Homeland Security Watch

Welcome to Disaster Hero.

That’s the title of an advertisement I saw in the June issue of the IAEM Bulletin. IAEM stands for the International Association of Emergency Managers.

Here’s a picture of the ad.

You can play the game online, at no cost. Just click on this link. http://www.disasterhero.com/ (It took a while to load the first time, but subsequent runs don’t seem to take as long.)

Here’s what the FAQ file says about the game:

Disaster Hero is a free online game designed to teach children (grades 1 through 8), parents, and teachers/caregivers how to prepare for disasters. The overall goals are to ensure that players know what to do before, during, and after a disaster. Parents and teachers are included so that the family and school are familiar with the main concepts of disaster preparedness. Emphasis is placed on three steps – make a plan, get a kit, and be informed….

Disaster Hero covers four main topic areas: (1) basic preparedness steps – including get a kit, make a plan, and be informed – to be accomplished to protect the participant and family before, during, and immediately following a disaster or large-scale emergency event, (2) common disasters (earthquakes, floods, hurricanes, and tornadoes), their associated danger signals, typical effects, common injuries, and appropriate responses, (3) basic quick-care tips and techniques for specific common injuries, and (4) basic information about geographic-specific disasters.

A 12 year old boy lives in my house. He is an avid gamer, and by avid I mean to the point where his mother occasionally searches Google for the difference between avid and addiction.

I asked him to play the Disaster Hero game and tell me what he thought about it. He avidly agreed.

I gave him the url and let him explore. What follows are summaries of the field notes I took while he was playing. Words in quotation marks are his, generally directed at the screen, as if no other humans were in the room with him.

———-
There’s an option to register as a user, but he chose to play as a guest. That cuts the start time significantly.

Then you have to load the flash based game. It took about 5 minutes to load. Our broadband access is around 5 mbs; not especially fast. I wondered what the game demographic was. What kinds of kids have access to the internet at home and in school?

“This is taking forever. They really missed a marketing opportunity here. When Droid games load, they run crawlers that advertise other games you could buy. The people who put this game together could be telling people disaster facts while the game is loading. This is taking forever.”

The game opened to reveal a stage that looked like a mix of CNN, Fox News and the Price is Right.

“Oh God; it’s a game show.”

You select your age appropriate difficulty level: bronze, silver or gold. Then you pick a charter who will be your avatar, sort of like Skyrim and maybe tens of dozens of other games.

Next comes an overly long introductory narrative about a retired emergency manager who spent a lot of his career going from planet to planet helping out.

“I don’t care about all this talking. Let me play.”

The head hero (Dante) left the operational world to train the next generation of disaster heroes.

“This is so annoying.”

The action takes place on a planet that has lots of disasters caused by earth, wind, fire, and so on. But the primary theme, as the advertisement promised, is “make a plan, get a kit, be informed.”

There is a skip option, so you only have to listen to all the talking once. The rules are basic and simple.

“Oh my god. Just shut up.”

Next you pick someone to compete against: Techtonic, Tempest, Whirlwind and Dr. Deluge. Guess what disasters they represent.

Living in the northwest, subject to the whims of the Cascadia subduction zone, he selected Tectonic.

After more words from Dante, the first game starts. The player navigates on a jet pack through a worm hole to pick up disaster supplies (I think that’s what it was), competing against Techtonic to see who can score the most points.

Occasionally there are disaster related multiple choice questions: Such as “How can you tell when an earthquake will happen?” Eventually the player gets enough points to move on to the next stage.

Then more talk.

“This is so slow. I want to skip the talk, but I’m afraid if I do I’ll miss something important.”

The next part of the games consists of three rounds, based on Make a Plan, Get a Kit (the type face makes it seem like “Get A Hit”), and Be Informed.

The Make A Plan game starts with 16 sentences to read about how to make a plan and what to include in it. The words can also be read by the game.

“I’m not going to read all that.”

Once past the reading screen, you go to a picture of two rooms and you have to find the 10 differences between the rooms. Click on the missing item (like a telephone) and another lesson pops up — e.g., make a list of your contacts, and so on.

“This is tedious.”

After that game was over, he moved to the Get A Kit screen and found another long list of sentences, this time about the kit. Because of a Flash problem, the list included such items as “forget your pets,” “food when the electricity does not work,” and “medicine is lost.” But one could work through easily enough what the real list was.

Once that was done, the next game appeared. It consisted of 9 squares, each one containing an object that appeared for a few seconds then disappeared. Click, for example, on three decks of cards and you score points; plus you get a hint about keeping a deck of cards in your kit so you have something to do during disaster downtime.

Be Informed was the third game. After going through another list (“I’m not going to read that.”), there was a map of the United States, shovels, shields and red crosses, plus a news crawl at the top of the screen that said something about floods and earthquakes and other things. The player had to do something with the shovels and shields, but — without reading the directions — it was not clear what one was supposed to do. So Tectonic won that round.

Once that game was over, the player goes back to the Headquarters screen to receive congratulations and the news that there was another round coming up.

“I’m done.” he said, returning to his room. “I’m going back to Minecraft.”

A few hours later, before he went to bed, I asked him for his summary review of Disaster Hero. I asked him what score he would give the game if he were doing a review for something like IGN (a site that reviews games).

“I’d give it about a 6.5 on a scale of 10. Essentially it’s a bunch of moderately interesting mini games needlessly framed around how to prepare for a disaster. There are lots of mini games, but they are not especially interesting. The introductions to the sections are tedious. The sense of humor in the game is not amusing.”

I asked him what he learned about disasters from the game.

“Nothing that I can think of right now. I didn’t want to take the time to read all that stuff. I wanted to get right to the game. If I wanted to learn something about disaster preparedness I’d just search it online. I didn’t need to play a game to find out how to be prepared.”

Here are the answers (and page citations) to the quiz I posted last week.  See the end of this post for instructions on grading yourself.

1. Why was the Report written?

• The answer is f – All of the above: Required by PPD 8 (page 1); To provide a national perspective on preparedness trends; To inform program priorities; To help allocate resources; To communicate concerns to stakeholders (page 59).

2. How many core capabilities are identified in the National Preparedness Goal?

• The answer is b – 31 (page 2).

And — for your skimming pleasure — here they are: 1) Planning, 2) Public Information and Warning, 3) Operational Coordination, 4) Forensics and Attribution, 5) Intelligence and Information Sharing, 6) Interdiction and Disruption, 7) Screening, Search, and Detection, 8) Access Control and Identity Verification, 9) Cybersecurity, 10) Physical Protective Measures, 11) Risk Management for Protection Programs and Activities, 12) Supply Chain Integrity and Security, 13) Community Resilience,  14) Long-term Vulnerability Reduction, 15) Risk and Disaster Resilience Assessment, 16) Threats and Hazard Identification, 17) Critical Transportation, 18) Environmental Response/Health and Safety, 19) Fatality Management Services, 20) Infrastructure Systems, 21) Mass Care Services, 22) Mass Search and Rescue Operations, 23) On-scene Security and Protection, 24) Operational Communications, 25) Public and Private Services and Resources, 26) Public Health and Medical Services, 27) Situational Assessment, 28) Economic Recovery, 29) Health and Social Services, 30) Housing, 31) Natural and Cultural Resources. 

3. Number of times the National Preparedness Goal is described specifically in the Report:

• Answer is d – Zero.

The National Preparedness Goal is referred to in the 2013 Preparedness Report, but unless I missed it, the Goal is not described specifically in the Report.

I’m not even sure the Goal is clearly defined in the September 2011 document that introduced the Goal to the nation (available here). The closest I can get to identifying the Goal is this statement on page 1 of the 2011 document:

We define success as: “A secure and resilient Nation with the capabilities required across the whole community to prevent, protect against, mitigate, respond to, and recover from the threats and hazards that pose the greatest risk.” 

I contrast that statement with the National Preparedness Goal described on page 1 of the 2005 Draft Goal:

The National Preparedness Goal is: To achieve and sustain risk-based target levels of capability to prevent, protect against, respond to, and recover from major events, and to minimize their impact on lives, property, and the economy, through systematic and prioritized efforts by Federal, State, local and tribal entities, their private and non-governmental partners, and the general public.

4. The majority of state and local respondents in a preparedness survey expect the federal government to be largely responsible for all the below, except for:

• The answer is f, Planning. (See the chart on page 10 of the 2013 Preparedness Report for details.)

The majority of state and local respondents expect the federal government to be “mostly” or “entirely” responsible for Economic recovery, Fatality management, Cybersecurity, Forensics, and Housing.

5. According to a 2012 survey of state Chief Information Security Officers, what percent were confident in their state’s ability to protect against external cyber threats?

• The answer is b, 24% (page 25)

6. According to the Preparedness Report, what is the percentage of Americans who have “physical, sensory, intellectual, or cognitive disabilities”? 

• Answer is a, 18%

Page 6 reports “Inclusive preparedness planning for the whole community requires integrating the needs of over 59 million Americans with physical, sensory, intellectual, or cognitive disabilities….”  There are approximately 316,000,000 people in the United States.

