Mass Care in Richwood, West Virginia

A frontal system got stuck over the hills of West Virginia the night of June 23, 2016 and caused historic flooding over the central and southern counties of the state. Twenty three people were killed, including a 2 year old who's lifeless body was found by search and rescue workers on the Greenbriar golf course. On June 24 the American Red Cross, in response to the flooding, deployed me from my home in northern Virginia to Charleston, West Virginia.

I worked on the response for 2 weeks. I spent almost half of that period in the little town of Richwood. I want to tell you a little about what happened to me there and, more importantly, what I took away.

The sign at the limits of the city of Richwood.

Dr. Bob Henry Baber was sworn in as the Mayor of Richwood five days after the storm. According to the business card he gave me, Bob Henry (as he likes to be called) is a "Poet, Novelist, Environmentalist, Speaker, Creative Writing Teacher and Mosaic Arts Instructor." He also told me that Richwood was a town of 2,000 souls in which 99% of the children were on free or reduced school lunch.

The flooding happened on a Thursday night and into Friday morning. I arrived in West Virginia that Friday night. When I reported to the Disaster Relief Operation (DRO) on Saturday morning the number of staff assigned to the operation had more than quadrupled from the day before. By Monday morning the staffing number had tripled again, and by Wednesday had doubled again. Ultimately, over 700 staff and volunteers were working on the operation. All of the volunteers came knowing that they would be sacrificing their 4th of July weekend.

Of the 1500 or so homes judged destroyed by the flooding, the most were in Kanawha County (598), followed by Greenbriar County (460). Nicholas County, in which Richwood resides, had the third highest total, 141. Through the misfortune of geography Richwood was more inaccessible than the affected towns in the other counties.The homes in Richwood were just as flooded. There just weren't as many of them, and the town wasn't as easy to get to.

On June 29th the DRO divided the response into 4 Districts and I was assigned as the Mass Care Lead for District 3. That day I drove from the DRO headquarters in Charleston to the District headquarters in Beckley, just south of the Fayette County line.

The division of the affected counties in West Virginia into Districts by the Red Cross Disaster Relief Operation.

The morning of Thursday, June 30th I rode north on US 19, a four lane divided highway that I came to know very well in the next week. Just south of Summersville we turned East on WV-39, a twisting, turning, harrowing, 8% downgrade that led to the Cherry River valley and the town of Richwood.

Viewed from a mountainside the Cherry River Valley and the town of Richwood are pretty. The damage is hidden.

At first glance flood damage is not as dramatic as that created by hurricane or tornado winds. With a few exceptions, like the mobile home in the picture below, the damage is hidden inside the structures. By looking at the high water marks and the topography of the valley I could tell that much of the city had been affected.

A mobile home washed against a bridge over the Cherry River in Richwood, WV.

After the flood waters receded the people of Richwood were inundated with a second flood: donations and volunteers. Different people and organizations stepped up to the task of receiving, sorting and distributing the thousands of items brought in on trucks, trailers and automobiles. The Moose Lodge, across from City Hall, and the 1st Baptist Church on Walnut St. were two such locations that I visited. The largest repository was the High School Gymnasium, a red building down by the river.

Donated goods at the high school gymnasium in Richwood, WV.

The Moose Lodge, untouched by the flooding, was a central location for feeding and donated goods and we initially established a fixed site for feeding there. Access to food was an issue in Richwood since they had no grocery store and the only restaurant I could find was a Dairy Queen, a few blocks from the Moose Lodge where I stopped when I wanted coffee.

Food pantries, supported by food banks, have the traditional role of feeding the hungry in blue-sky days. The food pantry in Richwood was by the river and was innundated by the flood. I worked with the food pantry and the food bank people to start the road to re-establishing this service. The Baptist kitchens and the Red Cross ERVs couldn't be there forever. In order to transition to long-term feeding we had to get the food pantry back in operation. I was able to start this transition process before I left.

Red Cross Emergency Response Vehicles feeding at the Moose Lodge in Richwood, WV.

A Type 1 Field Kitchen from the North Carolina Baptist Convention was assigned to support District 3 and operated at the Restoration Fellowship Baptist Church in Mt. Nebo, just off US 19 south of Summersville. I ate a lot of meals from that kitchen. The meals prepared by the kitchen were delivered into the 4 counties of the District by Red Cross ERV's. The meals are kept hot by insulated food containers called Cambros. You can see the Red Cambros stacked on pallets in the picture below.

Positioning loads for Red Cross ERVs at Kitchen #3, operated by the North Carolina Baptists, in Mt. Nebo, WV. 

We were fortunate to have a Team of Americorps Volunteers assigned to support us in Richwood. Many of the inhabitants of the city were elderly and didn't have vehicles. The Americorps Volunteers delivered meals from the ERVs to them. With the aid of a Red Cross truck and a supervisor, the Americorps Volunteers also loaded donated supplies from the gymnasium and delivered them into the community.

