This month, New York City released its after action report detailing what worked well and what needs to be improved based on the city’s preparations, mitigations, response, and recovery. The report acknowledges that “This report is not intended to be the final word on the City’s response to Hurricane Sandy, nor are the recommendations made here intended to exclude consideration of additional measures the City and other stakeholders could take to be prepared for the next emergency.”

As the report notes, “The City’s response to Hurricane Sandy began well before the storm and continues today, but [the City is] far enough away from the immediate events of October and November 2012 to evaluate the City’s performance to understand what went well and—as another hurricane season approaches—what can be improved.” It’s pretty amazing that NYC is willing to release an AAR before the incident is “closed-out” in order to improve preparedness for this upcoming hurricane season. NYC government should be applauded for understanding how important it is to use Hurricane Sandy as a feedback loop in order to inform and advance planning for future natural disasters.

Through my quick read of the report, the following on some important points to consider.

• NYC Coastal Storm Plan: “The current iteration of the City’s formal preparations for a coastal storm began in 2000 with the release of the Coastal Storm Plan (CSP), a collection of programs to prepare and respond to a storm, including evacuation, sheltering, and logistics planning” (page 4). Notice how they explain that the CSP is a collection of programs– not just plans. Programs are living entities that (hopefully) evolve, mature, and improve. Plans have a tendency to just sit on a shelf.
• Continuous Improvement: Significant adjustments were made to the CSP following Hurricane Irene in 2011. The programs included in the CSP evaluated their performance after the last major incident and made improvements.
• Feedback Loop: “To help understand why people in Coastal Storm Plan Evacuation Zone A chose to evacuate (or not), the City conducted a survey in English and Spanish to ask about New Yorkers’ overall awareness of evacuation zones, how they received information about evacuation zones and severe weather, and their confidence in the City’s guidance to evacuate or shelter in place.” (page 4) 
• The AAR generated 59 recommendations, six core areas, and seven themes (this is slightly confusing). Six core areas are: (i) communications; (ii) general and healthcare facility evacuations; (iii) public safety; (iv) general and special medical needs sheltering; (v) response and recovery logistics; and (vi) community recovery services.
• Seven themes:

1. Improved evacuation, including updated evacuation zones and better, clearer communication to help New Yorkers 

   understand how to protect themselves from the risk of

   severe weather. 

2. Improved accessibility of all coastal storm-related information and services to make them available to all New Yorkers, including persons with disabilities or special medical needs, homebound populations, non-English speakers, and undocumented immigrants

3. Better integration of the City’s data across platforms and agencies to increase situational awareness and allow more targeted, efficient response and recovery operations.
4. Additional capacity to respond to large-scale building inundation and loss of power, including pre-storm identification of the equipment and skilled resources likely to be needed for building restoration and better coordination with private building owners.
5. Better coordination of relief to affected areas and to vulnerable or homebound populations, including more efficient deployment of volunteers and donations to residents and business owners.
6. The development of a mid- to long-term housing plan for New Yorkers displaced by damage from coastal storms.
7. Partnership with the federal and state authorities that regulate and enforce standards for private companies and utilities that provide essential services to New York City residents.

• Communications (Page 6)

• Yikes! Notify NYC only has 165,000 registered users (out of 8.3 million residents, or 1.99% of NYC residents). For comparison, Portland, Oregon has 137,000 self-registered users of its emergency notification system and its population is 600,000 (or 23% of residents).

• The City became the first local municipality in the country to use the Commercial Mobile Alert System (CMAS), an emergency text message service created by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to send text messages to all equipped cell phones in a designated geographical area regardless of phone carrier service or origin. The City used CMAS three times during Sandy, starting at noon on October 28 after the Mayor announced the mandatory Zone A evacuation and twice on October 29 between 8:30 and 9:30 PM during the height of the storm.
• Recommendations:
  1. Further expand capacity of 311 call-taking during emergencies.
  • Implement a redundant call routing solution to ensure continuity of 311 call-taking.
  • Establish an alternate location for 311 call-takers.
  • Expand the use of cloud-based mapping solutions to support emergency activity.2. Formalize and expand regular updates to elected officials and community partners.
  • Update and collect the specific documents(PDFs) that are most relevant to the emergency for circulation, including agency documents such as building electrical
  recertification forms. Develop versions of critical documents for wide distribution that can be read by software used by people with visual disabilities.