7. Which of the following is not among the 4 capabilities states rated as areas where they were the least prepared

• The answer (again) is c, Planning (page 6).

“… states and territories continue to rate recovery capabilities among their least-prepared areas. Three of the four lowest-rated capabilities— Economic Recovery, Housing, and Natural and Cultural Resources—are in the Recovery mission area, mirroring [State Preparedness Report] results from the previous year. Fewer than half of states and territories identified these three capabilities as a high priority.

8. Which of the following are “newly identified national areas for improvement”? (select all that apply)

• The answers are b and d (page 59): “Enhancing resilience of infrastructure systems,” and “Maturing the role of public private partnerships.”

9. According to the 2012 state assessment of current capability, which of the 31 capabilities received the highest average capability score?

• The answer is d, “On scene security and protection” (page 8)

10. Which of the 31 capabilities received the lowest average score in the state assessment?

• The answer is c, “Cybersecurity” (page 8)

As noted above, in questions 4 and 5, approximately three-fourths of the states are not confident in their ability to protect themselves against external cyber threats, and the majority of states expect the national government to have the primary responsibility for cybersecurity.  I wonder if the national government — whoever they are —  knows that.

11. As of 2012, agencies had to belong to the Emergency Management Assistance Compact if they wanted to receive a DHS preparedness grant

• The answer is True (page 10)

“In FY 2012, DHS preparedness grants required grantees to belong to the Emergency Management Assistance Compact and to ensure that grant-funded capabilities are deployable outside of their community to support regional and national efforts.”

12. Applicants for Hospital Preparedness Program grants and Public Health Emergency Preparedness grants have to submit four separate grant applications to four different agencies before they are eligible to receive one of the grants.

• The answer is False (page 11).

“In 2011 and 2012, the HHS ASPR and CDC led a collaborative initiative to define essential public health and healthcare preparedness capabilities and operationalize the public health and medical components of the core capabilities included in the Goal. Using these tailored capabilities, HPP and PHEP applicants were able to submit a single application for both cooperative agreements for the first time in May 2012.”

13. FEMA’s 2012 household preparedness survey found more people who believe that a natural disaster was likely to occur in their community. This awareness triggered a “substantial increase” in individual preparedness behaviors, such as building a disaster supply kit and making a household emergency plan.

• The answer is b, The first statement is true; the second one is false. (page 31)

“In FEMA’s FY 2012 national survey, nearly half of respondents reported familiarity with local hazards and about half expected to experience a natural hazard, continuing a previous upward trend. However, the survey also showed no substantial change in the percentage of respondents reporting that they had made a household emergency plan (43 percent) or built a preparedness kit (52 percent).”

14. In 2012, federal agencies had to include climate change adaption plans in their sustainability plans.

• The answer is True (page 13).

“In 2012, for the first time, Federal agencies included climate change adaptation plans in their sustainability plans for reducing greenhouse gas pollution, eliminating waste, and improving energy and water performance. These climate change plans outline initiatives to reduce the vulnerability of Federal programs, assets, and investments to the effects of climate change, including rising sea levels and extreme weather.”

15. Which of the following acronyms is not related to the public information and warning capability (select all that apply)

• The answer is d,  BARDA – Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (page 63).

Here’s what the others mean: IPAWS (Integrated Public Alert and Warning System), WEA (Wireless Emergency Alerts), EAS (Emergency Alert System), FCC (Federal Communications Commission)

16. Which of the following acronyms do not appear in the 2013 Preparedness Report (you may select more than one)

• The answer is d,  LGBTQQIA – Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender Queer Questioning Intersex Ally

Here’s what the others mean: PHEMCE (Public Health Emergency Medical Countermeasures Enterprise), RRAP (Regional Resiliency Assessment Program), SLTTGCC (State, Local, Tribal, and Territorial Government Coordinating Council), EPCRA  (Emergency Planning and Community Right-to-Know Act), SLOSH (Sea, Lake, and Overland Surges from Hurricanes)

17. Which country was not involved (according to the Preparedness Report) with helping the US improve “operational coordination in law enforcement, cargo screening, and passenger screening”.

• The answer is b, Mexico.

The other “operational coordination” countries are identified on pages 15 and 16 of the Report.  I wonder why Mexico was not mentioned.

18. Average time DHS said it took to conduct searches of biometric watch list data from US ports of entry and US consulates.

• The answer is d, Less than a minute (page 17).

“The Federal Government is improving the ability of authorized users to access this data quickly. For example, DHS reported that the average time to conduct searches of biometric watch-list data from U.S. ports of entry and U.S. consulates was less than one minute.”  Given last week’s data collection and mining news, this National Preparedness Report finding approaches irony.

19. According to the Preparedness Report, the approximate number of terabytes of data processed by regional computer forensics laboratories in 2011 was:

• The answer is c, 4000 terabytes (page 18)

“Computer Forensics Laboratories increased from 5,616 to 6,318; the number of terabytes processed nearly doubled from 2,334 to 4,263; and the number of digital forensics examinations rose from 6,016 to 7,629 (see Figure 7). Additionally, these resources have played key roles in recent counterterrorism investigations. For example, in 2011, the Kentucky Regional Computer Forensics Laboratory supported the investigation of two Iraqi nationals conspiring to purchase weapons and ship them to Al-Qaeda in Iraq.”  And yes, yottabyte is a real word, “a unit of information equal to 1000 zettabytes.”

20. DHS established a maturity model that identifies the four stages through which the national fusion center network will progress “as it moves toward full capability and operational integration as a unified system.” As of February 2013, the national network was at what stage of the maturity model:

• The answer is b, Stage 2 – Emerging (page 19). “As of February 2013, the national network is in the second stage of the maturity model, with ongoing efforts to build and achieve full capacity.”

I wonder who decided to create a “national fusion center network”.  The idea of a system like that — combined with last week’s data monitoring news — recalls Erik Dahl’s observation two years ago (in an article titled “Domestic Intelligence Today: More Security but Less Liberty?”): 

“…even though we as a nation decided not to establish a domestic intelligence organization, we have in recent years done just that: we have created a vast domestic intelligence establishment, one which few Americans understand and which does not receive the oversight and scrutiny it deserves. There is good news here: this domestic intelligence system appears to have been successful in increasing security within the US, as demonstrated by numerous foiled terrorist plots and the lack of another major successful attack on American soil since 9/11. But there is also bad news: these gains are coming at the cost of increasing domestic surveillance and at the risk of civil liberties.”

21. As of 2011, approximately what percentage of the 1500 requests for financial transaction data from the Department of the Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network [FinCEN] was “directly related to terrorism”?  

• The answer is b, 25% (page 21).

“FinCEN also provides a mechanism for law enforcement agencies to communicate with financial institutions during investigations through the Secure Information Sharing System. As of 2011, law enforcement agencies and other FinCEN customers issued over 1,500 total requests for information on financial transactions, with 378 of these requests directly related to terrorism.

22. The State, Local, Tribal and Territorial Government Coordinating Council studied critical infrastructure programs in 31 states.  Approximately what percentage of the programs were able to measure the effectiveness of their critical infrastructure protection activities?

• The answer is a, Zero (page 28).

“As part of its two-year reporting effort, the SLTTGCC conducted interviews with critical infrastructure protection officials in 31 states, and found different approaches in how states were implementing the NIPP’s six-step risk management process…. The SLTTGCC also found that none of the critical infrastructure protection programs it studied could measure the effectiveness of their activities. The group cited the uncertainty of future grant funding and the inherent complexities in assessing the effectiveness of risk mitigation efforts as potential reasons.”

23. Approximately how many Citizen Corps Councils are in the US?

• The answer is c, 1200 (page 32)

“Councils now serve 63 percent of the U.S. population, an increase from 58 percent in September 2011.”

24. The most common natural disaster in the US is:

• The answer is c, floods (page 32).

“Floods are the most common natural disaster in the United States and cause an average of $7.8 billion in damages and an average of 94 deaths each year.”

25. The method most frequently used by states and local jurisdictions to enforce mandatory evacuation orders is:

• The answer is d, Mandatory evacuation orders are rarely enforced (page 36).

“The authority to order mandatory evacuations lies with different levels of government across the Nation, as outlined in Figure 13 [in the Report]. Figure 14 illustrates that states levy a variety of penalties to enforce evacuation orders.15 However, few states enforce these penalties in practice.”

26. Which of the following is not a part of the DoD CBRN response enterprise?

• The answer is e, They are all a part of the DoD CBRN response enterprise (page 37).

“The DOD CBRN Response Enterprise includes the Defense CBRN Response Force (DCRF); two Command and Control CBRN Response Elements (C2CRE); 57 National Guard Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) Civil Support Teams; 17 National Guard CBRNE Enhanced Response Force Packages (CERFPs); and 10 newly established Homeland Response Forces (HRFs). Together, these units provide approximately 18,000 personnel capable of supporting and conducting operations in CBRN environments.”

27. According to the Preparedness Report, most counties in the United States have established capabilities to provide response-level interoperable communications within one hour of an incident.

• The answer, according to the Report, is True (page 43).

