Portland Fire Bureau Disaster Drill
FEATURES
DISASTER MANAGEMENT
The future of all fire bureaus is affected by both internal and external forces. Nowhere is this more true than in a disaster scenario.
Usually, the fire chief can cope with internal problems by developing standard operating procedures for greater-alarm fires or disaster emergencies. However, external forces are much more difficult to control.
Many questions concerning external forces are answered differently by outside agencies because they have a different orientation, mission, and perspective than the fire department. One of these questions is the definition of a disaster. The problem here is that if a fire happens to you, it is a disaster. If it happens to someone else during your shift, it may be called an interesting run. A hazmat incident may be a disaster from the state’s point of view because the law requires so many local, state, and federal agencies to become involved. The actual incident may be handled as a routine incident by the fire bureau’s hazmat team and local industry.
Traditionally, fire bureaus have been the first responder to nonpolice emergencies within their jurisdictions. The senior fire officer is recognized as the incident commander. Today, however, during an incident we are faced with coordinating the efforts of up to 30 separate agencies, from volunteer groups to federal organizations.
All of these organizations are important and can be a great help to the incident commander. However, he must plan how they will be used long before an emergency occurs. Questions such as What services will I need? Who can supply them? What help will I get? What needs do they have? should be answered now.
The question of who is in charge also should be decided well before an incident occurs. Some agencies at the county, state, or federal level may feel that they have a command function and that it is not their place to provide technical support to the fire bureau’s incident commander. These technicalities are often best overcome by getting to know each other on a first-name basis. People tend to work together better when they know each other’s capabilities.
By recognizing these stake holders and working with them, we can all make our community a safer place to live. But it is necessary to invest a tremendous amount of time and effort to reach a mutual understanding of each other’s needs and unique problems—just identifying the “players” can be time-consuming.
Two years ago, the Portland, OR, Fire Bureau held a strategic planning session. It was evident that there was a need to reorganize our command structure in order to better interface with the world around us. We made two decisions: First, we intended to update our strategic plan annually; second, we reorganized our command structure.
New creation
We created the planning and development division. One of its missions is emergency management. The city’s assistant emergency management officer is now a fire bureau employee and a member of the planning and development division. This has greatly improved our ability to communicate with the volunteer agencies and the emergency management community in general.
The Portland Fire Bureau is working with private industry and volunteer groups as partners in disaster mitigation. We’ve helped form two industrial associations.
The Willbridge Mutual Aid Association consists of all the petroleum tank farms and pipeline supply companies within Portland. We provide training for each other and have pledged to provide firefighting supplies to each other when necessary.
The ECHO (Emergency Communication Hazard Obligation) Association membership comprises the safety officers of our major chemical and industrial corporations, utilities, and railroads. It’s our local version of the Chemical Manufacturers Association’s CAER (Community Awareness and Emergency Response) program.
The ECHO Association is now a 94-member organization from six counties in two states and sends minutes to Costa Rica, Sweden, and West Germany, as well as to many corporate headquarters in the United States.
Portland Fire Chief Kenneth L. Owens directed that two multiagency disaster exercises be held each year. These exercises would include all of the interacting agencies that the scenario could possibly involve. Both of our 1986 exercises were based on the problems that would result from a major earthquake in our chemical/industrial district.
Emergency Response Checklist
The following questions are asked to help evaluate your drill performance. It is a tool to use in self-evaluation of performance. It may be used to assist in determining priorities for improvement. Space is provided at the end to add other areas of performance or concern.
Notification:
Were police, fire, ambulance requested; was DEQ
or EPA contacted; was confirmation call placed to
insure response was requested; were adjacent
companies, neighbors notified; were telephone
numbers up to date; did you have night and weekend numbers available; were alternate names available if primary contact not at home?
Warning procedures:
Were employees notified of incident and instructed
on emergency procedures; were alarms/sirens
sounded; was PIO prepared to release information to public; were neighbors notified?
Emergency response:
Did “fire brigade” follow procedures; did employees report to emergency locations; did someone direct fire, police, ambulance to incident; did automatic safety equipment (sirens, sprinklers, fire doors, etc.) work properly?
Evacuation:
Did employees know evacuation procedures; did fire escapes, emergency exits function properly; did employees gather in designated assembly areas; did fire and safety wardens follow procedures; were visitors assisted?
Personal Safety:
Were emergency instructions given to employees; was protective clothing and equipment available; was it used; were first aid/medical personnel familiar with procedures; were first aid equipment and supplies fresh and available in sufficient amount?
Plant shutdown:
Were adequate, trained personnel available to shut down plant; do emergency shutdown procedures exist; were procedures followed; did shutdown personnel have adequate protective equipment?
General:
Did someone coordinate overall emergency response; did everyone know who was in charge; were safety procedures followed; did everyone know where to go and what to do; were announcements clear, audible and easy to understand; were updates provided?
Emergency Plan:
Satisfactory _
Needs Improvement
_
Satisfactory _
Needs Improvement _
Satisfactory _
Needs Improvement
Satisfactory _
Needs Improvement
Satisfactory _
Needs Improvement
Satisfactory _
Needs Improvement
Satisfactory _
Needs Improvement
Satisfactory _
Needs Improvement
Recommendations:
Amount of time required to complete emergency procedures:
_ Satisfactory _
Needs Improvement
Name of company __
Name of person completing checklist __
Exercise number one
We sent invitations to all members of both the Willbridge and ECHO associations, as well as all city bureaus and pertinent state and federal agencies, to attend a planning meeting. The meeting was heavily attended and our problem became one of limiting the number of participants. Twenty-one separate organizations played a role in Portland’s first multi-agency disaster exercise.
