The Sandman's Northern Rockies Incident Management Team supported a Hurricane Katrina shelter operation in Levi, Texas, from Sept. 25 to Oct. 7.

A coordinated effort by the Incident Management Team and operations resources to provide high-quality support to the evacuees, especially the special needs evacuees at Levi, was the most notable success. Crew members and immediate overhead went way beyond their typical assignment tasks to provide comfort, assistance and care to the evacuees.

The mission of the IMT was not necessarily to “do” things. A key point to remember when working in this sort of incident is that we're not in command: We support, coordinate and provide structure to the agencies we're working with.

To that end, facilitating the collaborative process among the responsible agencies, volunteer groups and other interested groups in an effort to manage emergency shelters and evacuees was important. The IMT demonstrated to the other agencies, cooperators and groups how to manage and use the Incident Command System to their advantage.

BEGINNING JITTERS

Some of the crews seemed to be unaware or didn't understand the humanitarian support they would be providing on this incident. Constant reminders by operations, human resource specialists and others at the morning and evening briefings that we were all working outside our normal roles helped to alleviate this issue. Human resources also developed a message to reflect this reality that was included in the incident action plan on several occasions.

Because of the humanitarian nature of the mission, it was easy for personnel working in the evacuation shelters to become emotionally involved with the evacuees or to experience “mission creep” due to their close coordination with other organizations that were involved in different aspects of evacuee support. This matter was resolved by constantly reminding employees to be aware of emotional involvement in individual situations and by periodically moving individual employees out of the shelters or to different shelters. They also were instructed to refocus on the mission assignment.

SHELTER SUPPORT

The IMT dealt with safety and health issues associated with dirty and contaminated supplies, such as cots, mattresses and bedding, and their potential impact on supply personnel. This challenge was met by developing a cot and mattress cleaning contract, using a cleaning service to launder dirty bedding and linens, and increasing personnel awareness through safety briefings on how to handle contaminated items.

In addition, shelters had not been prescreened in a coordinated manner for health and safety considerations. The IMT put together a task force of appropriate safety and health personnel to prescreen shelter buildings prior to moving evacuees into them. Once evacuees had been placed, any emergency needs required a lengthy procedure when an American Red Cross official wasn't available to sign a request. Instead, an order protocol was developed and put in place.

Within the different shelter buildings and through the various management personnel, there were several systems for tracking evacuees. Duplicate tracking and a lack of centralized information-sharing between buildings and organizations made it difficult to obtain an accurate count of evacuees in the shelters. It would be beneficial to develop a database in future incidents that would be available on the American Red Cross Web site or in a toolbox accessible by IMTs.

The reliability of information in the shelters was highly variable each day due to the large number of organizations involved; the lack of coordination, often between members of the same organization, in several evacuation shelters; and the lack of coordination between agencies and organizations involving programs where multiple operations were involved in informing, providing financial assistance and moving people.

This probably will be a common occurrence on all-risk incidents when dealing with multiple agencies and organizations that don't operate under, or have no knowledge of, the incident command system to drive the exchange and coordination of information. This issue occurred regularly, often several times per day, and couldn't be resolved.

Another problem with the shelters involved the food service, which wasn't running at its highest potential for this type of event. For example, the meals served didn't meet the requirements of vegetarians or those with special dietary needs. Some areas ran out of food because of the quantity served and because some evacuees were allowed to take up to five meals each.

To help address these issues, another food unit leader was hired to assist with meal planning and portion control, and crews were required to use a meal counter. However, many issues of control prevented improvement to the system. Future incidents of this magnitude and complexity should use two national caterers.

PUBLIC AFFAIRS

The information group maintained good working relationships with public affairs staff from all levels of government and a variety of organizations.

The group worked in close coordination daily with public affairs staff from the American Red Cross and FEMA, getting to know them on a first-name basis. The American Red Cross public affairs officer often attended the information staff meetings. Several events required coordination with public affairs staff from the San Antonio Police Department and the New Orleans Saints football organization.

However, communicating and coordinating between and among the IMT, American Red Cross, San Antonio Police Department, numerous short-term volunteers, and the City of San Antonio was difficult because no clear command structure or direct communications lines existed. It was very hard to get key people to communicate and work with each other rather than operate independently with no regard as to how their actions would impact other operations. We tried to be flexible, go slow, stay calm, expect the unexpected and always have contingency plans when things didn't go as planned.

