Delivering Mass Care Services to high-rise buildings

With the arrival this week of Halloween, the second anniversary of Super Storm Sandy carries it's own horror show legacy. A YouTube video outlining the plight of the elderly residents of a high-rise apartment building in the Rockaways in Queens, New York City in the weeks after the storm hit is a textbook example of the consequences of not planning for the care of vulnerable populations in multistory buildings in high risk areas.

According to the New York Times, after Sandy the New York City Housing Authority lost electricity and elevators to 402 of its buildings housing 77,000 residents, with most of them also losing heat and hot water. "Around the city, 26 of the housing authority’s basement boiler rooms had flooded, destroying the equipment there, and leaving 34,565 apartments without heat and hot water. "

The reply of responsible officials to the plight of the individuals in these apartments was: "The should have followed the evacuation order." Granted, an elderly, wheelchair bound individual on the 18th floor of a building erected on a scrap of barrier island sand should give careful consideration to heeding an evacuation order in the face of an oncoming hurricane. But some of these individuals, for a variety of reasons, don't heed the order.  And we can't just say, as the Grail Knight in the movie Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade did: "He chose poorly." We have to help them. An ambulance crew called to the scene of a vehicle splattered against a tree doesn't refuse service to the mangled occupant because he got behind the wheel while drunk.

The first and most important step to help these people is through mitigation of the risks. The New York Times reports that the city is using federal, state and local tax dollars to harden the city to the kind of flooding experienced during Sandy. The next step is to develop and rehearse realistic plans. A big mistake made in many emergency management plans is assuming that their informed citizenry will follow the instructions laid out in the plan. When the disaster happens some citizens will not only not have read the plan but will have no interest in written or verbal instructions that they perceive to be contrary to their self interest. 

In 2010 Florida completed our first ever statewide hurricane evacuation study. The study generated estimates for every county of how many people would evacuate for a certain category of storms, and how many of those who evacuate would seek shelter. And for each category of storm the study provided not one answer, but two.

The first answer stated how many people would seek shelter if everybody who was supposed to evacuate evacuated, and everybody who WASN'T supposed to evacuate didn't. The other number used behavioral surveys of the populations in the counties to estimate the evacuation numbers and the shelter populations.

I can tell you right now the next time a hurricane hits a densely populated, urban coastal city an elderly, wheel chair bound individual on the 18th floor isn't going to evacuate. And for all the hype over "Superstorm" Sandy, it was big but the intensity was barely a Category 1. The combination of wind, surge, rain, and tornadoes from a major hurricane doesn't leave wreckage but an array of empty concrete slabs. Just getting to the building is going to be a problem, much less climbing to the 18th floor. And that's assuming that you know that someone's there and has a problem.

When I came home to Florida from New York City after Sandy the problem of the wheel chair bound person on the 18th floor was uppermost on my mind. I tried to get other people interested in the problem but life got in the way.

Me at my first Red Cross deployment - Hurricane Sandy in NYC

A Red Cross friend who served in Sandy called me the other day and said, "I've been thinking about all those people in those high rise buildings in New York City. We need to come up with a Service Delivery Plan for those people."

"You're right," I said. "We need to do that."

"I'm going to talk to some smart people I know."

"Me, too," I said. "I know some smart people I can talk to."

Maybe we can come up with something. Maybe we can even get it done before the next storm comes.

Why we need the Red Cross

Last week I got an email from Jesse Eisinger, a Pulitzer Prize winning reporter from ProPublica. In the email he stated: "We are working with NPR on a story about the American Red Cross’s mass care during Hurricane Sandy. I understand that you were brought in to the NYC EOC after the first few weeks to coordinate the ARC’s mass care for the city."

I responded favorably and the next day we spoke on the phone for almost an hour.

