On the 10th Anniversary of the start of the Iraq War

The New York Times reported this weekend that the 10th anniversary of the start of the Iraq war would arrive this Wednesday, March 20. I had vivid memories that the war started on March 19. After a check I discovered that through the miracle of time zone travel we were both right: when the bombs started falling in Iraq on March 20 the date in my temporary home of Ft. Bragg, NC was still the 19th.

On that cold, rainy North Carolina evening the room that I shared with Colonel Dale Foster in a dilapidated World War II barracks filled with officers and soldiers of the 358th Civil Affairs Brigade. The object of our attention was my transistor radio, tuned to the local National Public Radio station, from which we expected to hear a speech by the President of the United States. We were all wearing crisp, newly issued Desert Camouflage uniforms. I still carry the memory of the raindrops forming on the window panes behind the radio.

March 19, 2003 Packed and ready to go.

I didn't know if this speech would be the start of the war or not. I had been working full time for almost five months preparing my unit to go to war and in that time there had been a series of important speeches and announcements, any one of which could have been the one that signaled the start of hostilities. On March 10th I celebrated my 25th wedding anniversary at Ft. Bragg without my spouse. I had kissed my wife goodbye, not knowing when I would return or if I would be going to a war, not once, not twice, but three times. The fourth time, on February 8, 2003, I squeezed her hand, gave her a smile, and jumped out of the car. That was the best we could do. I wouldn't see her or my family or my home until December 21, 2003.

The crowd in my barracks room showed no outward display of emotion after the President's speech, even though this was a very significant event in our lives. We were going to war, some on us for the first time. For others, like my good friend Leo Rivera, who had served in the Gulf war, this would be his second trip to Iraq in a U.S. military uniform.

The next day, March 20, we finally got the word that we had been expecting and waiting for since we had arrived in Ft. Bragg six weeks before: Donald Rumsfeld had decided that it was time for the civil affairs units to "start flowing into theater" (in the quaint Pentagonese term for it all). On March 21 we loaded out luggage (2 duffel bags and a ruck sack ) on a truck and climbed into buses with our carry-on items. Our immediate destination was Green Ramp at Pope Air Force Base.

March 21, 2003 - Waiting for a plane at Green Ramp.

One of the innumerable lessons of military life, especially relative to military contracted or U.S. Air Force flown intercontinental air travel, is to live in the moment and keep expectations at a very minimal, even subterranean level. This is no knock on my Air Force brethren, as I have always considered the Air Force to be a suitable substitute for military service. Let us just say that a United Airlines B-747 showed up at the right place at the right time, and didn't break down, and we left for Kuwait on the day that we were assigned. The platoons of staff officers in the Pentagon could check off one more box completed in the war effort.

March 21, 2003 - Boarding the plane

In a burst of egalitarianism, no doubt inspired by the Air Force, we boarded the plane in alphabetical order as opposed to rank. Thus, the World continued to inflict crass discrimination upon me because of my last name and condemn me to the end of the line.

March 22 - Camp Wolf, Kuwait

After a stop in Germany we arrived in Kuwait the next day and greeted our luxurious accommodations.  The Air Force Technical Sergeant who greeted our plane at Kuwait International Airport recommended that since the Airport was a target for the Scud missiles that even then were descending on Kuwait we should unload the plan and get off the runway as quickly as possible.

We all agreed with the Air Force Sergeant and did our best to comply.

Mass Care Common Operating Picture

We have been talking and having conference calls about a Mass Care COP lately. COP is short for Common Operating Picture, the quaint and curious concept that the many decision makers within the many agencies involved in a decision should be making their many decisions based on the same set of information.

There were multiple mass care operating pictures in New York City during Sandy but they had little in common. The reason for this was not a conspiracy of incompetence but a reflexion of the difficulties facing the mass care practitioners trying to direct resources in a large, urban environment.

The American Red Cross had 120 Emergency Response Vehicles (ERV) performing fixed and mobile feeding in NYC and on Long Island. The ERV crews were volunteers from places like Kansas and Indiana and Georgia. They knew as much about NYC geography as I did, and I was discovering (to my eternal amazement) that Coney Island wasn't an island, but a peninsula. I could be standing in Queens and someone could give me an address and I wouldn't know whether it was 3 blocks or 3 miles away (assuming that I even knew where I was).

