Indeed, the solutions to key problems in each functional phase of the safety management cycle are inherently inter organizational, relying on multi agency safety efforts:

• Gathering Information
  • Required hazard monitoring capabilities may reside in different response organizations.
  • Information on responder accountability, training, equipment, and health status information must come from many separate organizations.
• Analyzing Options and Making Decisions
  • Technical expertise to assess hazards must frequently be drawn from multiple responding organizations.
  • Effective decision making requires coordination of equipment and hazard mitigation options brought to the incident by all responding organizations.
• Taking Action
  • Difficulties in uniform safety enforcement can be addressed only via interagency coordination and agreement.
  • Sustainability measures to protect responder health must be applied across organizational boundaries.
  • Management of human and material safety resources must be coordinated among multiple responding organizations.

Only by building the capability of response units and agencies to coordinate at the organizational level can they be most prepared to successfully manage the functional challenges they face.

Developing such an integrated approach requires a transition from viewing safety management as an activity primarily carried out by individual organizations alone to understanding it as a multi agency function within the ICS that can scale up to meet the needs of complex disaster response operations. This transition must encompass organizations across the full range of the disaster response community —all levels of government, nongovernmental groups, and the private sector. In addition, recognizing the high-pressure and severely time-constrained post-disaster environment, this functional approach to safety must facilitate rapid initiation of multi agency coordination and safety management activities.

Benefits of an Integrated, Incident-Wide Safety Management Approach

The capability to draw on the safety resources of many organizations and effectively apply them to safety management for the overall incident would provide several important opportunities to better meet the safety needs of all involved responders:

• access to the specialized safety capabilities of multiple organizations
• a strategic approach to safety management
• a mechanism to address inherently multi agency safety issues
• a route to take advantage of diverse response capabilities.

Access to the Specialized Safety Capabilities of Multiple Organizations
When organizations from different response disciplines come together at major disaster operations, they bring significantly different levels of safety management capability. Such differences in expertise and equipment can result in safety shortfalls when organizations without necessary expertise or equipment are “on their own” to manage responder safety. However, when safety management efforts are coordinated among multiple agencies, such differences represent an opportunity to draw on organizations’ relative strengths to bolster protection for responders overall.

Many of the different organizations involved in carrying out response tasks at an incident scene bring not only operational capabilities, but safety expertise and resources to the operation. Government agencies at all levels, nongovernmental organizations, and private-sector entities with safety-related responsibilities at the scene may bring additional safety resources and knowledge.² Examples include

• law enforcement and intelligence expertise on potential threats and security hazards after terrorist events
• fire department expertise with thermal hazards and hazardous materials operations
• public health organizations’ capabilities in disease surveillance and health monitoring
• Departments of Defense and Energy expertise on nuclear, radiological, and other weapons of mass destruction
• utility, transportation, or construction capabilities in their areas of specialization and responsibility
• federal, state, local or other organizations’ expertise to assess hazards and measure environmental and occupational exposures.

It would be impractical for individual organizations to maintain the equipment and expertise needed to cope with all the hazards that could arise during a response to a major disaster. An integrated, incident-wide approach to safety makes better safety management resources accessible than would be possible for organizations operating alone.

A Strategic Approach to Safety Management
Just as the Incident Commander needs to take a strategic viewpoint of a disaster operation, a safety manager must be able to consider safety needs from an overall, strategic perspective. If the individuals responsible for managing responder safety are too close to or absorbed in the details of an operation, it is much less likely that they will be able to fully understand and address the risks at a complex disaster scene. This can make it difficult or impossible to make good safety decisions and meet worker safety needs. Similarly, if safety managers cannot take a long-term view of safety concerns —for example, anticipating response safety concerns and projecting safety requirements —safety management will also suffer.

For the safety manager of an individual organization, the complexity and operational demands of a major disaster make it exceedingly difficult to get this overall perspective or to project future safety needs. But in the context of an integrated approach, the additional expertise, capabilities, and resources that can be brought to bear on safety issues can help build and maintain this more strategic approach to the incident. By delegating specific tasks—such as technical monitoring of hazards, equipment logistics, or accounting for personnel—to the right experts or organizations, safety managers can focus their attention on building an overall understanding of the incident safety needs, providing better support to the Incident Commander on the safety components of operational decisions, and anticipating safety and health concerns that may arise as the incident evolves.

