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The difficult conditions that
exist during a major disaster pose serious impediments to
protecting the safety of emergency responders. In the high-pressure,
complicated environment of a devastating event, safety managers
face serious problems in gathering necessary information,
assessing hazards and making decisions, and taking action.
However, at the same time that the characteristics of disasters
challenge safety management, they present clear opportunities
to improve responder safety.
In defining the framework for this study of safety management,
we focused our analysis on the practical requirements managers
face and the activities they carry out as they strive to protect
the responders under their command. With this in mind, we
specifically examined safety management while response operations
are under way and responders are at risk. Our analysis, and
this report, started with a model of management actions taken
once an incident occurs—a safety management cycle. In
addition to producing the recommendations for improving safety
managers’ capabilities to carry out their critical
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functions, that analysis also led to the conclusion that better
structures are needed to coordinate the safety efforts of response
organizations. Effective integration of safety management capabilities
across organizations could benefit all components of disaster safety
management.
Even though the analysis addressed the actions managers take during
response operations, as is clear from the recommendations throughout
the report, effective safety management predominantly depends on
actions taken before a disaster occurs. Protecting responders during
an event depends on the measures, systems, relationships, and capabilities
put in place long before, during disaster preparedness activities.
Consequently, the majority of the recommendations are aimed at strengthening
safety management during preparedness efforts. Even recommendations
addressing actions during response operations—such as improved
scene control or implementation of sustainability measures—rely
on preparedness efforts to make them possible once a disaster occurs.
The recommendations described in this report lead to a range of
potential implementation paths for response organizations at all
levels of government, nongovernmental organizations, and in the
private sector. Some present short-term, more immediate payoff opportunities
to improve safety, while others require long-term implementation
efforts but could result in broad-reaching and large safety benefits.
Immediate Implementation Opportunities
Based on the lessons of the disasters examined during the study,
there is a clear need to integrate responder safety management more
effectively into preparedness planning. To carry out all phases
of the safety management cycle, responder organizations must define
their safety requirements should a disaster occur in their community.
In each area this includes determining the following:
- What information and resources will be needed for particular
disaster circumstances?
- How can those needs be filled?
- If providing needed resources and information relies on others,
what is required to access them and manage their efforts during
a response operation?
- When they become available, how can the safety resources be
linked to response management?
- Are implementation and decision processes in place to effectively
utilize them when they become available?
Such planning concerns are not dissimilar to those that must be
addressed to prepare to carry out response operations in general.
However, because the requirements for safety management can differ
considerably from those for operational response activities, it
is critical they be included in planning.
Within this overall framework, a significant number of the recommendations
described in the preceding chapters could begin to be implemented
immediately by individual response organizations, groups of organizations,
or as a component of local or regional preparedness efforts. Such
steps can build on relationships and planning processes that are
already under way in many jurisdictions and areas for both safety
and operational reasons. Efforts can be initiated to do the following:
- Put Hazard Monitoring Capabilities in Place—Relevant
steps include addressing monitoring needs in plans, procuring
needed technologies for high-priority hazards, locating external
expertise and capabilities, and determining how information will
be collected, coordinated, managed, and used at an incident.
- Address Personnel Accountability Needs—While
improvements in technology may provide better strategies to maintain
personnel accountability in the future, interim steps utilizing
scene control and organizational procedures could be implemented
to provide more information to Incident Commanders on responder
positions, activities, capabilities, and training.
- Develop Mechanisms to Provide Medical Care to and Monitor
the Health Status of Responders—Coupling better information
collection on responder health status with efforts to provide
needed care can help address both the health needs of responders
and the information needs of Incident Commanders.
- Put Necessary Procedures in Place to Make Safety Decisions
and Implement Safety Policies—Many measures focused
on the operational needs of disaster response can also provide
safety benefits. Improved communication, scene control, and personnel
management benefit response effectiveness as well as safety. Others,
such as procedures to determine what safety equipment is needed
and to ensure it is available, are safety specific and must be
addressed separately in planning.
- Begin to Move Toward an Integrated, Multi agency Approach
to Safety Management—To begin to build better safety
coordination, responder safety issues should be included in interagency
preparedness efforts. Mechanisms should be developed to ensure
that organizational roles are well defined and that relationships
and agreements are in place to draw on the other organizations’
safety assets and capabilities.
Steps taken by individual responder organizations to bolster capabilities
in these areas could produce immediate safety management benefits
in future response operations.
