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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 DIANNE WILSON
MR. WILKERSON: We have four FEMA regions that make up CUSEC, one of which is Region 7. Dianne Wilson is going to talk a little bit about what they do at the regional level. Ms. Wilson is the emergency management specialist in response and recovery division there in Region 7. She's worked with FEMA since 1979. She's served as the regional exercise officer for over ten years and at the present time, as I said, she is currently manager of FEMA's response and recovery division where she heads up the area search and rescue program. She's a regional program coordinator for the civil and military group base for planning with the Department of Defense and serves as the FEMA liaison concerning terrorism planning of other federal departments and agencies. And, of course, terrorism is something we haven't touched on at this conference, but there is some thinking that terrorists could take advantage of an earthquake situation so it's something to think about. And Dianne has books addressing that. And she's also the lead planner within the division concerning coordination of federal resources, response activities to major disaster events and serves as FEMA's liaison to the states. So, with that, here is Dianne.
MS. WILSON: Jim didn't mention that not only am I the senior coordinator in the region for dealing with our federal agencies in the states on disaster planning, but I also serve on a national team that is responsible for coordinating the emergency services branch that coordinates wild land fires, emergency medical, FEMA's urban search and rescue task forces and with EPA on hazardous material response.
Jan Peterson talked about dates that you will always remember when she was talking about stress debriefings. I served with the urban search and rescue task force that responded to the Oklahoma City bombing. April 19th will always be significant to me.
I would like to talk to you about how FEMA managed to pull itself up from its bootstraps from Hurricane Hugo to Director Witt's initiatives to today. I will also discuss the (1) federal government's alerting and notification system, (2) the teams that respond to disasters, (3) the logistics capability that we have developed to respond to catastrophic events, (4) and the coordination that's essential between the federal government and the states.
Alert and notification is probably the first line of our defense. There were several monitoring systems throughout the United States and FEMA is tied into all of them. When I say FEMA, that's our national warning center.The national earthquake intervention center in Golden, Colorado is one of them, along with several other warning centers that address the multitasking that FEMA and the states are responsible for.
Our operation centers run 24 hours a day. They're strategically placed across the United States and they're broken down into territories and will correspond to some logistics centers. The operations center that supports Region 7 housed in Kansas City is located in Denton, Texas. We have alert notification system in the region on normal hours, workday hours. For off hours the center in Denton monitors all of the warning centers along with CNN and any other type of media. So if there is an event, then they would call our regional director. Depending on the event and what response was needed, certain actions would be triggered in the region.
Based on our experiences with Hurricane Hugo and Hurricane Andrew, FEMA has organized itself into not only teams but different response levels. A lot of the states have also mirrored these operational levels. The level-three operation event is an event that's happened but it only needs to have minimal activity. In other words monitoring activity to determine really what's out there and we do that primarily with the corresponding directive of the state emergency operations center. The level two is a minimal or mid level staffing. It's a situation dependent on what the emergency is. We could FEMA staff in there to do the information collection. If it was a hazardous material incident, we might call in a representative from the EPA to work in our command center. If it was a medical specialty dealing with the anthrax threat that is fairly common within Region 7, we might have the FBI and the Public Health Service in to do the coordination back with the state and the local jurisdiction.
A level one is primarily a major disaster that requires full staffing on FEMA's part. It may also require activation of all emergency support functions and those are led by primary agencies. That´s discussed in the federal response plan so they would all be activated and coming to our command center.
The regional operations center, or the ROC, is really the federal EOC. That's FEMA's EOC. There are ten FEMA regions throughout the country. So what I'm showing you is fairly standard across the nation. We have been improving on standardizing plans in every region. Because we are a small organization, it's very necessary for staff from one region to go and support another. So it makes our job a lot easier if the plans are similar, so once we show up we´re familiar with what the plans look like. We don´t have to fumble our way through and find out how they respond in a different region of the United States.
