Amy Sebring: Good morning/afternoon everyone and welcome to
EMForum.org. I am Amy Sebring and will serve as your Host and Moderator
today and we are very glad you could join us.
Today’s topic is about enhancing coordination between military
installations and civilian emergency management programs at the local
level. This will become increasingly important as federal support
for each may decline in the future.
Now it is my pleasure to introduce today’s speaker: Ryan Broughton
is the Emergency Management Program Manager at Davis-Paige Management
Systems, LLC, where he continues to support implementation of the Army’s
Emergency Management Modernization Program. He previously led
development of the Navy’s Installation EM Program, developed the initial
draft of the Department of Defense (DoD) Installation EM Program, and
developed the Army’s Emergency Management Program Manual for
Headquarters, Department of the Army’s (HQDA) Protection Division.
Please see today’s Background Page for further biographical details and
links to several related resources including Websites related to each
service branch and military family preparedness.
Welcome Ryan, and thank you for taking the time to be with us today. I now turn the floor over to you to start us off please.
[Presentation]
[Slide 1]
Ryan Broughton: Good afternoon and welcome to today’s
webinar. I am glad to see so many friends online today. Two
of the people online have heard a variation of this presentation before
but I hope I can still answer some unique questions and expand this so
that we all learn something from today’s webinar.
[Slide 2]
Let me get started with a description. When we talk about the
Department of Defense and the military it is very common for people to
think about defense support to civil authorities or civil support
operations where the military provides people in uniform, what we call
“green gear” out in the field helping local community.
Although that is an important part of the duties and overall missions,
what we are talking about today is the installation environment.
We are going to be discussing the concept of jurisdictional emergency
management on the Department of Defense installations.
These installations are functionally equivalent to the towns and cities
you are already familiar with—schools, healthcare, gyms, shops,
restaurants, airports, office buildings, gas stations, parks and even
Starbucks. We have the exact same microcosm of civilian life—just
on a military installation.
The difference is that the Department of Defense, a federal entity, owns
and operates these cities. There is often a fence line to mark
the jurisdictional boundaries. Each installation has defined
missions to accomplish. Those missions might include a nation’s
support or might include power protection or test and evaluation
assistance.
We might have to build such as tanks and ships and all those things
require testing, maintenance and support. All those things are
done on installations as well. Not every installation is a whole
load of tanks or carriers, submarines or marines ready to go into
battle. This is an organization or company if you will.
Keep in mind the installations vary greatly but I want you to focus on
the installation environment instead of the civil support
environment. One of our deputies today—Larry Porter is very
knowledgeable in civil support. If you have a civil support
question he is one of those people you can reach out to but we are going
to focus on the installation environment.
[Slide 3, 4]
What gives us the authority to do this? In every plan we talk
about the basis of authority or why and how we can do emergency
management. The Department of Defense has an overarching
instruction but then each service applies that basic program
differently. The Air Force has a very different perspective of
doing this than the Navy or Marine Corps, or the Army.
Each of those services has their own EM program and those programs focus
on the local level—the installation environment, both inside and then
how do they integrate with the outside. That is the key focus of
today’s discussion.
[Slide 5]
This is separate from civil support so we are not talking about tanks,
bulldozers and men and women in uniform going outside the gate. We
are talking about the installation environment. Our firefighters
are largely civilian. Our law enforcement is civilian. Our
government uniformed personnel and contractors—we are not talking just
about the green gear guys. We are talking about the entire installation
environment.
Development timeline—it gives you an idea on this slide how we
progressed from NIMS in February in 2003 to PPD-8 in 2011 and how DoD
(Army, Navy, Air Force and U.S. Marine Corps) has progressed. Each
approached this slightly different because they are different
organizations.
The Army program developed an Army regulation in 2009 and an Army manual
in 2012. They also have all the services of a community preparedness
piece of that like ready.gov and those efforts with The Red Cross and
DHS to prepare the community as a whole. We had to prepare our
military community for how to interface with us, what kinds of warnings
we will give them, how to take mass care actions, how to shelter in
place and similar actions.
The Navy did the same thing. The Navy program started a little before
the DoD program. The Air Force program is an evolution of a
program that it had for many years and they are the only ones that use
military personnel in uniform to run their emergency management
program. All the other services use government civilian employees
as emergency managers.
In each of these cases we are looking at an all hazards type of
environment, all phases of emergency management protecting the entire
populous—not just looking at one piece of the mission or one piece of
the threat section such as terrorism.
Each of those services come up with assessment criteria and readiness
criteria which is that bottom white box where they assess based on
service specific metrics. Those metrics tell us that for the
amount of money we put in we expect X amount of readiness out. We
judge that readiness and adjust the amount of money accordingly to make
sure we are getting the right return on investment and that realizes our
efficiencies.