A Mechanism to Address Inherently Multi agency Safety Issues
A coordinated safety management effort provides a mechanism for sharing necessary safety information among response organizations. This coordination is particularly important to address the possibility that response activities can produce new and unfamiliar safety hazards for other responders.³ Similarly, integrating multi agency activities can improve the effectiveness of safety measures by allowing better coordination of safety logistics efforts. Such integration would reduce the chance of duplicative resource requests from separate organizations, a situation often observed in major disaster responses, and potentially make it possible to better allocate safety resources across the response overall.

An integrated approach to safety management can also make it possible to begin addressing a potentially more serious problem—the difficulty in uniformly implementing and, if necessary, enforcing safety policies across the disaster response operation. By bringing together representatives from relevant organizations, integrating different organizations’ safety management efforts provides a route to build consensus on safety policies and procedures among all response organizations. Such an incident- level consensus would enable more uniform implementation of safety measures across an incident, even in the absence of centralized safety enforcement authority. If incident-wide enforcement measures become necessary to ensure use of critical safety measures, an integrated approach provides a way to develop the necessary multi agency commitment to put them in place.

A Route to Take Advantage of Diverse Response Capabilities
Responders from different disciplines come to an event with unique types of expertise. In addition, organizations that more frequently face particular types of disasters —for example, responders from areas that experience specific natural disasters —develop expertise in responding to those sorts of incidents. Specialized expertise may also reside in response organizations from areas with elevated risk of particular events—such as high-profile cities at higher risk of terrorist attack—because of increased preparedness or participation in exercises aimed at those events. Accordingly, particular response units may be significantly more qualified to operate safely in particular risk environments.⁴ An integrated approach to safety management permits decision makers to draw upon this diversity to ensure that responders are assigned those tasks they are especially qualified and equipped to perform safely, lowering the safety risks for other responders.⁵

Implementing Integrated, Incident-Wide Safety Management

Responders to recent large-scale disasters have recognized the need to integrate their efforts in order to address the complex safety concerns of emergency workers. At both the Pentagon and World Trade Center, the practical difficulties associated with managing responder safety led response organizations to implement ad hoc arrangements to coordinate their safety efforts. Responders at the World Trade Center, for example, formed a large safety team, held daily safety-focused meetings, and brought safety experts into incident command meetings [Study Interviews]. This safety team initially instituted an accident prevention plan for the site and eventually developed a comprehensive safety and health management plan with input from the four primary contractors and 26 federal, state, and local agencies operating at the Trade Center site [Vincoli et al. 2002, 25].

Although these ad hoc efforts broke important ground by recognizing the need to implement an integrated, incident-wide approach to safety management, they also had significant shortcomings. First, because these expedient arrangements were developed during the course of the response, they took time to put in place. During the days before the structures were set up, the safety efforts of responding organizations had no effective mechanism for integration. In general, depending on the specific hazards involved in an incident, such delays could have significant consequences for the safety of responders. Second, improvised groups also may overlook the involvement of important, but less obvious, sources of expertise needed for managing responder safety and health. For example, it was not always fully clear to responders at the World Trade Center disaster how the participants in the safety meetings were determined. It sometimes seemed to require significant “negotiation” to gain access to the meetings [Study Interviews].

In addition, some responders perceived it as a weakness that these safety management structures existed outside the formal ICS. Interviewees indicated that it was not always clear how effectively the deliberations of the safety committee were connected with the ICS. When safety is managed by an ad hoc group, one interviewee commented, it is less clear “how decisions are actually being made,” and both the perceived validity of the decisions and accountability of the decision makers can be weakened [Study Interviews].

Although these ad hoc efforts were valuable, they also showed the very real need for the emergency response community to plan and practice integration and coordination mechanisms well before a disaster occurs. Doing so requires a transition from viewing safety management as a role primarily carried out by organizations individually to viewing safety as a formalized multi agency function within the ICS that can scale up to meet the needs of complex disaster response operations. Toward this end, we present the following recommendations.

Recommendation 7.1—Build an Integrated Safety Function into the Incident Command System

To ensure that safety management is closely linked to overall incident management, an organizational structure must be defined within the ICS for an integrated safety management effort. In the standard ICS, the ISO is part of the Command Staff (see Figure 3.2). No information collected for this study suggested a compelling rationale to position a multi agency safety function differently. But we recommend that safety management be approached not as a staff position but as a scalable multi agency function. In fact, a precedent exists for just such an integrated function on the management staff. The ICS includes a Public Information Officer supporting the Incident Commander for information dissemination [FEMA 1998]. In recognition of the need for coordinated release of information at large-scale, multi agency incidents, this role can be upgraded to a Joint Information Center (JIC) that integrates the public information staffs and efforts of all involved agencies [U.S. National Response Team, not dated]. Replacing the single ISO with an integrated, incident-wide safety function is analogous to replacing a single Public Information Officer with the JIC.

