LIVING WITH THE EARTH

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LIVING WITH THE EARTH
CHAPTER 14 EMERGENCY PREPAREDNESS
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Objectives for this Chapter

• A student reading this chapter will be able to
• Discuss the history and origins of Incident
  Command System (ICS), the National Incident
  Management System (NIMS), and The National
  Response Plan (NRP).
• List and describe the major components of ICS,
  NIMS, and NRP

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Objectives for this Chapter

• A student reading this chapter will be able to
• Describe and discuss the role of Environmental
  Health professionals in emergency/disaster
  response.

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Introduction

• It is not terrorist bombs or the release of
  anthrax spores that spawned the birth of modern
  day emergency preparedness.

USS Cole
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Introduction

• It began with a wildfire in Southern California
  in 1970 that swept through several counties
  during a 13 day period burning more than half a
  million acres, destroying over 700 structures,
  and costing 16 lives.

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FIRESCOPE

• the 92nd Congress approved funding for the U.S.
  Forest Service Research group to design a system
  or process to significantly improve the capacity
  of the agencies in Southern California to provide
  protection against wildfires.

This became known as FIRESCOPE (Firefighting
Resources of California Organized for Potential
Emergencies).
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FIRESCOPE

• There were five major program components that
  required planning and attention.
• The coordination of the resources among many
  agencies during a large incident,
• Creating a standard and easily understood
  terminology by all participants to avoid the use
  of professional jargon that would differ among
  police, fire, and emergency medical responders,

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FIRESCOPE

1. Develop systems and technical capacity that would
   permit communication among many participating
   agencies,
2. Provide training to all members of the
   participating agencies in communication,
   terminology, and command structure, and
3. Develop better methods for predicting the
   behavior of fires.

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Incident Command

• These objectives were ultimately condensed into
  two components of the FIRESOPE system designated
  as
• Incident Command System (ICS) that provided a
  specific command structure and coordinated
  incident management tool.
• Multi-Agency Coordination System (MACS) that
  improved coordination among multiple agencies for
  large incidents that demanded massive resources.

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ICS

• ICS structure and successfully employed ICS on a
  number of wild land and urban fires in 1978.
• The use of ICS expanded to non-fire incidents.
• The management of these incidents was
  all-hazard as they employed the well documented
  and proven command structure of ICS to a wide
  variety of incidents.

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NIIMS

• Initial steps to extend this ICS management
  structure began in 1983 with the creation of the
  National Inter-Agency Incident Management System
  (NIIMS).

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Post 9/11

• In swift reaction to 9/11, the Homeland Security
  Act of 2002 (H.R. 5005-8) was approved with the
  purpose of establishing a Department of Homeland
  Security (DHS) as an executive department of the
  United States.

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DHS Mission

• The mission of DHS is to prevent terrorist
  attacks within the United States, reduce the
  vulnerability of the U.S. to terrorism, and to
  minimize damage and assist in recovery from those
  terrorist attacks that do occur in the United
  States.
• DHS was officially established on January 23,
  2003 causing a massive reorganization of the
  government

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DHS

• More than 20 Federal agencies were directed to
  become part of the DHS and to be compartmented
  into one of four directorates including 1) the
  Border and Transportation Directorate 2) The
  Emergency Preparedness and Response Directorate
  3) the Science and Technology Directorate and 4)
  the Information Analysis and Infrastructure
  Protection Directorate.

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HSPD-5

• President Bush issued Homeland Security
  Presidential Directive 5 (HSPD-5) on February 28,
  2003. HSPD-5 directed Secretary of Homeland
  Security to develop and then administer a
  National Incident Management System (NIMS) in
  order to provide a consistent management tool for
  government, private, and nongovernmental
  organizations to function together during a major
  incident.

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ICS and NIMS

• Among the most likely reasons for response
  failure in an emergency includes confusion about
  who is in charge, unclear lines of authority, and
  lack of clear communication. The management model
  used successfully for more than 30 years to
  overcome these problems is ICS.

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ICS

• ICS position titles are distinct and recognizable
  anywhere in the country and at any agency or
  organization using the ICS system. There is only
  one Incident Commander at each incident and only
  that person is given the title, Commander.
  Members of the command staff are called Officers,
  and members of the general staff are called Chief
  

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ICS

• the

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ICS

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ICS

• ICS provides a very clear reporting structure so
  that each response person knows to whom to report
  and what they are expected to do. All response
  personnel answer to one immediate supervisor and
  can be assured that communication will be
  understandable and in plain English.

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ICS

• ICS structure may be greatly expanded if the
  incident grows or is already complex and large.

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ICS

• Public health doesnt normally function within an
  ICS command structure as do police, fire, and
  EMS, since most public health departments and
  agencies are quite small, personnel have defined
  roles, communication is usually simple, and there
  are very few immediately life threatening
  incidents.

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ICS

• Whether large or small incidents, the response of
  Public Health needs to be within the NIMS/ICS
  framework. In order to better understand how ICS
  might work within a Public Health structure, a
  detailed description of the Public Health
  Incident Command System is available online at.
  
• http//www.ualbanycphp.org/pinata/phics/guide/defa
  ult.cfm

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NIMS

• The purpose of NIMS is to provide a unified
  national response to incident management for all
  potential incidents regardless of size and
  complexity. A major objective of NIMS is also to
  improve coordination and cooperation among public
  and private agencies and organizations throughout
  a whole range of domestic incident management
  activities.