We hopefully draw down costs for doing that as we establish the programs and maintain them through their life spans.
[Slide 6]
Slide six gives you an idea of the scope. Many people have
different opinions about what emergency management is. For those
of us in the Department of Defense it is multi-agency and/or
multi-jurisdictional emergencies. It is not just the people
we are concerned about. It is the mission, the personnel and the
property.
When I say “multi-agency”—a response by fire, public works, law
enforcement, medical and EMS on the base is multi-agency. If we
are also pulling in mutual aid resources or we respond to something that
crosses both jurisdictions whether it is a wildfire, a tornado, a
chemical spill or a terrorist incident—those are multi-jurisdictional
events.
We work across the entire lifecycle—preparedness, prevention,
mitigation, response and recovery. That prevention piece is very
key that we integrate with the force help protection and anti-terrorism
programs as well as the information technology and the cyber-terrorism
programs to look at the prevention piece as well.
The law, the legal basis for our duty is enabling the government’s
responsibility to protect the installation against all hazards.
That is 50 U.S. Code, Article 797. That gives the installation
commander the role, responsibility and authority to protect the
installation in attempts.
We couldn’t do this without protecting and taking care of our people and
to do that we communicate early and often throughout someone’s time on
the base, whether they work on board or we have housing areas where many
of our uniformed personnel have families. Their kids go to school
on our bases. They go to child care and day care
facilities. They go to the pool and to the mall to go shopping.
All those things happen on the installation. We have a lot of effort
made in community preparedness and individual family preparedness.
We couldn’t do that if we didn’t talk the same language. NIMS
provides us that language.
Everybody talks about NIMS versus the National Response Framework and
for us the NIMS is the common language. If we use NIMS the same
way the outside defense line organizations use NIMS we can talk together
when the time comes.
We have exchanged business cards, we have exchanged plans and written
the plans in similar formats, we have used similar language and the same
concept of resource typing—all those efforts go to weave in those local
organizations outside the fence line and to weave in the bases that are
nearby and supporting.
For example if you are in a place like D.C. or Hampton Roads, Virginia
or San Diego, California or up in Seattle, you’ve got many bases weaved
in together—Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines. You also have
defense logistics agencies and other defense agencies that all have to
work together. All of that builds a coordinated response and
recovery capability.
Common architecture—we support the National Response Framework. It
gives us that architecture we have to link into. Our real goal is
to build a resilient installation. Short on response as much as
possible, quicken the loop to recovery and get those missions back on
line and get those people back working—those efforts only work if we
build resilient installations.
[Slide 7]
I said it before and I’m not going to belabor it—the difference between
civil support operations, where it is an additional duty to most
assigned units and emergency management which is the primary unit.
In emergency management it can be performed by uniformed personnel, DoD
civilians, DoD contractors—it doesn’t matter. We are not just
talking about the uniform side of it. Many of our emergency
managers are civilians.
We also have to use resources like Incident Command System and meet OSHA
and EPA guidelines because emergency management is not a military
unique operation. A military unique operation is like operating a
carrier at sea. OSHA doesn’t apply. OSHA is converted for
that operating environment because it is a very dangerous environment
and we don’t have all the same protections for someone on a carrier that
we do for someone working at a civilian airport.
In the case of emergency management, anti-terrorism and those types of
work, we actually have to meet the same standards. We don’t use
military, chemical or biological protection because you are only set for
a very small hazard sector. It is only looking for things that
are used in warfare.
Frankly there are a lot of things not used in warfare that can still
kill you so we need the OSHA and EPA guidelines as well. You look
back on the left hand side and you see civil support. This is
performed by the uniformed active, reserve and guard
components. The typical response—I am going to exclude the
Guard for a minute—but the typical officer in a uniformed activity in a
reserve is in the last-in-first-out basis.
We are not your first responder. We are not your mutual aid in
terms of uniformed personnel. We are the “you have been completely
overwhelmed and there is nobody else who can do the job and we already
have the capability sitting around.” We use it in wartime.
If we are not using it we can leverage it to use it in the civilian
sphere.
Those resources don’t use ICS at the individual level. They use
ICS by becoming one task force answering to a joint task force.
That joint task force is the one the interfaces with, understands ICS
and translates from the civilian request for assistance into the
military mission assignment.
Civil support is mobilized through the National Response
Framework. There is also an immediate response rule for an
installation to help a local environment if they need it. It is a
very specific request and a short timeframe usually. Civil support
is very different from emergency management. Think of us as the
enablers.
If we do our job right the installation is up and running, the air field
is up and running and our fuel supply is up and running—we can support
the uniformed personnel going outside the gate and helping our civilian
counterparts.