Disaster response operations often involve multiple levels of response management, including government emergency management organizations at the local, state, or federal level. Development of an integrated approach to safety management must therefore also address the potential safety roles for these different management levels. These additional levels of response management often do not take a direct role in safety management [Study Interviews; Study Workshop]. Because of their overarching viewpoint and inherently multi agency approach, however, they could be uniquely positioned to make significant contributions to an incident-wide approach to responder safety. Specifically, responders suggested that emergency operations centers or the command centers established by federal response agencies during major responses could take on management and coordination of broader, overarching safety issues thereby shifting some safety demands from incident scene safety managers.⁶

To organize the diverse safety resources and responders coming to a disaster scene, an internal organization must be defined for the integrated safety function. The ICS overall is divided into four sections (see Figure 3.1): Operations, Logistics, Planning, and Administration/Finance. This division, and the additional structures defined within each section, allows incoming resources to “plug into” the appropriate part of the operational effort. The integrated safety function needs a similar internal structure to organize safety assets drawn from multiple organizations.

Elements of this internal structure should be common for all disasters. For example, it is reasonable to assume that an integrated safety function would need a hazard monitoring sub function to organize all the resources and responders involved in assessment activities. Other common sub functions could include the following: personnel accountability, safety equipment logistics (in coordination with the ICS Logistics section), safety planning and forecasting (in coordination with the ICS Planning section), and responder medical care/health maintenance [see Morris 2001].⁷ Within these sub functions, specific roles and tasks will vary among different types of disasters. For example, protecting responders after a large-scale structural collapse will likely require significant monitoring for airborne hazards; safety management after a major flood may require greater attention to waterborne contaminants. However, starting from a common organizational template will facilitate efforts to accommodate disaster-specific differences in safety needs.⁸

Such organizational templates are especially critical since the earliest stages of most disaster response operations will be handled predominantly at the local level.

For safety management to function well later in the response, local responders must put structures in place that can scale up as the number of responding organizations increases. How successful they are in beginning an effective, integrated safety management effort will significantly influence the potential success of safety management for the entire incident.

Recommendation 7.2—As Part of Preparedness Efforts, Coordinate Plans for Implementing Safety Management

Beyond necessary management structures, effectively carrying out integrated safety management requires multi agency preparedness efforts to define how responder safety needs will be addressed in the difficult and high-pressure conditions after a major disaster. Successfully putting into practice an integrated approach to incident safety management requires

• defining requirements for, and sources of, safety assets and expertise
• ensuring that reinforcing safety assets will be able to “plug into” an integrated effort
• defining management and coordination processes.

Defining Requirements for, and Sources of, Safety Assets and Expertise.
Planning efforts must identify the safety capabilities, technical expertise, and other resources needed to perform the necessary roles and tasks for effective safety management. Defining these needs before the event occurs is particularly important because after a disaster, any confusion about what resources are needed and where to obtain them can significantly delay implementation of safety management and hinder responder protection.

Necessary safety resources and expertise will clearly differ among disaster types. For example, although experts on radiation effects and specific protective equipment would be important after a radiological event, a tornado response would require significantly different knowledge and supplies. Determining the likely safety needs for particular disaster types is clearly a critical part of multi agency planning at all levels of government.⁹ Beyond such disaster-specific requirements, study discussions did highlight several specialties that could be broadly valuable for a range of different disasters. Public health is one discipline cited as particularly useful and often not well connected to response management [Study Workshop]. Responders also said that medical expertise is often disconnected from safety decision making [Study Workshop].¹⁰

In addition to identifying necessary safety assets, study discussions also indicated that better mechanisms are needed to enable responders to call on these outside sources. Among operational responders at the state and local levels, this problem was generally framed in terms of not knowing “who to call” to gain access to particular types of capabilities or resources for different disaster events.¹¹

To the extent possible, the agencies that will provide particular capabilities and carry out specific safety management tasks should be defined in multi agency preparedness planning. During project interviews, for example, responders pointed out that confusion over what organization was responsible for which tasks risks duplication of effort while other safety needs go unmet. Such “prescripted” mission assignments can speed response and also minimize the effect of damage to communications or other infrastructures on responding to the disaster.¹²