“The National Emergency Communications Plan (NECP) establishes the Nation’s strategic approach to improve interoperability. As a result of NECP implementation, by 2011, 90 percent of more than 2,800 counties and county-level equivalents demonstrated response-level emergency communications (i.e., managing resources and making timely decisions without technical or procedural issues impeding communications) within one hour for routine events involving multiple jurisdictions and agencies.”  I thought this was one of the more surprising findings.

28. The federal highway administration estimate of the percentage of the nation’s bridges that are either structurally deficient or functionally obsolete is:

• The answer is c, 25% (page 53).

“Based on current investment trends, the ASCE [American Society of Civil Engineers] estimated a $1.1 trillion funding gap by 2020 for the Nation’s water and wastewater treatment; surface transportation [including bridges]; airports; inland waterways and marine ports; and electricity infrastructures.”

29. According to the Preparedness Report, “Interstate mutual aid plays a limited role in augmenting the capabilities of states and territories.”

• The answer (according to the Report) is True (page 59).

“States and territories continue to report the highest capability levels in those areas frequently cited as high priority. Interstate mutual aid plays a limited role in augmenting the capabilities of states and territories.”  I’m not sure I understand what this finding means. I think it mean states are not incorporating Emergency Management Assistance Compact agreements into their capability plans.

30. “Each year, the Nation makes additional advances toward realizing the National Preparedness Goal and implementing the National Preparedness System through improved guidance and new partnerships involving all levels of government; private and nonprofit sectors; faith-based organizations; communities; and individuals.”

• This assertion appears in the Conclusions section of the report (page 59). The 2013 National Preparedness Report is offered in support of that assertion.

Here’s how to score yourself:

-       Fewer than 10 correct: Read the report

-       10 to 15 correct: Read the report again

-       16 to 20 correct: You know more about the preparedness report than most people

-       21 to 25 correct: You know a whole lot about the preparedness report

-       26 to 29 correct: You know a disturbing amount of information about the preparedness report

-       30 correct: I’m guessing you wrote the preparedness report

 

 

 

 

I read the 2013 National Preparedness Report on Monday.  If DHS is going to take the time to produce this second portrait of the Nation’s preparedness, the least one can do is read it.

The Report’s not bad. If nothing else, it reminds the reader about the megacomplexity of homeland security. There is information in the report about what myriad agencies are doing under myriad constraints to prepare for myriad threats.

The usual terrorism, cyber, “all hazards,” and resilience suspects appear frequently, but so too do active shooter incidents, drought, low crop yields, greenhouse gas pollution, improving energy use, saving water, rising sea levels, vulnerable populations, unity of military effort, biohazards, biosurveillance, big data, public health cutbacks, computer forensic demands, financial crimes, food and agriculture and animal safety, transportation security, housing, culture, cyber workforce, impact of extreme weather on deteriorating infrastructure, supply chains, citizen and private sector involvement, fatality management….

There really is a lot in this 60 page (plus or minus) document.

I wonder who will read the Report. Maybe some people in DHS. Maybe a few people on congressional staffs. Maybe homeland security students.

The Report’s analytical conclusions tend to follow this pattern: “Progress has been made. Challenges remain. The Report and the data it draws from will mature in future years as we get more experience assessing preparedness.”

I think those are fair claims.

I don’t think the report will satisfy people who look for unambiguous evidence about the impact, or lack of impact, from homeland security spending. I think the document is still mostly a synthesis of other reports, self-assessments, and anecdotes. The report’s authors call this quantitative and qualitative data.

But I don’t know a better, or more current, overview of what’s going on in homeland security with respect to preparing for just about everything one could anticipate. (I did not see mention of space weather, meteors or obesity; but I might have missed something.)

If you do care about homeland security, I think reading the report will be a good use of your time.

After you’ve read it, see if you can answer these questions.

The answers are in the Report but I will post them later in the week. (You can find acronym translations on pages 63 and 64 of the Report.)

1. Why was the Report written?

a. Required by PPD 8

b. To provide a national perspective on preparedness trends

c. To inform program priorities

d. To help allocate resources

e. To communicate concerns to stakeholders

f. All of the above

g. DHS budget will not be released until the annual preparedness report is completed

2. How many core capabilities are identified in the National Preparedness Goal

a. 15

b. 31

c. 51

d. 65

3. Number of times the National Preparedness Goal is described specifically in the Report

a. 5

b. 3

c. 1

d. 0

4. The majority of state and local respondents in a preparedness survey expect the federal government to be largely responsible for all the below, except for (select as many as you’d like):

a. Economic recovery,

b. Fatality management,

c. Cybersecurity,

d. Forensics,

e. Housing,

f. Planning

5. According to a 2012 survey of state Chief Information Security Officers, what percent were confident in their state’s ability to protect against external cyber threats?

a. 12%

b. 24%

c. 48%

d. 72%

6. According to the Preparedness Report, what is the percentage of Americans who have “physical, sensory, intellectual, or cognitive disabilities”?

a. 18%

b. 25%

c. 46%

d. Undetermined

7. Which of the following is not among the 4 capabilities states rated as areas where they were the least prepared

a. Economic recovery

b. Housing

c. Planning

d. Natural and cultural resources

8. Which of the following are “newly identified national areas for improvement”? (select all that apply)

a. Fatality management

b. Enhancing resilience of infrastructure systems

c. Forensics and attribution

d. Maturing the role of public private partnerships

e. Supply chain integrity and security

9. According to the 2012 state assessment of current capability, which of the 31 capabilities received the highest average capability score?

a. Public information and warning

b. Community resilience

c. Operational coordination

d. On scene security and protection

10. Which of the 31 capabilities received the lowest average score in the state assessment?

a. Interdiction and disruption

b. Mass care services

c. Cybersecurity

d. Critical transportation

11. As of 2012, agencies had to belong to the Emergency Management Assistance Compact if they wanted to receive a DHS preparedness grant

a. True

b. False

12. Applicants for Hospital Preparedness Program grants and Public Health Emergency Preparedness grants have to submit four separate grant applications to four different agencies before they are eligible to receive one of the grants.

a. True

b. False

13. FEMA’s 2012 household preparedness survey found an increase in the number of people who believe that a natural disaster was likely to occur in their community. That belief triggered a “substantial increase” in individual preparedness behaviors, such as building a disaster supply kit and making a household emergency plan.

a. Both statements are true.

b. The first statement is true; the second one is false.

c. The first statement is false; the second one is true.

d. Both statements are false.

14. In 2012, federal agencies had to include climate change adaption plans in their sustainability plans.

a. True

b. False

c. False; there is no such thing as a federal agency sustainment plan

15. Which of the following acronyms is not related to the public information and warning capability (select all that apply)

a. IPAWS,

b. WEA,

c. EAS,

d. BARDA,

e. FCC

16. Which of the following acronyms do not appear in the 2013 Preparedness Report (you may select more than one)

a. PHEMCE,

b. RRAP,

c. SLTTGCC,

d. LGBTQQIA,

e. EPCRA,

f. SLOSH

17. Which country was not involved (according to the Preparedness Report) with helping the US improve “operational coordination in law enforcement, cargo screening, and passenger screening”.

a. Australia

b. Mexico

c. South Korea

d. Canada

e. Switzerland

f. Republic of Congo

g. Indonesia

h. European Union (a country for the purposes of this question)

18. Average time DHS said it took to conduct searches of biometric watch list data from US ports of entry and US consulates

a. One week

b. One day

c. About three hours

d. Less than a minute

e. Under 10 seconds

19. According to the Preparedness Report, the approximate number of terabytes of data processed by regional computer forensics laboratories in 2011 was

a. 400 gigabytes, less than half a terabyte

b. 4 terabytes

c. 400 terabytes

d. 4000 terabytes

e. One yottabyte

20. DHS established a maturity model that identifies the four stages through which the national fusion center network will progress “as it moves toward full capability and operational integration as a unified system.” As of February 2013, the national network was at what stage of the maturity model:

a. Stage 1 – Fundamental

b. Stage 2 – Emerging

c. Stage 3 – Enhanced

d. Stage 4 – Mature

21. As of 2011, approximately what percentage of the 1500 requests for financial transaction data from the Department of the Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network was “directly related to terrorism”?

a. Zero

b. 25%

c. 50%

d. 90%

22. The State, Local, Tribal and Territorial Government Coordinating Council studied critical infrastructure programs in 31 states. Approximately what percentage of the programs were able to measure the effectiveness of their critical infrastructure protection activities?

a. Zero

b. 25%

c. 50%

d. 90%

23. Approximately how many Citizen Corps Councils are in the US?

a. 56

b. 112

c. 1200

d. 2170

24. The most common natural disaster in the US is

a. Tornados

b. Wild land Fires

c. Floods

d. Crime

e. Earthquakes

25. The method most frequently used by states and local jurisdictions to enforce mandatory evacuation orders is:

a. Arrest

b. Fines

c. Removal by force

d. Mandatory evacuation orders are rarely enforced

26. Which of the following is not a part of the DoD CBRN response enterprise?

a. Command and control CBRN response elements

b. National Guard WMD civil support teams

c. National Guard CBRNE enhanced response force packages

d. Homeland response forces

e. They are all a part of the DoD CBRN response enterprise

f. There is no such thing as a DoD CBRN response enterprise

27. According to the Preparedness Report, most counties in the United States have established capabilities to provide response-level interoperable communications within one hour of an incident.

a. True

b. False

28. The Federal Highway Administration estimate of the percentage of the nation’s bridges that are either structurally deficient or functionally obsolete is

a. 1%

b. 15%

c. 25%

d. More than 50%

29. According to the Preparedness Report, “Interstate mutual aid plays a limited role in augmenting the capabilities of states and territories.”

a. True

b. False

30. Each year, the Nation makes additional advances toward realizing the National Preparedness Goal and implementing the National Preparedness System through improved guidance and new partnerships involving all levels of government; private and nonprofit sectors; faith-based organizations; communities; and individuals.

a. True

b. False

 

 

 

 

 

On Friday evening another series of tornadoes touched down near Oklahoma City.  They descended on the metropolitan area during the rush hour in the midst of heavy rains that complicated tornado identification and caused significant flooding.

