Over the past 10 years, two significant events forever changed expectations regarding the American fire service: the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and Hurricane Katrina in 2005. From these events new terminology emerged, such as: all-hazards; generational warfare; natural and manmade disasters; culture of preparedness; and, of course, CBRNE. If the fire service was not already under enough pressure to do more with less, the new and emerging expectations of all-hazard mitigation would surely strain even the largest departments.

Since 9/11, the day-to-day business practices of the District of Columbia Fire and Emergency Medical Service — 2,200 members strong under the leadership of Fire Chief Dennis L. Rubin — have changed dramatically. It is not necessarily that the types of events to which the department responds have changed all that much. Rather, the expectations placed on the department by both its customers and its members have risen to a new level.

The 1.6 million citizens, visitors and workers within Washington, D.C. — a place where, on any given day, the unusual is the status quo — all expect that, in the event of a fire, transit accident, terrorist attack or a mid-winter snowstorm, the department will provide the same level of service that it does every day. Interestingly, the department's members have the same expectation of themselves.

The day-to-day events managed by the department are complex and include building fires, technical rescues, hazmat incidents, suspicious packages by the dozen (with a healthy dose of white-powder responses) and water rescues. The critical infrastructure the department protects is equally diverse, such as the White House, the U.S. Capitol, and the Washington Monument, as well as numerous embassies and other symbolic buildings.

The department also provides fire/hazmat/EMS response for myriad sporting events — including the Capitals, Wizards, Nationals and D.C. United — and offers the very same services infused with counterterrorism measures for events such as political protests, Independence Day celebrations, State of the Union addresses, presidential funerals and, of course, presidential inaugurations. The department received national and international recognition for its performance during the 56th Presidential Inauguration, the largest one-day gathering in U.S. history.

Visiting professionals often ask how the department manages the atypical events that are typical of Washington, D.C. They want to know how the department plans for and responds to events as diverse as presidential inaugurations, state funerals — such as the one held for President Ronald Reagan in June 2004 — the 2010 Blizzard, which dumped as much as 36 inches of snow on the metropolitan area, the June 2009 Metro train crash, the April 2008 appearance of Pope Benedict at Nationals Stadium, and the 2004 Ricin contamination of the U.S. Capitol. They want to know how we prepare, train and equip personnel, and develop standard operating guidelines, for threats to the nation's capital that range from a nuclear detonation to a hurricane — and everything in between.

As complex as the threats are, as wild as the weather can be, as challenging as the events are to plan for, and as busy as the department is, the secret to its success really is very simple. First, we take advantage of our biggest strength, the men and women of the department, who perform their jobs to the highest level day in and day out. The foundation of all we do is built on the strength of their commitment, ingenuity, job knowledge, all-hazards training and the dedication and commitment they display daily.

Second, we have the best and brightest when it comes to homeland security, domestic preparedness, special-event planning, intelligence-led mitigation and incident management. Third, the real key to operational success is consistency. We value the importance of consistency in application of SOGs, incident management, event planning and attention to detail.

The final element to the department's success may be the most valuable yet least understood: We take advantage of every opportunity we can find to exercise our plans and procedures on real-life events.

A Highly Trained Work Force is Highly Reliable

The department has made significant investments in the all-hazard training that each member receives. For example, all of dual-role members receive the following instruction: National Registered EMT, Technical Rescue Awareness, Hazmat Operations, Response to IED Awareness, and WMD Complexities. Also, all new recruits attend a 40-hour WMD training program in Anniston, Ala.

In addition, we have 200 hazmat specialists and more than 400 hazmat technicians, with several hundred more attending Radiological Technician school in Nevada and Response to Incident Bombings school in New Mexico. We have a highly trained and skilled incident-management cadre, whose members meet and exceed national ICS standards and participate in our Inter-Departmental Incident Management Team. Also, several are on the National Capital Region Type-3 Incident Management Team.

Our members come to work each day and not only deal with the standard fire and medical service requests, but also are regularly involved in special events and security details. They have various all-hazard ancillary job responsibilities such as the department's decontamination-support companies and its mass-casualty task-force companies. They receive weekly intelligence reports and are beginning to provide real-time threat analysis. Basically they show up for work every day and expect the unexpected.

The following are two basic examples of the ingenuity of our members and their ability to work outside of the standard mission.

One of our engine companies responded to what appeared to be a simple auto fire, the type of incident to which we respond to 10 times a day. In this case, however, the husband and wife in the vehicle had just traveled from Texas after selling all of their possessions in order for the wife to spend her remaining weeks in a hospice in her home town on the Maryland Eastern Shore. After hours of desperate attempts for humanitarian assistance from all known resources, the members from this company obtained a van from the department's training academy, packed up the couple's personal belongings and drove them to the hospice some 90 miles away.

In June 2009, the department responded to what would become the worst accident in the history of the region's 30-year-old transit system, killing nine and injuring close to 100. Over the next 24 hours we experienced numerous successes and performed yeoman-like work. For example, we evacuated, triaged, treated and transported more than 60 patients in less than one hour. Our special operations division spent 14 hours extricating bodies from the mangled wreckage.

One of the most innovative acts came from our Customer Service Unit (CSU), which is commanded by Lt. Sean Egan. The accident occurred on a surface right-of-way (street level). The two Metro tracks were sandwiched between two high-speed Amtrak lines, sitting atop standard rail ties and crush rock. There were two eight-foot fences that encapsulated the surface right-of-way. In order for responders to get on the right-of-way, they would first need to climb a 5-foot grade at 70° angle after a week of rain. In short, the CSU engineered and facilitated an asphalt/crush pathway, which allowed quicker and safer ingress and egress for responders and victims. These all are examples of a highly trained, highly reliable work force.