  3. Standardize City communications by creating a template for flyers, adaptable logos, standard language, and translations to facilitate faster communications

• General and Healthcare Facility Evaluations (page 8)
• Only the second general population evacuation in the City’s history, the evacuation order required 375,000 New Yorkers to leave their homes and communities in advance of the storm. Many residents of Zone A heeded the evacuation order and left. However, thousands of people did not leave the evacuation zone; tragically, 43 New Yorkers lost their lives to the storm.
• While there were no deaths associated with healthcare evacuations in connection with that storm, the challenges posed by the evacuation were a focus of the City’s after action review of Hurricane Irene storm response
• Sandy’s unprecedented storm surge caused widespread power outages and flooding that ultimately compromised the ability of five hospitals and approximately 30 residential facilities to shelter in place throughout the storm and its aftermath.
• The City is revising its hurricane evacuation zones for the 2013 hurricane season. The new zones 1 through 6—which will replace Zones A, B, and C—include an additional 640,000 New Yorkers not included within the boundaries of the former zones.
• The New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA) strengthened its communications plan after Hurricane Irene. In advance of Sandy, NYCHA made 33,000 calls to 19,000 families, posted flyers in multiple languages, and worked with the NYPD to make announcements with bullhorns from marked vehicles with flashing lights in order to encourage residents to evacuate before elevators and other building systems were
  powered down. NYCHA and the NYPD also provided 200 buses to help residents evacuate and continued to transport residents outside of Zone A until it was no longer safe for first responders to be on the roads
• Residents who receive an instruction to evacuate are only slightly more likely to evacuate: 88% of Zone A residents surveyed knew that they lived in a hurricane evacuation zone, and 78% knew that they lived in Zone A. In addition, 71% of Zone A residents reported hearing an announcement to evacuate from a public official. Yet those who knew they lived in a vulnerable area and received an official instruction to evacuate were only slightly more likely to evacuate than a resident who reported that they did not receive such an instruction (78% vs. 68%).
• The most significant factors contributing to a decision not to evacuate include a belief that the storm would not be strong enough to pose a danger (22%); a belief that the resident’s home was sufficiently elevated to prevent flooding (11%); and a general belief that the resident’s home was well built (8%). Of those surveyed, 29% reported evacuating after the storm. Among residents who evacuated before or after the storm, 67% evacuated for more than 48 hours, 78% stayed with friends, and 2% stayed at a City evacuation shelter

• In total, City and State officials helped safely evacuate approximately 6,300 patients from 37 different healthcare facilities without a single fatality

• Healthcare “facilities were repatriated as they came back online, but this process was not as orderly as it should have been because there are no guidelines for healthcare facilities to reopen after an evacuation, such as a structural certification from the Department of Buildings (DOB), letters from certified contractors to verify essential utility connections, and inspection from the relevant healthcare oversight entity.” TJ Note: The word “repatriated” is often used for human remains and refugees–perhaps “reconstituted” would be a more descriptive term…
• Recommendations include developing a patient tracking system
• Public Safety (page 12)

• The City’s 911 emergency call-taking system reached its highest hourly call volume ever—20,000 calls per hour—during Hurricane Sandy and received more calls during one 24-hour period between 3:00 PM on October 29 and 3:00 PM on October 30 than on September 11, 2001 or during the 2003 blackout, the two highest call periods prior to Sandy.