Mayor Baber was undaunted by the challenges his community faced and even thought that the disaster could be an impetus for change. The last time that I saw him, just before I left West Virginia, I told the Mayor about Pearlington, MS. I told him how Pearlington had been devastated by the passing of the eye of Hurricane Katrina over the town in 2005. I told him how the many people who came to Pearlington to help had left with a tiny piece of the city in their hearts.

Home in Pearlington, MS destroyed by Hurricane Katrina's wind, rain and surge.

Someone set up a website dedicated to the recovery of Pearlington and the people who had responded. On the first annual anniversary of the storm the city inhabitants had a celebration with a Low Country Boil of shrimp, crab, potatoes and corn-on-the-cob. Through the website they invited all the responders and I came.

I told the Mayor that Richwood should do the same thing. Have a celebration a year later and invite everyone who had helped. When I spoke those words I'm not sure that Bob Henry, a far-sighted a man as I think he was, was able to see that far into the future.

He did give me his email and maybe next year, when the months have healed some of the damage of that night, I might remind him. I'm not the only one who left West Virginia with a piece of Richwood in my heart.

At the National Response Coordination Center

The National Response Coordination Center (NRCC) is housed on the Mezzanine Level of FEMA Headquarters on C Street in Washington, DC. "When activated, the NRCC is a multi-agency coordination center located at FEMA Headquarters. Its staff coordinates the overall Federal support for major disasters and emergencies, including catastrophic incidents and emergency management program implementation." I've been in the NRCC many times but last month I got the opportunity to work in the NRCC when it was activated for an exercise.

The National Response Coordination Center.

Unlike the emergency operations center in Tallahassee, FL where I spent numerous hours over the last 18 years, the NRCC has a low ceiling. Like the State EOC in Florida, however, every chair in the NRCC is assigned to a role and the agency designated to fill that role. My job was to serve as the American Red Cross liaison to the NRCC. 

The State EOC in Tallahassee

FEMA provides the trained staff to operate the NRCC when activated. Most of the various federal agencies and nongovernmental organizations identified in the National Response Framework provide representatives to the NRCC so that we can perform the emergency management form of alchemy called multi-agency coordination. Because of the inevitable turnover in staff, and the fact that the NRCC is rarely activated, these agency representatives show up in the NRCC knowing something about their own agency but very little about how to operate in a multi-agency coordination center.

My case was a little different. Because of my background and the fact that I had been in my new job less that 6 months I knew more about how multi-agency coordination centers operate that I did about the Red Cross. That was okay. It was an exercise. We were all there to practice and learn.

When I was at the State EOC my view of the disaster was like flying over in a helicopter. Working in the NRCC was equivalent to viewing the Atlantic Ocean from a transcontinental flight to Europe. We took the Long View of the Big Picture.

Most of our activities revolve around responding to resource requests (provided to us by the FEMA Region) from the affected state or states  and creating reports for the Big Bosses about What Is Going On. The information we collect is built into reports that inform decision makers like the FEMA Administrator and ultimately the White House. 

I enjoyed working in the NRCC. Part of the reason is that the exercise had an interesting scenario. If I had spent 3 days waiting for a hurricane that fizzled my sentiments would've been different. What was really interesting was the perspective that I got from looking down on the disaster from the transcontinental airliner and how this affected my opinion about how state mass care coordinators should act when faced with large or catastrophic disasters. And that is what I want to talk about.

Most normal emergency manager people when faced with an overwhelming event naturally focus on the part of the job that is familiar to them. They see the situation getting out of control and struggle to wrest it back. They work with the resources that they have available to get the situation back under control. In most disasters this is the correct course of action.

In a large or catastrophic event the resources available are inadequate for the tasks. Getting these resources deployed is important but an even more critical task is communicating the type, kind and quantity of resource shortfalls to those outside the affected area who are able to provide those resources. If you're at the county level you need to let the state know what you need. If you're at the state you need to concentrate on getting those Resource Request Forms completed and submitted to the right FEMA person as soon as possible. 

In other words, if your jurisdiction is affected then you need to direct more of your attention to those external agencies who are mobilizing to provide support. If you're not telling these external agencies what you want, when you want it and where you want it sent they aren't going to wait on you. And you may not be happy with what you end up receiving. 

After requesting resources the second most important task on the state mass care coordinator's list in a catastrophic event is to help ensure all the stakeholders have a common understanding of the situation - a Common Operating Picture. The way to achieve this common understanding is to get everyone with a need to know on the same conference call every day. The state mass care coordinator is in the best situation to do this.

The purpose of the state mass care conference call is to gather and share information with all the mass care stakeholders within and outside the State EOC. Holding this conference call daily with the right agencies is critical to an effective mass care response. I cannot emphasize this point to much.

Mass Care Conference Call

When I was the State Mass Care Coordinator in Florida I always held the call daily at the same time: 10 AM. This allowed everyone to adjust their own meeting and conference call schedules so that they could participate in the state call. I also developed a State Mass Care Conference Call agenda/report that I emailed to all the conference call participants before the call. This document identified who I wanted to report on the call and also contained the latest mass care information from the State EOC. That way precious conference call time wasn't used reporting on information that was already shared in the document.

