Are we planning too much?

The emphasis placed on planning by emergency management today is misplaced. Too much time and effort is put into plans that go unused when a disaster strikes. They go unused not because they are bad plans or the effort put into them was not sufficient. They go unused because they rarely match the realities on the ground after the event and the personnel responsible for implementing that plan cannot improvise to make the plan fit the reality.

The military has a saying "no plan survives first contact with the enemy." I could not agree more and came up with my own saying when I was an emergency manager on the line. No plan survives the first rain bands of a hurricane. Plans are based on a ground truth that changes almost daily in every community. When it come to execute them little is relevant. Try writing a plan for the Joplin tornado where it leveled one third of the community knocked out a fire station, the waste water treatment plant and the drinking water treatment plant. Set those priorities before it happened. It is next to impossible.

The emphasis instead should be on team building and training the Emergency Operations Center staff. If they can be trained to be able to make decisions under the pressure of too little information, not enough resources and not enough time to gather all of the facts then a community can begin to feel as if they are prepared.

Training the men and women who ordinarily do not face such decisions will better prepare a community than any plan. Most of those who man the EOC do not come from emergency response agencies or operational departments like public works. Instead they are used to careful and consensus building non-emergency decision making. They must be prepared to shift to crisis decision making or no matter how good the plan is it will not be effective. They must be prepared to go through the plan and if they must start at G instead of A because everything in between does not make sense then the plan might be useful.

It is the people who will make the difference not the plan. Train the people to make crisis decisions and any plan can be made to work. 

Standing Orders- A Lesson Reinforced by the Joplin Tornado

If a community is to respond to a disaster of this magnitude and ferocity then it must be prepared before the disaster. A simple set of orders for all personnel who work for a community could jump start the response without direction from above.

As a paramedic I worked under a set of Standing Orders, if a patient has certain set of symptoms we followed a specific set of protocols then contacted the physician. We started the treatment we knew they would order before contacting the physician thereby saving time and starting critical treatment for the patient. We need to establish the same type of system in emergency management.

After a sudden event like the Joplin tornado or an earthquake all of the critical response departments within that jurisdiction should have a set of Standing Orders (this is NOT repeat NOT a criticism of the Joplin response I am only using it as an example). The Public Works, Transportation, Law Enforcement and Fire Departments should all know exactly what to do without being told.

1. All units and facilities must report their status to the next higher up in their chain of command. The report should include if they can still perform your assignments and if not what is their status. The first and most important thing a jurisdiction must establish after an event like Joplin is what do we have left to respond. What are our most critical needs. 
2. All personnel and units should begin immediate operations. Public works and transportation should begin clearing major streets, the fire department and law enforcement should immediately check all critical infrastructure such as hospitals, nursing home and other designated sites. Report their findings and immediately begin search and rescue operations should they be needed. 
3. Any units, stations, vehicles, facilities not reporting in to the EOC should be considered out of service until some sort of communication with them has been established and their status can be determined. 
4. All off duty personnel of the jurisdiction should report to their normal places of duty for the additional manpower that will be needed. 

These Standing Orders should reflect the communities profile but clearing streets and search and rescue should be the primary priorities, followed by communications. Simple straight forward Standing Orders will prevent confusion and delays in the response.