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MISSOURI DIVISION |
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PROCEEDINGS OF THE SEPTEMBER 2000 POST EARTHQUAKE HIGHWAY RESPONSE AND RECOVERY SEMINAR HELD IN ST. LOUIS MISSOURI
FEMA OPERATIONS BY DAN BEMENT
MR. MUSSER: My name is David Musser of the Missouri Department of Transportation. I will be your moderator for this session.
Our next speaker is Dan Bement of FEMA. Dan is the chief of operations and planning in FEMA Region 5. He has 21 years of experience with FEMA, five years with defense council for preparation and civil preparedness agency. Three years at Western Michigan University, master's degree at Western Michigan University in political science and a master of science degree. He's a retired lieutenant colonel in United States Army Reserve.
MR. BEMENT: As operations chief I'm responsible for all the operations that go on within the region, day-to-day operations and planning for disaster response and recovery. I'm also responsible for coordinating ESF-5 (Information and Planning), ESF-9(Urban Search and Rescue).
The Federal Response Plan (FRP) is the basis or will be the basis for responding to a major earthquake when and if it occurs in the central United States. The FRP was updated in April 1999. You could find that updated FRP on the FEMA home page at www.fema.gov.
In 1998 FEMA, in conjunction with the CUSEC and other Federal agencies, proposed a New Madrid Earthquake Project. This established a structured approach for developing and improving a unified Federal and state plan for responding to an earthquake and improving Federal, state response, and recovery capability in key functional areas such as housing, transportation, building inspections, health and medical services.
A housing recovery strategy for a catastrophic earthquake in the Central U.S. was developed to address complex problems associated with providing short-term shelter and interim housing to potentially thousands of displaced disaster victims. One of the initiatives was to have the development of operations supplement the Federal response plan. Unfortunately, however, the entire project was put on hold due to various constraints. One of them was a change in leadership in CUSEC and competing priorities. In addition, there are a number of ongoing earthquake related projects in FEMA based on an all hazard approach to emergency management having direct applicability to earthquakes. One of these is the earthquake liaison team.
FEMA is working with the U.S. Geological Surveys, National Earthquake Information Center in Golden, Colorado, to establish an earthquake liaison team. We expect the earthquake liaison team could be operational sometime in 2001. FEMA first needs to develop an Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with the USGS. That is in the process of being developed. Once established, the earthquake liaison team will fall under the clearinghouse on earthquake data and emergency response, facilitating information flow to state and Federal emergency responders. The intent is to eventually post graphics, written updates and other information on the earthquake liaison web site that would be an authoritative data source. When real time data sensing becomes available, it will be put on the web site along with other relevant information.
FEMA is refining the HAZUS or Hazard United States program. It's a state of the art computer program for estimating earthquake losses. HAZUS can be used to support post disaster rapid impact estimates of damages, casualties, economic losses, and numbers, and locations of displaced victims. It uses mathematical formulas, information about building stock, local geology, location and size of potential earthquakes and economic data. HAZUS is powered by MAPINFO and ARCVIEW software and will display ground shaking patterns, building damage, and demographic information. The FEMA headquarters mapping analysis center will run HAZUS during an actual earthquake. HAZUS is available to local governments, corporations and the public free of charge. Along with free software, FEMA provides a wealth of database, training, technical assistance and a growing support network known as the HAZUS user group. More information on HAZUS can be found at the www.fema.gov/hazus or the HAZUS users group
One very relevant activity FEMA is involved in is the National Urban Search and Rescue System. FEMA trains and equips 28 National US Air task forces to assist state and local authorities to locate, extricate, and provide on site medical treatment to victims that are trapped in collapsed structures. The task forces are located across the United States. They are staffed primarily by local fire departments and emergency services personnel who are experienced and trained in handling structural collapses. Each task force is composed of 62 individuals organized in 31 positions, which means they can operate 24 hours a day. A task force must have a local sponsor and pass certain basic requirements to be funded by the FEMA. Funding covers specific equipment, training, and reimbursement of costs incurred when deployed under the Federal Response Plan. Upon activation by FEMA, the task forces become Federal assets. Three of the seven CUSEC states have task forces; Indiana, with Marion County Fire Department; Missouri, Boone County Fire Protection District; and Tennessee, with Memphis Shelby County Emergency Medical Authority. I must point out that FEMA can deploy any task force to a disaster area. It doesn't have to be a task force that comes out of that particular region.
Region 5 has, in addition to Indiana, an Ohio Task Force One, which is located in the Dayton, Ohio area and its pre-staging or staging location is Wright Patterson Air Force Base. This location gives them a very good deployment capability.
Examples of the ongoing training and exercises available to urban search and rescue task forces include a structural collapse technician instructor's training that was held last April. This qualified nearly 100 task force members for delivering the course locally. There is also a three-day, full-scale mobilization exercise scheduled for November 15 through 17 at the NASA Ames Research Center in Sunnyvale, California. This will involve the deployment of three task forces that have not been deployed before: Clark County, Nevada; Los Angeles, and New Mexico. So this exercise is going to be a good test on how actual deployment would shake out during a disaster.