• During and after the storm, the NYPD Special Operations division and FDNY water rescue teams used prepositioned personnel and equipment in Staten Island, Brooklyn, and Queens to rescue more than 2,200 people
• Once the storm subsided, FDNY and NYPD conducted grid searches of more than 31,000 homes and businesses to locate and assist people in severely affected areas

• Nearly 630,000 Con Edison and Long Island Power Authority (LIPA) customer accounts—more than 1.5 million people—were without power… Fallen trees brought outages to approximately 70% of customers served by overhead power lines in the Bronx, Brooklyn, Queens, and Staten Island

• NYPD provided traffic management and intersection control in areas without functioning traffic signals for weeks after the storm, though the number of intersections with signals without power immediately after the storm—more than 3,500—exceeded the number of available traffic enforcement agents. The NYPD quickly mobilized 1,200 Police Academy recruits to augment traffic control measures at key intersections
• Key recommendation:Establish a Dewatering and Generator Task Force and Action Plan to activate in advance of an approaching storm that will collect and use detailed information about buildings in flood-prone areas to expedite recovery.
  • Develop a plan to address environmental contamination in dewatering and debris removal.
  • Develop street siting and permitting criteria for large temporary generators and boilers.
  • Identify goods for a strategic stockpile and/or establish emergency contracts for additional critical resources
  such as generators, boilers, and electrical switchgear.
  • To the extent necessary, contract for emergency on-call electricians for generator installation and post-disaster assessments, and for on-call plumbers to install boilers.
  • Add generator operations and maintenance and GPS locators to the standard scope of work for generator contracting to help track location and placement in areas with poor communications connectivity.
• Sheltering (page 16)
• The majority of people seeking shelter arrived by October 30, immediately after the storm passed.
• The City’s communal shelters are designed as temporary places for people to seek safety and are not intended to provide food and accommodations for longer than three days—a far shorter duration than the time that many people could not return to their homes due to flood damage and the extended power outages caused by
  Sandy’s storm surge.
• Evacuation Centers also lack resources such as showers and laundry facilities; when possible, the City opened nearby recreational facilities with showers
• Key recommendation: Make charging stations for wheelchairs and scooters available to people with disabilities.

• Key recommendation: Plan on full-scale sheltering operations longer than 3-5 days
• From October 28 to November 19, the eight Special Medical Needs Shelters served a total of 2,236 evacuees. Among those served were approximately 1,800 residents of chronic care facilities who were unable to shelter in place due to inadequate backup power to maintain a safe environment for residents or other damage to their facilities, and who could not be placed at other nursing homes or adult care facilities
• Response and Recovery Logistics, Utilities, and Infrastructure (page 18)

• Some data was immediately available to guide recovery efforts. For example, water usage data immediately before the storm from DEP’s automated meter readers (AMR) gave an indication of which households may not have evacuated before the storm. Internet-based applications such as GasBuddy supplemented on-the-ground intelligence from NYPD about fuel availability

• Key recommendation: Formalize how building inspectors share building status information with social service providers that respond to resident needs
• Beginning Sunday November 4, the City worked with the National Guard, the federal Defense Logistics Agency, the federal Department of Energy, and the National Park Service to set up a fueling operation at Floyd Bennett Field for City vehicles and other critical recovery personnel. Along with two satellite locations, more than 25,000 emergency and essential vehicles obtained fuel through this partnership
• Waived environmental protections: For the general public, the City worked with the State to temporarily waive sulfur content requirements for fuel consumption and to ease fuel transportation restrictions into and within the five boroughs. The City also worked with the federal government to suspend the Jones Act to allow tankers originating from foreign countries to supply fuel from refineries along the Gulf of Mexico, and to temporarily waive federal Environmental Protection Agency requirements that are specific to dense, urban environments, allowing fuel consumed outside of New York to be consumed within the city. 
• The Mayor issued high-occupancy vehicle (HOV) restrictions on the river crossings into Manhattan on November 1 and November 2. To alleviate persistent fuel lines, on November 9 Mayor Bloomberg issued an odd/even license plate fuel rationing system that remained in place until November 24, when the City’s fuel supply infrastructure had been largely restored
• Key recommendation: Create a Fuel Task Force, modeled after the Downed Tree Task Force (the inter-agency tree removal group), to ensure adequate fuel for rescue and recovery operations.• Add a fuels desk to OEM’s Emergency Operations Center.
  • Formalize and expand DCAS/NYPD partnerships with retail gas stations.
  • Build federal and state support and create a “playbook” for regulatory relief during fuel shortages.
  • Protect and standardize eligibility for use of City fueling sites.
  • Research options and viability of creating local emergency fuel reserves.

