Testing a City-Wide Disaster Plan

Testing a City-Wide Disaster Plan

FEATURES

DISASTER MANAGEMENT

Just because your city hasn’t experienced a disaster equal to that suffered by Mexico City or Bhopal doesn’t mean that it can’t or won’t.

Responsible agencies in every city must be committed to working together to formulate a comprehensive disaster plan. They must constantly train in the execution, test the viability, and rethink and reorganize the various factors of the plan.

Working in cooperation with the California Specialized Training Institute (CSTI), a state training facility whose personnel are wellversed in disaster management, it took the City of Monterey nearly three years to develop a disaster plan that links city departments and outside agencies in an effort to effectively manage any emergency.

SETTING UP A DISASTER PLAN AND AN OPERATIONS CENTER

More often than not, disaster plans are designed by fire or police departments to meet state requirements calling for cities to identify and establish disaster plans before qualifying for state assistance. As a result, few disaster plans submitted are ever seen or read by all the managers of all the city’s agencies. And private-sector disaster plans very seldom go beyond identifying one company’s individual responsibilities. Few agencies ever describe (or determine) how they are going to interact with other agencies during a major emergency. It’s as if everyone will magically be ready to respond to their respective places within the disaster plan should there be an incident of major proportions.

Realizing this potential problem, the City of Monterey spent nearly $45,000 to train 45 members of its management staff. The 40-hour disaster preparedness course was conducted by CSTI at its San Luis Obispo campus. CSTI requires that all city managers attend the program to familiarize themselves with all aspects of a disaster plan.

Managers are trained in developing departmental action plans to identify their departments’ roles and capabilities. These plans also force city department heads to come together in a joint effort to form a disaster council and to see how their individual action plans become an intricate and critical part of the city’s overall disaster plan. Action plans differ considerably from everyday departmental responsibilities due to conditions imposed upon the city in time of disaster.

Few city departments other than fire and police are ever exposed to this type of training in planning and coordination. This is why most disaster planning is left to the fire or police departments: Their work forces are already assembled and ready to respond 24 hours a day. The City of Monterey chose the fire department as the lead agency in developing its city-wide disaster plan.

Building construction

Knowing the construction makeup of buildings is of major importance when developing a disaster plan for a city. Building plans should be checked for seismic safety and those buildings that will most likely collapse or fail should be identified.

For example, an emergency responder who was at the Mexico City disaster to aid in the rescue operations in collapsed buildings has observed that volcanic ash was used instead of sand in a majority of the masonry construction, and the ash did not provide the strength needed for bonding. Reinforcing steel, as we know it, was non-existent in Mexico City, for the most part. Strands of wire were woven together and used in place of steel rods.

One of the best disaster planning tools a city may have is the building code it adopts and enforces. A list should be made of high-risk buildings that may pose potential problems during a disaster. This would be one of the responsibilities of the damage assessment team, formed as part of your disaster plan. This team should consist of individuals having the expertise to evaluate construction and life safety hazards: building engineers, building inspectors, and fire inspectors.

If appropriate, incentives should be offered for demolition of substandard buildings and replacements made with modern construction techniques that provide for seismic safety.

Emergency operations center

A working emergency operations center (EOC) was a stipulation of CSTI prior to conducting a disaster drill, and the City of Monterey set aside $100,000 to design a temporary EOC in the public safety building. That building was chosen because it can be supplied with emergency power.

A two-level, 18′ X 40′ addition was built, with the lower level and a portion of the fire apparatus room designated as the operations room, the nerve center of the EOC. Here is where command decisions are made, allocating manpower and resources to meet the rapidly changing conditions expected of a disaster situation. The upper level of the EOC is used for storage of supplies.

(Photos by Steve Hart)

The operations room also houses the departments responsible for managing various emergency operations within the disaster plan: fire, police, public works, damage assessment, shelter management, volunteer coordination, message personnel, and the operations coordinator.

The policy section is located in another portion of the EOC, and consists of the city manager and several key personnel assigned to respond to conditions that could not be handled by operations personnel (such as utilities, hospitals, the American Red Cross, transportation agencies, and so on). Decisions made by the policy section can involve large life-or-death situations and could have long-lasting effects pertaining to the operations of the city.

Communication lines

Coordination of the radio communication system was somewhat of a problem because the city belongs to a central communications network (the county communications center) that provides service for the overall county. If a disaster the magnitude of Mexico City were to occur here, the central communications system would be overtaxed.

A system was worked out to have a phase-in procedure for an emergency communications center. In addition, a wind-down procedure was established to allow personnel within the county communications center time to adjust and regain communications control of the city.

Since the city and county are on a 911 emergency telephone system, special telephone lines were installed to link the permanent county communications center and the temporary emergency communications center together.

The emergency communications center incorporated three 16-channel scanning radios to communicate with the various agencies. A backup radio frequency from the parking division is used in the event telephone lines become inoperative.

Twenty-six separate telephone lines were installed at the EOC as the primary communications link among interacting agencies.

DRILLING CRITIQUE

On Friday, December 13, 1985, an earthquake registering 8.2 on the Richter scale hit the coastal, tourist-oriented city of Monterey. The city had one advantage: The earthquake had been planned for.

The agencies involved in the City of Monterey’s disaster planning process included:

1. Utilities
1. Electric company
2. Gas company
3. Water company
4. Sewage treatment

School districts (public and private)

1. Military
2. Hospitals
3. County medical authority
4. American Red Cross
5. Salvation Army
6. Police agencies
7. Fire agencies
8. State Office of Emergency Services
9. Monterey County Communications Center
10. County coroner’s office
11. Local ambulance company
12. Amateur Radio Emergency Service (ARES)
13. Transportation agencies.

