Disaster Recovery Journal- Volume 19, Issue 3 - Summer 2006 Issue

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Summer 2006 Issue

DISASTER RECOVERY
JOURNAL

P. O. Box 510110
St. Louis, MO 63151
(314) 894-0276
Fax: (314) 894-7474
Internet www.drj.com
E-mail drj@drj.com

PUBLISHER
Richard L. Arnold, CBCP
richard@drj.com

EDITOR-IN-CHIEF
Jon Seals
jon@drj.com

SENIOR EDITOR
Janette Ballman
janette@drj.com

COPY EDITORS
Richard Sandhofer
richards@drj.com
Pamela Clifton
pamelaclifton@hotmail.com

ADVERTISING
Robert Arnold
bob@drj.com

_____________

Corporate

President/CEO
Richard L. Arnold, CBCP
richard@drj.com

Vice President
Robert Arnold
bob@drj.com

CONFERENCE COORDINATOR
Patti Fitzgerald, CBCP
patti@drj.com

CONFERENCE REGISTRAR
Merce Knese
mercedes@drj.com

CIRCULATION
Laura Baugh
laurab@drj.com

EXECUTIVE COUNCIL
Jeff Dato, MBCP, KPMG
John Jackson, J Albright Advisors
Edward Devlin, E.S. Devlin & Associates
James Hammill, CBCP, JMH Consulting
Pat McAnally, SunGard Availability
Brian Turley, Strohl Systems
Belinda Wilson, Hewlett-Packard

INTERNATIONAL
CONTACTS
England: Thom Hetherington
Business Continuity
Phone: 0161-237-1007
thomh@tempus.demon.co.uk

Australia: Anthony J. Harvey
Journal of Business Continuity
Phone: 0011-613-953-0055-8
fax: 0011-613-953-0528
sector@notability.com.au

Japan: Shinji Hosotsubo
Quake Japan Co., Ltd.
Phone: 03-3215-2880
fax: 03-3215-2881

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Not ‘If’ But ‘When’

By PAUL R. THOMAS Jr., MBCP, CEM

“Code Yellow, Code Yellow, report to the EOC.” In the three to four minutes that followed this public address announcement, more than 30 supervisory staff members were assembled in the EOC of a hospital in St. Louis.
Sponsored by the St. Louis Metropolitan Hospital Council and the Missouri Hospital Association, several large hospitals simultaneously began their “Spring 2006 Disaster Exercise” with a simulated earthquake of the New Madrid seismic zone.
Hospital supervisors were briefed on the known situation at the time: dozens of reports on building collapse; ruptured gas, sewer, and water lines; and failures in bridges, roads, and communications. Emergency support cabinets in the EOC were opened, and designated staff members began donning vests with bright clear labels like “logistics,” “operations,” and “planning.”
This private sector institution had initiated their incident command system (ICS) and was ready to tackle a situation that included structural failure and fire in their own hospital. More than 30 volunteer victims were awaiting relocation to a temporary, off-site medical facility planned at a local college gym. Both patients and workers were reportedly worried about possible aftershocks.
The New Madrid seismic zone, unlike most major earthquake sources, is located in the middle of a plate rather than at the junction of two plates. It is not a single fault line, but actually a collection of seismically active areas buried six to 12 miles below the surface stretched over 120 miles from northeast Arkansas through five states into southern Illinois.
Millions of years ago, a mid-plate separation caused a rift that is now experiencing pressure from both sides pushing it back together. Known as a “failed rift,” the New Madrid seismic zone experiences more than 200 minor earthquakes each year. The “big one” was actually three shocks that would have measured over 8.0 if a Richter scale had existed at the time, from December 1811 through February 1812. There were more than 1,000 aftershocks in the following five months. The three major quakes were felt as far away as Washington, D.C., and Boston.
The current New Madrid threat is based on an estimated repetition cycle of 80 years, plus or minus 20 percent. With the last large quake in 1895 over 6.0 on the Richter scale, the central United States is well overdue for a big shake. The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) seems to agree and is planning a major central U.S. earthquake exercise for next year.
The hospital exercise is an example of how many private sector organizations have begun to adapt the ICS to manage responses for all kinds of business interruptions. Business leaders have come to recognize the internal benefit to their company derived from using the ICS approach to manage emergency situations.
In addition, they know that ability to interact effectively with local first responders is greatly improved by understanding both how they are organized and how they manage resources.
When asked why ICS and NIMS education were obtained, the hospital reply was almost obvious.
“We work with public safety agencies all the time, and the ICS works for them,” said the facility manager. “It looked like a logical way to organize hospital staff for a major incident, so we trained, and it works.”
The facility manager also indicated that since ICS and NIMS had become mandatory in most of the public sector, it made sense to get some training because it is not a question of “if,” but “when” these systems will impact the private sector as well.
Recall that NFPA 1600 began as a recommended disaster management practice and everyone saw it applying only to public safety and emergency management practitioners. More than five years ago, that recommended practice became upgraded to a standard. Initially published in 2004, NFPA 1600 today reaches far beyond public safety organizations and contains a section in Chapter 5 dedicated to developing an incident coordination capability.
ICS originated more than a decade ago in the fire service when it was challenged by the overwhelming task of managing and applying resources from hundreds of agencies fighting extensive California wildfires. A logical follow-on to standardizing command systems was to standardize the entire incident management system. Thus, the NIMS was created. NIMS compliance has already become mandatory for any agency wishing to obtain federal funding support. Eventually it will work its way into the private sector for a variety of reasons. Not “if,” but “when.”
The primary focus of NIMS is interoperability and compatibility among multiple agencies that could respond to any disaster situation. It attempts to provide a flexible framework and standardization that will allow ease of interface when mutual aid brings together fire, rescue, emergency medical, law enforcement, and emergency management resources from anywhere in the country to address a need.
While corporate America may not see an immediate benefit to such ease of interfacing with each other, an understanding of NIMS will better equip a business for the moment when it must rely on public safety agencies for disaster assistance, even if the only assistance needed is to gain access to their business when it is cut off by an outside incident.
Whether a business plans to embrace ICS or a variation of it, every business should understand ICS to facilitate their own ability to interface with the public sector in time of crisis. Principles covered in the NIMS components of preparedness, resource management and communications can all be applied to several elements of the “Professional Practices For Business Continuity,” and utilized in both development and implementation of business continuity plans.

Paul R. Thomas Jr., MBCP, CEM, is chairman of the DRI International Board of Directors and has served 13 years on the board. Thomas has also served as emergency management director in his local community for more than 20 years.