The point is that people are your greatest asset. Never underestimate what they are capable and committed to doing.

Strong Procedures Depend on Everyday Skills

Another bit of advice to chiefs would be to stop fighting the National Response Framework and NIMS. Both are foundationally strong, appropriate and have become a national consensus industry best practice. Read, understand and practice them, as this is a reasonable expectation for fire-service leaders.

The department's standard operating guidelines include detailed response policies for bombings, mass causality, radiological emergencies, WMD and hazmat. These plans are complex yet are built to the strength of our work force. We did not reinvent the wheel in its entirety, but used our real-life experiences, amalgamated with guidance from entities such as DHS, DOD, DOE and the FBI, to name a few. Personal working relationships with the FDNY, London Fire Brigade and the Israeli Fire/Rescue service enabled us to exchange thoughts, ideas and experiences, which led to a solid working document.

The development of policies and procedures that allow us to prepare for, and respond to, such complex and unusual incidents requires a subject-matter expertise that transcends fire/rescue/EMS; also needed is expertise in homeland security and domestic preparedness issues, incorporating emergency management and intelligence fusion. Consequently, our team includes a cadre of members with strong backgrounds in homeland security, domestic preparedness, emergency management and special-event planning. They have attended the prestigious Naval Post Graduate School, National War College, Johns Hopkins University and a host of other higher-education institutes.

Our response policies leverage the basic knowledge, skills and abilities of every firefighter and EMT. What they do every day — the donning of PPE and SCBA, the advancing of hose lines and snatch-grab rescues, fire suppression, providing medical care — form the foundation for our special response plans. If your personnel are good at these essential skills, you are halfway to effective disaster response.

The core of our response policies requires only a basic awareness and understanding of the threat and risks of the various incidents. Technician- and specialist-level training is good and you will need this expertise, but the core of the life-saving mission requires that personnel are prepared and trained to do what they do every day, as described above. This in no way means that a greater depth of knowledge and understanding of the risks associated with the various scenarios should not be expected at the command level — indeed, such depth is critical. Our mission in any disaster, whether nuclear attack or structure fire, is the same: self protection and risk management; strong command and control; aggressive engagement when there are savable lives; and incident stabilization.

Put Plans to the Test — Often

Unfortunately, large catastrophic events usually don't occur on your time frame. Most often they come with little-to-no notice, their consequences can be deadly and the room for error is modest. Add to that the ever-increasing service demands on our departments, the diminishing funding streams for training and the lack of previous learning experiences — borne of a reduction in fires — and you can have a real mess on your hands. The fact is, we are talking about low-frequency, high-impact events, and the overall risk of failure is great, unless we are prepared.

The last and most important piece of the puzzle is this: every day, in most localities, an opportunity will present itself for you to practice some part(s) of your plans. You must seek out and take advantage of those opportunities. Any small costs will be offset by the priceless experience you will gain.

Regardless of the nature of event, mass-casualty management will be one of your most important challenges and will make the single biggest impact on the public's perception of how well you managed the incident. Having the entire world watch while you have injured people lying in the streets for hours, waiting for help, will equate to a failed response no matter what else you do.

Our department has two mass-casualty task forces — one on the north side of the city and one on the south side — each of which has a Type-1 mass-casualty transport bus and a Type-1 mass-casualty support unit. Each task force is comprised of an engine company and a truck company that operate under well-defined SOGs. Generally, if we approached this in the normal fashion, those resources would average one or two responses a year, and the knowledge, skills and abilities of the task force would reflect the same. We cannot give them minimal practice time and then expect them to win the Stanley Cup when the time comes.

Instead, the D.C. Fire and EMS mass-casualty-incident plan calls for task-force activation for any event that has at least nine victims. We insist that each of these incidents be declared MCIs and we send out the entire cadre of the Task Force and we go to work. This entails ICS, triage tags, hospital notification and bed status, and full implementation of the Simple Triage and Rapid Transport (START) system — and we require this every time. These valuable experiences have enabled us to revise and reevaluate our MCI plan several times, and we feel we are well-prepared for when the "big one" occurs.

It did so in June 2009. The department responded to a Metro rail crash that injured more than 80 and killed 9. We successfully triaged more than 100 people and transported some 60 others, and had our last patient at the hospital in one hour. This was only possible due because we seek every opportunity to practice our plans.

There are some who will say things like, "that won't work here," "that will never happen here," "that's fine for them, they are a big department," or "we don't have those resources." Those who utter such excuses should consider that Hurricane Katrina dramatically and forever changed the public's expectations of how public servants should perform. Never again will our customers tolerate a failed response from those who are sworn to serve and protect. Regardless of whether that is reasonable or fair, it is a fact.

While we will have plenty of time to debate how to manage public expectations, the fact remains that we must prepare for the inevitable. During a recent congressional hearing, Dennis Blair, the outgoing U.S. director of national intelligence said that an attack on American soil within the next six months is "certain."

A highly trained and reliable work force, strong policies and procedures based on experience, and capitalizing on every opportunity to exercise your MCI plans will provide a framework to succeed.

Lawrence S. Schultz is the assistant fire chief, operations, for District of Columbia Fire and EMS.

Related Stories

• Rail Pass: D.C. Chief Rubin Talks About Metro Rail Crash
• First Line of Defense: How to Prepare for a Hazmat Response