Conference Notes (Part 7 of 7) Handling People After a Disaster

One of your major tasks after a disaster if you are in a facility that people will gravitate to (ie: school, airport, hospital, community center, etc) is handling people. You will have injured people, mentally ill people, worried well people, people who want to help, people who are frail or infirm, people who are displaced from their homes, etc. Here's some tips for handling people after a disaster:

• Triaging people after a disaster is often a common task. The dead are put in one place, the nearly dead are put in another place, the critically ill or injured are sent for immediate treatment, and the not so severely injured are often put in another place to wait for treatment. Note that when you are triaging people, you are often triaging groups or families--what do you do with the rest of the family if mom is sent to the hospital, dad is waiting for less emergent care, and there are four kids running around with them?
• If you don't control a crowd at the beginning of a situation, you will be overwhelmed. It is virtually impossible to show up at a scene and reason with a large, unruly crowd. Immediately after a disaster, if you expect a crowd to show up at your door (ie: to a hospital, community center, etc) you need to become immediately organized: traffic control, access control, security, information for people, a way to process people through your facility, etc.
• A good way to get control of a group is to give people something to do. People who have no idea what's going on, who feel out of control, and who are flailing about are more difficult to control than people who are given a task and expected to perform--it keeps them busy, keeps them out of your way, and keeps their attention on the task and not the overall situation.
• Signage is important. You don't want to answer the same "where is..." question two hundred times.
• People who will be dealing with the crowds after a disaster should be trained, as a team, before the disaster occurs so that they will be able to work efficiently and effectively together to control the scene and the people at the scene. Note that the government's National Incident Management System has become the the de facto incident management system in the US.
• If you will be handling people after a disaster (ie: at a hospital, airport, casino, school, large office complex, etc) you need to be prepared to be on your own for up to 96 hours. This includes: shelter, food, water, sanitation, decontamination, medical supplies/care, security, communications, entertainment, etc.
• A system for tracking people is also important. How will you track who went to what hospital? How will you reunite children with parents?

Conference Notes (Part 6 of 7) Forensic Evidence Management

After a disaster, especially after the man-made type such as a bombing or other terrorist event, forensic evidence management is important. The idea is to not mess up the evidence because investigators need this vital information in order to both figure out who did it and/or preserve evidence for further investigation. So how do you manage forensic evidence?

• After an incident, block off the crime scene and don't let anyone muck around there. You don't want evidence to be destroyed or compromised before the experts can process it.
• "When two objects meet, there is an exchange of material from each to the other" French scientist Edward Locard. This is the basic theory of forensic evidence.
• Photograph everything: the scene, the crowd, the evidence, etc.
• Document everything: time of the event, weather, witness information, etc.
• Unless you are saving a life, stay out of the crime scene. If people are dead, leave them where they fell for the investigators.
• Suspects may attempt to escape from the scene by joining the crowds who are being evacuated.
• All persons coming into contact with response workers should be searched for weapons.
• Let the professionals process the scene and recover evidence. This both properly preserves the evidence and ensures the chain of custody of the evidence.
• Forensic evidence management team members not only process the scene but they also go to the hospital and morgue with victims to process evidence from the bodies.
• Recovery of bodies: each body and body part found is treated as evidence; always wrap the head, hands and feet before removal; all bodies and body parts should be accompanied when taken from the scene to preserve continuity of evidence; bodies and body parts should always be subject to x ray examination to establish the possible presence of evidence.
• Beware of the media (they will stop at nothing to gain entry to the scene), those impacted by the event (people often react unreasonably after a disaster creating problems for themselves and others), and volunteers who show up to help (some will exaggerate their qualifications in order to help).

Conference Notes (Part 5 of 7) Evacuation

Another featured topic at the conference was evacuation. You would think evacuation would be a fairly simple idea...get out and get out now. However, when you are talking about evacuating large buildings or large amounts of people, there are many tips and tricks that you wouldn't think about until after you had experienced such an event. Here's some ideas:

