InfoGram 40-12: October 4, 2012

This InfoGram will be distributed weekly to provide members of the Emergency Services Sector with information concerning the protection of their critical infrastructures. For further information, contact the Emergency Management and Response - Information Sharing and Analysis Center (EMR-ISAC) at (301) 447-1325 or by email at emr-isac@fema.dhs.gov.

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Hospital Honored for Response to Shooting

The University of Colorado Hospital’s Emergency Room (ER) was full and had an almost full waiting room the night of the Aurora, CO, movie theater shooting.  They were on “ER Divert” status when the request for bed counts went out through the state’s EMSystem.  Patients started arriving 20 minutes after the first 911 call; 30 minutes after that, the hospital formally enacted its emergency operations plan.

The hospital was awarded Emergency Management Magazine’s “Disaster Humanitarian Preparedness Award” due to the outstanding response by the staff and the hospital’s dedication to preparedness, planning, and training.  Overall, three things stood out:

• Repetitive training – the hospital performs training, drills, or policy reviews at least monthly, with 34 preparedness activities completed so far in 2012.
• Unified command – the role of the liaison officer was especially useful, communicating with other health care facilities and government agencies.
• ESF-8 partnership – using Emergency Support Function 8 helped support them through this emergency and meet public health needs.

An overview of the hospital’s response and lessons learned – both good and bad – are discussed more fully in the article.

(Source: Emergency Management Magazine)

Fire Prevention Week: October 7-13, 2012

Home fires can happen at any time and can spread in just minutes, claiming lives and property.  During the week of October 7-13, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and the U.S. Fire Administration (USFA), in partnership with the National Fire Protection Association are encouraging families to protect their loved ones and homes from emergencies by making their homes safer now and during the year.

Hundreds of thousands of fires happen in and around homes every year, killing or injuring thousands of people and causing untold damage to families and communities.  Statistics show in 2010, over 362,000 residential fires resulted in 2,555 deaths, 13,275 injuries, and over $6.6 billion in property loss.  

The best way to prepare for a fire is to plan in advance and practice your family’s response.  Here are some suggestions for how to get ready:

• Check that all smoke alarms work;
• Make sure that there are two ways out of every room;
• Make a home fire plan; and
• Practice with the whole family so that everyone knows how to reach safety.

(Source: U.S. Fire Administration)

Managing Evacuation in Real-Life

Evacuating communities is one of the most logistically challenging problems that face emergency management teams, and the outcome can be questioned and criticized no matter how flawlessly or poorly it went.  Interviews with four emergency managers who have dealt with large-scale evacuations suggest creativity, authority, and improvising.

Backing from higher state authority strengthens the message of the local emergency manager.  It can also break down bureaucracy, making it easier to cut through official procedures that apply to ordinary conditions but impede emergency operations.  One example is the law Texas pushed through before Hurricane Rita granting state support to mandatory evacuations.

Deciding who must evacuate and directing those people to shelters is another hurdle.  To keep from overfilling some shelters, New York City decided not to disclose their locations during Hurricane Irene, preferring to send people to specific shelters that still had room.  Mississippi found people were more likely to evacuate if the shelter location was closer to their home.

Getting people to listen to evacuation notices is always a big concern. Communication redundancies worked for La Porte, TX, where they used voice, text, email, RSS, TTY/TDD, and more using Blackboard Connect.  New York found a unified message first given by the mayor’s office and then repeated by all other agencies helped keep everyone on track, including the agencies involved.

(Source: Emergency Management Magazine)

2011 Wildfire Incident Summary Published

The Wildland Fire Lessons Learned Center (LLC) published the 2011 Incident Review Summary (PDF, 1.28 Mb), giving a synopsis of the incident review reports submitted for 78 wildfires occurring in 2011.  Reports are written and submitted by several different state and federal agencies. 

The incident summary is intended to help pinpoint training opportunities and room for improvement.  For example, there were high percentages of both vehicle accidents and driving incidents, leading one to conclude more training and safety planning should be considered in relation to vehicle operations.

All 2011 incident review reports are available on the LLC website in their entirety.  Reports from 1908 through this year are searchable by year, state, name of fire, and other factors. 

(Source: Wildland Fire Lessons Learned Center)