1. Apps are popular

In June 2013, the Pew Research Center reported its findings that 56% of Americans have smartphones capable of downloading apps–up from just 35% in 2011. Additionally, the number of Americans without a cell phone is down to just 9% of the population. According to research from New Relic, the average smartphone has over three dozen apps (forty-one to be exact) and the average smartphone user checks her phone 150 times per day with 127 minutes per day spent on apps. It is estimated that by the end of 2013, there will be 1.82 billion active smartphones globally and within the next two years, almost 100 billion apps are predicted to have been downloaded by smartphone users.

2. Keep your constituents informed

Unlike a webpage, when content or information is updated in an app, the app can send an alert to the smartphone user to acknowledge the update (also called “push” alerts). During an emergency, it is possible to also send direct messages to users through the app. While not robust enough for a sole means of emergency notification, push alerts or push notifications can be one of the tools emergency managers use for notifying the public. Additionally, if your agency includes plans in its app, app users will always have the most up-to-date plans. When posted on the internet, users can sometimes stumble upon an older version of a plan that has been saved by a search engine or re-posted by local groups, etc. With an app, there is unfiltered access to the most up-to-date information (without the fear of cached versions of older plans recirculating during an emergency).

3. Productivity without connectivity

When disconnected from wifi or wireless data feeds, apps can still function because they have the ability to save information to a user’s smartphone from the previous time an update was downloaded or a connection was available. If your agency wishes to provide any type of guidance for constituents if wireless connectivity is degraded, apps are a good solution. For items like evacuation routes, shelter guides, checklists, and other steady-state documentation, the apps can include those documents and simply update any of the documentation when the user connects to the internet–yet still maintains a copy on the user’s smartphone for when internet connectivity is unavailable.

4. Longer Reach

Since almost all smartphone users keep their phones nearby (how else would they be able to check their phones 150 times per day?), the smartphone is a better targeted device for distributing information than a laptop or desktop computer. Apps are built for ease of use–especially in transit or on the go. For emergency managers, our intended audience during an emergency are those constituents who can be empowered with the right information to help themselves and their community. Oftentimes, information is needed immediately–not when a person can find a computer nearby. Thus, the app is a perfect way of presenting actionable, executable information in a timely manner in a reliable format.

5. Deeper Integration

As the operating systems (OS) of mobile devices become more advanced, apps are becoming better integrated with other programs on smartphones, such as maps, the address book, GPS, text messaging, and social media. The benefit of emergency management apps would be the deeper integration with other platforms. In a large-scale disaster, an emergency management app could open up a smartphone’s maps app to plot a course to safety. Once safe, an emergency management app could recommend using social media (rather than a phone call–which ties up limited bandwidth) to let family members and friends know that the user is safe. Deeper integration with reminders, calendar appointments, and other future mobile platform developments can serve to promote preparedness, enhance dynamic, safe responses, and encourage more robust recovery from disaster.

While not every emergency management agency is ready to release their own app, agencies such as Washington, DC’s Homeland Security and Emergency Management Agency (HSEMA), Virginia’s Department of Emergency Management (VDEM), and even FEMA have already released apps for specific uses during emergencies. Will your agency be next?

To assist in overseeing NPD’s complex mission, a deputy assistant administrator position for the Directorate is being established. Katie Fox will assume that responsibility.

Tony Russell, the superintendent of the Emergency Management Institute, will expand his portfolio, adding responsibility for all of NPD’s training and education services.

Donald “Doc” Lumpkins will assume new duties as the director of the National Integration Center (NIC), where he most recently administered the highly successful program Executive Office.

Carla Boyce will assume new duties as the director of the National Exercise Division, where she will bring her experience in administering the NIC and overseeing National Preparedness System implementation to the revamped National Exercise Program.

Finally, Dr. Keith Holtermann will assume new duties with FEMA’s Office of Response and Recovery.

(announcement above was adapted from the IAEM Website)

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.

Click here to listen to the interview (first 19 minutes)

Technology, Emergency Response & The Boston Bombings

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.

1. Know thine subject

• Don’t read off of slides, adults are capable of doing that without an instructor.
• Respect your audience’s time and intelligence by reviewing the material beforehand.
• If a question or topic comes up that you are not prepared to discuss or you are unable to provide an answer, simply say “that’s a good question, I’ll need to look up the correct answer at the break…”
• While it is necessary for you to know the subject you’re teaching, no one expects you to be infallible or to know everything.