Some people are hesitant to talk to reporters but my Hurricane Sandy experience in NYC was positive and I was eager to talk about it. I also wanted to correct the statement in his email that I was "brought in to the NYC EOC...to coordinate the ARC’s mass care for the city." That statement was not factually correct and exaggerated the role that I did play during my 2 week stint in Manhattan.

During my conversation with Mr. Eisinger I could tell from some of his questions that he was adhering to the dictum given to Watergate reporters Woodward and Bernstein: "Follow the money." The Red Cross received millions of dollars in donations for Hurricane Sandy relief and the question of accountability for how that money was spent is certainly a question that an investigative reporter would find interesting. Happily, I knew nothing about that subject. He said he wanted to talk about mass care in NYC during Sandy and I knew something about that subject. 

Plus, as those of you who know me will attest,  I LOVE to talk about mass care.

To be precise, we didn't talk about mass care as much as we discussed disaster feeding. At least, I talked a lot and he listened and asked occasional questions. I had already sent him links to my blog where I had already documented my experiences in Sandy. The first one was The Transition to Long Term Disaster Feeding in New York City after Sandy. Another one was Disaster Feeding in New York City during Sandy.

I spent some time explaining to him the 3 phases of disaster feeding. Not familiar with the 3 phases? Check out the first blog post I referenced, or read all about it in the source document, the Multi-agency Feeding Plan Template. The 3 phases are Immediate, Sustained and Long Term. When I arrived in the NYC Emergency Operations Center on November 11, 2012 (Veterans Day) we were well into the Sustained Phase.

The NYC EOC at the Brooklyn end of the Brooklyn Bridge

In the 8 days that I was in the NYC EOC I didn't coordinate mass care for the Red Cross. I went there to lend my disaster feeding experitise to what was a complex and difficult situation.  As I told Mr. Eisinger, I was able to make 2 positive contributions. First, we got the NYC Emergency Management to initiate daily conference calls for the Feeding Task Force. Through these conference calls we were able to coordinate the multiple, disparate groups involved in disaster feeding in the city. Second, I initiated the discussion about the transition from the Sustained phase to the Long-term feeding phase. The planning for this transition continued after I left under the steady hand of some good people and was a real success of the operation. You can read more about this in the first blog post I referenced.

I arrived at the NYC Red Cross Chapter on November 6, Election Day. I spent the prior week in Maryland responding to a request from their state. Why did I go to Maryland? They were the only state that asked for me. You can read about it in the blog post Hurricane Sandy's Inundation of Crisfield, Maryland.

When we finished the response in Crisfield I got released from my commitment to Maryland and asked the Red Cross if they would take me as a volunteer. The next day I flew home for 4 hours and then caught a flight the Red Cross booked for me to New York. While in Manhattan I worked 14 hour days doing my regular job while I was on vacation from the State of Florida.

Why? Well, for one thing, most of my friends were already there or in New Jersey. Second, I gained a lot, both personally and professionally. And although this was my 16th hurricane Sandy was the first time that I ever deployed as a Red Cross Volunteer.  I knew how important the Red Cross was to mass care in this country but it wasn't until I deployed as a Volunteer that I learned why we need the Red Cross.

When I arrived at the Chapter I was put to work planning a large distribution of emergency supplies operation that the Red Cross was going to execute during the upcoming 3 day Veterans Day weekend. The entire 4th floor of the Chapter was occupied by the Disaster Relief Operation so I was sent to a 2nd floor conference room. When I arrived I was the only person there.

The 2nd floor conference room at the NYC Red Cross Chapter when I first arrived.

Throughout that day and the next the room filled with volunteers and staff assigned to work on the distribution operation. It was a remarkable time. In my experience, this was the greatest concentration of mass care expertise assembled at one time and place that I had ever seen. Most of the people with the real expertise were Volunteers who left their jobs, homes and families to help out complete strangers. 

"This is amazing," I said to one of the many Volunteers in the room.

She nodded her head and smiled. "Yes, it is, isn't it?"