• Sandy generated an estimated 700,000 tons of storm debris, including construction and demolition debris, sand, concrete, and more than 27,000 tons of woody debris from nearly 20,000 downed trees and limbs

• Planning for Woody Debris Removal and Safe Storage: Woody debris from downed trees and limbs is cleared and stored separately from household and other debris because it poses increased fire risks and has the potential to spread Asian beetle infestations. The natural decomposition of wood chips causes temperatures to rise within the debris pile, creating a risk of combustion, which occurred last year during the Hurricane Irene cleanup
• Cars and Boats:

• Widespread coastal flooding also damaged 10,000 recreational boats and 100,000 personal vehicles, many of which were carried by floodwaters onto streets, sidewalks, and private property.

• Although the City regularly tows vehicles for parking violations, it did not have a plan to manage a tow operation of this scale. Within 10 days after the storm, the City had put a contract in place to tow and store damaged cars and boats, and had instituted a process for the public to locate and reclaim their property. In total, the City towed approximately 3,400 cars and 180 boats, including 60 derelict boats that washed up on City parks in Staten Island. 
• Community Recovery Services (page 25)
• The Mayor’s Fund to Advance New York City supplemented this food distribution by partnering with the NYC Food Truck Association to give out more than 278,000 free hot meals at several locations starting November 6 in coordination with borough Community Recovery Directors and OEM, and by purchasing and coordinating the donation of groceries including fresh produce and nonperishables.
• Key recommendation: Develop a Food and Water Distribution Task Force and Action Plan to systematize the City’s response operations and ensure that they are activated before a coastal storm
  
  
  
• Key recommendation: Develop a vulnerable populations/homebound doorto-door service Task Force and Action Plan that includes specific operational timelines and leverages community groups and other advocacy organizations, as well as state
  and federal resources. This plan will leverage the work of the Mayor’s Office of Data Analytics and improved staff training to coordinate data collection and sharing.
• Volunteers utilized: Volunteers, including the NYC Community Emergency Response Team (CERT), corporate groups, individuals, and community organizations knocked on doors, mucked out homes, cleaned up parks, and staffed grassroots neighborhood distribution centers

• Business Resumption: The City, through the New York City Industrial Development Authority (IDA), also issued emergency sales tax letters to waive up to $100,000 in New York City and New York State sales taxes for up to 250 businesses on materials purchased for recovery efforts.

At the end of the report, the City details the results of the survey they distributed after Sandy. The results are incredible–probably worth another article.

Photo Credit: Boston Globe

The cowardly bombings near the finish line at the Boston Marathon on Monday were a shock to many of us and a reminder of past bombings on American soil, such as the 1996 Centennial Olympic Park bombing in Atlanta, GA and the May 2010 Times Square  vehicle-borne improvised explosive device (IED).

As social media becomes a standard communications platform, the capacity and capability for first responders to send messages to the public is greatly increased.

Shortly after the IEDs detonated in Boston (at 10:38 in the recording above), an unidentified police commander got on the radio and began giving orders. “We’re going to get the victims out, we’re then going to conduct a sweep with EOD assets… we will then get people out of the restaurants and bars. I need somebody up there to get on social media and let people know what we’re doing here–that we’re sweeping the streets to make sure it’s safe first, and then we’ll get them out of the bars once we get it swept.”

Social media is a communications tool we didn’t have on 9/11 or in Atlanta. From its beginning in March 2006, Twitter has proliferated daily life. Twitter alone transmits about 340 million messages daily–almost 4,000 tweets per second! It is obvious that social media is an excellent way to communicate directly with victims and survivors–especially during notorious incidents in which it is likely that cellphone networks will be overloaded and, thus, unreliable.

It is no surprise that the Boston Police commander asked for social media. What is surprising, however, is how quickly he made the order. Immediately after ordering police officers to remove the victims and ordering the EOD teams to begin sweeping the area, the BPD commander asked for BPD headquarters to begin using social media!

