Shelter reporting

After 15 years as a State Mass Care Coordinator there is no topic more likely to launch me into an intense argumentative state than shelter reporting. Even as I write now I must pause frequently and take deep breaths. I was wondering why I haven’t written about it before and my emotional reaction at even reading the topic makes me understand why. I know from personal experience that many other mass care practitioners feel the same way.

Shelter reporting during disasters is the process of identifying which facilities are open to host survivors who need “a safe, secure and accessible place” to spend the night and tallying the number of persons who are in each facility. In many disasters no shelters are opened and the shelter population is zero. During the evacuation for Hurricane Frances in 2004 120,000 persons were in 384 shelters in 56 counties, a Florida record that still stands.

So why all the trauma and angst over a simple little report? Because it’s not simple and it’s not little and most of the time the report is all screwed up.

When I started as the Mass Care Coordinator in Florida in November 1999 the Division of Emergency Management had a Lotus Notes database that was the platform for all the emergency messages entered by the State Emergency Response Team and the counties. The Lotus Notes platform had a separate database used for shelter reporting. All 67 counties in the state submitted their identified shelters to the state electronically and the 67 separate files were poured into this database.

One of my jobs during a disaster was to go into the database and open the shelters that were open, enter in the populations and close the shelters that were closed. This was a lot harder that it sounds.

Like everything else in my Mass Care Coordinator job there wasn’t a manual handy entitled “Shelter Reporting” that I could us as a reference. So we came up with a system and then improved upon that system through trial and error.

There were lots of errors.

In my mass care brilliance and urge to simplify complex problems I decided that the simple solution was to tell all 67 counties the information that we needed and then stand back and wait for them to comply. You can imagine the results. I wrote up the shelter reporting instructions to the counties on a one page document and developed state ESF6 procedures that when a disaster started we were to fax (FAX!!!) the document to each of the affected counties. I also put in the procedure that if the counties didn’t respond to our fax then we were to call them and give them a gentle nudge.

“Hello, this is Mike Whitehead up at the State EOC. Can I talk to whoever does your shelter reporting? Did you get our fax? No?”

We were fortunate when we started that the disasters didn’t involve a lot of counties. But the process was laborious, labor intensive and had to be repeated. EVERY. SINGLE. DAY.

We were also fortunate that the Lotus Notes database was easy to use. I could take the average state worker that volunteered to come in and help us during activations and in five minutes show them how to access the database and update the populations. Then I would give them the list of counties they were responsible for, a phone, a chair and a computer and step away with confidence that the job would get done.

I also learned that the constituency for shelter numbers during a disaster was wide and deep. As I accumulated days in the EOC as a mass care coordinator I could not help but notice that I would be questioned about the shelter count by one or more persons within 5 minutes of my arrival in the morning at the EOC. EVERY. SINGLE. DAY.

I’m not saying that the report isn’t necessary. Over the years I have come to believe in the importance of accurate shelter reporting. The number of shelters and the populations within those shelters is the single, best indicator of the level of distress that the particular jurisdiction is enduring from the disaster.

Governor Bush, in a way, made my shelter reporting problem both harder and easier by mandating that the list of open shelters in the Lotus Notes database be placed on a web site for everyone on the Internet to see. Then when I walked into the EOC I could respond to everyone’s shelter question by saying, “Go look on the website.”

In fact, I stood before packed EOCs and showed them on the gigantic screen behind me the button that would take them to the shelter count webpage.

“No one should ever have to ask me what the shelter count is,” I would intone in my most firm, this-is-the-real-truth voice. “The best information we have is up there on the web site. Go to the site and look it up.”

Of course, for the rest of the day, friends and strangers alike would stop me as I strolled through the EOC and ask, “What’s the shelter count?”

During the six (long) weeks of the 2004 hurricane season, in addition to all the other problems that I had, my time was consumed by the shelter reporting issue. My weary answer of “Go look on the website” to the never ending queries that greeted me EVERY SINGLE DAY of the 42 day 2004 hurricane season was rewarded with the response. “I did. But are those numbers right?”

So. We had enough problems getting the simple facts straight and now you want to bring this into the mix? What is good? What is bad? What is right? What is wrong? What do I look like? A philosophy teacher?

Pause in writing to take more deep breaths.

Patience, grasshopper. Does anyone ever really step into the same river twice? The water that I step into today is different than the water I stepped into yesterday.