Once necessary safety capabilities and designated sources have been defined, this information needs to be captured in checklists, flowcharts, contact lists, and decision aids to assist responders in implementing safety management after a disaster. A common understanding of safety needs and where to obtain them is a prerequisite for integrating safety efforts. Such shared management tools that help build this common understanding across response organizations at all levels of government could be especially valuable. In addition, such tools help ensure that all responders have rapid access to the information they need to effectively initiate safety management after an event occurs.¹³

Ensuring That Reinforcing Safety Assets Will Be Able to “Plug into” an Integrated Effort.
In preparing for integrated safety management, response organizations must take steps to ensure that external organizations have a safety management structure to “plug into” when they arrive on scene. If such a structure is not in place when other response organizations become involved, they may initiate their own strategies for safety management and, having done so, become more difficult to integrate into a coordinated effort.

At the beginning of a disaster response operation, local agencies initiate safety management based on their standard operating procedures. Just as a decision must be made to scale up the ICS—as it becomes clear that larger numbers of resources or multiple organizations are needed for a major incident—a decision must also be made on when to expand safety management. The decision making criteria and process for scaling up the safety management function must be included in preparedness activities to ensure a smooth transition to an integrated management approach.¹⁴

It is also necessary for external organizations to come to the scene prepared to “plug into” an integrated safety function. Participating groups must have appropriately trained individuals as part of their response to contribute to safety management. Depending on the role of the organization within the safety function, the characteristics of that individual or those individuals might differ. Participants in study discussions indicated that some responding organizations do not include designated “safety representatives” in their planning, making it much more difficult to connect them to safety management [Study Interviews; Study Workshop].¹⁵

Defining Management and Coordination Processes.
Making the right connections between first responders and external safety resources is an important initial strategy for safety management coordination. However, the nature of disaster situations makes it impossible to plan for every eventuality. As a response operation continues, management processes must be in place to bring the right technical expertise into decision making, ensure that the practical needs of all involved responders are included in risk management, allow reallocation of safety tasks to address changing circumstances or improve effectiveness, and allow effective implementation or enforcement of safety policies. For the operational components of a disaster response, this dynamic coordination among different response organizations is a primary role of the Incident Commander.¹⁶ A similar coordinating authority structure within the safety function is needed for effective integrated safety management.

Preparedness efforts must include development of management processes that can effectively link the efforts of multiple safety-relevant organizations during response operations. For example, there currently is no consensus in the response community regarding the best means for safety decision making in multi agency response operations or how issues such as safety enforcement should be addressed for complex disaster scenes.¹⁷ It is clear, however, that the high-pressure and time limited environment that exists after a disaster is not amenable to addressing such difficult issues.¹⁸ As a result, these questions should be included in planning efforts so that consensus can be built on appropriate ways to address these problems.

There is a range of potential organizational structures that could be used to manage an integrated, multi agency safety function. Although not comprehensive, three examples are illustrative of the variety of options that exist: (1) augmenting the capabilities of the Incident Safety Officer within the ICS, (2) broadly inclusive safety management based on the approach developed in the September 11, 2001, responses, and (3) safety management based on the concept of Unified Command in operational response management.

Current strategies to address safety needs during major incidents build on safety management processes developed for routine emergency response. Within the context of the ICS, these strategies provide ways to augment the capabilities of an Incident Safety Officer to address larger incident scenes and more complex problems. These strategies include providing the Incident Safety Officer with assistants¹⁹ and creating a “Safety” section within the Incident Command Staff to more significantly increase the response resources devoted to safety.²⁰ Each of these approaches increases the resources and expertise dedicated to safety activities at large-scale operations. In addition, by preserving a centralized authority for safety (either the Incident Safety Officer or the head of the Safety section), decision making is simplified.

The focus of these approaches is not multi agency coordination, however. In literature sources on emergency incident safety and in project discussions, it was suggested that drawing assistant Incident Safety Officers from different response organizations could provide some multi agency involvement in safety management.²¹ Assuming that all response organizations with relevant safety expertise and resources are amenable to this model—responders acting as assistants to a central ISO or Safety section manager from one organization—this approach could be successful.