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NIMS

• NIMS is composed of six related components that
  function together as a system to prepare for,
  prevent, respond to, and recover from domestic
  incidents

1. Command and Management
2. Preparedness
3. Resource Management
4. Communications and Information Management
5. Supporting Technologies
6. Ongoing Management and Maintenance

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Command and Management elements of NIMS

• The Command and Management elements of NIMS
  during an incident is based on the use of ICS
  for establishing the operation and structure of
  incident management organizations
• Multi-agency Coordination System which defines
  the operation and structure of supporting
  entities
• and Public Information Systems that establishes
  the processes, communication systems , and
  procedures for delivering timely and accurate
  information to the public.

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Preparedness NIMS

• NIMS compliancy also requires participating
  entities to be prepared and to provide continuing
  pre-incident training, planning, exercises,
  personnel qualification checks, certification
  standards, and equipment acquisition and
  certification standards.

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Resource Management NIMS

• NIMS requires effective resource management so
  that there are standard methods for managing
  equipment, supplies and personnel throughout the
  incident.

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CommunicationsNIMS

• Similarly there needs to be a standardized system
  for communications information management
  including systems and technology procedures that
  work across all agencies, and a mechanism of
  assuring that information flows smoothly through
  a commonly accepted architecture.

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Unified Command

• When there is more than one responding agency or
  there are incidents that cross jurisdictional
  boundaries, a Unified Command may be employed
  whereby command decisions and planning are
  completed by senior representatives of the
  participating organizations who comprise the
  Unified Command

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Area Command

• Area Command is used for coordinating multiple
  incidents with different incident command posts
  (ICP).
• An Area Command structure does not require an
  Operations section since those functions are
  normally performed at each site.

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National Response Plan (NRP)

• The Homeland Security Presidential Directive
  (HSPD-5) led to the creation of the National
  Response Plan (NRP) in establishing a single,
  comprehensive approach to domestic incident
  management to prevent, prepare for, respond to,
  and recover from terrorist attacks, major
  disasters, and other emergencies.

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NRP

• The NRP is constructed around the previously
  described NIMS and is intended to be an
  all-hazards plan that provides the structure for
  incident management at all levels of federal,
  state, and local government and for any major
  type of incident including a major public health
  emergency.
• The NRP is designed to be scalable and flexible
  to meet the needs of incident management ranging
  from multi-jurisdictional to Incidents of
  National Significance (INS) such as massive
  hurricane.

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NRP

• The NRP and NIMS are companion documents that
  function together to integrate the capabilities
  and resources at all government levels,
  non-government entities, tribal, and
  private-sector organizations into a coordinated
  national response for domestic incident
  management.

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NRP

• When an incident occurs, it is managed at the
  lowest jurisdictional level possible. If it is a
  train derailment with the release of a toxic gas
  as an example, it may be handled locally with the
  assistance of State agencies and response teams.
  The NRP does alter the typical ICS response of
  first responders to carry out their functions or
  responsibilities. Should the derailment incident
  expand to multiple jurisdictions or states with
  greater potential consequences, then more than
  one federal, state or local agency will have
  jurisdiction.

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NRP

• The Incident Commanders from each agency will
  form a Unified Command to coordinate resources,
  develop a common Incident Action Plan with a
  unified set of objectives. An Incident Command
  Post (ICP) will likely be designated and the
  Unified Command develops the NIMS/ICS command
  structure from the top-down according to the size
  and complexity of the incident.

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Environmental Health Response

• The American Public Health Association (APHA)
  collaborated with EH practitioners to create
  three major EH competency areas now in use by the
  Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)
  and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). These
  three major EH competencies include
• Assessment gathering information, data analysis,
  evaluation
• Management record-keeping, problem solving,
  project management
• Communication risk communication, conflict
  resolution, education

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Environmental Health Response

• Environmental health personnel should participate
  in the development of the emergency response
  plans since the plans provide direction for EH
  professionals during an incident response.
• The EH professional will have responsibilities
  for identifying, monitoring, and reducing
  environmental hazards that may impact on the
  health of the community during a disaster.

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Environmental Health Response

• Conducting these activities requires EH personnel
  to work in partnership with other responding
  organizations in the emergency management
  structure including police, fire, public works,
  Red Cross, medical response teams, and so forth.

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Environmental Health Response

• The EH personnel will be expected to perform
  their assigned duties often based on a
  pre-defined set of activities defined in a Job
  Action Sheet (JAS) created as part of the
  emergency response plan for their agency. A JAS
  describes the functional role of a
  position/person in an emergency response.

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Environmental Health Response

• A set of immediate actions suggested by the
  Minnesota Department of Health to rapidly restore
  environmental health services during and after a
  disaster would include
• Obtaining information on the movements of
  populations at or near the incident site
  identifying the location of facilities used to
  house displaced persons, hospitals, and medical
  facilities and determining where relief workers
  will be housed to determine if those living
  quarters meet sanitary and housing codes.

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Environmental Health Response

• 2. Determine what capacities remain for
  delivering basic environmental health services
  including inspection and regulation enforcement
  of food, water and housing.
• 3. Quickly assess what damage has occurred to
  those food, water, housing, solid waste, and
  other environmental entities that fall under the
  Public Health regulations and ordinances. The EH
  professional should also attempt to discover what
  the immediate needs are for safe water, housing,
  food and sanitation.