2. Know thine audience

• Always be professional and take extra care to tailor your training to your audience.
• For example, don’t share a violent active shooter training video with parents at the PTA meeting–find a more informative and less stressful media presentation.
• At a training I recently attended, the presenter used gunshot sound effects at each slide transition–this was not only distracting but could have triggered an emotional response from audience members who have been in combat or other violent situations.
• During a CERT course I attended, one of the instructors was a firefighter and absentmindedly included training for skills that exceed CERT requirements–this wasn’t terrible, but the material should have been tailored for CERT rather than the fire service.
• Assume that someone in your audience might have an unintended emotional response to examples of violence, gore, profanity, etc.

3. Thou shall tell a story

• People love stories and case studies.
• Stories should be short, sweet, and relevant to the discussion.
• Stories can provide excellent reinforcement for lessons.
• Do not get off-topic and consumed with a long story (and do not drop names throughout a story).
• Do not tell inappropriate stories or stories that could embarrass/harm your and your agency’s reputation.

4. Thou shall not bear false witness (be honest)

• Be candid and sincere.
• Don’t tell a story that you don’t know to be true.

5. Thou shall be realistic

• Without being gratuitously violent, graphic, or profane, all training should be as realistic as possible to prepare students for what they will encounter in the real world.
• If the training you’re providing differs significantly from real world application, refer to the (previous) 4th Commandment.

6. Thou shall educate, thou shall NOT intimidate

• Resist the urge to frighten new students, it doesn’t make for a good learning environment.
• In emergency preparedness training, it is easy to cause fear in students. Doing so creates an emotional response in the students. People do not learn best when they have a strong emotional response to the course content. In the 2009 article “Stressed Memories: How Acute Stress Affects Memory Formation in Humans,” the authors explain that “During a stressful time, a person’s attention and emotional state may be affected which could hinder the ability to focus…”
• By presenting the course content in logical, reasonable, and non-harassing way, your students will feel more comfortable, be willing to ask questions, and share more during the course. Intimidation may work in boot camp but doesn’t have a place in most emergency preparedness classes (such as CPR, first aid, ICS courses, etc).

7. Thou shall NOT gratuitously show terrorists’/criminals’ pictures

• Unless it is necessary, refrain from using pictures of terrorists or other criminals during your presentations. Many of these killers want to be famous/infamous and spreading their image only helps them reach their goal. Instead, focus on the victims or the responders. The perpetrators should not be given undue publicity.
• You should use the photographs of terrorists/criminals if you have a need to do so. For example, you could show pictures of several active shooters and explain how they didn’t look like killers before their acts of violence and, thus, we really can’t stereotype what a killer looks like…

8. Thou shall be interactive and encourage thine audience to participate

• Don’t forget that when delivering training to adults, interactive training is important.
• The best classes include discussion and sharing from the audience that helps reinforce the course concepts.
• Ensure that there are specific times during the course that include audience participation.

9. Thou shall avoid unnecessary abbreviations & initialisms

• Oftentimes, in emergency management, it is easy to get carried away with abbreviations and initialisms (like HSEEP, ICS, IC, SitL, etc).
• Don’t assume everyone knows the definition of the terms you’re using. Make sure to define each one on first usage.
• Using too many abbreviations and initialisms can delay or limit comprehension–just be careful.

10. Thou shall be neither defensive nor offensive

• If you don’t know something–admit it. If you get corrected by a student, thank the student and make sure the class understands the correction. You’re an instructor, you’re not infallible. You’re not expected to know everything perfectly–neither are the students. Don’t get defensive. It’s a learning environment for everyone–including the instructors.
• Don’t be offensive. Don’t tell crude jokes–they are never as funny as you think they are. Don’t share offensive cartoons, videos, or any other media during the classroom breaks. At best, it gets a laugh. At worst, it triggers a complaint or (worse still) a lawsuit. Don’t make fun of students, other instructors, or do/say anything that could be considered politically incorrect. It simply is not worth it.

Above all else:

• Please be polite, courteous, helpful, thoughtful, kind, and professional. There are many opportunities for training and the emergency management field needs awesome instructors.

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.

After every school shooting, school administrators across the country pledge to review their lockdown plans. However, most people never learn the recommended response to active shooter incidents.

In October 2008, the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) developed training for the public regarding how to respond to active shooter incidents. The training was developed following the Virginia Tech massacre in 2007. The concepts behind the DHS-recommended active shooter responses are easy yet are all but unknown to most of the public. 

If you hear shots fired, you have a quick decision to make to save your life and the lives of those nearby. You must decide to do one of three options: (1) evacuate, (2) hide, or (3) take action.