The worst threat emerged between about 6:30 and 7:00PM Central Time.  According to CNN:

The Oklahoma Highway Patrol says a mother and child were killed as tornadoes moved through Oklahoma City. Highway Patrol Trooper Betsy Randolph says troopers found the bodies near a vehicle along Interstate 40 west of the city.
 
Parts of Interstates 35 and 40, which cut through Oklahoma City and Moore, were “a parking lot,” the weather service said, warning that those caught in the heavy rush hour traffic “are in danger.”

“We’ve got a nightmare situation going on right now,” Betsy Randolph, a state Highway Patrol spokeswoman, told CNN.

“They are essentially sitting ducks on the interstate.”

Overturned big rigs and cars littered portions of the roadway, and thousands more were believed to be stuck in the traffic.

“My biggest concern right now is the traffic that is out on the highway right now,” Oklahoma Gov. Mary Fallin said.

She said she has called out the National Guard, the Oklahoma Highway Patrol and the state Office of Emergency Management to “try to get the traffic moving” and get people to shelter.

As of Saturday morning I am mostly reading and hearing echoes of this Friday evening report.  More details are needed.  But there is a strong suggestion that even among the storm-sophisticated citizens of central Oklahoma there was a readiness to risk a “regular commute” in the midst of a tornado watch/warning and observable heavy rain.

The decision to stay or go is at the core of an effective emergency response.  For the vast majority of threats the better decision is to stay.  But a wide range of habits — from fire drills, to hurricane evacuations, to the daily commute — push us to go… sometimes directly into harms way.

LATE BREAKING: Please access the comments and many thanks to Mr. Rob Dale for very helpful additional information.

The following post is by Andrew J. Phelps. I invited Mr. Phelps to “respond” to my post above which was a reaction to his comment last week. His response is considerably more than a response-to-a-response and deserves this separate posting. (Philip J. Palin)

–+–

I have no idea what the title of this post means. I don’t know if I could accurately define or describe “synergy”, “resilience”, or “paradigm”. I have ideas of what they may mean and I have used them all, probably incorrectly, in talks, presentations, and my writing. I have a problem, however, with the word resilience. So much so that I jumped at the opportunity to dig a little deeper into my derision for that word when asked by the folks at Homeland Security Watch.

The Rockefeller Foundation’s recently announced 100 Resilient Cities Centennial Challenge is aimed at creating 100 local CROs (Chief Resilience Officers) “to oversee the development of a resilience strategy for (their) city”. Reading about this well-intentioned initiative made me wonder if the concept of “resilience” is truly understood by the policy-makers asking communities to become more resilient. I do not believe it is. My two-part understanding of resilience in the context of disasters and catastrophes in a community is this:

• One, the ability of a community to quickly begin recovering from a disaster and continue the provision of services;
• and two, a community’s capacity to return to its pre-disaster “shape” (a rubber-band is resilient, in that as it is pulled and stretched, it always returns back to its original size and shape. Unless it breaks.  In which case, it is beyond repair and perhaps lacked sufficient “resiliency”).

My first understanding of resiliency speaks to two critical components of emergency planning: Recovery (both short and long-term) and Continuity of Operations/Government. My second understanding just sounds like a bad idea to me and one I would not be comfortable explaining it as an optional path following a disaster to my elected officials:

Governor: Our state has been devastated by XYZ disaster. We need to show we are resilient.

Emergency Manager: How would you like us to demonstrate that?

Governor: By returning everything to how it was before the disaster.

Emergency Manager: Okay. But doesn’t that mean we will remain vulnerable to this same disaster in the future? Apparently “normal” wasn’t doing the trick and we had this horrible disaster. Maybe “normal” isn’t where we want to be…

Governor: Good point. So… we need to show we are beyond resilient; that we are forward-thinking and vow to re-build stronger than before so we won’t have to go through this again. I shall convene a blue-ribbon panel of experts to devise a strategy that will allow-

Emergency Manager: Governor, if I may, we have already done that. It’s our Hazard Mitigation Plan, full of project ideas designed specifically for that purpose. Why don’t we look at some of those projects that will allow us to be “beyond resilient” and rebuild our community so there is less of an impact next time and we don’t need to do as much “bouncing back”?

I think the idea of a resilience officer duplicates the current efforts of emergency managers to build a collaborative space in which subject matter experts from government agencies across all levels of government, the private sector, non-profit organizations, and the community served by the emergency manager develop plans, strategies, training and exercise initiatives, and resource acquisitions to address what it sounds like the Rockefeller Foundation envisions being addressed by a Resilience Officer.

Here is what I believe:

Communities are inherently resilient.

Since Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans has been recovering, even in light of a national economic down turn and a second disaster, the Deepwater Horizon explosion and oil leak. I understand New Orleans has not fully recovered, however a study released in February, 2013 showed that between 2010 and 2011 it was the fastest growing city in the US and as of July, 2011 (5 years after the disaster) had 90% of its 2000 population. That same study showed the New Orleans metro area had a 0.6% increase in jobs while the rest of the country had a 3% decrease between 2007 and 2012. The referenced study does show some areas where New Orleans is not doing so well, especially in terms of violent crime and affordable housing, but it certainly is not allowing itself to wash away into the Mississippi delta. I imagine that New Orleans is not seeking to resiliently return to its pre-Katrina condition, but to recover to a state better than its pre-Katrina condition.

There is no community in the US that I can think of that has been impacted by a disaster in the last 100 years that has not recovered. After a disaster, our communities are not abandoned. They come back. Some quickly, some slowly, but they come back. West, Texas will come back. Moore, Oklahoma will come back. Who will be leading those comebacks? It won’t be a Chief Resilience Officer. It will be planners, SMEs from all corners of government, the private sector, non-profit organizations, and members of the community.

Resilience is the new All Hazards

Most every profession has a short-hand (even the NIMS-indoctrinated, plain-text homeland security crowd). As I began my pursuit of a career in Emergency Management everyone was talking about an All Hazards approach. Of course, it didn’t mean we were planning for every hazard under the sun; it is shorthand meaning that we were planning for all of the hazards that could impact our community. I recently mentioned the all-hazards planning approach while giving a talk to a community organization where I live and work in New Mexico. A puzzled audience member asked why we would be preparing for all hazards when things like tsunamis and hurricanes wouldn’t really impact us. It occurred to me that the words we use and concepts we understand are not necessarily understood by people outside of our field, though that does not prevent elected officials, policy makers, or philanthropists from using them, regardless of their own lack of understanding. The further we get from the meaning of our own shorthand, the more cloudy our mission becomes, both to us and our communities. Instead of throwing around a term like “resilience” or “all-hazards” and assuming people know what we are talking about, let us break those concepts down into its individual parts and really explain the role of hazard and risk identification and assessment, mitigation, recovery and operational continuity planning and its importance. People are smart and don’t need us to “Reader’s Digest” everything into small words. These are big and important ideas. Let’s not throw them away.

I do not know that a CRO is sustainable, but believe sustainability is critical to resiliency.

The Rockefeller Foundation wants to distribute $100 million among 100 cities with the goal of making communities more “resilient”. My math can be shaky, but since I have time to use a calculator I have figured out that this comes to $1 million per community. The idea is that this money will be used to fund a Chief Resilience Officer charged with overseeing resiliency initiatives like a resilience plan and improvements to infrastructure to increase their resilience. If the recent FEMA Community Resilience Innovation Challenge is any indication of what some of those projects may be, we will see the creation of mobile communication vehicles and the purchase of emergency generators, but likely with even less accountability than current homeland security grant programs that have already given hundreds of millions of dollars to projects just like those. And in the blink of an eye, the community has blown through their million dollars, has a new position they either need to pay for or get rid of, and another plan tucked onto its already-too-full shelf; a plan that is in all likelihood a mash-up of existing continuity of operations, hazard mitigation, recovery and emergency response plans. And Harold Hill has moved on to the next town.