After requesting resource shortfalls and ensuring that all stakeholders have a common operating picture the third way that the state mass care coordinator can help his/her cause is by working to establish the mass care priorities for the response. The best way to do this again is through the mass care conference call. The means to this end is not by dictating priorities but by soliciting input from the key stakeholders and then working to achieve consensus. This is a tall order but the state mass care coordinator is in the best position to achieve this goal.

The sooner that the state mass care coordinator can establish a mass care conference call in order to 1) determine mass care resource shortfalls, 2) gather and distribute a common operating picture, and 3) establish mass care priorities the better the response will be. Achieving these objectives will enable those of us outside the affected area (in the NRCC, the Regional Response Coordination Center and the Red Cross Disaster Operations Coordination Center) to do a better job of suporting the survivors on the ground in the midst of the disaster.

Estimating mass care resources: the example of the Kumamoto earthquake

I've been trying for over 20 years to estimate the amount of mass care resources that would be required in a disaster. In 2004 when Florida was hit by 4 hurricanes in a 6 week period I had multiple opportunities to try and figure this thing out. One thing I learned pretty quick in the 6 weeks was that when someone wanted me to provide a mass care resource they wanted it RIGHT NOW. Or, preferably, yesterday.

I also learned that in the State Emergency Operations Center during a hurricane response we weren't able to do "right now." For certain things that were already in the State Logistics Staging Area (like bottled water) we might even be able to do "tomorrow." More likely it was going to be day after tomorrow. And if they wanted something that we hadn't already ordered it would be, well, days until they would get it. That is if the requester was lucky and everyone, including me, did everything right.

There was a lot of things that I remembered and a lot of things that I forgot after Charlie, Francis, Ivan and Jeanne paid us all a visit. My big takeaway was that we needed to be able to estimate mass care resource requirements before the damage assessments were completed and in some cases, before the event actually happened.

How in the world are you going to do that? you may ask. Think about it. If a Category 5 Hurricane is lined up on Miami and forecast to hit there tomorrow we don't need to say, "Well, as soon as the damage reports are compiled, probably a few days after the storm hits, we'll know what we need to order. We'll just have to wait until then to figure out what we need."

We have to do better than that.

The things we need to order are always the same: cots, field kitchens, shelter managers, bottled water. What we don't know are what numbers we need to put in the quantity blocks of the requisitions. What frequently happens are conversations like this:

MASS CARE GUY: I need cots.
LOGISTICS GUY: How many?
MASS CARE GUY: I have no idea.
LOGISTICS GUY: "I have no idea" doesn't fit in the quantity block of the requisition.
MASS CARE GUY (MAKES UP A NUMBER): What about 10,000?
LOGISTICS GUY (WHO DOESN'T CARE WHAT THE NUMBER IS BECAUSE YOU'RE JUST ONE MORE PROBLEM BETWEEN HIM AND THE END OF THE DAY): OK.

I've had those conversations during a disaster. More than once, I'm afraid to say. But what could I do? There wasn't a manual or instruction book explaining how to do all this stuff I was doing. I decided that there had to be a better way of doing things than making up the numbers.

After 10 years of talking, explaining and arguing with some knowledgeable mass care people we've come up with a process to estimate mass care resources. The process is crude and needs a lot of refining, but guess what? Doing it this way is better than making it up.

The demand for mass care resources after an event is based on three factors: population, intensity and vulnerability. The population numbers we can get from the Census. To estimate intensity levels we developed this chart:

Table to estimate event intensity.

What we do next is estimate the number of people who were affected by each intensity level. For hurricanes we have the Saffir-Simpson Scale.  The U.S. Geological Service puts out PAGER Alerts after significant earthquakes. The basis for measuring earthquake intensity in these Alerts is the Modified Mercali Intensity Level:

The PAGER system provides fatality and economic loss impact estimates following significant earthquakes worldwide. This information is usually available within hours of the quake and provides an immediate estimate of the number of persons affected.  The USGS put out a PAGER ALERT for the Kumamoto, Japan earthquake that happened several weeks ago. The PAGER looked something like this:

The PAGER showed estimates of the number of persons affected by MMI level. Using the Event Intensity Table I came up with the number of persons affected by High (194k), Medium (1,410k) and Low (2,865k) intensities. I entered these population numbers into the Mass Care Planning Tool spreadsheet that we've developed to estimate mass care resource requirements

Remember: the demand for mass care resources is a function of population, intensity and vulnerability. Using the Intensity Table and the PAGER we were able to estimate the population affected by intensity. From these numbers we need to estimate the % of people who need to be fed and sheltered, for each intensity level. The percentages would vary according to the vulnerability of the people.

In some places, for example, the percentages for sheltering would be 10% for High, 5% for Medium and 1% for low. There are different percentages to estimate the feeding numbers. I had no idea what %'s to use to make a shelter estimate for a Japanese earthquake so I used the 10/5/1 that I had. The estimate using those percentages for the Kumamoto earthquake was 118,550 persons needing shelter (see Table below). Then I waited for the off chance that I might actually be able to get an estimate of the number of persons requiring shelter.