EVACUATE: If you can safely leave the area, you should do so. There is no need to hide or stay around an area where there is a shooter if you can immediately evacuate the area. IT IS OK TO RUN!–you don’t need to stay in harm’s way to see what happens. Always take note of any exits or stairwells and have a plan of escape in mind. If you hear shots fired down the hall or in another area of the building, you may be able to immediately escape. Time is of the essence and you must make the decision to evacuate after listening to determine where the shots are coming from. As you leave the building, if you see law enforcement, make sure to show your hands and drop anything you may be carrying.

HIDE: If evacuation is not possible, you must hide. Barricade yourself in a room, if possible. Close and lock all doors and windows. Close any blinds or curtains and turn off the lights. Find a hiding spot that will conceal yourself. If possible, take cover behind items that can stop a bullet. In the military and law enforcement, anything that can stop a bullet is called “cover”. Types of cover include: four feet of dirt, a yard of wood (such as a large tree), 7 inches of concrete, and 1-inch of steel. 

A car door is not cover–but the engine block would stop a bullet. Also, walls in a building are unlikely to stop a bullet. Steel reinforced cinderblock walls may stop a bullet (as opposed to just cinderblocks–which will not stop a bullet) but may fragment and cause further injuries.

While hiding, silence any cell phones or pagers. You do not want to draw attention to yourself. Do not choose a hiding place that traps or restricts your options for movement. If police officers bang on the door and tell you to come out, you have some decisions to make. How do you know they are law enforcement and not the shooter? Some officers are trained to put their badge under the door so occupants know it is actually the police nearby. You may not want to yell back at law enforcement because that could give your position away to an impostor. Ultimately, it is your decision to make regarding whether you remain hiding or if you observe enough signs to reach the conclusion that it is safe to come out.

TAKE ACTION: Finally, as a last resort and only when your life is in imminent danger, take action against the shooter. Use whatever you can, such as a fire extinguisher, chairs, vases, or anything else to try to incapacitate the shooter. If possible, work as a team with others to stop the shooter. Act with physical aggression and do not stop until the shooter is unable to continue firing.

The City of Houston recently made a training video called “Run, Hide, Fight” to demonstrate the techniques I described above. Although I recommend that adults watch this training video, I must warn potential viewers that the video is graphic but not gory. The video shows an actor shooting several people at close range with a shotgun but there is no blood shown. Ideally, the video would be able to accomplish the same educational message without being gratuitously violent. I would NOT recommend this video for children to watch.

Additionally, when you make contact with law enforcement during an active shooter incident (either because you run towards them while you are trying to evacuate or they enter the room in which you are hiding, etc), ALWAYS SHOW YOUR HANDS. Police officers and sheriff deputies do not know that you are not the shooter. They do not know if there are multiple shooters. Do not be surprised if you are searched or questioned. Sometimes shooters have been known to hide among innocent victims in hopes of escaping capture. Law enforcement may be brisk and may run right past you without stopping. Remember, they are trained to respond to the sound of the shots being fired so that they can engage the shooter. Do not stop evacuating just because you see law enforcement. Always follow any instructions given to you by law enforcement. 

Notice how none of those options is “lockdown”? Lockdown procedures originated in prisons. If there was a disturbance or prison riot, the guards would lockdown the prison, extract any remaining guards, and wait for reinforcements to arrive to quell the riot. The lockdown procedures were not intended to protect inmates–but rather safely remove the guards and wait for reinforcements. It is common during prison riots for the guards to form a perimeter and wait for back-up. 

During the Columbine High School massacre in 1999, law enforcement across the country changed their tactics for responding to active shooter incidents. In 1999, the best practice for any type of hostage situation was to form a perimeter and wait for reinforcements to arrive (ideally a special weapons and tactics team–or SWAT). Columbine changed everything though. As patrol officers formed a perimeter, the two active shooters in Columbine never stopped firing. For many, Columbine was the first tragic introduction to active shooters. Rather than a hostage situation, where time is on the side of law enforcement and there is a standard operating procedure for bringing in trained negotiators, active shooter incidents are rapidly evolving situations with an individual actively engaged in killing or attempting to kill people in a confined and populated area. Often, there is no pattern or method to their selection of victims–the active shooter just wants to kill. 

Now, law enforcement officers are trained to immediately enter wherever the active shooter is and move to the sound of gunfire. They no longer turn to the old tactics of setting up a perimeter and we should all re-evaluate whether lockdown tactics are best for our schools, businesses, etc. Please understand that in some circumstances, lockdown procedures are appropriate. For elementary schools, it is unlikely that teachers may be able to herd young children out of the school if they hear shots fired (however, teachers should be trained that evacuation is an option). In hospitals, it may be impossible to move many patients quickly away from a shooter and the best solution for hospitals is often lockdown.