I also question how a community could assess the return on investment of a CRO, but I suspect that it could be measured in much the same way the return on investment can be measured for emergency managers (grant funds brought in to a community, contact with citizens during preparedness presentations, more efficient response times, etc.), in which case, what would be done by a CRO that is not already being done by someone. We also need to be adaptable to a changing world and maintain our ability to improvise to dynamic situations like disasters, but I don’t think we need a Director of Adaptability or Improviser in Chief.

Blog posts are the new psychotherapy, a chance to work through demons. The difference is the opportunity for strangers to comment on how well, or how poorly, you’ve done. I am grateful to Philip Palin and the HLS Watch for providing me an opportunity to have worked through my deep-seated hatred for the word resilience. I look forward to a continued exchange of ideas. We emergency managers, mayors, governors, fire and police chiefs, urban planners, corporate executives, community organizers and concerned citizens need to incorporate the concepts that are commonly understood as contributing to a community’s resilience into our planning. This means looking at climate change as a hazard to be mitigated and above all else, ensuring our communities can continue to progress, not regress or remain static, following a devastating tornado, wildfire, or pandemic. Many communities already do this formally, I believe all do informally.

Resilience is not a bad word, and the Rockefeller’s Resilience Challenge is not a bad idea. It has perhaps given emergency management a hair cut, so now people will look at emergency management in another way and say “you look… different. Good, but different.” And emergency managers should say “thank you” and keep doing what we are doing, but perhaps with a little more money in our budgets and, even better from the perspective of my office chair, more understanding and support of what we are trying to accomplish.

Plaza Towers Elementary School, Moore, Oklahoma. Before and after

My mother’s family mostly live around Oklahoma City.  As far as I know all my cousins are okay.  But it is a huge clan, much more prolific than my father’s.  I have not met most of the youngest generation.

Even without a personal connection — including childhood memories of  my grandpa’s storm cellar — the outcome of what happened in Moore and nearby prompts many of us to quietly, respectfully ask some questions; and listen patiently and non-judgmentally for answers at the right time.

Threat 

Is the frequency of the threat increasing?

Is the innate energy of the threat increasing?

Can we do anything to reduce the threat?

Vulnerability

Since the 1999 tornado has new construction reasonably reflected the nature of the threat? (For example, safe-rooms, basements, other “protective action”)

Since the 1999 tornado has there been any retrofitting to reflect the nature of the threat? (For example, construction/designation of safe-rooms)

What is the nature of public training, exercising, messaging and other aspects of threat preparedness?

Consequences

Does this event — and similar events — have implications for residential density?

Does this event — and similar events — have implications for preventive actions? (For example, there was at least some talk late Sunday and early Monday — before the tornado struck — of canceling schools across a wide area of Central Oklahoma.  Those involved in snow-closings will recognize the treacherous nature of such decisions.)

How do we best mitigate the worst risks?

Or as a friend wrote yesterday how do we — allow ourselves, discipline ourselves, empower ourselves — to “think-differently” about such risks?

Coincident with the flames filling your television screen this morning, on Tuesday the National Interagency Fire Center released its new National Significant Wildland Fire Potential Outlook for May-August.  In the West — and some other places — the outlook ain’t good.

“I should prefer Mozart. Mostly I listen to 70s hits.”

“I should eat a hot breakfast, but usually have a powerbar instead.”

“I should work-out three or four times a week, maybe I walk around the block twice.”

Should has become moralistic.  It is typically used as a kind of anti-verb, ascribing — often anticipating — non-action.

I have heard a lot of “shoulds” in regard to the explosion of the West, Texas fertilizer storage facility. The April 17 blast killed 14 and injured more than 190 in the town of 2700.

“We should regulate better.”

“We should put buffer zones in place.”

“We should be more realistic about the threat.”

“We should do a better job sharing what we know about the risk.”

“We should focus more on pre-event prevention and mitigation.”

More plural pronouns than singulars it seems.

According to a November 2012 analysis undertaken by the Congressional Research Service, 6,985 chemical facilities self-report they pose a risk to populations greater than 1,000. There are 90 that self-report a worst-case risk affecting up to 1 million people.

The West facility was not included in the CRS analysis.  They did not self-report — or evidently self-conceive — a worst case scenario that would seriously harm anyone.

As regular readers know I have for a few years worked on catastrophe preparedness.

One of the most remarkable — and absolutely predictable — aspects of this gig is the readiness — preference really — by nearly everyone to define catastrophe as something non-catastrophic.  I saw it again last week and this.  It extends across the public-private divide and every level of government.  When a few of us argue otherwise we are being pedantic, unrealistic, and wasting people’s time.

We should give regular time and energy — maybe five percent of overall effort — to truly catastrophic risks: Global pandemic, significant earthquakes and cyclonic events hitting major urban areas, sustained collapse of the electrical grid whatever the cause. Each of these could have far-reaching secondary and tertiary effects.  In some regions I would include wildfire and flooding. If you have a chemical storage or processing facility nearby that is absolutely worth worst-case thinking now not later.

In many cases the most important issues relate to the mitigation of systemic vulnerabilities that are threat-agnostic.  ”Fixing” vulnerabilities can reduce consequences for a whole host of threats, including non-catastrophic threats.

USA Today editorialized, “The Boston Marathon bombings overshadowed the disaster in Texas, but what happened in West was deadlier, and preventing the next fertilizer accident should command serious attention.”

There’s that anti-verb again.

–+–

And how I wish I’d, wish I’d thought a little bit more
Now shoulda, woulda, coulda I means I’m out of time
Shoulda, woulda, coulda can’t change your mind
And I wonder, wonder what I’m going to do
Shoulda, woulda coulda are the last words of a fool

Can’t change your mind
Can’t change your mind

Beverly Knight

In my religious tradition today is Maundy Thursday.  This is when many Christian churches remember the celebration of Passover by Jesus and his disciples.

I “do” catastrophe preparedness, this has become my principal role in homeland security. In this context the Maundy Thursday narrative has some resonance.

The perennial story begins with a long celebratory dinner recalling liberation and forty years in the wilderness. After dinner, recognizing he is on the edge of an agonizing choice, Jesus asks his best friends to help him. But they keep falling asleep. Later that evening he is betrayed by a long-time friend. As a very dark night unfolds religious hypocrisy and political expediency conspire toward profound injustice. Trusted followers flee and deny any relationship with their one-time hero. Expectations are shattered. Hopes are dashed. The most cynical outcomes are — with wonderful exceptions — confirmed.

Friday is even worse.

The consequences are catastrophic. At least in the Euro-American context, this death and what happened next was until recently (still, in some quarters) widely understood as precipitating a fundamental shift in ultimate reality.

My own strategy for “managing” catastrophe involves individual, family, neighborhood, organizational, regional, and national resilience. I’m all in favor of prevention (up to a point, at some point many efforts at prevention become as bad or worse than the threat). But prevention will fail. There will be another seriously successful terrorist attack on the United States. I don’t know when or where, but it will come. Much worse than any terrorist attack will be when earthquake or pandemic or epic flooding or you name it de-link a major urban area’s supply chains for several weeks.

Mitigation, response, and recovery are, for me, all important components of resilience. But resilience starts, I increasingly perceive, with the stories we tell each other over meals together. Such as Passover when the story is told again and again of courage and cowardice, loyalty and betrayal, victory and defeat.

There’s a new book out called “The Secrets of Happy Families.” It’s another example of delving into social science research to reclaim common sense that was widely accepted until distracted by earlier versions of social science research. According to the author:

Psychologists have found that every family has a unifying narrative… and those narratives take one of three shapes.

First, the ascending family narrative: “Son, when we came to this country, we had nothing. Our family worked. We opened a store. Your grandfather went to high school. Your father went to college. And now you. …”

Second is the descending narrative: “Sweetheart, we used to have it all. Then we lost everything.”

“The most healthful narrative… is the third one. It’s called the oscillating family narrative: ‘Dear, let me tell you, we’ve had ups and downs in our family. We built a family business. Your grandfather was a pillar of the community. Your mother was on the board of the hospital. But we also had setbacks. You had an uncle who was once arrested. We had a house burn down. Your father lost a job. But no matter what happened, we always stuck together as a family.’ ”

Dr. Duke said that children who have the most self-confidence have what he and Dr. Fivush call a strong “intergenerational self.” They know they belong to something bigger than themselves.

For the last sixty years or so the Ascending narrative has dominated the American imagination.  In the last six or seven years the Descending narrative has exerted amazing power.  But as with most families, our national narrative is more complicated.

Reality oscillates. Catastrophes come. Seventy-two hours later or 40 days-and-nights (or years) later, even 1900 years later reality may take another turn. There are no guarantees of “success”. There are resilient and non-resilient choices.

On Wednesday the threat of snow shut down much of DC.  Very little snow penetrated the Beltway.   In the wake of the “unnecessary” shut-down has come a blizzard of second-guessing.