This instance should serve as a case study for future incident commanders at recognizing the need to involve survivors and victims in their own outcome. Instantly ordering communications with the public using non-traditional methods (opposed to typically filtering messages from a public information officer) can create calm and assist in developing a common operating picture.

As the emergency management and public safety field continues to better understand and better implement social media, we will continue to see novel uses of instantaneous, two-way communication between public safety agencies and the public. For instance, following the bombings, law enforcement have requested videos and pictures from the public of the area surrounding the explosions. That’s right, we’re actually using crowdsourcing for terrorist investigations.

Although the head of public information for the DC Fire Department famously ridiculed social media, telling reporters “Social media is for parties. We ain’t givin’ no parties,” it is clear that social media is a powerful response and recovery tool for first responders. Simply, our new motto might be, “social media is for two-way communication, we need two-way communication in emergencies.”

—

The citizens and first responders of Boston made our country very proud the other day. As a country and as a field, we mourn the tragedy and the loss of life and the terrible injuries. The men and women of law enforcement, the fire service, emergency medical providers, and all other agencies that ran towards the explosions should feel proud of how they handled themselves–all the rest of us can learn a lot from how well Boston responded under the most perilous of circumstances. Well done.

I write a monthly emergency preparedness article in the local newspaper (ChevyChase.Patch.com). Here’s the link to my February article. I’ve also copied it below:

Statistics released by the US Secret Service reveal that the majority of active shooter incidents are preventable. Do you know the warning signs?

In 2002, the US Secret Service and the US Department of Education released a report that examined school shootings and attacks from 1974 to 2000 with a focus on “identifying pre-attack behaviors and communications that might be detectable–or “knowable”–and could help in preventing some future attacks.”

The findings included:

• There is no accurate or useful “profile” of students who engaged in targeted school violence
• Almost three-quarters of the attackers felt persecuted, bullied, threatened, attacked or injured by others prior to the incident
• 98% of attackers “experienced or perceived some major loss prior to the attack”, including loss of social status, loss of a loved one or the end of a romantic relationship, or experiencing a major illness (either personally or in a relative)
• 93% of attackers planned their attack
• Over 90% of attackers exhibited behavior prior to the attack that the attacker had a plan or was preparing to execute an attack
• In over 80% of school attacks, the attacker told at least one person about his plans. In close to 60% of school attacks, the attacker told more than one person about his plans.

In essence, school shooters do not cleanly fit the stereotype many of us have for a school shooter. Many of us assume that most active shooters come from broken families, have poor grades, have a history of suffering from mental illness, secretly develop their plans to attack a school, and lack friends.

In fact, most school shooters come from two-parent families, have good grades (only 5% of violent students receive failing grades), and only a third of school shooters were characterized as “loners”. This means that two-thirds of shooters are have friends and regularly socialize.

Students who plan attacks on their schools are usually not known to have psychiatric issues leading up to the attack. In fact, the Secret Service report explains that “fewer than one-fifth had been diagnosed with mental health or behavior disorder prior to the attack”.

The conclusion we can reasonably reach is that the stereotypical profile of a school attacker is a myth. As a community, we need to be ever vigilant for signs and symptoms that could alert us to a student planning an attack. In over 80% of school attacks, the attacker told at least one person about his plans. In close to 60% of school attacks, the attacker told more than one person about his plans.

This means that about four-fifths of school attacks could be prevented if students, siblings, and parents called 911 when they hear about a student planning an attack. It seems incredible, but when most people hear about plans for a school attack, they go into denial. They don’t want to be the one who reports a student, they don’t want to cause the student to “get in trouble”, and they simply don’t want to get involved. In one school shooting, 24 students knew about the attack before it took place!

The most important school shooting prevention tip is to immediately report if you suspect or hear of any plans that a student has to attack a school. If you call 911, you can request to remain anonymous.

As Montgomery County Police Officer Rebecca Innocenti explains, anyone who suspects an attack on a school should “err on the side of caution and give police a call.” For those that do not feel comfortable calling 911, the non-emergency line for the Montgomery County Police Department is 301-279-8000.