• Pay attention to the local news for information and other local sources of information about evacuations in your community. Communications is key in being able to know the what, when, where, and how of evacuations.
• Set up your incident command center as soon as evacuation may be a possibility. Consider having an incident command center set up sheet so that anyone could set the center up if needed.
• You need duct tape, markers, and sign board. These items will be used to make signs either directing the evacuation or leaving a sign to tell the public where you have evacuated to.
• If you are evacuating a large building, have one (or more) out-only doors. It is difficult to have workers going in and out of the same doors that you are trying to get everyone out of. Ditto for evacuation routes for cars--one way traffic works better than cars going every which way.
• Can you lock your doors? Some facilities such as hospitals and casinos usually never close so some have found that when they do need to evacuate and lock down, they have no locks!
• Work with your local fire department and emergency management department. They may be able to help provide fire breaks around your facility (ie: in the event of a wild fire evacuation), help with evacuations if necessary (ie: helping to evacuate patients from hospitals or provide buses to transport large groups of people), and may even place a strike team at your facility depending an the amount of loss that could occur due to fire, flood, etc.
• Consider what else you need to evacuate besides people. Nursing homes may need to collect up patient records, hospitals may need to bring all of their medications from the pharmacy, offices may need to quickly back up records and bring them along, etc.
• Have maps on hand. If you are evacuating a hotel or other location where you have people who are unfamiliar with local roads, you may need to provide evacuation maps (ie: if there is a tsunami evacuation, you will need to highlight the route people will need to take to get to higher ground).
• Create department closure checklists. Depending on how much time you have to evacuate, you may want your staff to officially close down their department (ie: securing computers, securing money, securing files, etc).
• Review your business hazard insurance and business interruption insurance. Are the types of disasters most common to your area covered? Many organizations may find that they aren't covered for floods...after a flood has decimated their facility.
• Hold regular evacuation drills.
• Purchase temperature monitoring software for sensitive areas. If you have a major investment in food, pharmaceuticals, temperature sensitive equipment, etc. these items will need to be trashed if you can not prove that they were kept within an optimal temperature range.
• Create mutual aid agreements with similar organizations (you may be able to share supplies, employees, equipment, etc. if your facility is evacuated or destroyed).
• Prepare to be able to evacuate vulnerable populations. If you have ever tried to evacuate a hospital full of sick people, a casino full of elderly and infirm people, an apartment building of elderly people, or other vulnerable populations, you will realize that not everyone can simply evacuate themselves. Many of these people need lots of help to be able to evacuate.
• Do what you can to minimize damage based on the reason you are evacuating. If you are evacuating due to flooding, try to put your most expensive equipment on a higher floor. If you are evacuating due to a hurricane, try to put things in a secure area in the basement.
• Don't wait too long to evacuate. It can be a tough decision to know the exact moment you should begin an evacuation process but it is better to be too early than too late.
• Consider phased evacuations. If you are evacuating a huge building or a huge city, telling everyone to leave immediately will create a bottleneck. Consider phasing the evacuation process so that everyone can leave in an orderly fashion.
• There may be some social dynamics to consider when evacuating. If you empty an inner city neighborhood and send everyone to one shelter, there can be conflicts between members of different gangs. Something to consider anyway...
• Have a place to evacuate to. If you are sending people in your community to a shelter, make sure the shelter is #1 open, and #2 can handle the influx. Remember what happened when everyone in New Orleans were told to evacuate to the Superdome during Hurricane Katrina? The place you are evacuating to should have shelter, staffing, supplies, power, food, water, security, etc.
• Evacuation usually entails the need for fuel, food, water, maybe medical care, bathrooms (if the evacuation route is many miles long), etc. Are these items/services available along the evacuation route? What if the gas stations are closed, the population is too poor to be able to afford gas, there are no bathrooms along the route, etc?
• Consider how to get your people back after the evacuation is over. If you sent staff away, how will you tell them they can come back. If you sent customers to other locations, how do you let them know you have reopened for business? If you have transferred patients out, how to you get them back?
• What will you do about clean up after an evacuation. Whether you evacuated because of a flood, wildfire, tsunami, bomb threat, etc, if the reason you evacuated actually came to fruition, you will probably have a mess to clean up. Do you have contracts with companies that can do the clean up? Can you afford the clean up? Will you keep your employees on the payroll and have them help clean up?

Conference Notes (Part 4 of 7) Staff

Staffing was, surprisingly, a big issue at the conference. When it comes right down to it, after a disaster if your staff doesn't show up, you are out of business. If you are a critical care provider (hospital, law enforcement, electric company, etc) and your staff doesn't show up, we are all out of business. Here's how to make sure your staff is ready for a disaster (and if you ARE the staff, you may want to make sure your employer has these bases covered):

