When widespread devastation occurs from natural disasters, it can be extremely taxing for first responders. Quite simply, during major events, there will be more calls for services than any community can deliver. It will require a massive coordination of efforts amongst local, regional, state and sometimes federal resources in order to just begin to manage the incident well — and that takes time. Unfortunately for us, time is the precious commodity that we don’t have. As people are frantically calling for help, it is time that we need to do the most good for the largest number of people.
Area command
As incident commanders, we are used to coordinating resources at single events, like a house fire. We can park to observe the scene and then deploy our engine and truck companies as needed to mitigate the critical fireground factors as they emerge. Need a primary search? No problem, send a company to complete that task. Need another line on the interior? OK, have an engine company stretch one. Running out of people? Call a second alarm and more help shows up.
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What many of us are not used to is setting up area command. In an area command mode, the IC is not at a scene directing units. Instead, they might best be served to stay back at a firehouse, dispatch center or emergency operations area. They must take another step back and manage potentially dozens of requests for help as they come in. Just like we preach to officers to stay detached from your firefighters and let them work, during natural disasters, we must detach from the incidents and step back to observe the full effect of what is going on in our community and area.
For example, I work in an area where tornadoes occur. If a large EF-4 tornado wipes out part of my community, I can’t simply call a second alarm for help. After all, the neighboring community probably got hit by the same tornado or a subsequent tornado. I may have hundreds of people trapped in their homes, some collapsed — and so does everyone else. If I respond to a neighborhood and set up operations on just one house, who is looking at the other hundred? Who is coordinating the response? It is the job of the IC to ensure appropriate resources are ordered and put to work.
Setting the command post
We know when some natural disasters will strike. We see reports of severe weather heading our way and can begin to pre-program some of our response. We must ensure that our firefighters and law enforcement stay diligent and not dismiss the weather reports. Sure, meteorologists can be inaccurate, but if they are saying severe thunderstorms, tornadoes, hail and damaging winds, we should probably prepare for exactly that. If I told you there was a 90% chance of an apartment fire in the next 30 minutes, wouldn’t you make sure we were good to go?
Call together an incident management team. The team can be comprised of members of your agency or mutual aid neighbors. It is imperative that all agencies are represented and know how to work. It does us no good to have a robust response plan on the fire side of the house if law enforcement officers are not going to follow it, nor utilize it. Think about how chief strategists work within our own government. We don’t send generals out to the main battlefield to observe firsthand what is going on; they work in the war room with access to all of the information coming in.
During the storm
Monitor progress and trust your people when the disaster is unfolding. Stay in the war room and begin tracking incidents. We are used to sending resources out sequentially — as a call comes in, we send an apparatus and a company out. This is not the time to stay in that mode. Just as we adjust our fire tactics for commercial buildings versus residential ones, this is where we have to triage our calls. If we are getting inundated with calls from a particular neighborhood, that should get an immediate response.
Deploy law enforcement officers to rapidly chase through neighborhoods and assess damage once it’s safe to do so. Ensure they are trained to identify minor, moderate and severe damage, and also to know that their role is not to get out and help every single person who needs it. Just like in EMS triage, we have to assess the whole scene before we can determine who gets help first.
Check on critical infrastructure and target hazards such as hospitals, nursing homes and schools. Churches, community centers and schools can be used as emergency shelter locations if they are habitable. These facilities also make for a great family reunification area or a place to distribute food, water and medical aid.
Accept help from the community. In the numerous disasters I’ve responded to with the federal Urban Search and Rescue (USAR) system, I’ve witnessed neighbors helping neighbors. Most of the time, rescues will be made by ordinary people — which is terrific for us. If our citizens are saved before we get there, we can free up companies to move where they are needed most.
Calling for help
As you get a handle on the totality of damage, begin amassing resources. You should know your closest search and rescue assets, boat teams and other resources, as well as the response time to get those resources to you. Begin activating county and regional assets quickly, and form a unified command within the situation room/emergency operations center/command post. This is where you’ll begin to form the objectives of each operational period.
Operational periods may be 12-24 hours long, and this event will likely go on for days or weeks. It is only through organization and planning that we can truly begin to grapple with the enormity and complexity of a direct hit on our communities from any disaster.
Set up a staging area, logistics section and planning section. The staging area should be big enough to accommodate everything you may need — fire companies, heavy equipment, utility companies and more. The logistics section can begin procuring the items you need and can work directly with the planning section on current and future needs. It is a process, and often a foreign one to many incident commanders used to just dealing with fires.
Decentralized command
I want to reiterate that you cannot command each individual facet of this event yourself. You must have competent and trained company- and battalion-level officers who can manage the incidents within the overall scope of the area. As those commanders push requests up to the command post, you can then work with logistics and staging to get the necessary resources to them. In this way, it is just like running a fire. Need a search and rescue squad with a search camera to check the void spaces in a collapsed structure? Sure thing, they are enroute to you. Need a boat crew to pick someone off in the waterway? They are responding. Need a rotator from the tow company to start moving debris? Sending them your way.
Final tips
Disaster management is daunting, tiresome and stressful. In the first few hours there will not be enough resources to help everyone in need — it’s just the unfortunate reality. Therefore, we must take a cue from EMS and triage the area to maximize the most amount of good for the most people.
Avoid overcommitting crews to areas where they aren’t needed and instead wait for reports from law enforcement scouts to know where to send your best resources. A heavy rescue company trained for collapse rescue does no good in a neighborhood where nothing is collapsed.
Retreat to a detached and hardened area where information can pour in without distraction. Have access to maps for when the power fails, secure backup power via a generator and establish communications early with units in the field. Triage calls for services as they come in, so ensure that units responding into the area know how to contact the command post for questions and information.
Additionally, have a centralized staging area and a logistics section stood up to manage the request for assets from units in the field. Then, stand up a planning section to begin to prepare for the next operational phase. Set clear objectives to be performed, and begin crafting the universal incident action plan.
Rehearse these plans before the incident occurs with all of the community partners — local government, hospitals, schools, public works, EMS and law enforcement. Research and know what resources are around, including access to civilian resources. Is there a citizen search and rescue team nearby? Does someone in town own a construction company with access to heavy equipment?
Finally, as taxing as it may seem, you always have command. Whether you realize it or not, during a disaster, there may not be enough resources to help, but so long as there is one unit out there helping, there is an incident command system. The system is inefficient if it isn’t practiced, nor is it useful if it isn’t taken seriously. As such, anticipate what could happen, what has happened, and predict what will likely happen when the next disaster strikes.