The regional operation center, once that's activated, is really the command coordination center for early response operations. Depending on the severity of the situation, we might deploy an emergency response team. But prior to that -- we talked about state liaisons. FEMA, every region has a person responsible as the liaison to the state. My particular state is Iowa. We have one person in our region that's responsible for the four states. So that person really goes out the door first for the event, and is kind of the eyes and ears for the FEMA region. If the situation warrants it, we would deploy not only an ERT-A leader, which is usually a FEMA senior official, but we would also activate some of our federal partners to be on that advance team.
Now, that advance team links us at the state EOC. So we have federal and state counterpart people talking to one another so we can get that down, the ground truth on what the situation is.
Our request for federal resources, will dictated by our needs. Any agency that's dealing in disaster is familiar with situation reporting. That's not any different in FEMA. We do it and we provide situation reports to our national office that is the emergency support team in our headquarters.
In the regions, we primarily have landlines and networks. We do have American satellite phones and we also have the FEMA National Radio System or FNARS. As I said, the emergency support team is really the national level team. It's the national EOC.
In the situation of New Madrid, we will have multiple states and multiple regions impacted, so they would provide the oversight. Particularly with deploying the national resources we follow the leads from the military, take a lot of time- phased deployment of resources, TPFDRS. I'm sure they're familiar with that term. FEMA has learned from that and really shops for those resources, national resources that can be deployed.
That team that operates out of the national interagency emergency operation center is a headquarters version of what we have at the region, not only FEMA but at the national level representatives from the other federal agencies.
When I talk about national level resources prime power is one of them. Prime power is the primary agency for response, that's primary restoration and technical advice on power restoration, that's provided by the Corps of Engineers, but the 249th Engineer Battalion is really the ones that do that. Another is urban search and rescue task force. We have 28 of these. The latest one is out of College Station, Texas, and Texas A & M sponsored that.
Disaster medical assistance teams, level one is fully deployable. The agency for this is the U.S. Public Health Service. They are similar to FEMA urban search and rescue task force except they provide medical assistance to the actual victims. They supplement the local and state medical care facilities.
The advanced team is really the group that does the coordination early on with the state. This is prior to a declaration. This interagency rapid needs assessment is a new term. It used to be what they called fast teams within FEMA and now they're trying to regionalize them.
How many are familiar with what they call a PDA team, preliminary damage assessment team? Okay, that team really was more concerned with assessing the damage for a dollar value. One of the keys to getting a presidential declaration is the dollar amount of the damages. And that's what the PDA team does. The rapid needs assessment teams are out the door and on the ground running as soon as a significant disaster happens. They are looking for life saving needs. You know, is there a need for search and rescue? Is there a need for debris removal immediately to open up a transportation line? So the rapid needs is a little bit different than PDA teams. PDA teams typically follow later on.
Part of the task for the emergency response team is to determine what those unmet state needs are. By the time the federal response team is at the state, it's assumed that the local has surpassed their capability and the state is doing what they can but now they need help from the federal government.
Now, the advance team that goes to the state really is a coordination team. The operation center is coordinated and the needs are coordinated back to the regional operations center. The request for those resources is sent up the chain to our national office.
ERT-A has two functions. One is to coordinate and find out what the state's needs are. The other is, depending on the magnitude of disaster, looking for a disaster field office location. We like to find one close to the disaster area. We like to have the disaster field office as a joint operation with not only federal response force but also state.
A priority within FEMA is working with the states to develop pre-designated mobilization centers. There is a big emphasis on with the coastal regions, particularly in the hurricane season. Some centers have been pre-identified. State liaisons are going out and working with our states to see if we can pre-designate mobilization centers. There is a footprint. Does it have an airport close by? Is it close to transportation, highways and structure support? Does it have billeting capability? Typically a mobilization center is where we would deploy all these federal resources and they would be sent out from that area into the disaster site. So even though you don't have a significant threat of hurricane, you have the earthquake threat. The states that don't have the hurricane or earthquake threats, we're still working with them just to do a mobilization center just to be ready for a significant disaster that's going to have a multitude of federal resources, and the 1993 flood is a good example. We're going to be working with them to do that. It can be a military selection and that means we have to work with the Department of Defense. We do that through the director of the military support. Or we could be working with GSA to see if we can't do some pre-standing contracts to identify those facilities.