For example, there was an issue involving turning over the preparation of a daily news update to the local American Red Cross. The American Red Cross didn't follow the agreed-upon format and provided incorrect information regarding media access to the shelter sites. The correct information had been approved by the mayor, so this mistake brought a complaint from the City of San Antonio. It was resolved by the IMT information group taking back the daily news update to ensure it was released in a timely manner with correct information.

In addition, a newsletter was prepared daily in Shelter Building 171, and the idea was later transferred to Shelter Building 1536. Volunteers helped write, produce and distribute the newsletters under the tutelage of an information officer assigned to each shelter. The volunteers also staffed information desks to direct shelter residents to services provided by other agencies and to serve as local media contacts.

Media were allowed access to the shelters with an information officer escort. Several media outlets were provided with access to do follow-up stories on particular shelter residents. A very favorable news story involved the work of fire crews on assignment to provide humanitarian support of hurricane evacuees.

VOLUNTEER COORDINATION

By having a liaison for volunteer coordination working for the IMT, coordination issues were handled extremely well with the Citizens Corps Volunteer Operations Center. Citizens Corps is a local affiliate of Freedom Corps, formerly known as Peace Corps.

However, our inability to ensure command and control of critical volunteer infrastructure, such as the staging and use of personnel and skill, compromised medical operations throughout the IMT's tenure. Though IMT medical personnel were directed to support only agency personnel assigned to the incident, it was extremely difficult to completely disengage from supporting evacuees when no other medical support was available due to lack of volunteer or volunteer contracted medical support.

Issues of emergency response for evacuees, including on-site dispatch of incident ambulances and concerns for medical liability, were essentially unresolved. Given a commitment to provide medical support to evacuees, a more appropriate response may be an ESF-Medical IMT rather than a wildland firefighting IMT.

Potentially, there were a huge number of volunteers available from myriad groups, but there was no pre-existing plan or centralized way to access all the resources that could have been brought to bear. There were some unresolved political issues that precipitated this situation.

Volunteers shouldn't be relied on for long-term staffing needs beyond a period of one to three weeks. The interest and motivation among an unpaid volunteer work force diminishes dramatically after about three weeks, and critical organizational positions become increasingly difficult to staff with a volunteers. The American Red Cross, though a highly regarded national organization, had some serious issues with organization, planning, logistics and communications because of incident direction.

FURTHER REVIEW

Unfamiliarity with the roles of the various cooperators made for a steep learning curve. The IMT would have benefited from information on general roles of the key cooperators, including an in-briefing about American Red Cross operations and a flow chart of its organizational structure.

Initial poor communications between the different organizations, both horizontally and vertically, never seemed to smooth out for the length of the incident. A single command structure with clearly understood lines of authority, communications and responsibility was never established, and frequent independent action with no thought or understanding of disruptive consequences continued to occur.

The IMT dealt with many organizations that had never worked together and were reluctant to engage in cooperative efforts for unspecified reasons. We weren't fully successful in bringing all the responding agencies together, although many did come together in a unified cooperative effort.

There needs to be equivalent training between the National Wildfire Coordinating Group and the structural fire world, including the International Fire Service Training Association and the National Fire Protection Association. This isn't occurring fast enough. The National Response Plan directs all agencies to work together, but training organizations have yet to decide to do so.

All-risk incidents seem to have become more commonplace in recent years. They involve different methods of operation for all functions because they may involve unique situations, such as providing information involving coordination of multiple agencies to long-term shelter occupants.

There needs to be more emphasis placed on all-risk assignments through the regular curriculum in appropriate sessions, such as S-420 or S-520; through tabletop exercises involving all-risk incidents based on an event such as this to emphasize lessons learned as part of the exercise; or through a separate training curriculum. Other suggestions include:

Provide management training

Having FEMA train IMTs on FEMA's processes and procedures regarding costs and property management would help us manage the incident and provide good supporting documents after it's closed out.

Establish national logistics

It was difficult to ascertain what specific agency was responsible for what supplies and how the supplies should be managed on an incident. A national strategic logistics emergency response team should define roles and responsibilities.

Standardize procurement

Creating purchasing and procurement guidelines associated with all-risk incidents between agencies would reduce the overall confusion as to responsibility for funding.

Train safety officers in medical management

Given the apparent trend to organize the medical unit under safety, safety officers should be provided specific training and direction to support the management of the medical unit.

The Dirty Face Furlong after-action review roll-up was submitted to the Wildfire Lessons Learned Center, www.wildfirelessons.net.