All agencies, both public and private, that are involved in mitigating a major disaster must interact with one another through all phases of plan development if the overall disaster plan is to be effective. Although every agency was requested well in advance to give a small briefing about what it could and would do in the event of a disaster, some did not send representatives to the training sessions held prior to the drill. Therefore, the meshing of plans could not be satisfactorily accomplished.

It’s been my experience that disaster planning for most agencies is so demanding and so removed from their everyday routines that it is only talked about.

The key elements essential in dealing with disaster are organization, coordination, cooperation, documentation, and recording of events. Personnel have a tendency to want to react to situations as they are reported. But, once again, a disaster cannot be dealt with in the same manner as a “routine” situation. Remember, we are faced with an incident of major proportions, and we will have to rely on outside agencies, both public and private.

The importance of documentation and recording of events is fully realized when the disaster is over, reality sets in, and bills and payment-due statements arrive. Proper and concise documentation and recording are essential for verification of goods and services received. If the physical disaster does not ruin your city, the financial disaster that follows may. The County of Santa Cruz in central California is still paying for its lack of preparation during the Love Creek mud slides of the 1980s.

After critiquing our drill, we found parts of our disaster plan that needed to be adjusted and fine-tuned. Reports from the various sections turned up a number of items.

Policy section

1. Because so much of what went on in the drill required operational but not policy decisions, sections felt removed from the process of taking action and making decisions.
2. There was trouble getting information in and out of this section because the mechanism for doing so was not well established.
3. Policy personnel filtered back into the operations area and created confusion.
4. Policymakers need to chart the major response activities so they can outline city priorities.
5. The terminology used by the various agencies (terms such as collapse, downtown, isolated, and so on) was hard to understand for two reasons: It’s a form of shorthand communications, and each agency uses its own language.
6. The policymakers needed a better understanding of various departments and their limitations as to meeting objectives.

Emergency operations section

1. The overall operations coordinator needs to be of fire or police discipline and trained in life-anddeath emergency conditions.
2. Operations should be restricted to the nerve center/decisionmaking section.
3. Operations did not take advantage of the ham radio operators of ARES. Despite what the name of their group implies, these individuals are not amateurs. They are knowledgeable and own state-of-the-art communications equipment.

Fire operations

1. The fire department cannot rely on mutual aid, because all local areas are affected by limited resources.
2. Disaster operations are different from day-to-day operations. Units cannot be committed to a large firefighting task. They must be able to hit and run to remain flexible and fluid for more crucial assignments.
3. Units in the field will have to be staged and not be allowed to act on their own. Units must be dispatched and routed through operations.
4. There aren’t enough personnel to handle a major disaster. Nevertheless, operations cannot rely on off-duty personnel to respond. Instead, operations must be organized to make best use of the people who are on duty.
5. When dealing with limited personnel, it may be advisable to use fire personnel in an organizational mode—for example, put a firefighter in charge of volunteer work forces.

Damage assessment

1. There was insufficient room to record incidents on status boards.
2. Like the policy section and others, the damage assessment section had trouble with conflicting terms. More information is needed to fully describe the conditions of structures.

Police department

1. The department had trouble keeping track of off-duty personnel reporting.
2. It lost track of which unit reported what.
3. The emergency communications center’s message form was too cumbersome and needed refinement.

Emergency communications

center

1. Phase-in procedures with the county communications center need fine-tuning.
2. The message form used by dispatchers needs to be simplified.
3. Communications equipment could be relocated to the operations room to reduce the lag time in responding to messages received.

U.S. Army

1. No request for military liaison officer was made.
2. No request was made for air or ground ambulances until two hours into the disaster.

Radio operators

1. The 17 ham radio units in the field went unused; a closer working relationship between ARES and emergency personnel needs to be established.
2. ARES operators working in the EOC demonstrated their value by establishing a communications link with the state capital 300 miles away 30 minutes into the exercise.
3. A communications link was established with the hospital 20 minutes into the disaster but not taken advantage of because other sections didn’t realize it existed.

County medical coordinator

1. The person in this role must identify ambulance needs and availability.
2. The coordinator must set up casualty collection points within the city.
3. The county should make agreements with other counties for ambulance responses.

Local ambulance company

1. Ambulances come under the direction of the county’s medical department, but it wasn’t clear which communications center has priority, the City of Monterey or the County Communications Center.
2. The number of ambulances is insufficient in the event of a disaster.

FINAL OVERVIEW

CSTI, in its evaluation of the overall drill, emphasized these points:

1. A major issue of how communication roles are split between the City of Monterey and the County of Monterey needs to be addressed and resolved.
2. The issue of whether the policy section should be part of the operations section needs to be resolved.
3. Participants must get used to using message forms for recovery and documentation. Refine the form if it’s desirable, but use of the form is a must.
4. The emergency operations room needs one person in charge, a manager for overall decisions. An individual of fire or police discipline is recommended.

It’s apparent that a city cannot provide leadership to its civilians if no plan of action has been set up and tested. We are working on bridging the chasm between the public and private sectors in identifying services, because we must be conscious of our limitations in the event such a disaster does strike.

One should always keep in mind that a disaster plan is a dynamic document, not simply a state requirement that can be filed away on the shelf. A city’s disaster plan has to be kept current and must be reviewed periodically. Department responsibilities as outlined in the implementation plans— as well as action plans, inventories of equipment, supplies, telephone lists, and outside resources—must be constantly updated.

Agencies have a tendency to backslide once a drill and plan have been completed, and the City of Monterey is no exception. However, the public has placed a certain trust in its city officials to safeguard and protect lives and property. It is a trust that should not be violated.