[Slide 8]
To do that, we have to provide a comprehensive solution. We use a
lot of acronyms in the military so I’m not going to use the acronyms as
much and focus on what we have to do—all the preparedness activities
that any other local jurisdiction would have to do. We have to
plan, train, equip and exercise.
We use some of the same systems. For example in the Army we are
specifically looking at compliance with NFPA standards and EDXL
(Emergency Data Exchange Language) to ensure our information, material
and training is compatible with those outside the fence line. We
adopted HSEEP. Almost all installations have adopted HSEEP
(Homeland Security Exercise Evaluation Program).
It is very similar to the programs we have already used but we have
realigned to get common terminology between our military installation
and our civilian partners. It increases our readiness and allows
us to be exercising to the same standards and requirements.
[Slide 9]
Once we build that capability and preparedness we have to continue to
mitigate and prevent hazards and threats. We do that through
supporting continuity of operations, using the same flood plain
management, the same run off management—all the typical things we have
to do in mitigation in the civilian world, we have to do in the military
world.
We don’t have to obey the interim final rule. We don’t have a
mitigation grant program. Those activities are funded by DoD, by
the individual services. The same thing with prevention—there is
not grant program for us to get additional capability. We do our
budget and present that budget up through the services and request that
money from Congress just like any other federal department.
We respond—we have to build that resource management capability.
Since our resources aren’t “EMAC-able”—aren’t transferable between
states under the Emergency Management Assistance Compact, we use Tier
Two or non-national state and local level resources. We have the
same support agreements—mutual aid, MOUs (memorandums of understanding),
MOAs (memorandums of agreement), it is between the local jurisdiction
and the federal entity.
We have to have the same mass warning and notification systems and we
have to coordinate those because if we tell everybody to evacuate and
the city doesn’t, there is going to be a ghost evacuation of the city
regardless of what we do. You can guess where those people are
going to go. They are going to our fence line and go right through
that same community.
We have to make sure those things are coordinated and that we have
interoperable communications. Just like everybody else, we have to
recover. The difference is we don’t get any public assistance,
private assistance, or individual assistance at all. There is no
money that comes from FEMA to the base itself, the base residents.
If you are the family of a sergeant or a petty officer and you are
living on the base, when your house is destroyed the DoD works to repair
it. They identify the damage, the costs, manage the debris and
end up paying for the rebuilding. If that same family lived out in
the local community outside the fence, they are eligible for FEMA
assistance and any assistance provided by the state.
Even Red Cross—Red Cross does not have a mandate to operate on military
installations. The mass care they are receiving outside is through
Red Cross, Salvation Army and organizations such as those. Inside
the fence line you are talking about the military taking care of the
military and the people on those bases.
[Slide 10]
We do that in the exact same environment you see on slide ten. We
are doing the same all-hazards environment—natural, technological,
intentional, terrorism—it doesn’t matter. The goal of emergency
management is to build capabilities that work regardless of what the
hazard is. We are not a scenario based program.
We don’t sit there and go, “Here are our fifteen planning scenarios that
are national level catastrophic events.” We build capabilities
for that type three incident—that local incident. We build that
interface so we can accept the help from the state, federal government
and other federal entities if we need it. This really requires
mutual support. You cannot do emergency management functionally on
an installation without mutual support with our local community.
[Slide 11]
We are a part of the local community, as you can see on slide eleven.
There are over 200 DoD installations, 85 percent of the overall
total. There are almost 5,000 facilities just located inside the
United States, its territories and possessions. In some of those
installations there are 100 people. In some of them there are
150,000 people. There is a large variation in what we call an
installation.
We are talking about 300,000 buildings at 5,000 locations on over 20
million acres of land. It is a huge enterprise when you look at
the number of bases, the number of people, and differences in those
installations and environments. We are your neighbors. We
are the people right there next to you working beside you. All we
need to do is just like the other jurisdictions—become part of that
regional environment so we can call upon you just like you call upon us.
[Slide 12]
How do we integrate? How do we increase that integration?
[Slide 13]
On slide thirteen you’ll see the start of some concepts we have—things
that are pretty good integration areas, but many of them represent
challenges for us. Develop mechanisms for sharing unclassified
Common Operating Picture across jurisdictions—it sounds pretty
easy. Many local jurisdictions do that today.
The military has developed a large body of regulations and experience
regarding how we prepare for cyber incidents and protect our
infrastructure. It is harder than you would believe to share a
picture between one jurisdiction that is military and another which is
civil. It is almost a daily challenge. We have to provide
that support across the fence line in both directions.
It is not enough for a local jurisdiction or city to say, “We need your
fire department”. Okay, but we need your fire department,
too. There are times when we are going to share those resources in
both directions. The real goal here is setting good expectations
management. The other EM as I call it—the ability to make sure the
other EOCs you are working with understand what you can and cannot do.