Long-Term, Potentially High-Payoff Safety
Implementation Opportunities
Other courses of action recommended in the previous chapters require
long-term efforts to put into practice. In some cases, the recommendations
themselves are conceptual, and specific application strategies remain
to be developed. As a result, pilot projects and evaluation efforts
are also needed to validate the potential for changes in management
processes or the application of new technologies to improve responder
safety management. For other recommendations, Multi agency implementation
efforts are necessary. To build a core group of disaster safety
managers or to fully integrate responder safety into disaster exercises
requires the efforts of multiple response organizations and levels
of government. Lastly, some study recommendations require leadership
and coordination at the national level to significantly benefit
responder safety. While these long-term recommendations may require
sustained efforts to be put into practice, they have the potential
for broad and large benefits in improving responder safety management.
Pilot and Validation Efforts
Many of the study recommendations can be implemented in a number
of ways. In some cases, several different strategies could accomplish
similar safety goals. In others, the recommendations described are
conceptual in nature, and there is either no obvious strategy to
put them into practice or no consensus in the response community
on the most promising approach. In most cases, the study research
did not suggest individual strategies to implement recommendations.
This is because differences among response organizations, geographic
areas, jurisdictions, and risk environments may result in different
solutions being more effective. The diversity of responders included
within the scope of this study—career and volunteer, traditional
and nontraditional, full time and disaster or hazard specific—carries
with it a diversity of implementation challenges that need to be
addressed in efforts to improve safety management. Further efforts
are required to determine the specific needs of particular areas
and situations, and how those needs can be addressed in the context
of a broad, consistent approach to managing responder safety.
As a result, implementing these recommendations will require significant
pilot efforts to determine, under realistic conditions, which strategies
are most effective to improve responder safety. Such pilot efforts
would be intended to develop prototypes to serve as a model for
broader implementation in responder organizations. To ensure that
courses of action are applicable to the full range of the response
community, pilot efforts should be held in several different locations,
from large metropolitan to rural areas.
Pilot and experimental efforts are also critical to evaluate the
potential of technological approaches to improving responder safety.
Although technology evaluation was not a central aim of this study,
a number of management tools and technologies were described in
the course of project discussions that could improve safety management
for individual responder organizations and as elements of an integrated,
incident- wide approach to safety management. As a result, a range
of technical opportunities exist that could contribute to improved
safety management. They include
- information and planning resources such as guidelines, checklists,
and contact lists
- hazard monitoring technologies and assessment aids
- databases to manage safety-relevant information such as hazard
data, responder accountability or capability information, and
response logistics inventories
- responder identification, credentialing, and accountability
technologies
- improvements to protective equipment, addressing interoperability
problems, improving functioning in post-disaster situations, or
bolstering usability
- communications technologies to aid the effective exchange of
information among responders and response organizations
- technologies facilitating responder health status monitoring
and collection of injury or exposure information.
In each area, a wide range of technology options exists to implement
the desired function. For example, for hazard assessment guidelines
and decision aids, the desired functionality could be built into
low-technology options such as laminated cards for responders to
carry or into much higher-technology systems such as portable computers
and decision-support software. In many of these areas, potential
solutions exist, but their operational feasibility, affordability,
and timely availability must be carefully assessed within the responder
community. Some have been developed specifically for the response
community; others could come via technology transfer from other
organizations such as the military. Because its focus was on management
concepts and processes rather than specific management or safety-related
technologies, this research did not address the particular advantages
or disadvantages of any individual system or solution. However,
in the course of the study, the potential of such systems—and
the need to continue to improve and adapt them to better meet responders’
needs in post-disaster environments—became clear.
Building a Core Group of Major Disaster Safety Managers
Because of the central role that individual safety managers could
play in coordinating the efforts of multiple response organizations,
building a group of such individuals is an attractive initial goal.
Doing so would require defining the body of knowledge needed for
safety managers to effectively spearhead an integrated safety management
function and developing a curriculum to serve as the basis for training.
Development of such a curriculum could be accomplished by a variety
of groups within the response community, including professional
organizations and standards bodies, or via cooperative national-level
planning efforts.
Once the preparation needed for disaster safety managers is defined,
implementation mechanisms must be developed to identify individuals
from the responder community to fill the roles. The results of this
study do not suggest any particular model for implementation. However,
it is clear that selection criteria must be defined that ensure
that individuals trained to be safety managers are appropriately
distributed geographically to ensure that they can rapidly respond
to a disaster. Preliminary estimates of the number of such individuals
needed to provide national coverage are relatively small; a few
safety managers based in each state would allow rapid response to
most potential disasters.1
The managerial demands of major disaster response also indicate
that the individuals trained to be disaster safety managers must
have significant management skills and leadership capabilities.