That's what a GPS is for, you say. But a GPS doesn't solve this problem. A GPS tells the user how to get from Point A to Point B, not the relative positions of Points A through Z. The people directing the ERVs in Sandy weren't receiving one or two reports of people needing feeding, they were receiving dozens. Not being from the area, they couldn't look at the addresses and know if some of the requests were clustered together. As far as they knew they were all separate entities, each clamoring for a limited number of a precious resource.

Normally, this isn't such a problem, but Sandy was different; the impacted area was large, urban, and densely populated. There was a disconnect between those who could identify the location of the need, and those who could direct the resources to meet that need. Just call them on the cell phone, you say. Well, the cell phones don't always work in a disaster, and this is not a point to point communication problem. This is an information processing problem. 

The solution, of course, is to collect all of the information and display it electronically on a map. The technology to do this is well developed and inexpensive. In our computer literate society information is collected, put in the right format, and transmitted to the correct depository millions of times of day. How hard could this be? What problem could keep us from making this happen?

The biggest problem of all: We've never done it this way before.

But we're going to fix it. We've got it fix it. In the upcoming years the American Red Cross will be fielding a new fleet of Emergency Response Vehicles with tracking devices that will convert them into blinking dots on an electronic map. The Salvation Army has already placed similar devices on a portion of their fleet of canteens. Each agency will convert their information into data feeds that can be assembled and displayed on a map along with shelter locations, field kitchen sites, power outage data, damage assessment reports and all the other bits of information that are pouring into emergency operations centers.

But all of that won't happen by this summer. And I am all about what can you do for me now. What will be ready when the Big Storms start swelling on the satellite pictures? For the last 12 years my New Year's resolution every January 1 is to get ready for a Category 5 hurricane to hit Miami. What have I got against Miami? Nothing. That's my worst case scenario. And that's the standard against which I have to compare my level of preparations.

Knowing my job, people ask me all the time about my opinion on the latest forecast for the hurricane season. Because of my job I am well aware of the hurricane season forecasts but they have no impact on my preparations. Regardless of the seasonal forecast, I have to get ready for the Cat 5 hitting Miami. As June 1 approaches my preparations grow more frantic. 

I asked a friend why this was so and he said, "You've seen the elephant."

Because I've seen the elephant we're going to jury rig some kind of mass care COP for this summer. We've already figured something out. We will test the contraption at this year's National Hurricane Exercise in Tallahassee in June.

And then, if the Big One to Florida comes this summer, we will use it.

Creating a state Mass Care Services Doctrine

I have stumbled through the wreckage and tumult of emergency operations centers as the occupants try, and sometimes fail, to manage a big disaster. A recurring theme in these situations is how the inhabitants sort themselves into categories. There are those who know that they don’t know what they’re doing, who know that they are steering the boat over the falls, but see no other choice but to grip the tiller and await the outcome. The really interesting ones are those who don’t know what they’re doing, and don’t know it. They may even be riding a delusional wave of euphoria, caught up in the excitement of the disaster and think that they are doing well. The ones who know what they are doing, and know that they know what they are doing, are mixed in among the others, camouflaged by their silence, waiting in vain for someone to ask them what needs to be done. They don’t speak up because they know that unsolicited advice will be wasted. The former category can’t absorb the advice because they are already resigned to their fate, while the latter category disregard their words because they think they already have it all figured out.

In August 2004, after almost 5 years in the job, I discovered how little I really knew about coordinating mass care at the state level. Hurricane Charlie plowed into Charlotte County as a Category 4 hurricane, crossed the state and exited into the Atlantic Ocean as a Category 1 near Daytona Beach. At the State EOC we were inundated with requests from over 25 hurricane-impacted counties comprising millions of people. I know that my frantic and frustrating actions included very little productive mass care coordination. And I knew it at the time.


What is sad about this story is how hard I had worked the previous 4 years to get ready for that moment. My problem stemmed from the fact that most of my efforts were focused on procedures to make things run right in the EOC. I know now that I had a role to play in that world outside the building. After 8 storms in 16 months I started to figure out what that role was. What is also sad about this story is that there wasn't a book, manual, document or scrap of paper that explained how to do my job. The role of State Mass Care Coordinator wasn’t defined. There was no state mass care doctrine for me to learn.