A few days later I read in the Wall Street Journal": “A total of 41 people were confirmed dead in Kumamoto prefecture, the epicenter of a magnitude 6.5 quake on Thursday night and a magnitude 7.3 quake 28 hours later early on Saturday. About 110,000 people were taking refuge at temporary shelters there as of Sunday afternoon, a Kumamoto prefecture spokesman said.”

Weather.com also reported that: “Local media reported that nearly 200,000 homes were without power and an estimated 400,000 households were without running water…[and] 180,000 are without shelter.”

Now that I had some actual numbers of people needing shelter I could see that the estimate of 118k needing shelter was low.  The 10/5/1 shelter percentages that I used weren't high enough, and probably should have been higher.  In other words, their vulnerability to the hazard was greater than I estimated.

As we socialize this estimation process in the mass care community and people start using it in disasters our ability to estimate these vulnerability percentages will improve. The conceptual framework for this estimation process has been included in the new FEMA L418 Course: Mass Care/Emergency Assistance Planning & Operations Course. This concept is also included in the new (soon to be released) Red Cross Feeding Standards & Procedures.

 Like I said, the process is crude and needs a lot of refining. But take my word for it: estimating mass care resource requirements this way is one HECK of a lot better than making up the numbers.

The 2016 National Hurricane Conference in Orlando

This is the 11th National Hurricane Conference (NHC) that I've attended in a row. I missed the 2003 and 2004 Conferences because of my involvement in the Iraq war. I enjoy the Conferences not only because of the information disseminated in the sessions and exhibits but because of the opportunity to network and meet new people in the mass care community.

Red Crosser Katherine Galifinakis (l) and I presenting at the Shelter Transition Workshop
 on Thursday, the final day of the Conference.

On Monday I participated in a day long session on the Shelter Field Guide (follow the link to the National Mass Care Strategy website to obtain an electronic copy). This class wasn't on how to be a shelter manager but on how to best utilize the Guide to solve common problems presented during sheltering. We worked in groups to solve injects involving a church that decides to shelter survivors of a large local disaster. I learned a lot about not only sheltering but how useful the Guide could be.

Al Vliet from FEMA (standing) was one of the instructors for the Shelter Field Guide Training.

Tuesday, the second day of training offered at the conference, was meteorological day for me. Three of the four sessions I attended were taught by our friends at the National Hurricane Center and the National Weather Service. The highlight of the day was the session on Atlantic hurricane forecasting taught by noted Colorado State University forecaster Phil Klotzbach (see a copy of his presentation here). Phil gave us some hints on the upcoming hurricane season but is saving his final judgment for his soon to be released April 14th forecast.

My good friend from the Salvation Army Kevin Smith (seated, near right) listens
with me to noted hurricane forecaster Phil Klotzbach.

The highlight for Wednesday was our "Voluntary Agency Rap Session." The session was well attended and the discussion was dominated by the obscure, but important, process for using the value of donated resources and volunteer hours to aid state and local jurisdictions during federally declared disasters. When the President declares an emergency under the Stafford Act the federal government helps defray select costs of the disaster (normally 75%). In some disasters the expenses are so great that some local communities are hard pressed to pay their share of the remaining 25%.

This is where the voluntary agencies can help these communities by documenting the donated resources and volunteer hours that they contribute to the response and recovery. In some disasters this contribution can mean a lot of money to the beleaguered local jurisdictions. But like everything else with the federal government when it comes to money this means documentation, documentation and more documentation. The discussion in the Rap Session was centered around how the voluntary agencies could meet this documentation requirement. An example of a form developed in Colorado to document volunteer hours is shown below.

FEMA, who must accept and validate whatever  the voluntary agencies provide, does not want to be prescriptive about how the documentation is submitted. This is understandable but leaves the voluntary agencies guessing as to how they are going to meet this requirement. Everyone needs to come up with a process that FEMA will accept, but no one wants to take the time and effort during a disaster to gather detailed information that will be denied by some FEMA Reservist in a Joint Field Office 9 months later.

Thursday, the final day of the National Hurricane Conference, offered multiple mass care workshops. My favorite, of course, was the one that I offered as a topic last December and was accepted: Shelter Transition. Shelter transition is the multi-agency process by which survivors in a congregate shelter are moved to some sort of appropriate housing.

Shelter transition is an important and vital part of concluding a mass care response and yet there is no written guidance or instructions to aid the local emergency manager in performing this task. To help fill this void the Red Cross and FEMA are creating a multiagency working group to address this issue. I will be one of the Project Leaders for this effort. I will have more to say about this project at a future date.

This year's National Hurricane Conference was a success from my point of view. I learned a lot, cemented some mass care relationships and made some new ones. My farewell to everyone as I left the last Thursday session was one that I have made many times before:

"I hope that I don't see you this summer!"

Working the Valley Fire with the Red Cross

I got a call from my Red Cross buddy Julie Schoening on a Sunday evening and she said that I was wanted in California to help with the wildfires.

