsequent drafts. Providing an explanation as to why input will not be included may not always defuse conflict, but it will at least allow discussion based on fact rather than generating a feeling the stakeholder is being ignored.

There are many reasons an emergency plan may fail but not including input from those who will have to implement the plan and those affected by it is a guarantee of failure.