Taking the safety committees formed during the September 11, 2001, responses as an example, a second, more inclusive model for integrated safety management could be utilized where a larger number of organizations are directly involved in discussion and decision making During project interviews, a significant number of responders were positive about the way these safety committees linked a wide variety of organizations. Because of the lack of clear management and authority relationships, however, others indicated that they did not allow rapid decision making and were not sufficient to coordinate the safety activities of the involved organizations.

A third option identified during the study draws on the ICS concept of Unified Command as a model for safety management.²² In a Unified Command, organizations with legal or jurisdictional responsibilities for an incident form a management team to allocate resources and make decisions for the incident. A safety analogue of a Unified Command team could bring a more limited number of organizations with particular safety responsibilities or critical knowledge into decision making Like an operational Unified Command, other safety-related organizations would provide support to the unified safety team. Such a structure could be useful for integration if multiple organizations have specific statutory or other responsibilities for safety issues during disaster response.

When considering models for an integrated safety effort, it is clear that there are decision making and managements trade-offs as the number of participants in the effort increases. Because of the time and effort that can be required to develop consensus among large groups, direct involvement of too many individuals in management decision making could reduce the ability of the safety function to act decisively in rapidly evolving response conditions. The need to involve specialized organizational expertise in management must therefore be weighed against the increased complexity of making decisions among larger numbers of individuals.

The exact structure for an integrated safety management function remains to be determined during implementation efforts. It is clear that the legal responsibilities of different organizations may affect the permissibility of various management options. For example, some approaches may not be consistent with the legal or operational requirements of environmental, regulatory, or other agencies at the local, state, or federal level. Furthermore, because of the responsibilities and legal requirements that all organizations have for protecting their members and because of differences among jurisdictions or geographic areas, some centralized models of safety management may be problematic for individual responding organizations. These potential legal and practical constraints suggest that pilot testing of candidate safety management models is needed to evaluate their strengths and weaknesses for different operational situations and local circumstances.

Recommendation 7.3—Develop a Group of Highly Trained Safety Managers to Facilitate Coordination at Major Incidents

Although integrated safety management focuses on multi agency cooperation, effective organizational integration often requires key individuals to initiate and oversee the required coordination. One key role of an effective Incident Commander is serving as a bridge among separate organizations. We found that safety managers serving a similar role are needed to initiate and support multi agency coordination. We have labeled these individuals “disaster safety managers.”

Because of the significant interagency component of disaster safety management, it is rare for individuals to gain the necessary “crosscutting” management and subject matter expertise in the course of their routine experience [Study Interviews]. Safety specialists from the fire service, law enforcement, or health organizations are knowledgeable about the safety needs of their own organizations; however, they generally do not develop the needed understanding of the safety requirements of other response disciplines or the management skills needed for very large multi agency operations.²³

Although the specifics could vary based on individuals’ backgrounds, disaster safety managers need to possess expertise in a range of areas, including

• significant expertise in coordinating multi agency operations
• general knowledge of likely and potential hazards across a range of contingencies and responder types
• information on safety resources and their availability
  • hazard assessment
  • decision support
  • human resources and equipment for safety
• understanding of the processes and requirements to call on external capabilities
• knowledge of relevant decision making criteria for managing responder safety
• experience operating within Incident Command Systems.

By possessing a broad-based understanding of disaster situations, these managers not only would have a working knowledge of the safety issues involved in most incidents, but would also know when supplementary technical expertise was required. Perhaps most important, placing an individual with significant multi agency coordination expertise in the Safety function is critical to promote coordination and integration of the safety-related efforts of all organizations involved in a response.

To ensure that disaster safety managers possess all the necessary expertise included above, curricula need to be developed addressing the specific skills and knowledge necessary for managers to carry out their roles. Drawing on the example of the wildland fire community, multiple levels of qualifications for safety managers might be devised, recognizing that different levels of knowledge and experience are needed for incidents of increasing size [Study Workshop; National Wildfire Coordinating Group 2000]. Because the disaster safety manager must serve the needs of all the responders involved in an incident, the contents of the curricula must be developed and validated with input from organizations across the responder community. Similarly, participation in joint exercises is important for these individuals to build their management and coordination expertise.

Within the responder community, there are strong precedents for maintaining specialized resources that can be called upon to assist during incidents that go beyond local capabilities. In the responses studied for this work, the roles of US&R Task Forces, Forest Service Incident Management Teams, and specialized medical teams were highlighted [Study Interviews; Study Workshop]. Members of such a national body of disaster safety managers could similarly be drawn from experienced and senior personnel identified across the emergency response community (e.g., emergency management, fire service, law enforcement, public health, public works, state or federal response organizations, and others). Individuals serving as part of this group could remain in their existing response organizations but would be provided with necessary training and support to participate in major disaster exercises.²⁴ Ideally, part-time salary support would also be provided to allow these safety managers to carry out ongoing planning and coordination activities among response organizations in their regions that go beyond their duties in their home organizations.