One dictionary defines doctrine as “a body or system of teachings relating to a particular subject.” Doctrine could also be defined as “something that is taught.” The new National Preparedness Goal defines Mass Care Services as: “Provide life-sustaining services to the affected population with a focus on hydration, feeding, and sheltering to those who have the most need, as well as support for reunifying families.” At the national level, FEMA and the American Red Cross are responsible for coordinating the implementation of Mass Care Services in a disaster.

The American Red Cross has assembled a doctrine on providing mass care at the local level from the vast history and experience of the organization. The doctrine is written in manuals and disseminated in classroom instruction by local Chapters year round. To borrow a term from the military, this is tactical doctrine. Mass care tactical doctrine explains how trained individuals and resources arrive at the disaster area and feed, shelter and distribute relief supplies to the affected population. This doctrine works fine for the hundreds of smaller emergencies, events and disasters that occur in the nation every year.

The principle voluntary agencies that perform Mass Care Services across the nation (the American Red Cross, the Salvation Army and the Southern Baptists) struggle to deliver the level of service that the public expects during big disasters. These struggles are not necessarily the fault of the voluntary agencies. Their ability to marshal volunteers (which they have trained at their expense), equipment (which they have paid for) and salaried employees from around the nation and employ them in support of local jurisdictions during a disaster is a feat that does not always receive the appropriate recognition. But their resources are not infinite. Their capabilities and the amount of resources that they can deliver in a crisis are dependent on public support and the donated dollar. For this reason, public criticism of their actions or non-actions by elected officials caught up in the emotions of the response is never helpful.

Fortunately, our country doesn’t have to deal with catastrophic disasters very often. For most emergency managers, when the Big One comes it is their first big disaster. For those that have done it before, their previous experience may not provide a good example. And too often the local politicians decide that this event is “important” and requires their uninformed, uneducated and ill-considered usurpation of the roles for which their emergency managers have been training and preparing for a life time. Is it any wonder that we don’t do well?

We have a tactical mass care doctrine that serves us well in all disasters. What we don’t have, and what we need, is an operational mass care doctrine. Borrowing again from the military (and simplifying the concept considerably) operational doctrine is about moving the resources into place so that the tactical doctrine can be executed. We practice operational tasks infrequently. The mass care community has a lot of skilled, dedicated professionals who have worked numerous big disasters. In some cases they are the ones in the emergency operations centers who know what to do, and know that they know what to do. They understand, through harsh experience, the need for operational doctrine, although they may not phrase it in those terms.

The best and most effective way to manage a disaster, especially a Big One, is in a collaborative manner, utilizing the resources of all the agencies available in the community. This is the philosophical basis for the Whole of Community concept now being promoted by FEMA and other agencies. There are some elected officials who, when the disaster strikes, take control of all emergency management actions, arrive at decisions without consultation with their state, federal, nonprofit and private sector partners, issue directives to their partners as if they were subordinates and then micro-manage the execution of these directives. This approach can, and has, caused unnecessary suffering to the survivors who have the misfortune to live in that jurisdiction. We can only shake our heads at such actions and leave any resolution to the electoral process.

For the great, sane, majority in the rest of the nation we need a collaborative, operational Mass Care Services doctrine. The central actor in any such doctrine must be the state government. Why? Because only the Governor of the State can request federal mass care resources on behalf of the local jurisdictions. By definition, operational actions are only necessary when the local jurisdictions are overwhelmed and need additional resources. The voluntary agencies can bring in their own national assets on their own authority and frequently do so. But what if the voluntary agencies are overwhelmed? Then state and federal assets must be committed by a designated State Mass Care Coordinator trained to do the job.

I have written here before about our efforts to create a State Mass Care Coordinator’s Course (see the new State Mass Care Coordinator's Course). And the national mass care community has been able to develop some documents that explain how the collaborative process should work to coordinate mass care at the state level. These documents can be found on the National Voluntary Agencies Active in Disaster website as well as the National Mass Care Strategy website. These documents, which are the first steps towards an operational Mass Care Services doctrine, are: The Multi-Agency Feeding Plan Template, the Feeding Task Force Guidance Document, the Sheltering Guidance Aid, Household Disaster Feeding, and Federal Mass Care Resources Coordination. To further assist this training process FEMA is publishing Mass Care Resource Typing documents (read about this development here).