“When do they want me to leave?” I asked.

“Tomorrow,” she said.

An American Red Cross Emergency Response Vehicle drives past a destroyed hotel
in the Cobb Community of the Valley Fire.

The next morning at 9 AM I stopped by the Capital Area Chapter to pick up my travel documents and then I was off to the airport. Sharon Tyler, the CEO of the Chapter, advised a reporter from a local television station that I was being deployed and gave her my contact info. The reporter called when I was going through security so I asked her to call me back.

Once I was through security and had a cup of coffee in hand I sat down to do the phone interview. Some people are nervous about talking to the media. I didn’t recall reading the Red Cross memo on media interviews but I didn’t see any harm as long as I: a) spoke about things for which I direct knowledge, and b) focused on the positive, as opposed to the negative. If they were looking for a spokesperson for Gail McGovern then I wasn’t their man. I was a volunteer from Tallahassee, off to the Left Coast to save California, and that’s what I talked about. I made the noon and 5 PM news shows and they didn’t garble too much of what I said.

This was only my second deployment as a Red Cross volunteer. My first deployment as a volunteer was in 2012 when I was sent to the New York City Disaster Relief Operation in Manhattan at the corner of 10^th Avenue and 49^th St for the Sandy response. If you want to read about the exciting times that I had in the Big Apple go to here and here.

Speaking of exciting times, after my interview I boarded a flight to Miami, where I changed to the middle seat of a 7-hour flight to San Francisco. After some adventures, which are a story for another time, I was able to save the Red Cross the cost of a hotel room by sleeping at a friend’s house in Santa Rosa, an hour and a half north of the airport, where I laid my weary head down long after my customary bedtime.

The American Red Cross Disaster Relief Headquarters for the Valley Fire at Hidden Valley Lake the
morning of September 22, 2015 when I arrived.

On Tuesday morning, September 22, I reported to the Disaster Relief Operation Headquarters at Hidden Valley Lake. I went through the check-in process with the people at the Headquarters in charge of keeping track of which people and what stuff are assigned to the disaster. This is an important job. On one of the hurricanes I worked on with the State we spent 2 months after the disaster looking for a rented trailer. If you’re not paying attention, that’s easy to do. They gave me a laptop computer and the address for the Lake County Emergency Operations Center and sent me on my way.

The so-called “Valley Fire” was the 3^rd most destructive in California history, or so I heard from more than one local emergency manager when I was there. The State of California Situation Report of 9/13/15 stated that the fire started in Lake County at 1325 hours on September 12. By October 2 the fire had destroyed 76,868 acres and 2,663 residences. I had seen some of this destruction as I passed through Middletown on my way to Hidden Lake that morning.

Light filters through the trees at a home destroyed by the Valley Fire in the Cobb Community.

My GPS sent me north toward the southern shore of Clear Lake, the largest lake in California (Lake Tahoe is partly in Nevada). Unsure of the provisions at my destination, my infantry training kicked in (i.e. never pass up an opportunity to eat or sleep) and I grabbed a chicken sandwich in Lower Lake on the way. I didn’t have to buy another meal for 10 days.

The Lake County EOC was housed in the banquet room of a Casino on the Lake.  The bathrooms were in the Casino so in the next week I made numerous trips between the rows of slot machines, self-conscious of my Red Cross hat and well aware that no amount of explanation could overcome the photo and caption: RED CROSS VOLUNTEER ON VALLEY FIRE CAUGHT GAMBLING IN CASINO.

The Lake County EOC in the Banquet Room of the Casino.

Like almost anything else, the best way to learn about disaster response is not by reading about it but by deploying and working on events. I have worked a lot of disasters, but very few at the County level and even fewer as a Volunteer. Plus, I’ve worked a lot of hurricanes but very few wildfires, and this was a big wildfire. Consequently, I learned a lot.

Lake County has a population of 63,860 so their County Emergency Management was woefully under equipped to handle a disaster of this size. No county jurisdiction in the nation is staffed to handle The Big One. That’s what Mutual Aid is for. When I arrived in the Lake County EOC I found a room filled with tables, chairs, computers, wires, maps and local emergency managers from all over the state coordinating the disaster.

The sudden destruction of a large portion of the housing stock in the County made a roof and a bed a premium item for survivors, responders and Red Cross volunteers. This put the Red Cross in the business of sheltering not only survivors but Red Cross staff and volunteers as well. I hadn't slept on a cot since I left Iraq 10 years ago and I can say that I hadn't missed it a  lick. I have slept on the ground and on the hood of a HumVee so there are worse things than a cot. And sleeping on a cot is easier when you've been working hard all day saving California.

My deluxe living accommodations on the shore of Clear Lake.

The State of California did a good job of recognizing the problem and then providing a solution. They pulled a 100 person base camp out of storage, loaded it on a trailer and and sent to to a County park a few miles from the County EOC/Casino. They assigned a California Incident Management Team to manage the Base Camp and these guys did an outstanding job. Instead of making me drive 45 minutes to Middletown to stay in the Red Cross staff shelter than let me sleep at the CALOES Base Camp, 5 minutes from where I was working.