To ensure that one or more of these individuals could arrive rapidly at any major disaster, a small number of safety managers could be trained in each state. In the event of a major incident, individuals could be deployed to provide assistance based on their proximity and familiarity with the affected jurisdictions as well as their expertise in the particular types of hazards that are present. Depending on the specific situation and the wishes of the local response organizations involved in the disaster, these individuals could either adopt a leading or core supporting role for safety management when they arrive at the incident.

Although the information developed in this study indicated the need for a group of highly capable disaster safety managers, it did not address the mechanics of how such a resource should be put in place. While some federally managed assets such as US&R and Incident Management Teams could be a model for such a resource, it does not necessarily follow that such a group would be built by the federal government. Indeed, mechanisms could be devised at the state, regional, or national level.²⁵ It is also straightforward to envision models by which response community organizations—through standard-setting and coordinated-implementation activities —could contribute to putting the necessary capabilities in place. However, because of the need for uniformity in these managers’ capabilities and expertise, if this group is not built in a centralized way, any separate efforts will have to be well coordinated.

Recommendation 7.4—Improve Joint Exercises and Training by Incorporating Realistic Safety and Health Issues

It is broadly accepted in the emergency response community that, to be effective at an incident, organizations must train and exercise their capabilities in preparation. However, responders indicated that, because of the operational focus of most training and disaster response exercises, safety management is seldom sufficiently addressed during these activities. In many, safety concerns are included as a “footnote” to the operational focus of the exercise. Other exercises also tend to simplify the safety and health problems for decision makers by deliberately or inadvertently alerting the participants in advance to the types of disaster problems they will be facing. This is in marked contrast to real disasters where the first critical safety concern is determining the nature of the event and the hazards involved. In addition, bringing together multiple organizations for a tabletop or field exercise is not an easy task, particularly if different jurisdictions and various levels of government are involved. These difficulties may result in safety-relevant organizations not being included in these activities.

Taking a more realistic approach to how safety and health issues are addressed in multi agency exercises could have substantial benefits. Multi agency or “joint exercises” are an important way of educating responders, both managers and rank-and file personnel, on what is necessary to effectively manage safety during large-scale responses.²⁶ Other benefits arising from joint activities include building personal relationships among responders from different organizations and the opportunity to identify unexpected shortfalls in coordination processes.²⁷ Achieving these benefits requires that exercises be held frequently enough to maintain relationships and incorporate changes in response processes or systems. Such activities also provide the opportunity to identify best practices in responder safety and health or for undertaking pilot tests on new concepts, procedures, and technologies. Exercises can also play an important role in educating officials from outside the responder community about the realities and requirements for effective and safe disaster response.

Recommendation 7.5—Develop a Common Terminology for Disaster Safety and Health Issues and Processes for Use During Response Operations

In order for different organizations to communicate, they need a common vocabulary. The need for such a common terminology was, in fact, a key driver for developing the ICS itself.²⁸ “Common terminology is essential in joint operations by diverse users of such critical elements as: organizational functions; resource identification, classification, and allocation; and facilities” [FEMA 1987]. Even if the technical and organizational systems needed to support interagency communication function perfectly, in the absence of a common terminology, effective communication may still not occur.

Similarly, responders indicated that common definitions and terminology for safety and health management is needed for more effective interagency safety cooperation.²⁹ Differences in how key tasks are labeled, the absence of precise definitions for safety terms, or the use of different terminologies and nomenclature by responders from different agencies or different technical disciplines all impede integrated management.³⁰

Summary

The complexity of disaster situations makes it difficult to fully address responder safety needs simply by bolstering individual response organizations’ capabilities to gather information, assess risk, and implement safety decisions. However, the safety capabilities available across a variety of responder organizations present a significant opportunity for improving safety management on an incident-wide level. Effective integration among responding organizations can allow better application of specialized expertise and capabilities to safety problems, help preserve a strategic approach to safety management, provide a mechanism to address inherently multi agency safety issues, and more fully address the differences in capability among response organizations.