You cannot call us and say, “I need the first infantry division to come
out here and haul away this debris because I can’t afford to pay
anything.” That’s illegal. I can’t do that. We have to
set those expectations early on. That is how we exercise and
train. We bring people across the fence line to do that.
That is going to build the relationship and trust. When the EOC
has stood up everybody has the same expectations.
[Slide 14]
Other integration opportunities—things like force protection conditions,
things we learned well from Ford Hood—we have a thing called Force
Protection Condition (FPCON)—of course we have to have an acronym for
everything. A force protection condition delta is a complete
lock-down of the base.
Unfortunately unless you practice it when you lock down the base you
lock out all the local first responders just as much as the other people
because they are stuck in the same traffic. In Fort Hood that
forced us to have a large number of helicopter evacuations that we
wouldn’t normally have to hospitals that we didn’t maintain a good
expectations management and relationship with.
It became very difficult to track our path through the incident.
We want to make sure that ambulances, fire trucks, and police can get on
the base and at the exact same time we are trying to get non-essential
personnel off the base or evacuated. That goes into the evacuation
management. We have to coordinate evacuation routes.
It is not just enough to coordinate with the first city but with the
state as a whole because you are conducting a large percentage of a
working population in many cars—there is not a lot of mass transit on
one of these bases—and you are dumping them out onto the roadways and
they need to capture that.
The problem is that programs like FIRM (Flood Insurance Rate Maps)
aren’t done for military installations. Funnily enough they are
done by the same organization but the military has to pay to get them
done separately for those installations. In many cases the
hurricane evacuation studies have never included those military
populations or they have only included the uniformed population without
looking at the entire working population of the base.
In both cases we need to ensure that we coordinate our evacuation needs
and that we resolve the legal challenges before we exercise the
capability. Unlike the civilian world when the military commander
evacuates people they have to pay for it. They have to start
paying for those people’s per diem, travel and costs incurred during
that evacuation.
We talked a little about mass care. Mass care is also a challenge
because we don’t have civilian shelters on these installations.
Most of the military programs call them safe havens because they don’t
meet the definitions of what a shelter is. We are pretty good at putting
people up and making tent cities and making mass care facilities but we
have a long way to go in how we communicate that to our people, how do
we meet the same intent if not the same capability that Red Cross or
Salvation Army meets.
[Slide 15]
On slide fifteen, one of our growing challenges is public or private
ventures. There are schools on bases that are county or city
schools. There are county or city kids that go to school there
every day, come onto the base in a bus, go to school and have to come
off the base. They have no affiliation with the military.
The base just happens to host the school.
We also have housing areas that we’ve had trouble finding the resources
to maintain so we have leased them out to private countries. We
provide a guarantee of maybe 80 percent capacity. Those housing
areas are on the physical installation. If we don’t meet the 80
percent capacity turn around and they rent it out to civilians.
They have no military affiliation. We give them a pass to get
through the gate but functionally they are private citizens living on a
military installation. Those support agreements both on and off the base
become very important. Many bases have a lot of tenants and many
of those tenants don’t even work for the Department of Defense.
You go to some bases especially along the border and you might find
Border Patrol, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and all sorts of
different groups working on the base. We have to create agreements
and understanding to set those expectations between us and the tenants
about what they can expect from us during an emergency and what we need
them to do.
One of the largest tenants is the medical community. Medical and
public health are usually owned by another command. They provide
the hospital and clinic services on that base. Those military
hospitals have to coordinate with local hospitals because public health
services will not help you if you are only monitoring your side of the
fence line.
We have to look at both sides of the fence line and share hospital
availability so that we ensure that we have that capability when the
time comes.
[Slide 16]
Slide sixteen gives you an idea of all the emergency communications—and
we can’t do any of that coordination without those communications.
As we move to the trunked radio systems that are now required we find
that we actually lose interoperability with the local community and we
have to address those challenges and find ways to maintain or strengthen
our interoperable communications.
Those communications come to a head in the node that we have called the
installation dispatch center. There are sixteen or seventeen
places in the Army and we have public safety answering points that meet
the same qualifications as civilian counterparts. In many cases we
have dispatch centers that only get a select number of the 911 calls
and many of the wireless 911 calls go off base and get routed back on to
the installation for response.
We have to coordinate that hand over process as well. We have to
ensure that those people can rapidly initiate mass warning and
notification. We say mass warning and notification because we do
mass warning for our populous. Doing those protective actions—we
tell people to stay where they are, move a little, move a lot, keep
moving or evacuate.
Those are simple messages. We don’t want to cloud the issue with
whether it was a terrorist incident or non-terrorism incident. Who
cares? We need to tell them to shelter in place, to lock down, to
go home and do residential sheltering or go to a safe haven we
designate, go off base to another location, or all the way to another
base.