The tents were climate controlled and the showers were hot. The only slight disadvantage were the midnight trudges with flip-flops and my Gator Sweatshirt through the chill night air to the portalets. To this day I can't go to a portalet with thinking about Iraq but I couldn't complain about my luxury camping conditions.

"People pay a lot of money to camp like this on the shores of Clear Lake, California" I said more than once to any of my fellow Campers who would listen.

When the Lake County EOC shut down and I was reassigned to the DRO Hqs at the Adventist Church in St Helena, nestled on a hillside overlooking the spectacular Napa Valley, I was assigned to the nearby Staff Shelter. Because I allegedly snore (not having heard anything, I am unable to verify the allegation) I took up the offer to sleep outside in my own tent, sleeping bag and cot. Besides having to erect the tent in the dark (a task alleviated by the able assistance of some RedCrossers who took pity on me) I had no problems with these arrangements. Although the absence of heat, insects and reptiles were a plus.

Putting up my tent in the dark outside the Red Cross St Helena staff shelter.

As in all disasters, some things went well and some didn't. What California did well, at least in Lake County during the Valley Fire, was to make sure that accommodations were made in the shelters for those who had access and functional needs. The efforts by the responsible individuals in the Red Cross, the County and the State to make sure the toilets and showers at the shelters were accessible and that the animals were taken care of made this one of the better disaster responses (in this area) that I had seen.

The burn scars from the Valley Fire around the city of Middletown in Lake County, CA.

Like Floridians with hurricanes, Californians are getting wildfire responses down. This is an unfortunate business that the El Nino winter rains may alleviate.  This will allow the Californians to work on their mudslide responses.

Who pays for mass care?

A good friend has a saying: "Whenever anyone says that it's not about the money, you better believe that it's all about the money."

At the Hot Wash discussion at the end of last week's 2015 National Mass Care Exercise in Austin, TX we started a discussion about how mass care responses in large or catastrophic events are paid for. Actually, I made some statements about the topic and this generated a discussion.

Chad Ostlund from Minnesota Emergency Management briefs Texas senior leadership during the National Mass Care Exercise in Austin, TC, June 2015.

I'm going to lay out what I said but first the general reader (i.e. one who isn't a mass care or emergency management professional) will need some explanation to provide context for the discussion. By mass care we mean the provision during disaster of food, shelter, emergency supplies and family reunification. By disaster we mean the range of natural and man made incidents from a house fire to a Category 5 hurricane.

Most of the time mass care resources are provided by the Voluntary Agencies Active in Disaster (VOAD) using funds that have been donated to them for that purpose. During blue skies the VOADs receive donations that they use to pay for salaries, training and exercises so that during gray skies they will have the capability to respond. When disasters happen the appeals go out to the public for donations to pay for the additional costs of the response. Big responses, with lots of exciting video footage of destroyed buildings and dazed survivors, generate a much broader and deeper response from the public than a smaller incident that may only make the  newspaper in their community. The result is that the VOADs often pay the mass care response costs for the smaller or less publicized disasters with blue sky money.

The old emergency management joke defines a disaster as when a tree falls on your neighbor's house and a catastrophe is when a tree falls on your house. Regardless of whether the disaster is federally declared or not, or whether the storm made good video for the Weather Channel, when the tree falls on your home and you're poor and uninsured you've got troubles. And if your county ended up on the list as declared for federal Individual Assistance, the maximum amount that FEMA can give you is $31,000. The average handed out by FEMA is only about $5,000. The VOADs are left with the task of matching the donated dollars they've received with the unmet needs of the survivors.

The gray sky money donated by the public, whether through the "Text $10" appeals or by other means, must pay for response costs as well as the unmet needs of individual families that are uncovered  through case management during recovery. One VOAD indicated that two thirds of the gray sky money that they receive arrives within 5 days of the event. The pot of money that each VOAD can devote to a disaster is therefore fixed and finite, and most of the donated dollars arrive early in the disaster.

Some state and local government aren't inclined to help out during the mass care response. In one of the many storms of my past a member of the Governor's staff, who shall remain nameless, asked me, "Why are we giving truckloads of bottled water to the Red Cross?"

"Because they're handing out the water to our citizens," I replied.

"They should buy their own water with the money the federal government gives them," said the staffer.

"The federal government isn't giving the Red Cross money."

"Oh, yes, they are."

"But really, they're not."

"Oh really, they are," said the staffer in a tone that was meant to conclude the conversation.

Fortunately, someone other than me was able to educate the staffer and the Red Cross got their truck of water.

In another state and another disaster I had an emergency manager question my request to send a truckload of water to the Salvation Army. "Why should we send them a truck of water?" he asked.

"Because they're handing out the water to your citizens," I replied.

The EM frowned. "That community already has ways to get their own water."

I nodded my head and walked away. Fortunately, someone other than me was able to educate the EM and the Salvation Army got their truck of water.