There is also the United States Army Corps of Engineers structures-specialist training course conducted August 14 through 18 at McClellan Air Force Base near Sacramento. Work is underway to provide fire, search, and rescue technical specialist training in Region Six. The New Mexico and Texas task forces will each send two qualified people to support the region's rapid needs assessment capability.
FEMA has developed a baseline information collection plan for determining specific information requirements, collecting, and identify priorities following an earthquake. The plan will be continuously updated to facilitate assessment, planning and decision-making.
The National Imagery and Mapping Agency has developed the United States at Risk Earthquake Contingency Plan, which provided a guide for tasking hole sensing assets. The plan covers essential elements of information that are required, collection methodologies that are going to be used, which platforms, policies and procedures, the coordination of information throughout the disaster response community. Although the plan itself is classified, it's more than just that. It includes a damage classification system developed jointly by FEMA and NEMA, which will be incorporated into remote section data with release for GIS products. That real time information will be very, very helpful to any decision made for whatever level working data, Federal, state or local level.
FEMA has issued a policy based on an Executive Order dated 12/6/99, Seismic Safety for Federally Assisted or Regulated New Building Construction. The policy judges the seismic adequacy of codes (the International Conference of Building Officials, ICBO, of the 1997 Uniform Building Code, and the American Society of Civil Engineers in 1996) for new building construction using public assistance program grant funds. It's also likely that the international building code 2000 will eventually be judged as equivalent. The codes are required regardless of the cause of a disaster.
A program has started that we've talked about for two or three years. It's called the Full-time Federal Coordinating Officers Cadre or program: FCO program. This was announced about a year ago. A thousand people applied from around the country and there were 25 people selected to undergo very intense training to become a FEMA Federal coordinating officer. In the past, Federal coordinating officers were selected from full-time equivalent positions such as myself working day-to-day, in the regional headquarters. FCOs are gone for weeks, if not months at a time. So this is a dedicated program to provide Federal coordinating officers to FEMA. We hope this program will insure continuity of leadership from disaster to disaster and the consistency in the delivery of disaster assistance. M time running disasters or being involved in disasters at the senior level have been dramatically reduced because of this program. I am now able to work in my office to do the things that are necessary for our day-to-day programs.
Most FCOs are assigned to regional offices. We have two in our regional office. Several are based in our Washington headquarters. When not on assignment as an FCO, the people in the FCO program perform disaster relief work assignments or assist with disaster support activity. These people who we identified and trained as FCOs are under five-year contracts and they can be moved.
FEMA tries to learn from lessons from previous disasters. We learned a lot from Hurricane Andrew in 1992. In addition to the FCO program, we have developed the Emergency Response Team N (ERT-N): N meaning national. Each region has an emergency response team, which we call alpha or actual response teams that we deploy for events that are not considered major catastrophic type disasters. So we will not deploy ERT-N very often. The last time it was deployed was during Hurricane Floyd. Region Five was identified and tasked with the responsibility to become part of ERT-N going into Region Four initially. We took over South Carolina for Region Five. ERT-N responds to the most critical area of need; stays there as long as they're needed; and then they will return home.
FEMA has taken steps to identify three interagency national response teams red, white and blue. These pre-rostered teams provide the full range of response and recovery assistance in a catastrophic high-visibility disaster. Each team is composed of 50 positions with members from headquarters and the regions on call every third month. It was interesting last fall with Hurricane Floyd. I worked as the operations officer for a FEMA team in South Carolina. We thought initially that we were going to be the hardest hit state but it actually clobbered North Carolina.
I might say that the ERT-N is deployed at the discretion of the FEMA director, James Lee Witt, in close coordination with the affected regional director. The team rosters have been recently solidified. Each team is attending a one-week orientation preparedness session prior to its on-call month during hurricane season. So red will be on call one month, blue the next, and white rotating throughout the year.
I might say that Hurricane Floyd was a very interesting hurricane in the sense it went from the southern border of Florida along the entire east coast and finally out to the ocean around Maine. We had a lot of states declared. Our team was activated and our intent was to be in the state capital of South Carolina at least 24 hours before impact. As we were driving to get to South Carolina, it was a sight to behold to watch two lanes of traffic bumper to bumper as far as you could see down the Interstate moving in the other direction. One has to pause and question, why am I going this way? We needed to be pre-staged. We were some distance from the coast and we had to get in there prior to impact. We could coordinate with the state, the governor, the emergency director for the state, my counterpart to the state operations chief, to get our efforts underway. We then hunkered down and waited for the impact. Within a matter of nine o'clock or ten o'clock the next day, we were in a Blackhawk surveying damage. We were able to see very quickly what our tasking needs were to begin our response efforts.
This last year, Hurricane Floyd caused the largest evacuation in the history of the United States in peacetime. Some 3.5 million people were moved. That was a sight to behold. I really had a lot of empathy for the state department of transportation, the governor, and the director of the state police in trying to manage that evacuation. I might say the governor, department of transportation and state police were under the gun and microscope. As a result of the traffic concerns that were experienced during this evacuation, FEMA and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers commissioned the Southeast U.S. Hurricane Evacuation Traffic Study. It was completed in June and addresses various issues. One issue was the gathering of and dissemination of traffic information so traffic flow could be managed properly.