• All staff need to have a "go bag"--one for the home and one for the office. Who knows, they may end up stranded for a couple of days at the office and if they are already self-contained, that is one less thing you as an employer need to worry about.
• All staff need to have family disaster plans in place. When the flu hit and schools were closed for a few days in our area, the biggest problem employers had was staff who could not come to work because their kids could not go to school. Everyone who is responsible for kids, pets, or the elderly should have a triple redundant plan for child care, animal care, and elderly care if for some reason they end up staying extra hours or days at work.
• All staff need to know the company disaster plan and drill it frequently. If you have 200 staff members, you don't want to be up to your elbows in a crisis and have every one of the 200 staffers calling you for instruction. They need to know what to do, who to contact, and how to help without going to the head of the company.
• Consider tele-commuting options and use them often--during "regular" times and during times of disaster--if possible.
• Have multiple ways to contact employees and for them to contact your company during a disaster. Many critical facilities have a half dozen ways to contact their employees (home phone, cell phone, email, Twitter, blast fax, HAM call sign, etc); some even have the employee's homes plotted on a map so in a crisis, someone can pick up the employee from home if necessary. On the flip side, your employees need to be able to get information from you during a disaster. It is a good idea to have a number of people who can update the company website or blog to provide disaster instruction, you may also want to have a 1-800 phone number staff can call for updates, signage at the office, etc.
• Have a good understanding of your employee's needs (ie: a single mom with five kids and a sick mom that she takes care of) so that you as the employer can look at alternatives if you need that employee (ie: if most of your employees have small children, you may want to set up on-site child care during a disaster).
• Also, know as much as you can about your employee's skills/hobbies/etc. If one of your senior guys is also a HAM radio aficionado, you definitely want to know that and include this person in your disaster plans both in their current position and in communications position that they can also help out with. Be sure to write this down as you may not be around during the disaster and your incident commander will definitely want to know this information.
• Jumble your staff around occasionally. Often times people get so locked into the rhythm of their normal job, that when a disaster strikes and they need to think on their feet and fill in at a different department, they either freeze or become quite useless. If this is just part of the normal job, the change doesn't come as such a surprise when they really do need to take on other job functions.
• Consider job action sheets. Each job should have a "job action sheet" in case someone from another facility, a volunteer, or a temp agency comes in to help. At least they can get the basics of the job done without needing too much help this way.
• You need a system for tracking hours and resources during a disaster in order to get reimbursed by FEMA or other programs afterwards.
• Some ways to get the staff you need after a disaster: perform only essential functions and reassign other staff members, call back personnel, add an "essential personnel" clause in staff contracts, and/or borrow staff from similar businesses that weren't impacted by the disaster.
• Consider credentialing if this is necessary for your organization. There are a number of high tech systems that have been developed for just this purpose. After a disaster, loonies tend to come out of the woodwork. People show up and say they are doctors or nurses and want to help however they aren't--this is bad. Others may show up and say they are law enforcement personnel who want to help, firefighters, the FBI--you name it and someone has probably tried to grab some glory without having the credentials. During a disaster, these people can sometimes slip through the cracks and cause more problems than you already have so institute a good credentialing system before you need it.
• Put everyone to work. Develop a way to manage volunteers prior to the disaster. It is a bit overwhelming when 100 people show up to help and you have never managed one volunteer before let alone a whole bunch of them. Traffic control, runners, scribes (if your computers are down and you need to write all of your records it's nice to have scribes), simple clean-up, etc. are all jobs that volunteers can do.
• Have a way for your staff to access your facility if it happens to be in lockdown when they arrive.
• Have provisions for the staff. If you have a kitchen in your facility, you are ahead of the game. If you have a simple office, consider storing some emergency food, water, blankets, flashlights, etc. for staff to use in an emergency.
• Create a staff disaster guide and provide it to staff annually. This guidebook will include everything--contact information, location of emergency provisions, security policies and procedures, etc.
• Work with your local Red Cross or Department of Emergency Management. These groups have lots of resources for staff training and disaster preparedness. Also check and see if there is an industry group in your area that focuses on disaster preparedness and join it.

Conference Notes (Part 1 of 7) The Go Bag

I just got back from an anti-terrorism conference. Lots of good information was presented and I have a stack of notes to go through but I figured if I cover one topic each day for the next week, that should get me organized, get my notes transposed, and allow me to share a bit of what was learned. Some of the information is more government/industry/CEO oriented but much of the information is applicable to everyone. First topic--the Go Bag:

• When the speaker had everyone list the contents of their Go Bag, it was just as he said it would be--no two bags had the same contents.
• Your Go Bag needs to be specifically tailored to YOUR needs, not based off of a list for anyone else (ie: medical people included scrubs and medical equipment that they would use for work, those who would be out and about during an incident were very specific about the firearms/ammo they would need, CEOs considered a portable hard drive with all of their corporate info backed up on it essential, etc).
• Your Go Bag should allow you to take care of ALL of your needs for 48-96 hours. Many people grab their Go Bag during a disaster and then they are off to help others. You cannot help others who are lacking food/water/medicines/shelter/etc. if you don't have enough food, water, medicine, or shelter to take care of yourself. If you don't have these items, you will be in the same situation as the people you are there to help.
• Your Go Bag should be tailored to the place/region you will be in.
• It is common practice to dump out, revise, and repack your Go Bag each season and/or before a deployment to various parts of the world.
• Everyone had more than one Go Bag; one for the car, one for the home, and one for the office. Be sure to keep your home Go Bag in an outside shed or near the door of your home/garage. Should the building be destroyed, you won't have to dig too deep into the structure to find your bag.
• Keep a written checklist of the contents of your Go Bag. This is good for quick packing and to ensure that you don't forget anything. Be sure to revise your checklist regularly.
• Be sure to add to your bag: a spare set of keys, a handwritten contact list, a power inverter which you can plug into any car lighter to charge your cell/radio/etc, copies of all of your important documents (passport, insurance, birth certificate), etc.
• PPEs are becoming more and more necessary: rubber gloves, masks, and eye protection are the basics.
• On a side note, we got into chatting about home preparedness and while I have the requisite 5 gallon bucket with plastic bags and a tight lid to use for a latrine if needed, one guy suggested adding cat litter to the set up--it allows you to use the bucket longer between bag changes and reduces the smell (just shake the contents a bit).