This sets the context for the statements that I made at the conclusion of the National Mass Care Exercise. My contention (and I am not alone in this belief) is that during a federally declared disaster the state government, to the extent responsible, should support the activities of the mass care VOAD agencies through the purchase of logistics and supplies. Examples of logistics that can be provided are forklifts, pallet jacks, portalets, dumpsters, bulk water, propane and diesel. Examples of supplies are bottled water, ice, shelf stable meals. baby supplies, shelter supplies and food for preparation at the field kitchens.

In a large disaster the costs for these items would be millions if not tens of millions of dollars. Whether the state purchases the resources or asks FEMA to do so 75% of the costs are a federal responsibility. And for every dollar of response costs absorbed by government there is another dollar available to the VOADs weeks later to help meet the unmet needs of the survivors.

"So why should the states help out the VOADs during the response?" you ask.

So that they can use the money they save to help the survivors when the government is not in a position to do anything more. And that's a good strategy for any government to follow.

My visit to the Red Cross Mass Care and Logistics Institute

I have been invited to present at a training event for the Red Cross next month. The 2015 Disaster Mass Care and Logistics Institute will be held at West Chester University in West Chester, Pennsylvania, on June 4- 6, 2015. Hosted by the Mid-Atlantic Division of the Red Cross, they are expecting approximately 100 participants from South Carolina through New England. The audience will be composed of Red Cross staff, volunteers, partners and stakeholders.

The intent of the training is to prepare the participants for the upcoming hurricane season. The panel on which I will present will focus on large scale disaster responses similar to events such as Hurricane Sandy. This post is a preview of what I intend to talk about during my presentation. The statements that I make here apply to coordinating a mass care services response at the state level when affected by a large, federally declared disaster that overwhelms the capabilities of the state.

Red Cross staff receive a morning brief from Eric Jones (r) at the Disaster Relief Operation in Manhattan during Sandy.

The public now expects a World Class, Olympic Gold Medal response for every disaster. This is the new standard to which we all must aspire. We're not going to be able to modify this standard so we have to do the best we can to plan, train and exercise ourselves to success.

The state mass care response works better when the responding staff operates in accordance with well understood and rehearsed operational procedures. During the State Hurricane Exercise in Tallahassee last week the Emergency Support Function (ESF) 6, Mass Care staff practiced using our procedures in response to a large, federally declared disaster. The State ESF 6 Standard Operating Guide (ESF 6 SOG)  divides the work into Operations and Planning. Most of the ESF 6 staff in the EOC performs Operations related duties. The Time Horizon of the tasks that they are performing are for TODAY and TOMORROW.

The ESF 6 Planning tasks are managed by the State Mass Care Coordinator. The Time Horizon for these tasks are 48 hours from NOW and beyond. The diagram below, reproduced from the ESF 6 SOG, lays out the two critical tasks related to ESF 6 Planning: the Initial Estimate and the Situation Analysis.

A state can call these tasks by different names and use their own processes to complete them but they must address these tasks because they provide the answers to two fundamental questions faced by the State Mass Care Coordinator in a large, federally declared event: 1) Do I have enough stuff? and 2) How are we doing?

Question #1 addresses whether there are sufficient resources (personnel, equipment, teams and supplies) on hand or en route to feed, shelter, distribute supplies and reunify families in the affected area considering the size of the disaster. If the answer is YES then the State Mass Care Coordinator monitors and reports. If the answer is NO then she needs to do something about it. The way to get to YES/NO is to use the Initial Estimate Process (see diagram below).

This diagram comes from a brand new FEMA course that has been in development for over 5 years. The course, called the Mass Care/Emergency Assistance Planing and Operations course, is 2.5 days long and will go a long way toward standardizing how we approach the state response to large, federally declared disasters. Every state should be talking to their FEMA Region about scheduling this course in a convenient venue.

Once the State Mass Care Coordinator finds out whether the answer to the first question is YES or NO he can direct attention to answering the 2nd question: How are we doing? If you want to know how you're doing you have to know where you're going and when you expect to get there.  

In most disasters when asked how we're doing we point to the number of people fed or sheltered, two reports that are readily available in most disasters.  But activity doesn't signify progress. During Planning we need to define our Operating Priorities, the outcomes expected from those priorities and a metric to use to gauge our progress. When the disaster starts we agree on dates at which these outcomes will be accomplished. The table on page 13 of the ESF 6 SOG shows the Mass Care Operating Priorities, Outcomes and Metrics that we have assigned in Florida. States should work with their partners to establish priorities, outcomes and metrics suitable for their jurisdiction.

How is the State Mass Care Coordinator supposed to be figuring out all of these estimates and metrics in the middle of what is likely to be the biggest disaster of her career? To get the job done at the Olympic Gold Medal standard that is expected she needs to bring in more staff through mutual aid as well as the voluntary agencies and FEMA. How are all these new people going to be organized and put to good use? They will be grouped into mass care task forces, by function.