The study also covered traffic volume forecasting so we can anticipate the traffic impacts during an evacuation and plan for it. We also considered reasonable traffic control strategies such as reversing lanes and highway advisories.
They also established evacuation liaison teams to support regional hurricane response efforts to facilitate evacuation, pre- positioning, staging, reentry planning, and problem solving. The department of transportation has taken the lead on this.
We've come a long way in FEMA in terms of looking at the logistics and management of the logistics. FEMA is developing force packages to prioritize in advance the types of critical assets that need to be deployed into the disaster area in the first 72 hours, using air, land, and/or sea transport. Try to imagine last fall during Hurricane Floyd moving north trying to keep logistics flowing, into one state after another, as part of the primary response. South Carolina did not require a great deal, but North Carolina did. As much as we could was earmarked for early movement and delivery.
Once an incident occurs, the force package is tailored to fit the actual situation. Among the force packages completed is one for San Francisco Bay Area magnitude 7.2 earthquake, Hayward. U.S. DOT is the primary agency for ESF-1, Transportation or movement coordination. It takes the lead in addressing the various coordination issues in the circle during the first 72 hours following a disaster. Things such as movement tracking, establishment of transportation services, military air support, resource priorities, and conflict resolution.
FEMA is developing a field operation center profile and requirements as well as standards for memorandums of understandings (MOU) covering the language to reestablish use of field operation centers. Some states have been working on pre-identifying possible field operation centers. They've been doing this for many years under the revitalization program.
FEMA is involved in collaborative interagency efforts to provide cradle-to-grave tracking of all resources. In the disaster field office, equipment comes in; you sign for it; and the equipment goes out. When it's over with, you or the customer better have the equipment. Equipment is going to get paid for through a simple tracking system. Generators are needed in most disasters including earthquakes. FEMA established generator maintenance programs to insure that we do have generator packages available for deployment.
There has been a major partnering effort in the last two or three years between FEMA and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Following the 1998 hurricane season, the Corps of Engineers made major changes in the way it responds to disasters. It designated lead districts to coordinate major missions such as water, ice, emergency power, debris, temporary moving, and housing. Other areas are addressed through advanced contracting. We now have a pre-scripted mission assignment statement (a FEMA authorization to another Federal agency to respond to a disaster) that we can give the Corps.
FEMA and the Corps of Engineers have set up a formal mechanism to build a better working relationship that provides a framework for disaster response. Over the last two years, the two agencies have held a number of joint meetings and exercises, territorial workshops, and command work seminars. FEMA and the Corps of Engineers have also developed remedial action plans to address the most critical problems and issues. We also track actions taken to resolve them. The plan is reviewed quarterly to assure implementation and corrective action as needed.
As in any disaster, debris is a problem. We look at debris management every time we have a disaster to try to improve on that. FEMA is developing a one-day training course for state personnel called a debris workshop and a three-day course for FEMA personnel in debris operations. Both courses cover debris funding reimbursement eligibility, operations, contracting, contract monitoring, estimating, and debris reduction techniques. FEMA is revising its debris management course for state and local officials. It covers the elements of debris management plans for locals. FEMA has implemented a new staff structure to focus on the debris related issues during disaster recovery operations. When necessary, FEMA will use a deputy public assistance office for debris management. This office will have debris management specialists to provide technical assistance to state and local officials as issues arise during recovery efforts. The deputy public assistance office for debris will assist the state in developing an overall debris operations plan for the disaster and overseeing the debris specialists. The debris specialists will provide technical assistance to local officials in the form of guidance on funding eligibility, contracting, and monitoring.
It was interesting in Y2K rollover case. We viewed FCOs a little differently than the FCO cadre that's now being used. We knew that if there was going to be any problems, it would be nationwide. We concentrated on making people work with the FCO and having the FCO cadre play deputy in each of our six states. Of course, nothing of any significance happened so we did not really have any opportunity to see how that concept worked.
EMAC, or the Emergency Management Assistance Compact, provides a legal and operating framework to facilitate rapid, systemic sharing of mutual aid between states. It has been interesting to watch this group evolve. EMAC was initially established as the Southern Regional Emergency Management Assistance Compact (SCREMAC) following Hurricane Andrew in 1992. Since then, it has expanded beyond the south and today there are 32 member states and one territory that have signed its charter. All 7 CUSEC states except Illinois are members. EMAC has great potential as another source of response personnel, materials, and equipment. Assistance provided under EMAC may be even more timely and cost effective than the federal system.
EMAC was widely used in response to Hurricane Floyd in September of 1999. For example, 14 states gave North Carolina assistance totaling 385 people along with equipment and some materials. Virginia had five states provide 24 people and equipment. EMAC is working with the National Emergency Management Association. EMA provides senior leadership to support EMAC implementation. FEMA has made provision for an EMAC A-Team (advanced) to deploy to FEMA headquarters during multi-region/state catastrophic events. The A-Team brokers requests from states for mutual aid. The expanding EMAC A-team was deployed to the FEMA headquarters during the actual Y2K rollover.
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