InfoGram 4-13: January 24, 2013

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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Campus Fire Documentary Shows Aftermath

Nine campus-related fires occurred within a 3 week period in January and February of 2012, causing loss of life, injury and property damage. Through eyewitness stories of student victims, fire officers, school officials and parents, the aftermath of the fires is revealed in the documentary "9 Fires."

The fires occurred in on- and off-campus housing and in laboratories, and details clearly show the benefits of automatic sprinkler systems in all facilities. Students and staff were allowed back into sprinklered buildings within hours of the incident, as opposed to months with unsprinklered buildings.

School officials must constantly address the reliability of the student population to take audible alarms seriously since pulling alarms is often a "prank" on college campuses. Relying on audible alarms to wake up sleeping occupants or to be in working order, especially in off-campus housing, is also problematic.

The 20-minute video is available free online and for download for use in public and campus fire safety education, but no hard copies are being made. Other resources available through the Minger Foundation include posters, handouts, a quarterly newsletter and more videos.

(Source: The Minger Foundation)

Planning for “Single Point of Failure” Incidents

In the past year, three departments had unexpected and almost unthinkable "single point of failure" incidents demonstrating worst case scenarios and the need for proper planning:

• One town had all three ambulances break down within a 24 hour period and remain out of commission for almost 2 days.
• A volunteer fire department responding to a laboratory fire was needed at the scene for a week. Their equipment and turnout gear required considerable cleaning and decontamination treatments afterward, adding to the downtime.
• A man angry over an arrest crushed more than half the local police department’s fleet, destroying equipment and causing $300,000 in damages.

While the last story made national and international news due to the humor many saw in the circumstances, the department lost a considerable amount of time and equipment. Vehicle trunks had to be cut open to determine the condition of firearms, radios were destroyed and neighboring departments put in extra time in mutual aid.

Situations such as these are rare, but these cases show that they can and do happen. Having mutual aid agreements, contingency plans and redundancies in effect can ease such sudden and unexpected events.

(Source: 9 Fires, ABC News, EMS World)

FCC Issues Report on 9-1-1 Derecho Outages

The disproportionate outages of 9-1-1 call centers and Public Safety Answering Points (PSAPs) after the derecho storm in June 2012 is addressed in a report published this month by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). The report (PDF, 772 Kb) faults avoidable failures of backup power and monitoring systems for most of the outages.

"Seventy-seven 9-1-1 call centers… serving more than 3.6 million people in six states lost some degree of connectivity." The FCC report details the storm’s overall damage of wireline networks, wireless communications and PSAPs by state or county.

The report lists actions that should be taken by PSAPs to ensure resiliency of systems and plans. The report discusses best practices already identified in the industry that were not followed, leading in part to the problems after the storm.

The FCC is also expected to make several regulatory recommendations to strengthen emergency communications, including regular "audits" of systems, networks and backup power generators.

(Source: FCC)

DHS Creates Active Shooter Preparedness Site

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has created the Active Shooter Preparedness website to collect in one place the DHS resources, documents and training available to emergency responders and the public.

In addition to webinars, information on scheduling training and an Emergency Management Institute (EMI) Independent Study course, the site also lists guides for campus safety and research on threat assessments produced by the U.S. Secret Service.

The DHS website states "in many cases, there is no pattern or method to the selection of victims by an active shooter, and these situations…by their very nature are unpredictable and evolve quickly." The information on this site is presented to help increase awareness of behaviors, pre-incident indicators and characteristics of active shooters.

The information presented on the Active Shooter Preparedness site is available for download or can be printed.

(Source: DHS)