Every time there is a hurricane Corpus Christi and the area have all the
military bases packed up and all the residents move up to San
Antonio. The Marines had a great example of that just recently in
Georgia. To do that we need to coordinate with IPAWS because as
those people move from one location to another we are going to have to
rely on IPAWS to provide that infrastructure.
Once they leave their desks or their building we start losing modes of
communication. As we lost those modes we need to expand our
reach. IPAWS provides that not only for us but for the other
civilian counterparts as well—what better way to be interoperable than
use the same method for mass warning.
[Slide 17]
We also do the notification piece. How do you activate your
installation EOC? How do you activate the Family Assistance
Center? How do you activate the Damage Assessment Team? You
have to have very quick notification methods. We use the same
system for both avenues—both mass warning and tailored notification to
select populous.
Let’s talk about the best practices and we’ll get into the best part of this which is the Q and A.
[Slide 18]
Some of the best practices that we have seen—the work that has been done
with BioWatch with the civilian version and BioNet with the DoD
version trying to integrate sensor technologies. The integration
of civil and DoD with IPAWS—what we just talked about. The
exercise programs—they make sure the military installations participate
fully with state and local exercises—absolutely critical.
If you don’t exercise the capabilities, those capabilities don’t exist.
On many of the bases they’ve created shared use of civilian WebEOC
systems. Whether it is you only or proactive there is a growing
trust among the civilian community to trust the installation with the
visibility of that information and it streamlines those resource
requests both in and outside the fence line.
Some of the DoD installations have achieved the NWS Storm Ready
designation. Especially important the Air Force has done a lot of
work with the National Weather Service on things like Storm Ready
Designation. We’ve had installations and school systems developing CERT
teams to leverage that capability and capacity within the community.
[Slide 19]
What are some other best practices we see? The Air Force warning
coordination with the National Weather Service is probably the best of
all the four services. The Marine Corps has a great program called
the Marine Corps Task Force for Emergency Response (MCTFER). It
started at Camp Lejeune in December of 1999 and it is rapidly growing to
be a perfectly example of what and installation can do when they
actively engage with the civilian environment in their local civil
jurisdictions.
The Air Force has a Certified Emergency Manager program. There are
lots of legal reasons why but there isn’t a lot of integration although
many emergency managers within DoD have joined IAEM and have become
CEMs—there isn’t a mechanism to mandate and acknowledge that through the
entire Department of Defense.
The Air Force has their own Certified Emergency Management program that
was developed in conjunction with IAEM—very good program that many of
the other services are looking at as a model. The Air Force and
Navy have standardized mutual aid templates and have shared those among
both the Air Force and Navy installations. In fact recently the
Army adopted one of those same templates so we are having the same
language and discussion with our civilian partners.
Naval Submarine Base Kings Bay in Georgia has a great mutual aid
system. It is heavily dependent on a local environment and very
good coordination. It is a great example of best practice for all
the installations and local communities to look at.
In the Army we have the EM Modernization program which is focused on
procuring pre-material systems, common operating picture, mass warning
and notification and enhanced 911 and fielding those to select
installations where there are gaps—where they don’t have the ability to
share information between the military jurisdiction and the civil
jurisdiction. Where they don’t have the ability to notify the populous
or their teams effectively, or to capture that automatic number location
information and the data to quickly enhance the response and dispatch
of fire, emergency services and law enforcement resources to an
incident.
The Army Installation Level Resource Typing Initiative—we talked about
the NIMS Tier Two resource types—the ones that are not “EMAC-able” among
the states. We have done quite a bit of work in the Army to
resource type. We have 22 capabilities that are type resources
assigned to our typed installations. We have Types One, Two and
Three installations and they are required to develop Types One, Two and
Three resources respectively.
Those resources run the gamut from installation EOC team to certain
types of response resources all the way to mass care, evacuation and of
course recovery such as the damage assessment teams, debris management
teams and structural evaluation. Those are some of the best
practices that we have seen across DoD. There are many others but
this gives you an idea of what we are trying to do to build that bridge
and integrate with the local community.
[Slide 20]
The lessons learned you see on slide twenty. One of the challenges
of course is that each service has its own “lessons learned”
system. We have to then work at the headquarters level—we have an
emergency management steering group for the entire service—and then we
have an emergency management steering group across all the services and
the DoD activities like the logistics stations.
That gives us a chance every month to come together and talk about what
we’re doing, learn from each other, and also find out how to apply a
lesson that may have happened for example in the Marine Corps to the
Army. We don’t have visibility on their lessons learned but they
can identify those things they see as having applicability across the
DoD. Those are some things we have challenges with.