Governor’s aides aren’t into philosophy. They don’t understand why the shelter number submitted to them this morning is different than the shelter number handed to them for the Governor’s noon hurricane briefing at the EOC. Or why the shelter number in the Red Cross news release is different than either of the numbers previously submitted to the Guv.

Sometime during the 2004 hurricane season (or it may have been the 2005 season, it all starts to blur together now) I was summoned from my critical mass care coordination duties on the EOC floor to another room in the building to appear before Governor Bush himself. This was the only time that I was asked to speak to the Governor on any topic, emergency management or otherwise. I was accompanied on this mission by my friend Ray Runo from the Department of Health. Ray was responsible for gathering the information on the special needs shelters, which he submitted daily to the ESF6 staff, who entered the information into the Lotus Notes database.

The Governor was very polite. He wanted to know why the shelter numbers were in conflict. This was a very reasonable question and Ray and I gave very reasonable answers. I told him that the database gave the best information that we had at the time and as soon as we got better information we updated the database.

“So what do I have to do to see the current shelter count?” Jeb asked me.

“The shelter count is available to everyone on our website,” I replied.

“Really? I didn’t know I could get this on a website.”

“Yes, sir,” I replied. “You ordered that this was to be done and we did it.”

Maybe he forgot. Governors are busy men and make lots of decisions. Anyway, he was happy and we were happy and Ray and I returned to our more pressing duties.

The net result was that after 42 days of intense shelter reporting practice we were able to work the kinks out of the system and were able to claim that Florida had the best shelter reporting of all the disasters in the history of humanity. Or words to that effect.

A big breakthrough came when (I’m not sure exactly where in the chronology this happened) we discovered that the Red Cross was also collecting shelter numbers for the shelters they operated (the great majority) on a database operated at the Capital Area Chapter right there in Tallahassee. Duh. Chris Floyd, the Emergency Services Director for the Chapter, gave us access to his website (Tallytown.com, I still remember that) and we manually transferred the Red Cross data into our Lotus Notes database.

Yes, that was a duplication of effort by much easier than faxing all the counties and calling them when they didn’t respond.

In 2006, after we had worked through much toil and travail to develop a serviceable and easy to operate real-time shelter reporting system, Florida decided that they were going to discontinue the Lotus Notes database and move to a different system. Good grief, said Charlie Brown.

That was about the time that I heard about the National Shelter System. And how I came to hear about the OTHER National Shelter System. How can the nation have two National Shelter Systems? Wouldn’t that cause confusion? Wouldn’t that make the already difficult job of coming up with one, correct shelter population count for a disaster even more difficult?

Well, that’s what happened.

I have been reminded (just last week, in fact) of how sensitive this topic is to many people. In fact, we have a saying in the national mass care community: do not discuss religion, politics or the National Shelter System(s) at the dinner table. (Actually, I’m not sure if we actually have this saying but if we don’t, we should.)

Once upon a time, in the dark days after Hurricane Katrina, the American Red Cross created a National Shelter System so that the nation would never again have the problem of not knowing how many people were being sheltered across this great land. Money was invested to create a web-based software system that could be utilized by Red Cross staff and volunteers across the nation.

After the Red Cross system was created, deployed and in use FEMA decided to spend money to create a web based system to track how many people were being sheltered across this great land. FEMA decided to call this system the National Shelter System.

I only bring this up because in 2007 I was searching to replace our beloved, battle-tested and easy-to-use Lotus Notes system that the State was going to take away from us. The way I saw it, we had 3 choices: 1) Buy a new system, 2) use the Red Cross NSS, or 3) use the FEMA NSS.

After investigation I came up with the following information: 1) the state had little if any money to spend on shelter databases, 2) the Red Cross system was deployed and in use by staff and volunteers across the nation, 3) the FEMA NSS was still in development, housed within the armor plated Department of Homeland Security firewall and had formidable login and password requirements.

And so it came to pass in 2008 that my friend Omar Abou-Samra from Red Cross National Headquarters and I got down to figuring out how the State of Florida would adopt the Red Cross NSS as our shelter system of record. The only issue appeared to be our requirement that our open shelters be posted on a website.