Although there are six full-time police officers in Montgomery County that serve as “school resource officers”, the SROs oftentimes cover multiple schools at once. Students, parents, or any other concerned party should not wait until they see an SRO to report a planned attack–always immediately call police or tell a school administrator.

Since over 90% of school attackers exhibit warning signs, we must be mindful of potential warning signs. Warning signs developed by the FBI in 2011 include:

• Boasts, predictions, and subtle threats; stories, essays, poems, and pictures; violent fantasies; and interest in violent video games, movies, and books
• Depression, anger, impulsive and uncontrollable behavior
• Poor coping skills
• Low frustration tolerance
• Grudges, lack of resiliency
• “Us against them” mentality, narcissism
• Boastfulness about weapons, abusive language
• Suicidal ideation, wishes of death, desire to kill others
• Delusions, hallucinations, bizarre thoughts
• History of physical assault
• Perpetrator or victim of bullying
• Substance abuse
• Rebellion against authority
• Isolated, withdrawn
• Chronic or acute fatigue

Anyone who observes one or more of these signs should immediately report the student to 911 or a school administrator–our only hope of keeping our schools and kids safe is to ensure our community is advised of warning signs and remains actively vigilant.

For more information on how to survive an active shooter incident, please see my previous post in the Chevy Chase Patch about active shooters.

* * *

Todd Jasper is a federal emergency manager and has been happy to call Chevy Chase home since 2008. His emergency management blog is www.toddjasper.com.

Just in time for the holidays!

This month’s article stretched over two pages in the Bulletin, so I’ve pasted the text below:

Maintaining Resiliency and Shaping Discourse Following a False Alarm

By Todd J. Jasper

On a Thursday night in October 2011, the University of Maryland (UMD) sent three urgent warnings through a variety of methods to campus personnel about an imminent tornado. As sirens sounded on the UMD campus, students huddled in hallways and concerned parents feared for the worst. “#Terps,” an official tweet announced, “A tornado is forecast to hit the campus within the next 13 minutes. Seek shelter immediately.” Although no tornado actually formed, UMD still had a problem on its hands. The tornado warning was a false alarm.

Despite the fact that the National Weather Service never issued a tornado warning for the area, the University issued its own warnings out of an overabundance of caution. After the false alarm in 2011, the UMD community and the media crucified the university for sending the alert. UMD was accused of “crying wolf”, generating “hype”, and acting prematurely.

False alarms can take many different forms (such as the non-existent tornado at UMD, a fire alarm that sounds when there is no fire, or even a student who is seen walking with a rifle that turns out to be an umbrella). Almost all false alarms hurt the credibility of the agency sending the message and then retracting it. The emergency management and risk communication field relies on constituents’ trust in the senders in order to motivate the public to act when a hazard is imminent. This symbiotic relationship between message senders and message recipients is crucial to maintaining institutional resiliency. The consequences for every false alarm are, unfortunately, not simply limited to any one specific incident; but rather, constitute a threat to the resiliency and future efficacy of the sending agency (and even other jurisdictions).

If we use the DHS Risk Lexicon definition of resiliency as the “ability to adapt to changing conditions and prepare for, withstand, and rapidly recover from disruption”, then it is clear that false alarms serve as a disruption within the normal emergency notification system. Indeed, Major and Erwin’s 1998 article (“Exploring the ‘Cry Wolf’ Hypothesis” in the International Journal of Mass Emergencies and Disasters) finds that “individuals who have experienced predictions of disasters that do not materialize will discount the validity of subsequent disaster warnings.”

From a resiliency standpoint, every false alarm must be considered a disruption in need of remedy in order to mitigate cascading effects false alarms have on the efficacy of future emergency notifications, alerts, and warnings. Through experience and research, the following three points are crucial action items for emergency managers and risk communicators:

Emergency Notification Protocols are a Must-Have

Most agencies and organizations are lucky if they have pre-scripted messages available for the most common incidents. Pre-scripted (or “canned”) messages are helpful for establishing tone, consistency, and avoiding unnecessary emergency management jargon. Even more helpful, though, are emergency notification protocols that explicitly state a framework for when, why, and how emergency notifications will be made. Designing, developing, and then (most importantly!) exercising and training with emergency notification protocols is the most proactive approach to preventing the dissemination of unfounded emergency notifications. If we can prevent false alarms, we can negate the need for recovery from a false alarm.