The fire bureau assumed the role of project facilitator. All members would choose their own roles and the extent of their involvement. This decision has proven to be a good one.
The group selected the following five objectives:
- Update the city’s disaster plan.
- Establish first-name-basis contact within industry and government.
- Identify a resource pool (what and how assistance can be obtained and from whom).
- Hold a major exercise using both public and private resources.
- Anticipate and solve problems before the drill.
All of these objectives were met. The actual exercise was held in April 1986. It involved the following four sectors:
- An acid spill with victims at McKesson Chemical Company,
- A chlorine rail car rupture with victim involvement,
- A diesel trailer rupture, and
- A fuel spill into the Willamette River.
This exercise proved to be a media event. More than 125 city officials attended. These included Portland’s mayor and several city commissioners, county commissioners, state senators and representatives, senior aides from our federal senators and representatives, as well as bureau heads. Most important was the large number of corporate managers in attendance. Some of them were from local businesses and others were flown in from national or international offices.
This exercise would not have been possible without the strong support received from the government agencies and the petrochemical companies that participated. Shell Oil Company supplied the tank trailer. McKesson Chemical donated the rail spur and the acid training props. Pennwalt Corporation provided the chlorine tank car and the patching kit, as well as its chlorine emergency response team. The Red Cross supplied its canteen service, while Portland Community College loaned us old Station 16. Tri-Met donated the services of an articulated bus and driver, which would have been a necessity in the event of inclement weather. Life Flight provided transport for two victims, adding realism for the medical sector and a test for hospital communications. Radio station KEX loaned its helicopter to provide an aerial observation and command post.
Working in cooperation with emergency management and private industry has expanded our capabilities and made our city a safer place in which to live.
The training tape of this exercise is on file with the National Fire Academy’s Resource Center.
We learned several lessons during the critique. All of our problems involved coordinating the efforts of so many agencies and staging a media event. Our planning oversights were:
1. We needed more press packets for the media.
2. An inadequate public address system at both the orientation and viewing areas (Kittridge Overpass) made it difficult for viewers to understand events.
3. Some agencies wanted the drill to be a surprise to their employees, and that resulted in some notification failures. When the drill coordinators called these agencies and gave notification of the drill, the intended participants thought the calls were meant only to let them know a drill was going on. As a result, they didn’t follow through by calling the parties on their own notification lists.
4. Effective viewing was difficult because the exercise covered a large area.
5. Drill objectives for other agency participants should have been in writing and authorized by the appropriate authority within that entity. Some of the players were not involved in planning the drill and were not sure of their roles. This was a command failure within their agency.
6. There should have been an official announcement to all participants that the exercise had been completed. Some agencies were not informed of the drill’s termination and were “left hanging.” Sector commanders could be used to give this notification.
7. Fire alarm dispatch should have received checklists in order to make positive contact with all participants who depended on their own dispatching centers.
Exercise number two
These lessons learned were applied to our second exercise, the scenario of a worst-case earthquake, which was held on September 27, 1986. We expanded this exercise both in scope and concept. The group selected the following goals for our new exercise:
- Help private industry to develop and exercise emergency plans and to create a call tree.
- Provide a vehicle to develop networking of corporate safety officers and public agencies.
- Provide a vehicle to assist public agencies in updating their disaster plans.
Because there were so many private companies that wanted to participate, we developed a threephase exercise:
- On-site with us,
- Off-site under the direction of their own safety officers, and
- A “county fair”-type display area for those who wanted to show their emergency response equipment.
ECHO decided to update its emergency response plans, a project that paralleled the development of our September exercise. The emergency response checklist we developed was used for this project and for an evaluation device for the off-site participants.
Twenty-three organizations conducted their own off-site disaster exercises concurrent with our drill. Each organization designed its own exercise consistent with its own perceived needs and special industrial problems that would result from a massive earthquake. Each corporate safety officer evaluated his own exercise and then drove to our on-site location to review the results of his drill with our staff. We held the exercise on a Saturday, because when they are training their employees, corporations prefer to pay overtime rather than interrupt the flow of business during the week.
In the on-site disaster exercise all the players were coordinated from our command vehicle. Because of the new scenario, the agencies played many new roles.
The players list included 25 private companies, nine city bureaus, six state departments, three federal agencies, two volunteer organizations, and three regional districts. This came to a total of 48 separate organizations and more than 500 actual participants. In addition, on the Sunday before the exercise, our local newspaper published a lead article that described the damage an earthquake could do to our city.
Our critique showed that the exercise was almost flawless. All parties found that communications is still the main problem. We will try to improve communications this spring when we once again plot a way to “destroy the city” with a new exercise.
Summary
The entire cost of both exercises was paid for by the individual participants. They also supplied their own insurance coverage. The fire bureau costs for both exercises totaled $400. The 180 gallons of AFFF used by Foam Turret 12 was given to us by the U.S. Navy for training its crews, which were in port during overhaul. This would have cost us about $3,400.
We believe that by becoming involved in and working with emergency management and private industry, we have expanded our capability and made our city a safer place in which to live.