The Drug Commissions Standards—I think we’ve come a long way in
that. The medical community is really engaged in it. We have
had quite a bit of difficulty integrating our trunked radio systems
because we have two different frequencies spectrums. We have a lot
of challenges using volunteers. There is a specific clause 31 U.S. Code
31-42 that prohibits us from using some of those volunteer resources
unless it is an emergency.
We have gone through a long legal process of knowing how to define and
declare an emergency so it is clear that we can use those
resources. How do we use those resources in training and exercises
well before the emergency exists?
The reimbursement mechanism for mutual aid continues to hamper a lot of
reimbursement across the fence line because we have to cost what these
resources cost the DoD. That is not something we have been
traditionally strong about but something we can push on and make happen.
The mass warning and notification timelines are ten minutes from the
incident. That can be hard when you’re doing a parachute drop at
Fort Bragg how do you notify a person who is in that process. Down
the range, how do you notify them and engage them in those ten
minutes? We have the same challenge engaging people who are at the
commissary, grocery store, exchange at the mall, or even at their homes
or places of business.
Those are some of the lessons learned. We continue to learn.
We are not just watching as the lessons fly by. We are trying to
apply those into how we develop and execute our policy and how we
implement the programs at the installation level.
[Slide 21]
We get to the good part. That took about the right amount of time. We’ll talk about the questions.
Amy Sebring: Thank you very much Ryan. I was particularly
interested to learn about the challenges that these installations face.
Audience, if you have specific experience in your own communities, we
would be glad to hear about it as well.
[Audience Questions & Answers]
Question: Amy Sebring: Are there links to the MAA and MOA templates that some of the services are using?
Ryan Broughton: The Army one is online with the Army
Emergency Management program manual. If you go to the resources
section and you click on links for Army policy, at the bottom there is a
link to the DA Pamphlet 525-27. That is the Army’s Emergency
Management program manual. That has an example of the overarching
template we use. I’ll have to find out if the Navy or the Air
Force has a distinct link to those or if they are internal assets.
We aren’t trying to initiate this conversation from the civil inside
with our template. We want to make sure the installations use our
template in their discussions with civilian’s environment. That’s a
good point. I’ll follow that up.
Question: Jeff Hoyle: Can you discuss plans for DoD Emergency Management
to leverage the Unified Incident Command Decision Support System (UICDS -
DHS program) to facilitate interoperability between DoD Installation
Emergency Managers and local Civil Emergency Managers?
Ryan Broughton: That is a great question. There are
some installations that are trying to apply that to see how we leverage
usage into the way we do it on a military installation. There is
definitely a lot of growth that can happen there with the use of those
tools. I don’t know of any installation’s emergency management
program in the services that is actually formally providing guidance to
the installations.
One of the challenges with DHS is keeping up with DHS. DHS will
change things literally—as we wrote the Army EM program manual, they
came out with PPD-8. They changed a lot of the terminology and
environment. We had the same problem when we developed the Navy
program.
When we started working there wasn’t anything called the National
Incident Management System. It was a few pieces of paper in
HSPD. We do have the problem of how to quickly capture and
integrate it. Thanks for bringing that up. I’m going to
follow that up on my side within the Army program and I’ll recommend it
across the DoD.
Comment: Gary Weeks: Presentations like this should be offered at each
State's Emergency Management Conference such as the Texas EM Conference
being conducted Mar 25-29. DOD should be attending these
conferences to meet their counterparts.
Ryan Broughton: I absolutely agree with you. The
challenge we have on these state EM conferences is we have more
conferences than people to present at them. Each of the
installations is encouraged to participate at their local, state and
regional conferences. As you might be aware of there is
sequestration and right now we don’t have travel to any conference or
workshop.
We have cancelled almost everything that we do that way and have gone to
webinars and teleconferences which are not as efficient as face-to-face
long term relationship you can build. I just came from San
Antonio before I moved here to D.C. and was at the Texas EM Conference
last year.
In fact I asked about providing the same type of lecture there.
There wasn’t a lot of interest. A lot of that is because they
don’t understand the difference between a DoD installation and civil
support. They say they’ve got plenty of people from the National
Guard and talking about what the Guard does. We’ve got Northcom briefing
and Army North briefing from San Antonio. Those were all great
presentations but they aren’t about necessarily about how you build that
relationship with the installation.
I’ll take that back and bring that up. Thanks again—that was another great comment.
Question: Amy Sebring: Do you know what impact of the sequester and
the new budget is going to be on these emergency management programs in
the military?
Ryan Broughton: I can only talk directly to one
program. At this time the Army EM program has taken millions of
dollars in cuts because of sequester. There was another cut of our
DoD funding even before sequestration went into effect. There
have been a number of cuts however we have been able to protect the
civilian paid training—those efforts, including the Emergency Management
Modernization program.