We all understand that false alarms will occur eventually, but having emergency notification protocols as a justification for sending an alert can provide the media and others critical of the incident a reasonable and logical explanation. Although policies and protocols are not infallible, explaining to an inconvenienced constituency that the system worked as intended (through the use of established and trained protocols) is usually is a compelling response. It is likely that the media will question the appropriateness of the protocols–but that is the first step of shaping the public discourse.

Retract the Warning Immediately

As soon as it is clear that the warning was made in error, the agency or organization should retract the warning using the same means and methods use to distribute the false alarm. Not all retractions are equal. The best retractions state the reason for the false alarm in very simple language, should provide specific guidance for the future, and a method for obtaining additional information. For example, the following retraction accomplishes all of the aforementioned pointed: “The National Weather Service has cancelled the tornado warning at [insert specific time/date]. It is no longer necessary to shelter-in-place. Please be cautious on the roads and be alert for any other weather warnings or watches that may occur in the future. For more information, …”.

Use a False Alarm as an Opportunity for Improvement

False alarms are essentially no-notice full-scale exercises with constituents participating in real-time. While a false alarm is no one’s idea of a good time, it is an opportunity to connect with your constituency in a positive manner. It is a perfect time to spread preparedness guidance, such as “although today’s warning was cancelled, it may be the perfect motivation to check on your emergency supplies, review your family’s emergency plan, and get more information on what to do if today’s threat had been real.”

Additionally, following a false alarm, agencies and organizations should clearly review protocols and procedures for distributing a warning. Any corrective actions should be captured in an after-action report and improvement plan.

The Way Forward

Although false alarms should be rare, it is better to have a false alarm than to delay sending an alert only to discover the threat was real and the public could have been warned sooner. UMD received significant criticism about their premature tornado warning, but their intentions were nothing but honest and good. Ten years prior to the false alarm, two sisters were killed when a tornado tore a destructive path through the UMD campus. At that time, UMD had no warning system.

This month’s article stretched over two pages in the Bulletin, so I’ve pasted the text below:

Emerging Technology for Safeguarding Soft Targets

As technology advances and prices decrease, the emergency management field must collectively look to the next generation of innovative technologies and strategies to safeguard America’s soft targets.

 As a movie played in the background, James Holmes snuck out the rear theater exit and propped the door open. He exited the movie theater, walked to his pre-positioned vehicle, dressed in body armor, and calmly collected his weapons. The tragic act of domestic terrorism that occurred moments later in Aurora, Colorado is a heartbreaking example of attacks against soft targets. Soft targets are everywhere and when they suffer attacks, the results are devastating. More can be done to protect soft targets, but it often comes at a high price.

As technology advances and prices decrease, the emergency management field must collectively look to the next generation of innovative technologies and strategies to safeguard America’s soft targets.

DEFINING SOFT TARGETS

Unless living on a military installation or in a prison, we all spend considerable amounts of time in locations that are considered soft targets. Emergency managers consider soft targets as any area primarily used by civilians that is undefended, unprotected, or under-protected against attack. Soft targets typically have open access points and lax security measures. They afford terrorists a low risk of failure and a high probability of “shock value” when the attack is covered in the media. Although soft targets are not usually selected for their symbolic value, they can be–which leads to attacks on soft targets being highly unpredictable.

Schools, movie theaters, places of worship, restaurants, transit hubs, universities, malls, and hotels are all examples of soft targets. The innocence of these locations coupled with the randomness and unpredictability of attacks on those institutions make assaults on soft targets even more memorable. Who can forget Columbine, Aurora, the Sikh Temple in Wisconsin, the Sbarro suicide-bombing in Israel, the train station bombings in Madrid, the Virginia Tech Massacre, the Salt Lake City Mall shooting, and the 2008 attacks on two hotels in Mumbai, India? The trauma of such barbarism in places of routine safety etches an enduring scar on our memories and challenges the safety and security we try to foster in our communities.