Finally, in furtherance of the National Mass Care Strategy, we are holding a National Mass Care Exercise annually in order to train present and future State Mass Care Coordinators from around the nation, as well as mass care workers from the federal, state, local, & voluntary agencies and private sector. The first such National Mass Care Exercise was held in Tallahassee, FL in May 2012 (read the after action report). Another National Mass Care Exercise is planned for Tallahassee in May 2013. The intent of these exercises is to give the national mass care community a chance to practice these operational procedures and train in the difficult but essential collaborative coordination processes that are essential to a successful mass care response.

Hopefully, through these actions, we can help some future State Mass Care Coordinator prepare and do a better job than I did during Hurricane Charlie in August 2004.

Hurricane Sandy's inundation of Crisfield, Maryland

On Sunday evening, October 28, as I kept one eye on supper cooking on the grill, another eye on the late NFL football game, and still another eye on the track of Hurricane Sandy, I received the phone call that I had been waiting for. My state mass care coordinator counterpart in Maryland, Pam Spring, wanted to know if I could give her a hand.

I had been playing my favorite game all weekend, following the track of the storm using my Hurrevac software and figuring out where it was going. More correctly, guessing where the storm was going based on the NHC forecast. And the storm looked like it was heading for Baltimore, MD.  

By Wednesday, October 31,  when I got on the plane to Baltimore the storm had jogged to the right. Pam and I knew that Maryland had dodged a bullet but I also knew that some parts of the state had been hit hard. Sandy's impact on Maryland wasn't the big disaster like New York and New Jersey, but the state had flooded homes and citizens in  distress. A lot of them were in Crisfield, MD.

Crisfield is a small town of 2,700 souls in Somerset County on the southwestern tip of the peninsula. Sandy's winds, coming off the mainland, pushed the waters of the Chesapeake Bay into the city, inundating as many as one third of the 1,100 structures.  I got that estimate directly from the city's building inspector in his office at city hall.

Pam and I along with Ginny Hazen, a fellow Floridian from Broward County, who accompanied me on the Emergency Management Assistance Compact (EMAC) mission to Maryland, left Reisterstown the morning of Thursday, November 1, to drive to Crisfield. I drove Pam's state vehicle, with Pam in the front seat, while Ginny followed in our rental car.

In a trend that was to continue for the next three days, Pam talked on her cell phone almost continuously. From Resisterstown, location of the State EOC, and northwest of Baltimore, there was no easy route to the DelMarVa peninsula. It was either sit in traffic on the interstate or grind our way through the big city. Ginny and I got the non-scenic tour of the city. 

Having only been to Baltimore once, I was totally dependent on Pam's directions, and Pam was busy filling up a notepad with incoming and outgoing phone calls. Ginny, behind us, was focused on keeping up. At one point in the middle of the city, I got Pam's attention and asked for directions.

She looked around and said, "We missed the turn." Pause. "We're in a really bad part of town." Pause. "Lock the doors."

We got out of Baltimore and I made my first trip across the Chesapeake Bay bridge. I would have had a better chance to see the view if I hadn't been driving. I had never been to the beautiful, rural, farm country of the Maryland peninsula, and I thought it sad that it took a disaster to bring me there. After a 4 hour drive halfway across Maryland, I reached Crisfield and finally saw a place that looked like it had been hit by a hurricane. You know, the usual signs: utility trucks, chain saw crews, traffic lights not giving out a lot of guidance. 

We had a meeting scheduled at City Hall  with the Mayor of Crisfield and we were there on time. As the senior, local elected official,  he was in charge, and we were there to do what we could to help him and his city. The big issue facing the Mayor was that his city inspector was getting ready to condemn 123 public housing units and place up to 278 citizens in the position of having to leave their home.

We walked out of the meeting and into a 2 1/2 day whirlwind of activity. The Mayor wanted a shelter, a Point of Distribution (POD) and an information center set up at the Woodrow Wilson Community Center, which was a short walk from the affected public housing units.

The Woodrow Wilson Community Center in Crisfield

The line of trash on a fence near the Community Center showing the height of the surge.

The Crisfield Essential Services Center

Volunteers assembling at the Crisfield City Hall for a day of service

Supplies at the POD in the Fire/Rescue facility in north Crisfield

The Red Cross, the Salvation Army and I outside the Woodrow Wilson Community Center.

Me, Pam Spring and Ginny Hazen on the last day of our assignment in Maryland.

After three hours of frenetic activity, triggered by Pam's cell phone, trucks were unloaded with supplies, tables were moved and set up, a Salvation Canteen showed up in the parking lot to feed, and the Mayor had what he wanted.


