Moving forward from a "Lessons Learned" framework - mindset

Lessons Learned are not learned unless actions are taken to correct the problems identified. Also lessons learned does not necessarily mean what was done wrong. That is another misnomer of the phrase. I have seen organizations and people afraid of lessons learned in AAR's because they point out where they made mistakes. It can be a reinforcement for some actions and a source of information for the correction of others. 

It has been my experience that there are plenty of lessons learned produced but the attitude in the industry is not one of learning from them. I hate to keep harping on the military use of lessons learned but there is a correlation between the military profession and our own. I'll always remember when General Schwarzkopf giving a briefing after the first Gulf War about the overall tactics of the war. He mentioned a Civil War battle that he had studied at West Point as the basis for his determining the tactics he would use. That is the example of how lessons learned should be used in our profession. I'll never forget one official after Katrina stating that one of the most difficult and unexpected problem after the storm was the total destruction of so much of the communication infrastructure. That lesson was learned after Hugo and Andrew close to twenty years previous. Until we as a profession begin study disasters and the various problems they produce to create our plans we will continue to repeat our mistakes.

What are the ABC's for emergency management?

Like the ABC's used in EMS for every patient; airway, breathing and circulation. What are the first three most important things an emergency manager must know to begin their response to any disaster? Are there three over arching pieces of information that should guide emergency managers in the initial hours or days of a response.

In my book using the Observe Orient Decide Act (OODA Loop) as my guide I came up with What do you have? What do you need to do? What do you need to do it? Repeat. Repeating the Three Questions would keep everyone in a constant state of evaluation until a clear picture has been established. My objective was try to find out how to begin. What do you do every time no matter how big or small the incident (a tornado or tsunami or earthquake) in the first minutes, hours or days to be able to properly size up and respond to an event. But I still feel as if there is a better more complete set of questions or basic principals out there. 

Part of the answer has to be the ICS/EOC interface. The people with their feet on the ground are your only assets in the beginning. One of the answers it would seem to me is: what assets are still capable of responding and what are they doing. This would include fire, law enforcement, public works, hospitals etc. What is their condition and have the been impacted by the incident and have they begun operations. This would be reported by the IC or if the incident was large enough multiple IC's. It goes back to the old question we used in the field when we walked up on an incident. What you got?

Mobile device use in recovery and early response

Mobile IT is at the center of emergency management of the future. I saw a video tape (that is how long ago it was) about an earthquake in California close to fifteen years ago. It was showing what the future held for the use of technology in a disaster. First it showed an earthquake warning system altering civilians and giving them a few seconds warning, enough to take cover. Japan has this system in place today and was used during the Mega Quake. It gave as much as thirty seconds warning depending on how far you were away from the epicenter. There is a wave that an earthquake produces that travels faster than the physical movement and can be recorded. Tens of thousands of residents received a warning on their cell phones. It was used even to trip some factories to shut off prior to the physical effects were felt.

Next it showed CERT team members using what is now an IPad to report damage and injuries to the EOC. It showed the same type of technology being used by the first responders to report progress or report damage. In Haiti they used a program to map the local of incoming calls of damage and injuries using cell phone location. These maps were used by the Marine Corp and Coast Guard to decide on the best use of their resources. So it is already beginning to happen.

I think the use of drones with live feeds to the EOC to receive an early damage assessment are the next big thing. Think if they could have been launched immediately after the tornado in Joplin.

I am not even touching on the power of social media to warn as well as collection information from the public.

So IT and mobile devices are at the center of emergency management. The biggest question is how to integrate it with current operations.

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.