Hello
Welcome to the April edition of Emergency Management Solutions.
San Francisco's city seal is the image of a phoenix rising from flames. It's an appropriate symbol for a city that has suffered multiple major fires throughout its history and had to rebuild itself from the ashes. However, all previous fires are dwarfed by the fires following the earthquake of 1906. Those fires burned for three days and destroyed 80% of the city. Yet a mere nine years later the city was able to host a world's fair, the Panama Pacific International Exposition.
As a San Franciscan, the 1906 earthquake and fires will always hold a special place in my heart. As an emergency manager, it serves to remind me that many great cities have suffered major disasters and emerged stronger and better. It is a constant reminder that response alone is not enough; mitigation and recovery are equally important responsibilities.
In this month's featured articles, Tim Riecker discusses the need for mental health counseling, something we too often forget in our planning; Erik Bernstein suggests three simple ways to help prevent the occurrence of a reputational crisis; and I offer some thoughts on the need to rethink emergency operations centers.
Be well!
|
|
|
Canton on Emergency Management
By Lucien G. Canton, CEM
|
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.
|
|
© 2023 - Lucien G. Canton
Lucien Canton is a management consultant specializing in helping managers lead better in a crisis. He is the former Director of Emergency Services for San Francisco and the author of the best-selling Emergency Management: Concepts and Strategies for Effective Programs used as a textbook in many higher education courses.
|
|
The Contrarian Emergency Manager
By Timothy "Tim" Riecker
|
|
A Call for More Mental Health Training
The Missouri Department of Public Safety is deploying training courses around the state on Critical Incident Stress Management (CISM) for all first responders. These sessions, according to this report, will "focus on coping with stress and the psychological trauma that comes from responding to critical incidents". Missouri is offering two programs. The CISM training is three days, and includes individual and group crisis intervention. A two-day peer support training is also offered.
I applaud Missouri DPS for this initiative and challenge all states to offer similar programming for public safety professionals – but in higher volume and with a broader range. Overall, we are wildly ignoring the prevalence of mental health related trauma and injuries we see across public safety. I’m glad Missouri is offering a range of courses, in shorter format and longer courses. These can all be non-clinical, intended to help responders help themselves and support their colleagues. There may also be a need to further broaden this, depending on what needs to be accomplished and trained, perhaps courses in duration of one, two, and three days.
|
|
© 2023 - Timothy Riecker, CEDP
Used with Permission
Tim Riecker is a founding member, partner and principal consultant with Emergency Preparedness Solutions, LLC, a private consulting firm serving government, businesses, and not for profit organizations in various aspects of emergency and disaster preparedness.
|
|
Bernstein Crisis Management
by Erik Bernstein
|
|
The 3 Quickest Ways to Improve Crisis Prevention Success Rates
The least damaging crises are those you prevent altogether or for which, at a minimum, you have crisis prevention systems and processes in place to minimize damage that can’t be totally avoided. Very logical, right? Factually, in our experience, most organizations still remain dramatically underprepared for crises. However, there are a few simple things you can do, starting now, to change that and increase your odds of crisis prevention success.
Crisis prevention expert’s top recommendations to increase success:
- Institutionalize the concept of accountability – doing what you say you’re going to do when you say you’re going to do it or having a damn good reason why you’re not.
|
|
© 2023 - Erik Bernstein
Used with permission
Erik Bernstein is President of Bernstein Crisis Management, a specialized firm dedicated to providing holistic strategies for managing crisis situations.
|
|
American Experience: The Great San Francisco Earthquake
The terrible chain of events began at 5:12 am April 18, 1906 when an earthquake hit San Francisco with the force of approximately 12,000 times the power of the atom bomb that would be dropped on Hiroshima some 40 years later. Featuring film footage of the city before and after the quake and archival photographs, this documentary creates a fluid, dramatic account of a disaster-torn city that would enthusiastically reinvent itself after the three-day firestorm that leveled four and a half square miles.
|
|
|
FEMA Exercise Program Technical Assistance
FEMA provides state, local, tribal and territorial governments with no-cost technical assistance for exercises through the agency’s National Exercise Program. Support is also open to nonprofit, private sector, and federal entities with a State, local, tribal and territorial jurisdictions co-sponsor. Academic institutions which are state-funded can receive support without a co-sponsor.