The Mayor wanted to call the information center a Disaster Recovery Center but I advised against it.

"A Disaster Recovery Center implies that FEMA is here, and as of right now, we have no federal declaration," I said. "When we have this situation in Florida, we set up what we call an Essential Services Center."

The Mayor agreed. As a reward for my suggestion, Pam put me charge of the ESC.  The Governor decided to put those in the condemned units that wanted to leave in a hotel, and some of them took him up on the offer. 

With the immediate needs of the affected inhabitants of the public housing units addressed, we expanded our outreach to the rest of the town. Ginny Hazen, my partner from Broward County, took over the Volunteer Coordination role for the city and did a fabulous job. The volunteer response was tremendous, and there was a lot of work to be done in the town. The locals were remarkably well organized and industrious. They sent volunteers out to assess the need on one day, recording exact addresses and requirements. Then, when the Southern Baptist chain saw crews showed up the next day, they had a list of jobs to perform.

The Mayor directed that a second POD be set up in a Fire/Rescue facility in the northern part of town. Feeling that I was underemployed, Pam added responsibility for establishing the second POD to my portfolio. I met with whoever was in charge at the Fire/Rescue station and showed him how to set up a drive through POD. A truck from the Food Bank arrived with canned goods. Other trucks arrived with bottled water and Red Cross Clean Up kits.

But I can't forget the elderly woman who showed up and asked the most repeated question I was to hear during the time I was in Maryland: "Is FEMA here?"

"No, Ma'am," I said. "They aren't."

"Well, my carpets got all wet and they're starting to smell. Do you know when they're coming?"

"Well Ma'am, FEMA can't do anything until there's a federal declaration. The Governor and the President are discussing it. When they make a decision, they'll let us know."

There was nothing that I could do to put this old woman's life back in order, but I still felt bad that I couldn't do anything. Crisfield reminded me of Pearlington, Mississippi, a small town that was hit much harder than Crisfield, but still left me feeling bad that I couldn't do more. Unlike Pearlington, however, I wasn't sure that Crisfield was going to get their federal declaration. Therefore, I was pleased to hear today that Crisfield and Somerset County were awarded a federal declaration last Friday and a Disaster Recovery Center is now open in the city.

By Sunday we had addressed the immediate needs of Somerset County. The long road to recovery was still ahead. Pam released Ginny and I from our EMAC assignment and we headed home. Sandy wasn't finished for me, however. When I got home from Maryland on Monday, November 5, I departed 3 hours later for 2 weeks in New York. 

Forklifts, big trailers and Hurricane Sandy

I am sure that New York City and the American Red Cross aren't resting on their laurels about how perfectly they played their response to Hurricane Sandy. Emergency management is logistics, and doing logistics in a big city is tough. After two weeks spent in NYC during the Sandy response, I feel like FEMA Administrator Craig Fugate, who recounted his response to a reporter's question about how he knew so much about emergency management by saying: "I've been doing this for so long that I've made every possible mistake and learned from it."

While in NYC I had the great opportunity to work with the Red Cross Disaster Relief Operation and the highly professional NYC Office of Emergency Management. I saw both organizations making mistakes with the exceptional clarity of one who has made the same damn mistakes myself. And some more than once.

A lot of people have years and decades of disaster experience but very few have experience in disasters dealing with millions of people. And of those who have experience in such disasters, most were operating at the street or shelter level, and not in the big emergency operations centers. I have spent most of my emergency management career working in the big EOCs, places full of so much information and so little clarity about what is really happening to those people working in the cold or the heat in the affected areas.

My job in the EOC, when boiled down to its essential essence, is to make sure the people in the street and shelter have the right kind of resource, with the right capability, in the right quantity, at the right time. This sounds simple but its not easy.

The responders in the affected area are worrying about Right Now. Right Now could be the next minute, or the next hour or Today. For them, long range planning is Tomorrow. At the State EOC in Tallahassee I can't do anything Right Now. If you need something Right Now, and that resource is already positioned in the Logistic Staging Area (LSA), I can arrange to have it delivered to you tomorrow. We can't deliver it to you Right Now because all the vehicles at the LSA are out delivering resources that were requested yesterday.