The lawyers got involved (always a bad sign) but they drafted a disclaimer for us to put on our site. With that our Information Technology people took a data feed from the Red Cross NSS and put it on our website. This happened in July 2008 just in time for us to utilize it for the shelters that were opened across the state as a result of Tropical Storm Fay. This is the system that the state of Florida still uses today.

I tell this story to show everyone that shelter reporting can be done right. The reason that it’s done so well now in Florida is that we had an inordinate amount of time in 2004 and 2005 to keep practicing until we got it right. The rest of the nation shouldn't have to endure the same ordeals that we did in order to get a simple, little report right..

Right now at Red Cross Headquarters we are finalizing the new Shelter Standards and Procedures doctrine. A significant amount of effort has gone into making sure that we get the shelter reporting procedures right. I’ve seen what we’ve done so far and it looks pretty good.

That means that there’s hope.

The National Mass Care Strategy Website

One of the (many) cool things about my job at Red Cross National Headquarters is that they gave me my own website to play around in. Technically, the National Mass Care Strategy website is not mine but I’m going to take ownership of it anyway.

When I was the State Mass Care Coordinator in Florida I considered the State ESF #6, Mass Care website to be mine. I wrote or helped to write most of the documents posted there. I got to decide what documents were posted, how they were grouped and I even got to decide the names of the groups under which they were posted. Whenever anyone asked me a technical question I would tell them to go to my website and pull down a particular document in which they would find the answer.

When my friend Beth Boyd was managing the NMCS site at National Headquarters we had a friendly rivalry as to which web site was the BEST mass care web site in the country. Of course, I thought the Florida site was the best and Beth thought the NMCS website was the best. I still think that the Florida site has better content.

But now that I have the National Mass Care Strategy power I’m going to fix that.

When I left the State of Florida I copied all of my working files (6 GB) to the iCloud and this is now a reference library for me and I can share some of that data with the rest of the country. For example, I have all the shelter and meal count data that the state (me) collected from the voluntary agencies during the 2004-05 hurricanes. I did a lot of subsequent analysis of this data and I should be able to make this information available in documents on the NMCS website.

This may take some time because the Red Cross has me working on other projects than the website, but I’ll poke along at it. My first step will be to move all the good content on the Florida site over to the NMCS web. If a lot of this content is Florida specific, well, hey, I’ll work on fixing that, too. I’ll solicit good documents from my friends in the mass care community nationwide.

What kind of documents am I looking for? I believe that people want to see jurisdiction (not agency) feeding plans and shelter plans. The Feeding Template and the Shelter Template are good documents but if you have the task to write a feeding plan for your state (like Colorado just did) you want to look at examples of how other states did it. The same would hold with a shelter plan. And instead of having to dig through state websites looking to see if they even have a shelter plan, it would be better to know that everything available is collected at one central location.

Another thing I will be looking for are good examples of mass care plans at the local or municipal level. A big problem in particular is information geared to local emergency managers focused on the process of transitioning survivors from shelters to appropriate housing. Does anyone have anything written on that? Procedures, plans, after-action, reports? Let me know and we’ll put them up.

How to start a disaster response

Last year I heard a series of presentations from some first responders on the April 17, 2013 West, Texas fertilizer plant explosion. The blast killed 11 firefighters at the scene and injured 200 of the 2,800 inhabitants of the town. The presenters, from the police, fire and emergency medical disciplines, assumed leadership positions when they arrived on scene and described the actions that they took at the first large disaster of their lives. The week of December 7-11 the American Red Cross assembled a team of 18 people in Denver, Colorado to draft a reference guide for local Red Cross employees and volunteers to use when they have to respond, as those men did in West, Texas, to the first large disaster of their lives.

When FEMA Administrator Craig Fugate was a State Director in Florida I heard him define the difference between an emergency and a disaster. At most emergencies, like a house fire or an automobile accident, the first responders outnumber the survivors. When an event happens, and the survivors outnumber the responders, then you have a disaster. Across the nation the Red Cross responds to emergencies every day.  In 2015, Red Cross disaster workers responded to 176 large U.S. disasters – more than each of the past three years.

Not everyone with the responsibility to recognize and react to a growing disaster has the benefit of having done it before. The first responders in West, Texas didn’t, and many of the Red Cross employees and volunteers on the ground during those 176 disasters didn’t either.