Ad hoc efforts at integrated safety management were implemented during the World Trade Center and the Pentagon response operations on September 11, 2001. Although supporting the concept of integrated safety management, ad hoc structures have significant shortcomings that reduce their effectiveness for protecting responder safety. As a result, a range of preparedness and implementation efforts are needed to formalize this approach to safety management and more effectively link it to disaster incident management systems.

¹ In principle, all shortfalls in disaster safety management could be addressed at the individual organization level. However, preparing every response organization for the full range of potential disaster safety problems would be, at best, a challenging and resource intensive strategy. To adequately address all potential safety shortfalls would require significant augmentation of all organizations’ information-gathering capacity, decision making and assessment expertise, and implementation capability—much of which would not be beneficial for their routine response activities.

² Some of these organizations may have statutory requirements to respond to the incident or specific responsibilities related to responder protection.

³ For example, when ongoing firefighting operations are occurring side by side with construction or demolition work, each activity could adversely affect the safety of the other responders.

⁴ Examples of such responders include members of FEMA-sponsored Urban Search and Rescue teams operating in collapsed structure environments, trained hazardous materials responders countering spills of such substances, or police tactical teams facing situations with particularly high potential for violence.

⁵ For example, if a disaster response required helicopter operations, it would be critical to select an appropriate pilot for the conditions. For operations during severe weather and high winds, calling on a Coast Guard pilot experienced in rescue operations would be appropriate. For a situation requiring a more tactical approach in urban terrain, a pilot from the local police force might be a better choice [Study Interview].

⁶ There are also technological reasons these additional management levels could make significant safety contributions. For example, the fact that some of these management organizations work from fixed-site emergency operations centers enables them to have information management and resource coordination systems in place that would be difficult, if not impossible, to build at an incident scene.

⁷ It should be noted that any organizational structure within a safety management function should not duplicate efforts taking place in other parts of the ICS.

⁸ Analogous templates have been produced to support use of the ICS at a range of different types of incidents. For each incident, model command structures with their component sub functions are provided as starting points for rapidly putting an ICS in place when an incident occurs. A variety of examples can be found in the U.S. Coast Guard Incident Management Handbook [USCG 2001].

⁹ The safety assets that may be needed could clearly differ markedly based on local situations. For example, a tornado in a rural environment could result in very different hazards and responder safety needs than a similar event in an industrialized area.

¹⁰ In the traditional incident management structure, medical support to responders is placed within the Logistics section (see Figure 3.1) [FEMA 1998]. As a result, without a specific effort by Incident Commanders to draw on their expertise, medical experts will not necessarily have the opportunity to contribute to safety decision making Several interviewees cited this as a particular problem during the responses to the anthrax incidents [Study Interviews]. Integration of a medical doctor into the safety function would be similar to the military practice of having a “staff surgeon” as an element of the Command Staff of major units [Department of the Army 1997].

¹¹ To ensure that responders know “who to call” during an event, planning efforts should identify safety-relevant capabilities that are available locally. This planning should include the private sector and other nontraditional response groups. In addition, safety management resources that are available from state, regional, or national response organizations should be identified.

¹² However, the unpredictability of disaster situations makes it impossible to plan for every eventuality. Such agreements will likely have to be adjusted for particular events to ensure that unforeseen safety needs can be addressed. As a result, decision making mechanisms also need to be defined to allow safety management to better adapt to evolving disaster situations.

¹³ The need for better safety management tools—planning checklists for particular types of events, issues that should be addressed and hazards assessed early in a response, etc.—was highlighted independently of the need for better multi agency coordination and integration at these events.

¹⁴ It should be noted that any effort at integrated safety management depends on first responding organizations initiating safety activities in a way that can scale up as the response evolves. Especially during the early phases of response activities, the demands of a disaster can pull responders away from safety responsibilities and involve them in operational action [Study Interviews]. If this occurs, safety management does not take place. In addition to hindering initial safety efforts, later organizations will have no way to connect with the management structure —to “plug into”—when they arrive at the scene.

¹⁵ Not all organizations involved at a disaster scene need to have a representative directly participating in an integrated safety function. Only representatives from organizations with necessary safety expertise or capabilities need to be directly involved to allow coordination of their activities. The identity of these organizations will likely differ in different regions, as well as from disaster to disaster. Organizations that need to receive only the “output” from the safety function must be sufficiently connected to get the required information, but they will not necessarily require a dedicated representative.