If the resource you need is not in the LSA, then I have to go get it. This means that I have to arrange for the State to buy it or request FEMA to provide it. This can take 48-96 hours, at best. And if you need it Right Now, 48-96 hours sounds like Next Year. Therefore, my time horizon is never Right Now, but is focused on what I anticipate the people in the field are going to need 48-96 hours from now.

That means that I am in the prediction business. In small disasters any errors in my predictions are usually small. In big disasters the errors in my predictions have the potential to be very large. And the question is rarely about WHAT we need but rather HOW MANY. That is why I have spent many years trying to devise ways to predict the quantity of resources that we would need in a big disaster.  One of the best ways to improve predictions is to make them a collective judgment of the stakeholders involved. In Florida, we do that on the daily state mass care conference call.

What happens in big disasters is that the people in the EOCs are stuck in Right Now and aren't thinking about the next 48-96 hours. The reason they are stuck in Right Now is that they are understaffed for the size of the disaster. The reason that they are understaffed is they don't know what they don't know. You don't know what you need in a big disaster until you experience one. But big disasters don't happen that often, so few people have the experience required to deal with the more complex issues presented.

In 2009 the State of Florida ran a catastrophic hurricane exercise to test our new catastrophic hurricane plan. This was Craig Fugate's last exercise as Florida's EM Director. I was the State Mass Care Coordinator in the exercise and I was overwhelmed by the quantity and complexity of the problems that I had to address. At one point, I needed to be in 3 critical meetings at the same time. I learned that I was understaffed for the size of the disaster and needed to plan to do something about it should the real event happen.

Which brings me to forklifts and big trailers. The biggest and most impressive lesson that I learned while responding to the 8 hurricanes that hit Florida in a 16 month period during 2004 and 2005 was the critical importance of having lots of big trailers and forklifts.

In big disasters involving millions of people you need to fill the big 48 ft or 53 ft trailers and direct them to a staging area near to or within the disaster area. The staging area is important because when you order the trailer loads (48-96 hours in advance) you may not know the ultimate destination for the load.

This is the most effective way to get large quantities of "stuff" to large quantities of people in a big disaster. In the 2 weeks that I spent in NYC I didn't see or hear about people using lots of big trailers and forklifts. They were using a lot of straight trucks and unloading the cargo by hand. This technique works just fine in little disasters. In big disasters you need big trailers to push the supplies as far forward into the affected area as possible and then unload them using pre-positioned forklifts.

I spoke to several people about why they didn't use more forklifts and they said that they tried. There are thousands of forklifts in NYC but they aren't where they need them for the disaster. And moving forklifts around is H-A-R-D. They're heavy and don't travel very fast.

That is why I advised the American Red Cross to get a national forklift contract for use in big disasters such as Sandy. We used these contractors in Florida to position forklifts at over 70 Point of Distribution (POD) sites in Dade and Broward Counties after Hurricane Wilma in 2005. The contractors carried the forklifts in on flat bed trailers and dropped them off at the POD locations and field kitchen sites.

Another important reason to have the capability to quickly pre-position forklifts is that in a big disaster big trailers become a critical shortage item. In 2004 the Florida SERT and FEMA disrupted commerce in the Eastern United States because we rented every available trailer and filled them with disaster supplies. We needed the forklifts to empty the trailers at the field sites because we needed the empty trailer in order to go back and get more disaster supplies. And when you are trying to empty thousands of big trailers, you need a lot of forklifts.

Finally, to make this system work you need tractors to move the trailers to the field sites. The big "linehaul" tractors with the sleeper cabins are great to move trailers inter-city but don't serve as well positioning trailers in the city. The linehaul tractors move the freight from origin to the LSAs. The "city" tractors make the short trips from the LSA to the field site.  You can contract for a fleet of city tractors with drivers and a dispatcher at the LSA to make sure the supplies get to the right place at the right time.

Boy, this all sounds expensive, you must say. But in a $30 billion or $50 billion or $100 billion disaster these costs are chump change.

Besides, there are 3 types of disaster responses: Efficient, Cheap or Quick. You have to choose one. The public and our elected officials demand that it be Quick. Our job is to make it happen.

The transition to long term disaster feeding in New York City after Sandy

From November 12 to November 19 I shuttled between the New York City Emergency Operations Center (EOC) in Brooklyn, the American Red Cross Disaster Relief Operation (DRO) on 49th St. in Manhattan and my hotel near Times Square. The objective of my efforts was to achieve a coordinated transition in the City to long term disaster feeding.