The 2nd floor conference room 2 days later

We needed that expertise because we were faced with a large task and a challenging mass care environment. It's hard to do anything in New York City on a blue sky day. The City is a system of systems and the storm had disrupted the balance. We had to move lots of commodities, vehicles and  volunteers using an organization equivalent to a pick up basketball team. It helped that the players were really good.

Mr. Eisinger wanted to speak to me about disaster feeding because, as he noted, the Red Cross received a lot of criticism about their feeding operation in the first week. I couldn't comment about the feeding operation during the first week because I wasn't there. But I knew enough about disaster feeding to criticize the critics. 

The first few days after the impact of the storm are the Immediate Phase of disaster feeding. In this Phase local resources are used for feeding until such time as resources external to the jurisdiction are brought in to produce and distribute meals at the level required for the disaster. In 2005 after Hurricane Wilma it took us 3 days to establish the feeding infrastructure and begin the Sustained Phase of disaster feeding. Wilma was the 8th hurricane that we had worked in 16 months and we had the skills that came from lots of practice. 

In NYC after Sandy, in my professional opinion, 4 or 5 days to establish the feeding infrastructure would be a reasonable estimate considering the conditions. People must consider that mass care vehicles aren't the first priority for access to the City after the winds die down. Law enforcement, Search & Rescue, and other life safety resources get first priority. As they should.

To stand in front of the media on Day 2 or 3 after the storm and criticize the Red Cross because they aren't feeding yet is to demonstrate an ignorance of the realities of disaster feeding. There are a lot of advantages to living in a great City like NYC. There are lots of disadvantages. Hurricanes, and big disasters in general, are one.

Criticizing the Institution and the idea of the Red Cross is not constructive. We need the Red Cross. Criticize the individual who made the mistake and not the organization. The Red Cross represents an ideal and we need that ideal. It's the ideal that I saw in the 2nd floor conference room of the Greater NYC Chapter of the American Red Cross during the Hurricane Sandy response.

In my almost 15 year career as the State Mass Care Coordinator for Florida I have heard of a lot of jurisdictions, local and state, who say that they've given up on the Red Cross. They give a lot of reasons. The Red Cross didn't do this. The Red Cross wouldn't do that. I don't see any good reason that a jurisdiction should cast the organization aside because of this. We need the Red Cross.

I'm not going to to criticize Mr. Eisinger for an article that I imagine that he may write. If he's looking for accountability from the Red Cross he should be looking for fraud and abuse. I didn't see any fraud or abuse when I was in NYC during the Sandy response. And I don't think he's going to find any. He may uncover some people doing the very best they could in a difficult situation, and making some mistakes along the way. 

I was there. I made some mistakes. Blame me. Don't blame the Red Cross. We need the Red Cross.

Disaster Feeding in New York City during Sandy

Hurricane (or, if you prefer, Post Tropical Cyclone) Sandy had a major, but not catastrophic, affect on New York City. Of the four hazards from a hurricane (surge, wind, inland flooding & tornadoes), surge was the principle source of the damage to the city. There was not the extensive inland roof damage from winds that happened in, for example, Wilma. Six months afterward, when I flew into Ft. Lauderdale, I was greeted by a sea of patched, blue roofs. I tried to explain to some New Yorkers that the wind damage was minimal but they protested and showed me their cell phone photos of destroyed, ocean side homes. I had seen such images before, in pictures and in person. What I was unable to convey to them , or they couldn’t understand, was that when a storm delivers surge, wind, inland flooding & tornadoes to a spot, there are no pictures of wrecked houses. There is only, like I saw in Bay St Louis after Katrina, the empty, concrete slabs where the houses had once been.

