Some people have asked why Emergency Management and Homeland Security issues are so important to me as an elected official. First and foremost is because I will always care for the people and businesses of this city and will do whatever I can to help protect them from harm. Now that being said let me explain why I feel some of the courses I take are relevant.
Some of the first courses I took were the IEMC or Integrated Emergency Management courses at the Emergency Management Institute (EMI). These courses combine lecture and theory with hand on exercises in a simulation lab. I have taken three of these classes; All Hazards Planning and Response, All Hazards Recovery and Mitigation, and Hazardous Materials Planning and Response. With these courses I learned where our city and where my knowledge needed to be in preparing our city. EMI, located in Emmitsburg Maryland has some of the best programs in the Country for this and my classes and travel cost were funded by FEMA. Although I do not get reimbursed for lost wages from my job as a Union Electrician, I have decided that when I retire it would be nice to go back and teach other elected officials some of what I have learned. I have an application in for a contract instructor for the IEMC courses.
Some of the gaps I realized by taking the IEMC courses were our cities ability to meet requirements set in place by the National Incident Management System (NIMS), our Continuity of Operations Planning (COOP)and the training and testing of staff. First with the COOP Planning I was able to find a class being taught in Richland Washington. This class, along with knowledge I learned from many other resources including extensive online training allowed me to create our draft Emergency Planning Documents. After convincing the Course Manager that I was serious about building a strong training and exercise program for our city, I was accepted into the Master Exercise Practioner program at EMI. This program included three weeklong classes in Maryland along with considerable course work in between the classes. During this time I wrote a Table Top and a Functional Exercise as well as certified in writing, conducting and evaluating disaster exercises. When I graduated in 2009, I was the first elected official to earn a MEP and still am the only person who held office at the time to graduate from the program. Since that time I am happy to say that one of my classmates won a seat on his City Council in Pennsylvania.
A big part of the NIMS requirements is for training in the Incident Command System (ICS). Taking classes both online (ICS 100, 200, 700 and 800) and at Pierce County EOC (ICS 300, and 400) I became the first person in our city to meet the NIMS requirements and kept our city qualified for certain federal funding. Since that time Police Chief John Calkins, Lt. Edwin Massey, and Community Development Director Jay Bennett have all reached those same requirements. Our Emergency Plan requires all City Council members to have completed ICS 100 by next month and to complete up to 300 next year. The Council President and Mayor Pro Tempe, because they need to be able to take over for the Mayor in their absence will need to also take ICS 400. Other city employees and volunteers who might staff certain positions during times of disaster are required to take at least ICS 100.
In January 2010 (not the warmest time of the year to be on the East coast) I returned to EMI to take the ICS Training the Trainer. This allows me to teach ICS 100 – 400 (ICS 700 and 800 are online programs dealing more with the NIMs Structure and the National Response Framework). Last Spring we offered our first ICS 100 class to the public and next week we have our first ICS 200 class. The plan is to offer these at least once per year. ICS 300 and 400 are available only in the classroom format and require multiple instructors to teach. I am on the list as an instructor with the State of Washington, Pierce County and King County EOC’s.
With these classes and a host of online programs I continued to refine our emergency planning documents. Last year we had a great intern who worked with staff and me and completed our COOP Plan. Jay Bennett, our Community Development Director and Deputy Emergency Management Director wrote our Hazard Mitigation Plan and I developed a multiyear training and exercise plan. Last spring we conducted our first stand alone exercise. We have another scheduled for the end of this month. In addition we have participated as an independent participant in the Statewide Sound Shake 08 exercise as well as worked with the VRFA in a drill on that same scenario. All of these documents were then included in our Comprehensive Emergency Management Plan that was adopted by City Council last year.
One of the issues I discovered from taking these classes is a big gap exist nationwide in classes specifically focused at the Policy role. An elected official, although their role is critical in the success of any program is typically not directly involved in the Emergency Operations Center (EOC) most of the training programs developed have been towards the operational side and not specifically on the critical thinking and impacts of policy in the planning for, responding to, recovering from and mitigating against disasters. Because of this I am now writing a Plan of Instruction for a new class; The Policy Role in Incident Command and Emergency Management as part of the Master Trainer Program at EMI. I will be teaching a six hour version of this program this November in cooperation with Pierce County DEM and the Association of Washington Cities. The final version will be a 24 hour class that like most successful Adult education programs combine lecture with hands on application through exercises.
Another gap that I noticed was in my personal education. Disasters are not always natural or accidental. As we saw on September 11, 2001, disasters sometimes are purposeful and acts of terrorism. None of my training had been specific to these types of disasters. Although I do not expect to see a terrorist explode a dirty bomb at city hall or someone to release a chemical weapon during Pacific days, as a policy leader I need to understand the realities of these types of events. Next Sunday, I will be leaving for the Center for Domestic Preparedness (CDP) to take my third class in awareness of and management of WMD type events. Both my last class and the one I am attending this month include hands on training inside the COBRA Training Facility, the only live agent training facility in the United States that is available to civilian training programs. Suiting up in a chemical suit and monitoring levels of real VX and Sarin Gas has given me a much more realistic conception of what it takes to operate in a WMD type environment. It was as exciting as suiting up in bunker gear and going into a training fire.
Also I have been accepted to attend a program offered at Texas A&M University on Advanced Unified Command by the Texas Engineering and Extension Service. Like EMI and the CDP, this program at TEEX is funded by FEMA and DHS.
So that gets down to what I plan on doing with this training. First, I want to make sure that our city is prepared to face any disaster. I want to make sure that we have in place both the planning and the training that even after I retire as Mayor that Pacific’s citizens and businesses will always be protected. Second, I want to help prepare our region. Many of my mentors, Sarah Miller of Auburn Emergency Preparedness, Dominick Marzano of Kent and staff of Washington State Emergency Management have given so much to me that I want to give back to others. That is why I am writing this policy training program, I have been given a rare opportunity to combine what I have learned in emergency management with what I have learned is important as Mayor. I will use these skills in any way I can to help our region become better prepared. Finally I want to help our Nation. If the class I write can be used nationally, I want to make it available. I see my future will most likely be involved in emergency management. This is still a few years off as I will not retire as an electrician for a few more years. My father raised me to believe that when you see a problem that needs to be corrected, you do not just wait around for others to do the work, you roll up your sleeves and figure out how to do it yourself. That is what I am doing with emergency management. That is why it is so important to me.
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