I talked about the rapid needs assessment. This is another team that we're developing at the region and that basically is their mission. They do come with equipment. They're self-sustaining for 24 to 72 hours. They're deployed quick and back quick to gather that critical information and pass it up the chain. Most of the equipment is personal supplies, MREs, water, four-wheel vehicles, cold weather-hot weather gear, and personal clothing. We would also have a state liaison on it, your critical life saving representatives from other federal agencies. In other words, you would have a Public Health Service person there, a Corps of Engineers person would be there plus FEMA search and rescue person and EPA.
Once we get into a full-blown disaster, we deploy the emergency response team, which is the full team. Out in the field, it's led by the federal coordinating officer (FCO), that is appointed by the president. When a declaration request comes in from the state and comes into the region, we do our assessment and pass it up the chain. We make a recommendation from the region on the FCO. And of course, it's up to the White House whether they agree with it or not.
But once again, you can see that the emergency response team could operate from several different locations. We can have people at the disaster field office, disaster recovery center, or those are generally generic to your garden-variety disasters. Those are areas where individuals can go, if they have questions about an application for assistance.
Most centers are where we put our resources as they come in. The staging area would be a place for donations. There are a various facilities that we would staff.
Along with the teams at the region, we also have three national teams. And those teams really are for catastrophic disasters. We have deployed one, called ERT-N, commonly they're red, white and blue, so we're very patriotic.
But they started out with 5 positions staffed and they thought that was too many so they cut the team back to 49 rostered. That's down to the branch chief level. I happen to be on the red team. It seems like the red team is the only one that ever goes out. But they work directly with the region they're supporting. They're supporting, particularly in the hurricane season, because one region may have three or four states impacted and there is no way that one region can handle that many at once. So typically, the national teams go to the most impacted state.
We'll talk a little bit about logistics. FEMA has been very outgoing in acquiring resources to support national disaster response. Logistics are basically to meet disaster victims' needs quickly and to integrate federal logistics into the local area. We bring enough resources to respond for the first 72 hours and then hopefully based on the local situation after that first 72 hours the local economy, local businesses, can start to gear back up to the point where we can start acquiring resources from the local area.
The logistic sites we have across the country include some military installations. On the West coast we have Moffett Field. Fort Worth, Texas has one that happens to be very close to our Denton, Texas office. Fort Gillem, Georgia and the agency logistic center is in Berryville, Virginia. And then we have the disaster information system clearinghouse in Berryville, Virginia where we have all our computers: the communications equipment. That's just the focal point for storing that activity.
So when we have a disaster and we know we've going to have to open a disaster field office, we'll call one of these logistics centers and say, okay, we need 100-, 200-, 300-person disaster field office kit. They have a checklist on what´s in a field office kit. It's prepackaged and it can be deployed rapidly.
From a commodities standpoint, the TLCs is the territory logistics centers. There is enough stuff in one of those kits to supply given commodities for 30,000 people for three days. There are generators, refrigerated vans, and other inventory that is quite extensive.
We have 50 generator packs in our inventory. They range from 10 KW all the way up to 455. There is a maintenance contract. The TLCs are responsible for insuring they are ready to roll out the door. If they're activated and sent out, then part of their responsibility when that equipment comes back in is to get it operational and ready to go again.
When I talked about disaster information center, the DSSC, this is the type of information that they would have and the equipment they could supply. We can really be in the most austere environments and we can be self-sustained.