At least in the Army, and I believe DoD wide, we are in a complete
travel ban. Unless you have a great reason to be there they aren’t
going to send anybody to a conference or a workshop. You can see
this all the way back—to people like Larry, Jean and others who were at
the IAEM conference this year—we had to turn away—we had 500 military
people coming to IAEM when we talked in September.
When the actual IAEM conference happened most of the travel bans had
gone into effect. We had to turn away 48 people from the Air Force
and that was after they cancelled 200 sets of orders. The
Army—same thing—the Navy and Marine Corps lost a lot of attendance
because of those travel bans affecting our participation in local
environments.
We understand how important it is but at this point we emphasize the
need to build and maintain relationships at the local level where there
is no travel required until we restore at least a semblance of travel
authority.
Comment: Larry Porter: I suggest you inform the audience about the
recently released (February 2013) ALSA (Air Land Sea Application) MTTP
(Multi-Service Tactics, Techniques, & Procedures) publication
“DSCA.” It is available at: http://www.alsa.mil/library/mttps/dsca.html.[Restricted distribution.]
Ryan Broughton: There is also a draft Multi-Service
Tactics, Techniques and Procedures (MTTP) publication for EM.
Those are great resources we need to add to the resource list.
Question: Robert McCreight: How will differences between AF Navy and Army in doctrine and common EM training be handled?
Ryan Broughton: That is a million dollar question. The Army
just directed training and doctrine command to do a study on that
relationship not only between the services but between civil support
operations and emergency management operations—find those
efficiencies. How can we combine classes, online training and the
certification process? The Air Force has a very rigorous training
program that starts at the hazardous materials response, chemical,
biological, radiological and nuclear incident response levels.
Their emergency management cadre starts out as responders. That is
an enlisted cadre of personnel. These are enlisted, uniformed
personnel, active reserve and guard that first learn to do CBRN
detection, plume modeling—focused on the CBRN hazards. As they
progress up their chain they widen their aperture to an all hazards
environment, first at the unit level.
Eventually—the unit level being the departmental operation
centers—finally, up to that installation EOC level. The Air Force
is quite different. The Navy and the Army have quite a few
similarities in the training material and some policies that have been
shared and expanded upon by both of the services.
A lot of that is because some of the people who are implementing the
Army program came from the Navy installation program and carried some of
that with them. What we see is the fact that we have a DoD
installation program since 2009 that helps us standardize what those
expectations are, I think you are going to see Air Force, Army, Navy and
Marine Corps and the Logistics Agency come up to some common EM
standard.
It has taken its time but as I said there is a new multi-service
tactics, techniques and procedures (MTTP) doctrine coming out that will
apply to all the services. It is happening but it is taking time.
Question: J. R. Thomas: Would you please discuss challenges when holding a joint civilian/military exercise on a military installation.
Ryan Broughton: One of the big challenges is breaking down that
perceived roadblock. Many of the military leadership initially do
not want to reveal the true limitations. That is something that
is held close to the chest when the military are talking to other
components and jurisdictions—here are our strengths and we’re not going
to talk about our weaknesses.
Exercises have a tendency to show those weaknesses, capabilities and
limitations. It is important to engage those military
installations early on. The goal here is to strengthen—to get rid
of limitations and strengthen our capabilities across the board and show
how it benefits readiness from both sides of the fence.
If you tie those exercises with a local military jurisdiction to
readiness, to doing this exercise will help you with your readiness and
to develop your capability on your side of the fence as well as
ours. That is the way we have to start selling it to our
installation leadership. They are very eager to take part in this
and there is a lot of command pressure from headquarters to take part in
jurisdictional exercises.
You have to engage them early and get them to understand the reason and
benefit to them in doing this exercise and then make sure they are part
of that from the initial planning conference. If you engage them
at the MPC or the FPC of the conference and say that we want you guys to
respond and send out some tapes, bulldozers and some men—they are going
to say no.
That is not why we exercise. We don’t exercise the civil support
function the same way we exercise the installation emergency management
function. If you start with the installation EM function getting
fire, police, EMS, public works and typed resources to work across the
fence line you will build that relationship and eventually you can get
authority to have the civil support capability exercise. I’d start
with the installation one—that is where the command emphasis is.
Question: Robert McCreight: Is there an annual mechanism for information
sharing between the Air Force, Navy, and Army on best practices and
continuing issues?
Ryan Broughton: There is a monthly DoD wide EM steering
group. That group has representatives from each of the four
services, plus the Defense Logistics Agency, Pentagon Force Protection
Agency, Defense Reduction Agency and a couple of other cats and dogs
that contribute. Those services and agencies all share their
experiences and challenges.