I knew and had served on disasters with a good number of the Team that assembled in the Drury Hotel in Denver. Before we could start we had to define the problem that we were addressing, the solution to the problem and the intended audience for whatever document we ended up producing. As was to be expected from such a diverse and experienced group, we had significant disagreements. Fortunately, we were joined by some experienced facilitators who had ample experience corralling ornery and rambunctious groups like us.

This wall was used by the Team to determine the target audience for our Field Operations Guide.

This week in Denver was one of the highlights of my mass care career and I felt fortunate to have been in the room with such a knowledgeable and dedicated group of mass care professionals. In particular, I learned a lot. I learned a lot about how to establish and operate a Red Cross Disaster Relief Operation. The most rewarding part of the week was that I was able to use my hard earned knowledge and experience to contribute to the effort that we were all making.

After five long days, working in groups, we were able to assemble a rough draft of over 100 pages. The target audience for this Field Operations Guide is the Regional Disaster Officer and Disaster Program Manager at the front line of the Red Cross disaster response hierarchy. The Guide is a series of checklists and job aids by function: Job Director, Operations, Planning, Logistics, Finance and External Relations. It’s a good product and we were all pleased with the result.

The draft has now been turned over to the doctrine staff at Red Cross National Headquarters, who will use their superior command of the English language to transform our scribblings into readable prose, with all the periods and commas in the right place. Once they have finished their magic the draft will go out to a wider audience for comment. The intent is to get this product completed and out to the field by spring.

If that sounds ambitious, it is. But we think that we can get it done.

Toward a catastrophic mass care response capability

I don't normally write controversial blog posts but this one will generate disagreement among my friends in the mass care community.

I want to talk about what we, as a nation, have to do to build a catastrophic mass care response capability. The two biggest disasters that we had in the last decade, Katrina and Sandy, revealed some significant mass care response issues that I don't think have been adequately addressed.

Since I'm not writing a book (yet) on catastrophic mass care response I'm going to focus on one issue in this response: Operational Coordination of Mass Care Services. "Operational Coordination" is the technical term for the capability to manage the resources brought into the disaster area. 

In a large disaster these resources would require thousands of 53' trailers. When the emergency managers of the affected jurisdictions start screaming for everything in the world and "the world" shows up, you need a lot of people on hand to tell the trucks where to go.

In a gross oversimplification (for clarity) of operational coordination during emergencies, everyone is either working in a multi-agency coordination system (i.e. an emergency operations center) or an incident command. A county EOC would acquire resources for one or more incident commands. When I helped coordinate mass care at the State EOC in Florida we acquired resources (personnel. equipment, teams and supplies) for county EOCs, state incident commands or voluntary agency incident commands (like the Salvation Army or Red Cross).

The Maryland State Emergency Operations Center during the response to Hurricane Sandy.

 When the Category 5 hurricane hits Miami (and it will) the state mass care team will have to decide what mass care resources are required (and in what quantities) and who will provide these resources, whether it be local, state, federal, voluntary agency or private sector. The process for achieving this task requires complex coordination. To be effective the mass care team needs a common understanding of the process and detailed, rehearsed procedures.

During the National Mass Care Exercises we conducted in Tallahassee from 2012-14 and in Texas in 2015 we worked to develop and rehearse this process. We, the national mass care community, are going to continue this process during the 2016 National Mass Care Exercise in Kansas City.

So we're working on fixing the problem of identifying mass care resources by type, kind and quantity and deploying them into the disaster area. But once we've ACQUIRED these resources in a catastrophic event the question becomes who is going to EMPLOY those resources?

The state mass care team isn't going to employ them. The counties and municipalities will be overwhelmed, and their EOCs will be focused on what they always are focused on: police, fire, medical and debris removal. In some hurricane prone states the locals and/or states establish evacuation shelters (at times in coordination with the Red Cross). But the post-event short term shelters are almost always managed by the Red Cross.

FEMA doesn't have a mass care capability except in certain narrow circumstances (see Federal Mass Care Resource Coordination). And no, providing truckloads of bottled water and shelf stable meals is not mass care but logistics. FEMA does logistics very well.

Mass Care is more than evacuation shelters and bottled water.The capabilities to feed hot meals in the community, shelter for weeks, distribute emergency supplies and help reunify families live almost exclusively within the voluntary agencies. And there are only three mass care voluntary agencies able to mobilize national resources to bring a significant mass care capability to bear in a catastrophic event: the Southern Baptists, the Salvation Army and the American Red Cross.