¹⁶ Depending on the particular disaster, such management roles could be carried out by the on-scene Incident Commander; by individuals in the local, state, or federal emergency management/operations center; or both. For this discussion, no distinction is made between these different levels of management.

¹⁷ It should be noted that the focus on incident-wide approaches to safety management in this chapter is not intended to minimize the importance of actions taken at the individual, unit, or organization level for protecting responders during response operations. In the case of safety enforcement, for example, any incident-wide consensus on appropriate safety measures and the need to enforce them will be largely implemented by the actions of organizations to inform their members and ensure that they comply.

¹⁸ This need for community consensus on organizational structures and processes also applies to the operational components of response. For example, in a study of a major flood response operation in Arizona, this factor was highlighted as the key driver for the area’s improved response effectiveness [McHugh 1995].

¹⁹ The primary rationale behind the addition of assistant safety officers is to provide the ISO greater capability to monitor, assess, and manage a more demanding incident scene. “Complex incidents or those that cover a large geographic area may require the appointment of Assistant Safety Officers” [NFSIMC 2000, 63]. For incidents that involve unfamiliar hazards, such as the presence of hazardous materials or other unusual threats, “additional safety officers may be needed [to] . . . provide an increased level of competency for the Incident Safety Officer” [Kipp and Loflin 1996, 202].

²⁰ The other strategy that has been explored for particularly demanding incidents is creating a Safety section and, as a result, significantly augmenting the manpower devoted to responder safety concerns. The Safety section is staffed by a number of responders to make it possible to monitor and manage safety in multiple areas of a complex incident. It also provides a management structure to coordinate their efforts. By increasing the resources devoted to safety, this strategy provides a way to gather better and more complete safety information, carry out more rigorous risk assessment, and provide more effective implementation [Brunacini 2002; Morris 2001].

²¹ This model of a central safety officer supported by assistants from other responding agencies is also suggested in Chatfield and Robertson, 1997.

²² One responder involved at the Pentagon even referred to their safety coordination effort as “a Unified Command of safety officers” [Jackson et al. 2002, 46].

²³ For example, although the training programs that currently exist for fire service Incident Safety Officers were cited as positive by many study discussion participants, they also indicated that the programs were “not enough” to prepare individuals to manage safety at incidents of this size [Study Interviews, Study Workshop].

²⁴ The group of trained safety managers could play a significant role in improving safety management in routine response and in bolstering the treatment of safety in disaster preparedness activities. Preparedness roles could include participating in designing, arranging, and monitoring the results of multi agency exercises that practice and evaluate safety and health concepts. In addition, this continuing involvement of the disaster safety managers in both day-to-day safety issues and preparedness activities would help maintain their expertise and skills until they were needed.

²⁵ For response activities more generally, examples of assistance arrangements and compacts can be found at the local, multi county, state, regional, and federal levels.

²⁶ Because of the size and diversity of the U.S. responder community, it is difficult to provide sufficient opportunities for exercise participation for all responders. As a result, other strategies for broadly disseminating needed safety and health information should also be pursued. For example, volunteer responder units located in rural areas will typically have far less resources available for travel, training programs, and acquiring specialized educational materials compared with their career responder counterparts in more populated areas. In addition, both volunteers and career responders benefit from having more flexible mechanisms to work training into their schedules. Although such materials are not equivalent to operational and classroom training, they can play an important role in providing needed safety and health information.

²⁷ Because it is important to build relationships between representatives from safety-relevant organizations and operational responders, some exercises must include both types of organizations. “Safety focused” exercises, concentrating on safety managers and organizations that provide critical safety assets to response operations, could also be valuable to address technical safety issues and bolster coordination among the safety specialists within the response community.

²⁸ Common terminologies were highlighted as key for the ability of groups of responders from different areas to work effectively together. For example, in managing urban search and rescue operations, FEMA US&R and FEMA Incident Support Teams (teams that support US&R operations by assisting in operational coordination, logistics, and management) may be drawn from different areas of the country. The fact that both teams have common training and use common terminologies supports their working to respond together in rescue operations [Study Interview].

²⁹ Standardization in a wide range of areas can facilitate integration of multi agency efforts.

³⁰ Problems cited in study interviews or at the workshop included (1) different topics being considered “safety” versus “health” issues by different agencies, thereby affecting how they were managed; (2) differences in what was meant by particular terms by different organizations, e.g., “responder rest and rehabilitation”; and (3) use of different technical terms in hazard monitoring processes and results, causing confusion among agencies.