In conclusion, everyone must think about what they would do during an active shooter incident and talk to your friends and family about it as well. Ask if they know about “run, hide, fight” and if they know what to do if they hear shots fired. This information just might save lives.

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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!

By attending the sessions, having numerous conversations with emergency managers from across the country (and even a few from Canada), and engaging with others at the CTC, I noticed the following emerging themes from the conference:

1. Social media is a big topic, but lacks consistent implementation

Almost every session mentioned social media. Whether it was Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, blogs, photo-sharing sites, or other new technology, social media was constantly being mentioned. At the same time, it is clear that the emergency management field is still easing itself into the social media pool. For every social media enlightened emergency manager, I would estimate that there are about 10-15 that have no idea what social media is. In other words, the emergency manager that uses social media is still in the minority. Enterprising emergency managers, like those of us in the Crisis Technology Center, are trying to change that. Throughout the conference, the CTC answered countless questions and explained/demonstrated social media. While the field is definitely heading towards more open engagement with the communities we serve, new technology is still viewed with some skepticism.

In many ways, I think the reluctance of emergency managers to embrace social media is triggered more by differences in perspective regarding the role of emergency managers rather than simply a technology/generational divide. Personally, it seems like if you are an emergency manager that sees value in engaging with your constituents, you will embrace social media after overcoming the hurdles associated with new technology. On the other hand, if you don’t see the benefit of publicly discussing your job performance with the people that pay your salary, you may resist social media for as long as possible. Just a thought…

2. “Resiliency” is a buzzword, not a core competency

The title of this year’s conference was “resiliency”. I counted about 5-6 sessions that had “resiliency” in the title, but other than being mentioned in the title, sessions rarely mentioned the term again. In discussions I had with other emergency managers, resiliency was rarely mentioned. It seems like a good buzzword, but (as a field) we’re slowly adopting the topic and slowly growing to understand what resilience means to our programs and the whole community.

3. ”Whole Community” has a real following

While resiliency wasn’t discussed much, the “whole community” concept was given plenty of airtime (and rightfully so). I don’t think most emergency managers fully understand resiliency (I know I definitely struggle with it), but the “whole community” idea has caught on and has a serious following. The idea of encouraging regionalism, empowering local emergency managers, and acknowledging that the Feds don’t have ALL the answers is very attractive to our field. The concept makes sense and has a catchy name. Whereas resiliency can be somewhat ambiguous, “whole community” serves to represent enough of a departure from current practice that it has garnered a significant following. While some understand that resilience and whole community are intertwined–I think that would come as a surprise to many emergency managers.  The take-away here is that “whole community” has earned recognition and acceptance for which resiliency advocates could only hope…

4. Capability- and risk-based planning vs. all-hazards planning

Risk-based planning and resourcing is gaining traction and was mentioned considerably during many sessions and discussions. I’m not sure what the impetus is for the change. My guess for the change are one or more of the following reasons:

• Reductions in funding have changed local priorities from all-hazards plans to risk-specific planning. Rather than having general plans that cover many different topics, risk-based plans account for the incidents/damages that are most likely to impact your community.
• It is too difficult to explain “all-hazards” planning to community members and elected officials who think we ought to just have very specific plans to address obvious risks
• With the new THIRA process, the focus has clearly shifted to identifying and quantifying risk–it’s natural that planning follows the same evolutionary logic

5. More changes are coming

With the new THIRA guidelines, upcoming frameworks, PPD-8, and the new National Preparedness Goal and National Preparedness System, the emergency management field is still in a state of major doctrinal refinement. The major changes in doctrine pose significant increases in the level of effort required by organizations at all levels of the “whole community”–but it appears the changes will be positive in the long-term. I think the field will need to reconcile the emerging hierarchy of plans, goals, systems, and frameworks–but that will all come with time.

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This past week, the US was hit with Superstorm Sandy. I’ve been awed by the pre-positioning of supplies, the timely alert and notification, and the prevention of major loss of life. The loss of property was unavoidable, but it was the heroic actions of first responders and others that prevented a catastrophic loss of life. I know several emergency managers that literally walked to work during the hurricane to ensure as robust of a response as possible. Although terrible, Sandy brought out the best in Americans and I’m convinced that the damages from this storm can be an opportunity for the US to rebuild better than ever before.