Taking a central role in coordinating the efforts of many different
organizations is challenging and requires skillful leadership to
be carried out successfully. As a result, it is critical that the
position of disaster safety manager be approached as a high-level
appointment, to ensure that the responders filling the role possess
the necessary authority and influence.
An effort to build a group of disaster safety managers as a national
asset must also ensure that these individuals will be available
to fulfill their roles during both disaster operations and preparedness
activities. For the safety managers to be effective, they must be
able to respond when disasters occur. Such responses may involve
participating in operations outside their immediate area, which
requires a commitment by both the responders and their home organizations
to ensure that they can respond when called on. Beyond disaster
operations, many of the potential benefits of such a group of trained
safety managers involve their participation in preparedness activities
throughout their regions, helping bolster preparation for safety
management and laying the groundwork for effective coordination
during response efforts. Implementation efforts must also include
developing mechanisms to support a portion of these individuals’
time to make that participation possible.
Integration of Safety into Disaster Exercises
Because of the importance of disaster exercises as a route for building
both inter organizational relationships and testing capabilities,
integration of responder safety issues into disaster exercises is
a particularly attractive early step for improving safety management.
To do so, safety information and scenarios must be developed that
facilitate the inclusion of these issues in exercises at all levels
of government and in large-scale Multi agency, multilevel disaster
drills. In addition to exercises involving both operational and
safety-related organizations, exercises focusing primarily on safety
issues and organizations could be valuable to improving coordination
among safety specialists within responder organizations. Because
of the diversity of disaster exercises, implementation of this recommendation
could also benefit from pilot efforts to test different mechanisms
for including safety in these activities.
Areas Requiring National Coordination and Leadership
For some recommendations, the majority of the benefits to safety
management will occur only if common practices are developed and
adopted by a large percentage of the responder community. Implementation
of a number of the recommendations described in this report would
require coordination and leadership at the national level. These
areas include
- consistent organizational structures for safety management
- common terminologies
- standards for equipment and other technologies
- hazard and risk assessment guidelines
- responder credentials
- training curricula.
Such national-level leadership could come from a range of sources,
including the federal government, responder community and governance
organizations, multidisciplinary standards organizations, or partnerships
built among multiple agencies or organizations. In some cases, these
efforts are already under way. For example, the ongoing federal
effort to implement a National Incident Management System initiated
by HSPD-5, 2003, represents a major opportunity for ensuring the
use of common organizational structures during disaster response.
Similarly, standards and policy efforts already in place are considering
or could consider many of the equipment, training, and other issues
relevant to these safety concerns. Just as this study often highlighted
safety needs without identifying particular implementation routes,
the research was not focused on where national coordination of these
issues should originate. However, the need for such leadership,
both to heighten focus on these safety concerns and to bridge the
significant diversity that exists within the response community,
is clear.
Concluding Remarks
In the wake of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, the risk
of terrorism and the demands of homeland security must be a central
component of any discussion of protecting emergency responders.
Although the information developed over the course of this study
does indeed indicate that some things have changed in this post-
September 11 era, many things have remained the same. The nation
still faces the risk of hurricanes, earthquakes, large industrial
incidents, and other natural disasters. Often striking without warning,
such events can overwhelm local response capabilities as effectively
as intentional acts of our nation’s adversaries. In responding
to their effects, responders face the risk of physical injury, traumatic
stress, and hazardous exposures. Effectively addressing such risks
requires bringing together the capabilities of a range of response
organizations from agencies at all levels of government, nongovernmental
organizations, and the private sector.
In the context of such an all-hazards approach, bolstering preparedness
efforts aimed at protecting emergency responders can therefore benefit
national preparedness against both terrorism and the inevitable
consequences of natural or technological disasters. Doing so requires
putting the capabilities in place so safety managers have access
to the information, the resources necessary to protect responders,
and the management structures necessary to address safety during
Multi agency response operations. While the demanding circumstances
that exist during disasters will likely present unforeseen challenges
to responder safety, the recommendations described here represent
promising opportunities to improve safety in future response operations.
It is our hope that this research, by bringing together safety management
concerns relevant to both natural disasters and the potential effects
of terrorism, can contribute to efforts in all parts of the response
and homeland security communities to strengthen protection of the
nation’s emergency responders.
1 Depending on the specifics
of the conditions within particular states, the total number of
such safety managers would be in the very low hundreds for the nation
overall.
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