The New York City Emergency Operations Center in Brooklyn

The nationally developed Multi-Agency Feeding Plan Template describes the three phases of disaster feeding: Immediate, Sustained and Long Term.  In the Immediate phase disaster feeding is conducted using local production and distribution resources.  If additional resources are required, then the voluntary agencies establish a mass care feeding infrastructure consisting of field kitchens producing hot meals for distribution by Red Cross and Salvation Army vehicles. This is the Sustained Phase of disaster feeding.

As electrical power is restored to the affected homes the daily count of distributed hot meals declines and is eventually terminated. The cessation of the distribution of hot meals to the survivors is always and everywhere a political decision, made by the voluntary agencies in consultation with local elected officials. The end of the Sustained Phase of disaster feeding does not mean that the need has been eliminated. Rather, the means of delivering feeding support shifts to the Long Term Phase.

The two principle mechanisms for delivering long term disaster feeding are the Disaster Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (DSNAP) and the limited, targeted distribution of food boxes.  At the beginning of this year I knew very little about these topics so I worked with subject matter experts from the Food and Nutrition Service of the U. S. Department of Agriculture, Feeding America and the Florida Food Bank Association to gather information. 

As I produced drafts of what became the Household Disaster Feeding document my contacts sought out additional experts who also contributed to the excellent quality of the final product. We have to produce these reference documents in this bootleg manner because getting a document through the federal agency approval process is more effort than it is worth.

We finished the document in June of this year. Five months later, when I walked into the New York City EOC, I knew that the Household Disaster Feeding Template could provide a framework by which the City of New York could devise a plan for the implementation of the Long Term Phase of disaster feeding the the city.

I arrived in the NYC EOC as a Red Cross volunteer working for the Disaster Relief Operation but without an operational role in the disaster. The reason I volunteered, and the reason that I was asked by the ARC to go to the EOC, was that I had been planning to implement a catastrophic feeding plan in Florida for over 6 years. I had technical expertise appropriate to this disaster, and I also selfishly wanted to bring back any lessons learned to Florida.

The Greater New York Chapter of the American Red Cross on 49th St
in Manhattan. The Sandy Disaster Relief Operation was on the 4th floor.

In any disaster feeding operation (and Sandy was my 16th hurricane) the key events requiring the most coordination are the transitions between the phases.  The disaster had already transitioned from the Immediate to the Sustained Phase. The conditions for a successful transition from the Sustained to the Long Term Phase needed to be set in place.

I had previously met with key members of the NYC emergency management team and found them to be some of the most competent and profession emergency managers that I had met in the nation. I also found the NYC emergency management team to be extremely well resourced for the difficult job of managing disasters in the city.

New York City is one of the most difficult environments I have ever encountered in which to conduct mass care. Doing anything in the city on a good day is hard. Trying to feed and shelter hundreds of thousands survivors after a disaster is a tough and complex task. 

The coordination mechanism in the city for disaster feeding is called the Food Access Task Force. The concept of Food Access was new to me but it was an apt manner of describing the feeding situation in New York. In blue skies there is a food access problem in the city. A bewildering (to me) number of government and non-government programs operated to address this issue.

Two important actors in the city are City Harvest and Food Bank of New York. These non-governmental organizations provide food to a wide network of food pantries and soup kitchens. Sandy not only added survivors with food access problems to the existing population but caused damage to the capacity of the food banks and their networks.

I played a very small role during the week that I spent working with the different stakeholders on the Food Access coordination call. During the call, which was held daily, I was able to introduce the framework outlined in the Household Disaster Feeding Template. After a number of days of discussion, the concept of transitioning from the delivery of hot meals by the city and the Red Cross to a long term feeding strategy led  by the food banks and the other voluntary agencies was agreed to by the participants on the call. The details of this transition and the manner in which the food banks and their networks will be resourced are still under discussion.

My flight home to Tallahassee took me through Miami. As I approached the Miami airport I looked out the window of the airplane at the tall buildings on the barrier islands in Broward and Dade counties.  They brought to mind the similarly situated New York areas of Long Island, the Rockaways and Staten Island. I thought of the tremendous mass care problems presented by Sandy's surge and how Florida's State Emergency Response Team would have to deal with the same issues confronting New York City.

I also thought that when, not if, a major hurricane hits southeast Florida the mass care problems will be greater than the ones I encountered in New York City after Sandy.