For the last 3 years the national mass care community has been conducting National Mass Care Exercises (NMCE) in order to figure out how to organize these task forces and integrate them into the state mass care coordination process. This year the NMCE will be held in Austin, TX, June 7-11. Next year the Exercise is planned to be held in Missouri.

The role of the mass care task forces is to assist the State Mass Care Coordinator to perform the necessary planning and coordination. The diagram below, extracted from a document entitled White Paper – Mass Care Task Force Structure and Function, shows the different actors in the state coordination process and how they are supposed to interact.

The key word in that last sentence is "supposed." This state coordination process is not only complex but new and not totally refined. We're doing better with each exercise and we hope to improve our understanding of the process even more next month in Texas.

This state coordination process diagram does show some concepts that I have previously laid out in this post. The tasks in this process are divided between operations and planning. The mass care task forces perform coordination and planning under the direction of the state mass care coordinator. The objective of this process is to acquire, prioritize and allocate resources and information to the Supported Agencies.

A concept that has been difficult for many people to grasp is that when the disaster comes the task forces will be staffed primarily by personnel brought in from out of state. The affected state has little choice in this matter because all of their available mass care personnel will be swept up in the response. There are few people in the nation with the knowledge, expertise and experience to work in a mass care task force during a large disaster. But with every NMCE we conduct the pool of people who are familiar with the proposed state coordination process grows.

To further grow this pool of mass care specialists we must standardize the organization and processes by which we run these task forces. Once standardized, and we are achieving that goal with every NMCE we conduct, we can teach a growing cadre of mass care Jedi Knights so that they will be available to respond to requesting states when the Big One hits. 

The diagram below, from the same White Paper, shows a sample organization for a mass care task force. This organization was incorporated into a Generic Mass Care Task Force Operational Procedure that can be utilized by responding task force leaders who arrive to assume a position in a state that does not have their own procedures. Right now, that is the situation in most of the states in the nation.

As you can see, state mass care coordination in a large, federally declared disaster is not a simple process. We have made a lot of progress but we still have a long way to go. To facilitate the way forward three things must happen: 1) States must identify a State Mass Care Coordinator, 2) the new Coordinators and their voluntary agency liaisons need to be trained in the FEMA MC/EA Planning and Operations Course, and 3) Trained State Mass Care Coordinators must be given priority by FEMA Headquarters for funds to travel to future National Mass Care Exercises.

With the proper encouragement I see no reason that the national mass care community cannot get this done.

The National Mass Care Exercise, June 7-11, 2015, Austin, TX

After 3 years of holding the National Mass Care Exercise in Tallahassee we're holding the 2015 Exercise in Austin, courtesy of the Great State of Texas. Planning is already underway for Missouri to host the Exercise in 2016 and we are looking for a state in the FEMA Region 5 area (the MidWest) to play as host for 2017. After action reports on the previous Exercise are available on the State of Florida Mass Care website.

We have been working on planning the Texas Exercise since last August. Because of my record of putting on 3 successive exercises with no budget or staff, I was asked to help out with the planning for this year's exercise. I agreed because I'm all about training up the rest of the country in state mass care coordination so that they will be ready to come to Tallahassee and help me when the Cat 5 hits Miami.

The site selected at Camp Mabry National Guard base for the Shelter & Feeding Task Forces.

The National Hurricane Conference also happened to be in Austin this year so we took advantage of the fact that a number of key out-of-state planners (including myself) were attending the NHC to hold some meetings and on-site visits with our Texas partners (or podnuhs, as they say in the Lone Star State). We visited the State Operations Center (SOC), housed in a 1953 era underground bunker as well as Camp Mabry, the location selected to house the 3 mass care task forces that will be established and operated during the exercise.

Texas Division of Emergency Management &Texas National Guard show
State, VOAD and FEMA visitors the Camp Mabry site.

A major purpose of the current and former Exercises was to continue development of the mass care task force concept. The basis for the structure and function of a mass care task force was outlined in a White Paper in December 2013. The White Paper summarized the lessons learned from the 2012 and 2013 exercises, and the concept outlined in the White Paper was validated in the 2014 exercise.

Two major issues that were not resolved in the previous exercises, and will be a particular focus of the 2015 exercise, are coordination between the task forces and the linkage between the task forces and the state operations center. Camp Mabry, the location of the mass care task forces, is at some distance from the SOC and this will provide some challenges in maintaining a common situation awareness at both locations.

A state establishes mass care task forces when the size of the disaster overwhelms their ability to coordinate an effective response. In 2004 we tried to meet the demand for additional mass care coordination by drafting state workers for the job. This solution was less than satisfactory. In big disasters we need augmentation by skilled emergency managers and mass care subject matter experts. The only way to get these people is to bring them in from out of state. How do we organize and employ these additional personnel? We establish mass care task forces.

These task forces will be much more effective if the incoming people are trained and exercised on a common mass care task force structure and function. That's the process that we started in Florida, will continue in Texas this year and carry forward in Missouri next year.

Plus, the exercise will be a lot of fun. All the cool people will be there. I'm looking forward to it.