MERS and MATTS. MERS stands for mobile emergency response system. It's national access. MATTS is mobile air transport telecommunications system. MATTS typically takes a C-141 or C-130. It has been deployed to several of the hurricanes in the islands. They are our lifelines. They bring communications equipment in so we can talk anywhere in the world. Their support is really for the federal response teams. They're not going out and reestablishing telecommunications in the disaster area. They're there to provide the connectivity that federal responders need back to our resource supplies. Typically all the equipment is prepackaged and sent by air. They already know the load master requirements: it's palletized for quick mobilization. All the other equipment stored at the territory logistic centers or the MERS, is all transported by semi.
Part of the equipment they have is a mobile command center. We use this type of equipment for not only disasters but also for special events we have to respond to especially if it's a special event by the FBI. The papal visit, actually in 1998 in St. Louis was a special event. So we brought up our mobile command center out of Denton, Texas for that event. It can support 20 computer workstations with communications.
Information and planning is something that we all do. FEMA has a responsibility under the federal response plan to chair or lead federal emergency support function No. 5, which is information and planning. We're planning now for the next operational period. We decide what the highest priorities that are approved by the federal coordinating officer. We do analysis of disasters: what resources need to be time phased in first. This is done in conjunction with the states. Information and planning also has remote sensing and aerial reconnaissance capability. If we need to do rapid assessment, we can do it in several different ways. Aerial recon is usually done through satellite entry. We also have some standing agreements with the states and the civil air patrol. The Chicago civil air patrol has done some flyovers for us with their cameras particularly with New Madrid. They pipe that footage into the EOC so people sitting in the EOC can actually see what they're seeing as they're flying.
And GIS, that´s a big system and that's what everybody uses. One of the things that is essential for FEMA and for all federal agencies is getting essential elements of information, or EEI. That´s information that we need right away from the states. Information such as the size of the disaster and access points where we can send in search and rescue teams. This coordination is done before they're ever deployed. They have to know who is in command on the ground and what transportation has been arranged. All this coordination is done with the state and locals before our life saving teams are mobilized. There is a lot of hazard specific information that we need. Is there a hazardous materials spill? Do we have protection for our first responders and the federal forces coming in? There is a lot information and coordination we need from the states. The most critical is the initial damage assessment. We're talking New Madrid. Are we having housing units? Are we talking to American Red Cross as far as looking at short and long-term housing? The list goes on and on. That´s the type of information we have to get from the state. It´s all very critical to any type of federal response.
Since Hurricanes Hugo and Andrew, FEMA and a lot of federal agencies have done a lot on forming teams: building a rapid deployable force. Sometimes we're too rapid and the states aren´t ready for us. But once again, the federal response is not supposed to be deployed until the state requests it. So the sooner the state can get that information, the sooner it can make the determination on whether they're going EMAC, the Emergency Management Assistance Compact or federal response resources.
And that's basically all I have to tell you guys. Thank you.
MR. WILKERSON: Thank you, Dianne. FEMA really finds itself between a rock and a hard place as they found out with Andrew. As Dianne said, there is a problem. A local government has to declare a disaster. It has to go to the state. The state determines whether or not it's beyond their capabilities and they call FEMA to make their request to the president. I know FEMA had an OC in Miami and when some lady made that cry, "Where is FEMA?" Well, you know, they can't just come marching in. There is a protocol. They have tried to work with the states to get that process sped up. We can go back and make some of those declarations afterwards. But when you've got the congressional staff wanting to know why you're not helping their constituents, it puts you in a really bad situation.
If you've never seen FEMA deployed to a large disaster, it's really impressive. I got to see a wholesale exercise out in Salt Lake City a number of years ago. I saw the MERS units deploy out of Denver. It's amazing what they can do to an abandoned warehouse. Computers, phone lines, and completely air-conditioned facilities go up in a matter of hours. Short of having the tanks and weapons, I would say they're very similar to the military in its ability to come in and set up a center.
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