In the mass care arena (these agencies also bring significant recovery resources) the Baptists have an enormous national capability in field kitchens while the Salvation Army has significant feeding capabilities with their canteens and field kitchens. The Red Cross Disaster Relief Operation is the only mass care "incident command" that acquires and employs resources in the four mass care activity areas: feeding, sheltering, distribution of relief supplies and reunification.

The American Red Cross Disaster Relief Operation in Manhattan during the response to Hurricane Sandy.

The cheapest investment, as a nation, that we can make in our catastrophic mass care response capability is to improve the ability of the American Red Cross Disaster Relief Organization to manage the enormous amount of mass care resources that must be employed in a large scale event. There. I said it.

In discussions that I've had with individuals that I know and respect my suggestion provokes an emotional reaction. 

"That won't work. The Red Cross can't manage mass care in a catastrophic event."

And I reply: "What are the other choices? FEMA? The Counties? The State?"

A staggering quantity of mass care resources will be requested and will flow into south Florida (or whatever the disaster area happens to be) after a catastrophic hurricane. They must be managed and employed in a coherent fashion. 

The Red Cross has the capability to employ these resources but right now lacks the CAPACITY to do so in such a large event. In my view the solution is to take those actions necessary to increase the capacity of the Disaster Relief Operation to manage large events.

And FEMA has to help the Red Cross to do this.

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.

Shelter types

There has been a considerable effort within the national mass care community during the last five years to classify shelters.  In 2009 FEMA, at the suggestion of the mass care community, assembled a working group from within the mass care community to undertake to type mass care resources. The group was called the National Incident Management System (NIMS) Mass Care Working Group. I wrote about a lot of this in a post last November.

The Working Group consisted of representatives from the VOADs, the private sector, state and local governments. FEMA personnel from the National Integration Center (NIC) monitored the activities of the Workgroup but did not serve as a part. A contractor, paid for by FEMA,  provided administrative support. As the State Mass Care Coordinator for Florida I was asked to Chair this Working Group and I accepted. 

Among the VOAD representatives were Lynn Crabb, the Mass Care Lead for the American Red Cross National Headquarters and Richard Hinrichs from the San Diego Chapter. Richard became the Chair for the Shelter Subcommittee of the Workgroup. The Shelter Subcommittee members included Randy Linthicum from California, Lynn Crabb and Doug Sandy from ARC, Tonya Roberts from Arkansas, Kevin Rawson from the US Navy and Harold Hansen from the International Association of Venue Managers. 

The product of their efforts was the document entitled The Shelter Guidance Aid and Staffing Matrix. This product was and has been the only shelter document of its kind and now resides as a resource on the National Mass Care Strategy Website. The shelter classification outlined in this document was the basis for the Shelter Manager Job Title that was drafted by the Subcommittee and ultimately adopted by FEMA in June 2014.

The Shelters were classified in the document according to the kind of facility, with the criteria based on the expected length-of-stay of the occupants. The classifications by length-of-stay were: Evacuation (up to 72 hours), Standard/Short-term  (up to 2 weeks) and Long-term/Mega-Shelter (longer than 2 weeks). A characteristic of each of these kinds of shelters was that the amount of resources available increased as the length-of-stay increased. A Table outlining this classification can be found on pages 2 and 3 of the Shelter Guidance Aid. The graph below is a pictorial representation of the concept.

The efforts of the NIMS Mass Care Working Group were terminated in June 2012. After some bureaucratic delays the NIC returned to typing mass care resources in 2014.  As a part of this effort Chris Darlington with the NIC assembled another working group to advise FEMA on typing shelters. Uma Hiremagalur of the Red Cross and I, among others, were asked to serve on this group. We were invited to a meeting at FEMA HQS in Washington, D.C. in September 2014. Uma represented the Red Cross at this meeting.

There were very heated discussions during this day-long meeting. The conclusion and general agreement among the participants by the end of the day was that shelters should be classified by kind and type. There would be 3 kinds of shelters using the length-of-stay criteria outlined in the Shelter Guidance Aid. In addition, each kind of shelter would be classified according to type (capability).  Thus, each kind of shelter could be a Type 1 through a Type 4, based on the expected population.

Of course, none is this is etched into stone yet. As the national conversations proceed I wanted to give everyone some background information on where we've been before so that we can move forward with a common understanding.