I perceive three broad critiques:

Bad Intelligence Analysis (in this context called weather forecasting):  From a late February blogpost by weather-geek Cliff Mass, “U.S. numerical weather prediction is lagging behind the European Center and others–a diagnosis pretty much universally accepted in my field. I listed some of the reasons: inferior computers, poor management, lack of effective leadership, inability to tap the large U.S. weather research community, and others.” (At the Cliff Mass Blog you will find thoughtful self-critical analysis of the weather profession specific to the Snowquester).

Poor Communication between Intelligence Community and Decision-makers: “We made our decisions based on, unfortunately, faulty weather predictions,” said Pedro Ribeiro, spokesman for D.C. Mayor Vincent C. Gray (D). “You can’t really blame the government officials for using the data the scientists gave them.”  More self-critique from the Weather Gang, “Communication of uncertainty is something the entire weather forecasting community should strive to improve… One of the reasons, as we get closer to the onset of the storm, that we drop some uncertainty information is that some readers want to know the bottom line, without qualification. They view scenarios and percentages as “cop-outs.” Ultimately, there has to be a sweet spot, where we can effectively communicate uncertainty concisely and effectively while also presenting a most likely forecast. We’re constantly working to find that and came up short in this last case.”

Over-dependence on Signal Intelligence (weather models) contrasted with Human Intelligence (common sense):  A reader comment posted on the Weather Gang’s blog, “Driving my car on Tuesday afternoon I listened to dire predictions of snow for Wednesday. Somehow I couldn’t equate the fifty six degree reading on my dashboard thermometer with the supposed 5-10 inches of snow set for the next day. Do weather forecasters ever engage in predictions that include going outside?  Sorry, my mistake I referred to them as weather forecasters and of course we know it’s weather guessers.”

Meanwhile about thirty miles west of the Beltway– and admittedly a thousand feet higher — the snow accumulated to over ten inches and power was out for tens of thousands.

Uncertainty can be denied, but it persists.  There is no “sweet spot”.  Humans cannot communicate clearly enough for everyone to accurately hear.  Many will not even listen.

Randomness is fundamental reality.  Perceiving patterns is possible, but precise prediction should not — cannot — be depended upon.  We have some important control along the margins, but we should not fool ourselves into overestimating  our capacity.  On a global scale a thirty mile margin is pretty impressive.

We will fail in both directions.  This time we seem over-cautious.  Some day soon we will seem neglectful.  There are consequences both ways.

The readiness to self-critique demonstrated in this instance is encouraging.  We should learn what we can.  But it is a profound error — the ultimate in tragic hubris — for any of us to expect perfection of ourselves or others.

“What’s that hissing noise?”

It was 4:00 Tuesday morning. I was asleep. I thought my wife was asleep.

“Huh?” I asked, intelligently.

“That noise,” she said, sitting up in bed.

I did hear something. I got out of bed and looked out the window.

I heard hissing sounds. And popping sounds. Lots of them.

And I saw a red glow where there shouldn’t have been one.

A frighteningly ugly and much too close red glow.

“The shop’s on fire,” I said, using the name I gave to my study — a building about 300 feet from our house.

“Is it bad,” my wife asked.

“Yes. Get the kids out of the house.”

“Should I call 911?”

“Yes.”

 

Here’s what the outside of the shop looked like when we moved into our house a few years ago.

Here’s what it looked like from my bedroom window, at 4:16 on Tuesday morning.

My family practiced fire drills a few times a year. My kids took the drills seriously. So everyone was out of the house quickly, maybe under a minute. My wife and son moved the cars away from the house in case the fire spread.

It did not.

Even though our evacuation wasn’t perfect, I would like to believe the drills helped. At least at the margins.

As the preparedness experts suggest, our cars each have 72 hour emergency kits for the four of us, so that was a good thing. We also have a two week supply of food, water, blankets, and other recommended preparedness items.

I should say we “had,” rather than “have.” I kept our main preparedness kit in the shop.

Seemed like a good idea at the time.

It also seemed like a good idea to use the shop as a study and library. The shop held something near 5,000 books that I’d started collecting when I was 18 (including the first two books I started with: Webster’s Collegiate and Roget’s Thesaurus). It had papers, notes, writings, and other relics of an academic life.

We used half the 1000 square-foot shop to store out-of-season clothes, tools, bikes, lawn mower, chainsaw, holiday decorations, camping equipment, pictures of the kids growing up, and the other miscellaneous items families keep, expecting to pass along to another generation.

 

I live in rural Oregon, so it seemed like 2 hours before the fire department showed up. Turns out it took them less than 5 minutes to get to my house.

Apparently internal clocks are not to be trusted during chaos.

The 7 or 8 responding fire fighters were calm, methodical, and professional. Even though it was a minor incident (to everyone but me, of course), they used incident command. The commander assigned one team to the north side of the building and the other team to the south side. Not knowing what was in the building, they brought masks, and canisters and lord knows what else with them. They were a credit to their profession. But it was their calmness that I best remember. It was infectious.

Most of the fire was out in an hour. One team remained for 90 minutes to extinguish returning flames.

The fire smoldered for several more days, even in the Oregon rain.

Books and family artifacts do not die quickly.

 

It’s been a week since the fire. A bizarre week.

My wife now defines herself officially as “an empty husk of a woman.” I helpfully remind her that at least she has that going for her.

My 12 year old is happy the internet has returned to our house. But he does hug me every now and then and says he’s sorry I lost everything. I hug him back and remind him he’s mistaken.

My 16 year old son surprised me during the hight of the chaos. He remained composed during the whole incident. He made sure his mother and brother had warm coats when they evacuated into the cold darkness. He wrote down — legibly — our names and contact information for the fire chief. He did a lot of small things that brought comfort and confidence to his mother and brother. I had not seen that part of him before — perhaps a glimpse of the man that he is becoming.

As for me, I look at what’s left of the shop and stagger between “Wow!” and “WTF??”

My professional network consists mostly of public safety and military men and women. I do not have words to describe how supportive they’ve been, offering to do anything I need, realistically knowing at this point the sentiment is enough.

These friends also are a stabilizing influence for me. I have been surprised by that. Yes, it was personally tragic, but it could have been a hell of a lot worse.

And for many of the people my public safety friends have known, it was worse.

Their emailed condolences indirectly remind me what they’ve experienced: New York City and the Pentagon on September 11, 2001, Katrina, Haiti, San Bruno, Aurora, Sandy, Iraq, Afghanistan — to say nothing about the day-to-day tragedies that shape the routines of their professional lives.

The subtext of almost all the compassionate messages I received from them during the week was something like, “Sorry it was your turn. Take a little time to regroup. Then get back in the arena.”

Gently, one colleague reminded me he had to leave everything he owned — “except for a couple of suitcases” — when he was forced to leave his homeland.

Another wrote that he knew what I was going through because he’s still trying to recover from what Hurricane Sandy did to his home

Another friend was more direct:

Sorry Hallmark does not appear to make a “So your placed burned down” greeting card.

Maybe my favorite was this message:

No books. Wow. You’re about to try living life like an 18 year old.”

 

Yesterday I came across some words John Borling wrote (Borling spent six and a half years in Hanoi as a prisoner of war):

My view is that our job [like Sisyphus] is to get the rock up and over the hill…. And once you do, the rock rolls down the other side, and what do you see? You see another hill. The essence of life is really just pushing rocks.”

And, I might add, that’s not entirely a bad thing.

 

Note: This post started out to be something about personal and family preparedness. But it got side tracked along the way.

I was going to write about where my preparedness plans succeeded (a few places), where they failed (far too many places) and what I’ve learned in the past week (far too much I should have known and acted on before the fire).

But I’ll write about that another time. I’m still preparing my after action report, and you know how long those things can take.

For now,  I’ll pour myself a glass of wine, get back to being resilient, and contemplate one more picture from a fire of still undetermined origin.

We are all aboard the Carnival Triumph.  That’s the cruise ship stranded at sea starting on February 10.  Our comfort and survival rest on interdependent systems most do not understand; and some systems many  actively avoid thinking about.

Usually the systems work well. But recently there has been a rash of cascading failures: Carnival Splendor,  Costa Allegra, and Azamara Quest.  The capsizing of the Costa Concordia is a different category, but not not irrelevant.  In the wider world of cascading failures other labels are applied:  Tohoku, Haiti, Lehman Brothers…

According to CNN:

“We know that the fire originated in front of a generator,” Patrick Cuty, a senior marine investigator for the U.S. Coast Guard, told CNN on Sunday (February 17)….  It appears that the fire suppression worked as designed, Cuty said Friday (February 15). The engineer who was on watch around dawn February 10 saw the fire ignite over a video feed and immediately notified the bridge, Cuty said. Based on an inspection of the engine room Thursday, Cuty said the fire did not appear to have been large.

On Monday afternoon February 18, the Associated Press reported, “A Coast Guard official says the cause of the engine-room fire on the Carnival cruise ship Triumph was a leak in a fuel oil return line.”

According to the New York Times:

The passengers had left the Port of Galveston in Texas on Thursday (February 7) for what was to be a four-day cruise to Cozumel, Mexico. They ended up sleeping for five days on sewage-soaked carpets and open decks, with food so limited that they were reduced to eating candy and ketchup on buns. “It’s like being locked in a Porta Potty for days,” said Peter Cass, a physician from Beaumont, Tex., as the ship crept closer to Mobile on Thursday. “We’ve lived through two hurricanes, and this is worse.”