Due to the understandable budget-restraints of soft targets, the following emerging techniques, technologies, and methodologies are tailored specifically for soft targets as cost-savings measures.

TRAINING AND AWARENESS

The least expensive form of improving security at soft target locations is providing training and outreach to employees, customers, and other visitors. Training employees is terrific, but participating in awareness campaigns for the public and visitors to soft targets is a “force multiplier”. In other words, instead of a dozen or so employees looking for suspicious behavior, potentially dozens or hundreds of customers are encouraged to report untoward circumstances. Much like anything in emergency management, creativity goes a long way and partnerships, ingenuity, and robust training/awareness programs can make the difference between safety and tragedy. The national “See Something, Say Something” campaign has been widely publicized for encouraging the public to report suspicious persons, activity, packages, or other circumstances. Soft targets should consider participating in awareness campaigns to encourage the public to report suspicious activity–vigilance should not end at the ticket booth or the schoolhouse steps.

MAXIMIZING DETERRENTS

Because of a lack of resources, many soft targets are lucky to have an unmonitored surveillance systems or a couple of security guards. Soft targets can maximize the deterrent effect of surveillance systems or security guards through several innovative yet inexpensive methods. To make surveillance cameras more noticeable, several jurisdictions (such as the Chicago Police Department) have installed cameras with conspicuous flashing blue lights. Using lights to draw attention to the security cameras is a low-cost but high-visibility method to increase the deterrent effect of the cameras–especially at night when a surveillance camera might be near invisible.

Additionally, security guards can be made more noticeable by issuing bright, neon reflective vests and jackets. Police officers in Britain are famous for wearing highly-reflective vests and trench coats. The memorable attire advertises presence and hopefully deters those with malicious intent from carrying out an attack in the area. In the same vein, many security vehicles are now being outfitted with strobes and other lighting packages that are constantly activated to advertise roving presence. Since early this year, the Philadelphia Police Department has used always-on blue and red lights on their light bars to improve police visibility. For a very low-cost, the increased visibility is substantial.

CRIME PREVENTION THROUGH ENVIRONMENTAL DESIGN (CPTED)

Strong environmental design with a concentration on security can be cost-effective and efficient in reducing the attractiveness of a soft target. Through the use of open floor plans, reducing blind spots, and improving lighting, soft targets can improve “natural surveillance”. Natural surveillance is the concept that areas can be made easily observed–and thus reduces the likelihood of attacks–by providing adequate lighting, pathways, fencing, and other design-based components.

Many CPTED concepts are relatively inexpensive and can improve safety and security. Improved lighting and lines-of-sight can draw attention to unattended packages and can even serve to deter potential attackers. CPTED doctrine is advanced and can offer many other benefits. Soft targets should consider performing a physical assessment to determine if CPTED concepts could be successfully implemented to improve security.

ACCESS CONTROL

As the Aurora massacre demonstrated, access control can be the difference between life and death. Sneaking through emergency exits, circumventing common pathways, and propping open exterior doors are all examples of failing to control access points.Soft targets are characteristically easily accessible and can lack alarmed exits. A simple way to reduce a soft target’s desirability is to reduce the number of active egress/ingress routes. This can be done in a variety of ways: by installing door and window alarms or key-card access systems, installing barriers to keep vehicles away from a structure or gathering area, and implementing security checkpoints (both high- and low-tech) for an added layer of deterrence. In addition to physical access control, information access should also be monitored closely; maps, facilities layouts, and other resources should be controlled and only those with a need-to-know should be allowed access.

CONCLUSION

While improving security and deterring the potential for attack has traditionally been regarded as a resource-intensive process, this article demonstrates how low-cost solutions can be strategically implemented to minimize resources and maximize opportunity. By implementing outreach and training, employing simple design improvements, increasing visibility, and specifically regulating access control, soft targets can decrease vulnerability and reduce their attractiveness to potential attackers. When seconds count and lives are in danger, it just might be that an inexpensive protective measure can save lives and prevent tragedy.