The City of New York, under the strict supervision of the Mayor’s Office, applied the considerable resources at their disposal to the task of feeding the survivors of the disaster. After tasking the National Guard to deliver shelf stable meals and bottled water to Points of Distribution, the City contracted for catered hot meals to be delivered to fixed feeding sites in the affected area. They also hired a number of the abundant food trucks to perform mobile feeding. These actions were paid for from the Mayor’s Fund, a stash of donated dollars available for use at the Mayor’s discretion.

The American Red Cross and the Southern Baptist Convention contributed considerable resources to the establishment of a mass care feeding infrastructure in the five Boroughs of the City and on Long Island. Three Baptist Field Kitchens were positioned in the City (Staten Island, Brooklyn & Queens) and one on Long Island. In mid-November there were approximately 120 Emergency Response Vehicles (ERVs) assigned to distribute the production of the 4 Field Kitchens and any additional catered meals.

The Food Banks in NYC, with their associated food pantries and soup kitchens, shoulder the burden of feeding the needy every day during blue skies. With the advent of the disaster their burdens were increased.  The truckloads of donations increased significantly after the disaster, which is a good thing. Receiving, sorting and distributing the additional donations was an additional burden on already exhausted staff, which is a bad thing.

Finally, ad hoc groups of people sprang into existence to take care of unmet feeding needs. The Food Banks and the Red Cross tried to assist these groups with varying success.

When I arrived in NYC in  the middle of November 2012, almost 2 weeks after the impact of the storm, very little of this feeding activity was coordinated. There were, in the words of a friend of mine, “multiple, parallel, non-converging" feeding efforts under way in the City (although parallel is, by definition, 2 straight lines that do not intersect, I add the term “non-converging” for those of you who never read Euclid). After speaking at the recently completed National Hurricane Conference to a number of individuals in the mass care community who served in NYC during Sandy, I arrived at several conclusions that I would like to share with you.

The reasons for the lack of coordination are primarily cultural and institutional. I will deal with the institutional first.

NYC is a hard place to live in on a good day and I imagine is a very difficult place to manage. The successful elected officials and managers in the City succeeded because of the particular way that they solved problems. I am not going to attach adjectives or moral judgments to their problem solving processes. Long ago the 5 Boroughs of the City decided that the best way to manage the City was with a powerful Mayor. Broward County, Florida, with a population of about 2 million persons, has 31 municipalities and a county government without an equivalent, powerful central executive. The problem solving processes in NYC and Broward County are different but satisfactory to a majority of the populations in each jurisdiction. When a Big Disaster Strikes the City the elected officials and managers address this problem the same way that they have been successful addressing Big City problems in the past.

The Whole of Community concept that FEMA Administrator Craig Fugate developed in Florida and brought to the nation emphasizes communication, collaboration and cooperation in the disaster response so that all of the resources in the community are brought together in a Unified Effort. The Unity of Command brought about by a powerful Chief Executive comes at the expense of a Unity of Effort. The fact that the disaster was not catastrophic meant that Unity of Command was sufficient for a successful response. A Unity of Command, that is, augmented by the remarkable and enormous resources at the disposal of the City Government and the admirable hardiness of the New York City survivors.

Another reason for the lack of coordination in the City during the Sandy response was the clash between the Culture of the New Yorkers and the (Southern, Midwestern, take your pick) cultures of the Femites and mass care volunteers who poured into the City during the response. The things that we did and said angered and worried the New Yorkers. How could they have confidence that we would perform when we had that kind of attitude? The things the New Yorkers did and said shocked and offended us. I remember thinking: I volunteered my time and energy to come here and help. Why are they treating me this way?

This was not a good environment for communication, collaboration and coordination.

I don’t believe that NYC is going to change the way that they handle disasters. They have been hit by 2 storms in successive years and they believe that their responses were successful. Why should they change?

They should change because Unity of Command will be overwhelmed in a catastrophic event. Whole of Community was adopted and implemented because Unity of Effort is the best way to respond in a catastrophic event. The City of New York can figure that out now or they can have that conclusion forced on them days or even weeks into a catastrophic event. It’s their choice.