I had hoped by now there might be more public detail on confirmed cause-and-effects.  I can’t find what I consider fully credible information.  But since I am just a blogger — and mostly want to argue an analogy — here’s a rough summary of what I understand:

• A comparatively small fire — probably accidental in origin — was quickly extinguished.
• But as a consequence water pumping, air conditioning, propulsion and ship stabilizers were all disabled. The Triumph was left “dead in the water.”
• The crew was wonderful, according to many.  Most of the passengers were cooperative, collaborative, and creative under stress.
• But living conditions quickly turned from luxurious to life-threatening.  The second of what will surely be many lawsuits, claims that passengers were “exposed to extremely toxic and debilitating conditions resulting in severe and permanent injuries.”
• The response, both official and unofficial, was “effective”. No one died. The ship will cruise again.

Toxicity was mostly a matter of ongoing exposure to untreated human waste.  With over 4200 humans in close quarters pitching this way and that, human hygiene was seriously challenged.

This was also a problem at the New Orleans Superdome following Katrina.  This is at the core of the cholera epidemic in Haiti.  It was an issue in several New York high rises for weeks after Sandy.  In the aftermath of any sustained loss of power, pumping, or water, sewage system failure is a secondary — or sometimes tertiary — consequence that can quickly overwhelm densely populated places.

Water is often treated as yet another critical infrastructure.  Water pumping, storage, distribution, and treatment systems are among our most ancient human infrastructures.  But the water system is not just a contributing function, it is also a key supply: for hydration, fire suppression, and hygiene.   We can survive with no electricity, without fuel, and — for a considerable period — even without food.  But lack of water — or the persistent presence of wastewater — can very quickly overwhelm every other human capacity.

I almost headlined this post “Sh*t Happens”.   I am still my mother’s child so I hide it in the final paragraph (raising a multitude of issues related to hypocrisy, passive-aggressive tendencies, and various pseudo-Freudian totems).  But, indeed it does happen, both literally and figuratively, even as we pay our fare and blithely expect a three hour cruise.

Today’s post is written by Tracy L. Frazzano, a Lieutenant with the Montclair New Jersey Police Department, and G. Matthew Snyder, a leadership instructor with a federal law enforcement agency. (There’s additional information about the authors at the end of the post.)

 

Nothing captures the nation’s attention more than mass casualty attacks.

These horrific, brutal, heartless, and calculated acts garner international media attention due to the compelling questions of “why” and “how”.

While mass murder rampages are perceived by many to be a modern phenomenon, they are neither new nor are they growing at epidemic rates. Despite being statistically rare events, they dramatically impact countless individuals, communities, and nations. Events involving sophisticated planning, varieties of weapons, and complex tactics will undoubtedly persist globally in highly unpredictable patterns.

The current Department of Homeland Security definition of an active shooter is “an individual actively engaged in killing or attempting to kill people in a confined and populated area; in most cases, active shooters use firearms(s) and there is no pattern or method to their selection of victims.” [1]  That definition does not adequately describe for first responders the dynamic crime scenes that involve a variety of lethal weapons and uncontained attackers.

The active shooter label is no longer sufficient to completely describe the enhanced threat that public safety will be called upon to deal with.

We define the term Hybrid Targeted Violence (HTV) as an intentional use of force to cause physical injury or death to a specifically identified population using multifaceted conventional weapons and tactics. This definition based on “hybrid” weapons and tactics better captures the operational range of hazards confronting first responders.

HTV assaults often use a combination of lethal conventional weapons (i.e. fire as a weapon, small arms, improvised explosive devices, etc.) and a combination of well-planned tactics (i.e. ambush, breaching, barricading, maneuver, etc.). The compound effect of this form of violence requires a more complex response strategy. These strategies blur lines between traditional law enforcement, fire, and emergency medical service duties and responsibilities.

Clarity and unity of vision must drive first responder decision making at chaotic HTV events.

(Multiple Weapons) + (Targeted Population) + (Planned Violent Action) = Hybrid Targeted Violence

Example: (Small Arms and Arson) + (School Population) + (Ambush Tactics) = HTV

Targeted violence directed towards innocent and defenseless people, especially children, demands a highly competent, rational reaction. Professionals must extract lessons from past events to better prevent, disrupt, and mitigate future attacks.

Preparation for future HTV events requires an appreciation for historical incidents while maintaining a keen awareness for impending threats. Past events that have involved combinations of ambush strategies, explosive devices, firearms, and other targeted assault tactics are worth analyzing. First responders can glean valuable training lessons from these events by comparing local resources against HTV tactics.

Following the Sandy Hook Elementary School Attack and the Aurora Colorado Theater Ambush, the New York Police Department published a revised active shooter risk mitigation report. [2]  NYPD’s report is one of many that provides a global analysis of HTV incidents with sufficient detail to permit further research.

Examples of noteworthy tragedies that can serve as the basis of first responder HTV awareness and training include:

• May 18, 1927: Bath Township Michigan School Massacre: Ambush, bombing, fire as weapon, and shooting. [2]

• December 30, 1974: Olean New York High School Attack: Ambush, bombing, fire as weapon, and shooting, (NYPD, p. 143).

• April 20, 1999: Columbine Colorado High School Attack: Ambush, fire as weapon, IED’s, and shooting (NYPD, p. 121).

• December 9, 2003: Visalia California PrintXcel Plant Attack: Multiple fires as weapons and shooting (NYPD p. 83).

• November 26, 2008: Mumbai India Coordinated Attacks: Ambush, barricading tactics, explosives, fire as weapon, military maneuver tactics, and shooting (NYPD, p.50).

• August 27, 2010: McKinney Texas Department of Public Safety Ambush: Ambush, fire as weapon, and shooting (NYPD, p. 13-14).

• July 22, 2011: Oslo Norway Parliament and Children’s Camp Attack: Ambush, distraction VBIED, maneuver techniques, and shooting (NYPD, p. 175).

• December 13, 2011: Liege, Belgium Saint-Lambert Attack: Ambush, shooting, and stun grenades (NYPD, p. 34).

• July 20, 2012: Aurora Colorado Theater Attack: Ambush, chemical weapons, explosive booby traps and shooting (NYPD, p. 33).

• December 14, 2012: Sandy Hook Elementary School Attack: Ambush, breaching tactics, and shooting [3] (NYPD p. 91).

• December 24, 2012: Webster New York Firefighter Ambush: Ambush, fire as weapon, and shooting. [4]

Executive and operational leaders need to make the transition from historical HTV lessons to planning for future HTV attacks. More importantly, these leaders must understand that these events occur with little or no notice, thus testing capabilities and the ability to respond to an unusual event with multiple agencies and multiple disciplines involved.

There is considerable confusion and chaos at the start of these events, so much that the initial first responders rely heavily on training and past experiences to recognize and react to the atypical threats. The problem is that training is historically inclusive of each public safety discipline (police, fire, EMS, etc.).

What is evident in all of these scenarios is a need for change – change in traditional roles of each organization dispatched to an HTV event.

The public, the media, and even first responders look to the law enforcement community solely to manage these events. Television coverage amplifies the visual of police officers and SWAT officers running to the scene wearing body armor and carrying tactical firearms. Initial images of the Columbine and Virginia Tech school shootings portrayed the fire department and emergency medical community in the “staging” area awaiting the police to deem the area safe or bring patients to them.

A collective paradigm shift in first responder perspectives and cultures must occur to better address hybrid threats and targeted violence.

Discipline-centered basic and advanced training has not fostered a spirit of dynamic cooperation at crime scenes and on the fire ground. For example, police officers are trained to address acts of violence, firefighters are trained to fight structure fires, and EMT’s are trained to care for the injured. These are fundamental roles that are not clearly defined during an HTV event.

When roles overlap, leaders across disciplines must question the methods of interoperability. For example, under the current model, can police officers, firefighters, and EMT’s simultaneously engage an active shooter within a burning building when lethal injuries are being inflicted every few seconds?  Hard questions like these must be addressed with an honest self-assessment.

While in the past, the roles of police, fire, and EMS may have been viewed as independent, HTV events present the need to share resources and alter the response protocols of each discipline. Interdependence and rapid interoperability must replace parochial role specific response strategies.

Effective responses to these events hinge on integrated public safety professionals applying finely tuned skills to perform essential tasks cooperatively in a lethal multi-hazards environment. Joint planning, training, and understanding across disciplines are required to more efficiently neutralize chaos and confusion during the initial response to an HTV incident scene.

The first few minutes of any emergency call for service are the most lethal for both innocent victims and first responders. Quick identification and recognition of an HTV incident insures that first responders request and receive the appropriate resources to engage the threat. Minimizing the damage inflicted by a determined attacker can pivot on a rapid recognition by all responders that a call for service is not a routine gun call, structure fire, or medical request.