Support will be tailored to the needs of the partner and can include assistance with exercise planning, design, scenario development, conduct, and evaluation in the form of subject-matter expertise, material production, and/or facilitation for exercises. Support is only provided for exercises that have not begun their planning processes. There is no associated cost share for selected jurisdictions for this exercise assistance.
- Discussion-based exercises support will only be provided for exercise with a conduct date of January 2, 2024, or later.
- Operations-based exercises support will only be provided for exercises with a conduct date of April 17, 2024, or later.
Pre-decisional scoping calls will be held for each support request submitted. During these calls, a National Exercise Division Exercise Program Manager will review the support request with the sponsor to better understand what support is requested.
Traditionally, the application process for this exercise support was twice a year, but to streamline the application process, FEMA will now accept applications once per year.
The 2023 Exercise Support application period is open through June 1. Applications are open to all state, local, tribal and territorial governments but new applicants, especially those from underserved jurisdictions, are urged to apply.
Free Webinar Series
The Natural Hazards Center, in partnership with the Federal Emergency Management Agency, is pleased to present the Making Mitigation Work Webinar Series. These free one-hour webinars feature innovative speakers and highlight progress in mitigation policy, practice, and research.
Save the dates for future Making Mitigation Work webinars:
May 16, 2023, 11:00 a.m. to Noon MST
June 13, 2023, 11:00 a.m. to Noon MST
|
|
Professional Development Opportunities |
May 7-11, 2023
Raleigh, North Carolina
The world’s largest and most comprehensive floodplain management conference.
National Emergency Training Center (NETC) Emmitsburg, Maryland
June 5-7, 2023
Connecting our Past with our Future: Celebrating Community Impact through 25 Years of the FEMA Higher Education Symposium
Broomfield, Colorado
July 9-12, 2023
More information to follow!
November 3-9, 2023
Long Beach, CA
The goal of the IAEM Annual Conference is to improve the knowledge, competency level and collaborative skills of attendee.
|
|
Catastrophe in the Making: The Engineering of Katrina and the Disasters of Tomorrow
by William R. Freudenburg, Shirley Laska, and Kai Erikson
When houses are flattened, towns submerged, and people stranded without electricity or even food, we attribute the suffering to “natural disasters” or “acts of God.” But what if they’re neither? What if we, as a society, are bringing these catastrophes on ourselves?
That’s the provocative theory of Catastrophe in the Making, the first book to recognize Hurricane Katrina not as a “perfect storm,” but a tragedy of our own making—and one that could become commonplace.
The authors, one a longtime New Orleans resident, argue that breached levees and sloppy emergency response are just the most obvious examples of government failure. The true problem is more deeply rooted and insidious and stretches far beyond the Gulf Coast.
Based on the false promise of widespread prosperity, communities across the U.S. have embraced all brands of “economic development” at all costs. In Louisiana, that meant development interests turning wetlands into shipping lanes. By replacing a natural buffer against storm surges with a 75-mile long, obsolete canal that cost hundreds of millions of dollars, they guided the hurricane into the heart of New Orleans and adjacent communities. The authors reveal why, despite their geographic differences, California and Missouri are building—quite literally—toward similar destruction.
Too often, the U.S. “growth machine” generates wealth for a few and misery for many. Drawing lessons from the most expensive “natural” disaster in American history, Catastrophe in the Making shows why thoughtless development comes at a price we can ill afford.
About the Author
William R. Freudenburg was professor of Environmental Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Robert Gramling is professor of Sociology and director of the Center for Socioeconomic Research at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette. Shirley Laska is a professor of Sociology at the University of New Orleans and director of the Center for Hazards, Assessment, Response and Technology (CHART). Kai Erikson is professor emeritus of Sociology and American Studies at Yale University.
|
|
|
|
Emergency Management: Concepts and Strategies for Effective Programs
Second Edition
by Lucien G. Canton
This book looks at the larger context within which emergency management response occurs, and stresses the development of a program to address a wide range of issues. Not limited to traditional emergency response to natural disasters, it addresses a conceptual model capable of integrating multiple disciplines and dealing with unexpected emergencies.
|
|
|
|
|
|
Looking for a speaker for your conference? I offer keynotes, seminars, workshops, and webinars, either in person or virtually. You can find more details and sample videos on my website. |
|
|
|
©Lucien G. Canton 2023. All rights reserved.
You may reprint and excerpt this newsletter provided that you include my copyright, the source,
the author, and "reprinted with permission."
ISSN: 2334-590X
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