That is a venue we have shared lessons learned and best practices
across. That mechanism exists. There is no document that
says you have to submit your lessons learned to other services. It
is just getting them in the same room and getting them talking on the
subjects.
Question: Amy Sebring: Is there any movement to expand the Air Force CEM program to the other branches?
Ryan Broughton: The Army is in talks with the Air Force
about leveraging that same concept. The biggest challenge is that
the Air Force unlike the other four services has an enlisted clear
field. They have three levels of their CEM and only one of them
does emergency management. The other does emergency response.
We have to find ways to tailor how the Air Force—that top layer of their
CEM links into—and making sure we have the right terminology in
there. And then of course somebody has to pay for it. If any
service tacks on an additional workload we have to figure out what that
workload is and how to fund it. It has been discussed in the last
year and something I think that will happen in the future.
Question: Robert Rathbone: From FL. ARMY MARS. Who would I contact at a
local AFB to get plugged into the base’s resources to help solve the
bridge between the two radio systems?
Ryan Broughton: Every Air Force base has a local
emergency manager. It is called the Readiness Flight. They
are under the Civil Engineer for the base. If you look up on the
base directory or you contact the base what you are looking for is the
Chief of Readiness Flight. That Readiness Flight is who you need
to contact. They will refer you to some other communications folks
but that is a good place to start. They are your entryway into
that military EM program.
Question: Scott Hiipakka: Ryan-much of your discussion was focused on DOD
Active Duty installations. What are you hearing/seeing regarding NGB's
guidance for the "way forward" with National Guard installations that
are managed by each State?
Ryan Broughton: We had that discussion just yesterday
about how the supply is different to the National Guard versus and
active installation. The National Guard in the Army—and I’ll
specify for the Army because that’s the one I’m most familiar with—we
are talking about 4,300 to 4,400 facilities in the United States, its
territories and possessions.
If you are just talking about an armory—a physical building or what we
call a facility versus an installation—they are getting their emergency
resources largely from the civilian jurisdiction. We consider
those type three installations. In those installations, their
requirement is to build awareness and capability to call on locals for
help and the supporting military installations for assistance.
Whereas there are National Guard camps that are physical installations
with their own fire departments. Although those are rare, they are
the most exact replica of the active duty component on the reserve
component installations. The National Guard has also moved to a
state virtual installation model where they have a state virtual
installation garrison command structure and that helps manage all the
facilities and camps within those state boundaries.
The same rules apply—the same need to build capability and capacity
apply but very often they are leveraging their relationship with their
local, civil jurisdiction instead of actually building that capability
and capacity inside their fence.
Question: Avagene Moore: Thanks, Ryan. Re: Individual / Family
Preparedness on military installations, how is the preparedness training
provided, what types of topics are taught, and do these serve folks
well when they no longer live on a base but live in local communities?
Ryan Broughton: The quick answer is the Ready Army, Ready
Navy, Ready Marine Corps—all those programs are very closely tied to
what is put out in the civilian environment but they are tailored to the
military environment. They are not going to FEMA or Red Cross
necessarily. They are going to the base. That is why we have those
programs—to build those relationships and show how we provide those
same services. There is no loss of services. In some cases I
would argue especially with damage assessment and financial systems we
are a lot better and streamlined than the FEMA program because we don’t
have to go through the same process.
These are people we know and people we asked to live there and it is our
responsibility to help them. It builds a good basis and
foundation. We keep the same ideas about a minimum of 72 hours of
readiness and personal preparedness. We talk about the same needs
for how to shelter in place or go to a civilian shelter. All those
issues are discussed.
We then provide localized hazard guidance as well and information on how
to tap into our mass warning and notification system—how to subscribe
to alerts and do you maintain that communication link with the
installation. There are links in the resources to Ready Army and
the other branches.
Our goal is to ensure those people are reached with that
information. Since Red Cross doesn’t have that charter, Red Cross
may or may not provide any information, but they, without doubt, are not
going to provide tailored information about how we do things on
base. How do get food, water, clothes? How do you do
donation management? How do you volunteer to help?
We have unique laws, policies, and procedures and we need to communicate those to our jurisdiction.
Comment:
Larry Porter: There is also a newly updated (from the 2005 publication)
DoD Strategy for Homeland Defense & Defense Support of Civil
Authorities (February 2013).
[Closing]
Amy Sebring: On behalf of Avagene, myself, and all our
participants today, thank you very much Ryan for joining us today and
sharing this information and your insights. We wish you continued
success in the future as you move forward with this.
Our next program is scheduled for March 27th when we are very excited to
present an update on the status of the Public Safety Broadband
Network. Our guest will be FirstNet Board Member Kevin McGinnis.
Please make plans to join us then.
Have a great afternoon everyone! We are adjourned.