The concept behind the term “Hybrid Targeted Violence” is intended to foster a change in mind-set to all first responder disciplines. Achieving that change through multi-discipline training and education will shorten the reaction time between attack initiation and neutralization through a Whole Community response. [5 ]

When lives are being lost during those initial few seconds to a HTV attacker, first responders must be capable of abandoning routine response strategies and adopting synergistic strategies. This paradigm shift will maximize lifesaving forces in the face of danger that is seemingly unimaginable.

 

Notes

1. Department of Homeland Security (2008). Active Shooter: How to Respond. retrieved February 1, 2013 from http://www.dhs.gov/xlibrary/assets/active_shooter_booklet.pdf

2. Kelly, R. W. (2012). Active shooter: Recommendations and analysis for risk mitigation. New York City Police Department, New York, NY. Retrieved January 21, 2013 from http://www.nyc.gov/html/nypd/downloads/pdf/counterterrorism/ActiveShooter2012Edition.pdf.

3. Bomboy, S. (2012, December 18). Huge school bombing in 1927 puts Sandy Hook in context. National Constitution Center: Yahoo News. Retrieved January 21, 2013 from http://news.yahoo.com/mass-school-bombing-1927-puts-sandy-hook-context-185608674.html.

4. Shoichet, C.E. and Botelho, G. (2012, December 24). ‘Chaos:’ Gunman ambushes, kills two firefighters at New York blaze. Cable News Network. Retrieved January 21, 2013 from http://www.cnn.com/2012/12/24/us/new-york-firefighters-shooting/index.html.

5. Federal Emergency Management Agency (2011). A Whole Community approach to emergency management: principles, themes, and pathways for action. Washington, DC. Retrieved on January 21, 2013 from http://www.fema.gov/library/viewRecord.do?id=4941.

 

Tracy L. Frazzano is a Lieutenant with the Montclair Police Department in New Jersey. She was awarded the 2011 Center for Homeland Defense and Security Alumni Fellowship and was detailed to the United States Department of Homeland Security (DHS), Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) in Washington, D.C. for one year. A 2010 graduate of the Center at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California, she earned a Master of Arts Degree in Security Studies (Homeland Security and Defense). She also has a Master of Arts Degree in Human Resources Training and Development from Seton Hall University where she was inducted into the academic Kappa Delta Pi and Golden Key International Honor societies. Contact: tfrazzano [at] montclairnjusa.org

G. Matthew Snyder is an Advanced Leadership Instructor with a federal law enforcement agency. He has been employed as a police officer with the City of Waynesboro (VA) Police Department since 1992. Formerly a full time patrol officer, he now serves as a part-time investigator assigned to the Criminal Investigations Division. In 2010, Mr. Snyder retired from the U.S. Army Reserve at the rank of Command Sergeant Major with over 24 years of active and reserve service. He earned a Master’s degree in Public Administration from James Madison University and he recently completed all coursework towards a Doctorate in Education at Liberty University. His ongoing dissertation research is focused on training and education related to Hybrid Targeted Violence. Contact: gmatthewsnyder [at] gmail.com.

More from United States Geological Survey

Earthquakes are precisely unpredictable.  But they can be anticipated with considerable accuracy.

We don’t know exactly when and where the New Madrid fault will shift.  But most (though not all) argue continuing tectonic movements will eventually produce a geologic snap, crackle, and pop.   The last time a major shift began (December 16, 1811) the earthquake is estimated to have been in the upper 7s or low 8s on the Richter Scale.  Here’s how the naturalist and artist John James Audubon described it from 200 miles west of the epicenter.

Never had I witnessed anything like this before, though I had heard of earthquakes. I found myself rocking on my horse and I moved to and fro with him like a child in a cradle, expecting the ground to open at any moment and reveal an abyss to engulf me and all around me. The fearful convulsion lasted only minutes, however. Almost every day or night for weeks shock succeeded shock, but gradually diminished into more vibrations of the earth. The quake ceased, but not until after it had caused serious consequences in other neighboring places, rending the earth and sinking islands.

There are several million more people in the seismic zone today and a huge panoply of modern — and a fair share of pre-modern — infrastructure on which the nation’s economy depends and which was constructed without anticipating such an earthquake.   This has implications for the grid, drinking water distribution, sewage systems, dams, bridges, buildings, river locks and levees, natural gas pipelines, and much more. When it happens we will be surprised and we will suffer.

But today at 10:15 many schools, hospitals, workplaces, and more in nine states are collaborating in the The Great Central US Shake Out.  A reasonable investment in a bit less surprise, a bit less suffering.  As KC and Sunshine Band sang, “Give yourself a chance.”

A local comment caught my eye.  According to the Pantagraph (Bloomington, IL), Steve Land with the Williamson County emergency management office, “…encourages Illinoisans to have enough food, water, medicines and other necessities to last two weeks.”   This will not be a 72-hour event.

February 7 was not selected at random.  On this date in 1818 the “last” 7.0 plus (some say 9.0 plus) earthquake hit the region.  From December 1811 until February 1818 the central United States experienced at least four earthquakes above 7.0 and as our little 2011 Virginia trembler demonstrated, the shaking travels farther this side of the Rockies.

Talk about a cascading event.

In reporting on the Superbowl blackout a CBS News correspondent commented, “It was smooth until it wasn’t.”  Which echoes Craig Fugate’s comment, “Our system works really well until it doesn’t.”

Rational, reductionist, predictive, risk-informed, well-tested — and almost always effective — many of our most important modern systems hum along until suddenly they don’t.

From a Tuesday morning front page story in the Times-Picayune:

It’s still unclear exactly what went wrong Sunday. Entergy officials said they are working with the company that built the electrical switchgear, which controls the flow of electricity from the power company to the stadium, to determine if that is to blame.

The equipment, added as part of the upgrades, automatically shuts down when a problem is detected, such as a surge or loss of electricity, potentially signaling — and protecting — against a more protracted power outage.

Ultimately, the equipment worked as it was supposed to. But what caused it to trip Sunday is the central mystery officials are now trying to unravel.

Doug Thornton, senior vice president of SMG, which manages the Superdome, said Monday that the switchgear “sensed an abnormality” and tripped.

“It was a piece of equipment that did its job,” he said. “We don’t know anything beyond that. It’s premature at this point to say what it was or what caused it.”

A cause will be found and a recurrence of that cause will be suppressed.   And probably, unknown and unintended, something even worse will be seeded in the fixing.

If you have not, I encourage you to read Bak’s Sand Pile: Strategies for a Catastrophic World by Ted G. Lewis.

Last Friday the NYS 2100 Commission released its report: Recommendations to Improve the Strength and Resilience of the Empire State’s Infrastructure.   It is a helpful contribution and provides a very constructive level of detail.

The report also offers a meaningful framing for investing in resilience in New York and well beyond. The following long quote is from the c0-chairs’ foreword:

While the response to Sandy continues, work needs to begin now on how we build back better – in a way that increases New York’s agility when responding to future storms and other shocks. Building back better demands a focus on increased resilience: the ability of individuals, organizations, systems, and communities to bounce back more strongly from stresses and shocks. Resilience means creating diversity and redundancy in our systems and rewiring their interconnections, which enables their functioning even when individual parts fail.

There is no doubt that building resilience will require investment, but it will also reduce the economic damage and costs of responding to future storms and events, while improving the everyday operations of our critical systems. In a time of fiscal constraints, the positive sign is that inexpensive policy changes will be as critical as the financial investments we make. Hard infrastructure improvements must be complemented by soft infrastructure and other resilience measures, for example, improving our institutional coordination, public communication, and rapid decision making abilities will make us better able to recover from the catastrophic effects of natural disasters. In many respects, New York is ahead of the game in this regard. In recent storms, including Irene and Sandy, we have successfully embraced the notion of “failing safely,” accepting the inevitability of widespread disruptions and tucking in to protect our assets to the extent possible.

We cannot prevent all future disasters from occurring, but we can prevent failing catastrophically by embracing, practicing, and improving a comprehensive resilience strategy. As New York and our neighboring states continue to recover from the devastating impacts of Superstorm Sandy, we have a narrow but distinct window of opportunity to leverage the groundswell of consciousness.

I have delayed and hesitated to post on this report because, with all its strengths, it fails to sufficiently address a fundamental aspect of resilience.   The co-chairs foreshadow this issue in writing, “Hard infrastructure improvements must be complemented by soft infrastructure…”

Achieving resilience involves a different way of thinking, choosing, and behaving. There are a whole host of trade-offs. I agree with the report’s authors that the trade-off’s are worthwhile. But this will not be obvious to everyone. Resilience emerges — or not — from families, neighborhoods, and communities. It unfolds from dialogue and relationships, or not at all.

The NYS 2100 Commission report does a great job identifying and seeding the hard infrastructure topics that need to be discussed and engaged. But how will the dialogue be started and sustained? How will a soft infrastructure be cultivated that is sufficient to enable hard infrastructure decisions?

The current report reads as a set of recommendations to be implemented by the widely-respected and honored philosopher-kings of a latter day Kallipolis (Plato’s “Beautiful City” in The Republic).  New York is, for me, a beautiful place, but last time I looked its politics were more complicated than this.