Preparing for Bioterrorism: Critics Say U.S. Lacks Vision

inside: Assessing our warming world | Colleges heighten security | Educating displaced kids

Summer 2007

BIOHAZARD
Issue 3 — Vol. 2

WITH ATTENTION FOCUSED ON NATURAL
DISASTERS, CRITICS SAY PREPARATION FOR A
BIOTERRORISM ATTACK HAS BEEN MISHANDLED.

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_______ Designer _______ Creative Dir.
_______ Editorial _______ Prepress
_________ Production _______ OK to go

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ON THE COVER

20

Blind
Preparation
Public health experts say
lack of a national vision for
disaster preparedness
cripples biological and
chemical readiness in
government.

Contents

FEATURES

30
A Changing Reality
What does global warming
mean to emergency managers?

36
Cracking the Books
Education programs for emergency
management professionals are growing
nationally and internationally.

40
Educating the Uprooted
Supporting children displaced
from Hurricane Katrina —
another lesson learned.

PHOTO BY JON ANDROWSKI

Emergency Management 3

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Publisher:

Contents

Tim Karney tkarney@govtech.com

Executive Editor:

Steve Towns stowns@govtech.com

EDITORIAL
Editor:

Jessica Jones jjones@govtech.com

Associate Editor:

Jim McKay jmckay@govtech.com

Managing Editor:
Staff Writers:

Karen Stewartson kstewartson@govtech.com
Andy Opsahl, Chad Vander Veen

Chief Copy Editor:

Miriam Jones mjones@govtech.com

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East
West, Central

Account Managers:

FEATURES

REST OF THE BOOK

44

6

14

Safe Haven No Longer

Contributors

Major Player

8

Aaron Kenneston,
Washoe County, Nev.,
Emergency Manager

College campuses seek increased
security in the wake of shootings.

Editor’s Letter

48

16

Tragic Disconnect

Safely Out
Preparation is key to evacuating
special-needs populations.

Director of Marketing:
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EM Bulletin

10
In the Field

18
In the News

12
Seismic Explosions
Fifty years ago, two gas-fueled
explosions ripped through Reno,
Nev., but new technologies make a
similar scenario today unlikely.

CORPORATE
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56
Products

58
Last Word

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Government Technology’s Emergency Management is published by e.Republic Inc.
© 2007 by e.Republic Inc. All rights reserved. Opinions expressed by writers are
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Emergency Exit

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Bulking Up

The Human Disaster

A Florida county goes above and
beyond code in raising one ﬁrehouse
from the rubble.

Workplace violence is growing — and
should be mitigated and prepared for as
its own kind of disaster.
A publication of

4

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and Windows Vista are either trademarks or registered trademarks of Microsoft Corporation in the United States and/or other countries. Other trademarks and trade names may be used in this piece to refer to either the entities claiming the marks and names or their
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Contributors

Chandler Harris

Amy Yannello

Contributing Writer

Contributing Writer

Harris is a regular contributor to Emergency Management magazine,
and has written for Adventure Sports Journal, Surfer’s Journal, Information
Week, Government Technology and Digital Communities magazines.
He is the former editor of Shout Out newspaper.

Yannello is a journalist
based in Sacramento, Calif.,
where she writes for several
publications. She has spent
nearly 20 years covering
California politics,
health care and healthcare reform, issues of
homelessness, and the
public policy and treatment issues
surrounding mental illness.

Andy Opsahl
Staff Writer
Opsahl joined Government Technology as a staff
writer in October 2005.
He has written extensively on government
IT outsourcing and private-sector solutions in
government. Opsahl also
writes for Government
Technology’s Public CIO
and Texas Technology.

Jessica Weidling
Contributing Writer
Weidling is a writer
living in Sacramento,
Calif., and has written
for Capitol Weekly, a
newspaper covering
California politics.

Jessica Jones
Editor
Jones is also the assistant editor
of Public CIO, a bimonthly journal,
and Government Technology magazine. She was the education reporter
for the Hollister (Calif.) Freelance.

Jim McKay
Associate Editor
McKay is also the justice editor of Government Technology magazine. He has spent more than a decade as a writer, editor and
contributing writer for publications including The Fresno (Calif.) Bee, The Vacaville (Calif.) Reporter and The Ring magazine.

6

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the video

is being televised

when

it’s everything you need to

strikes

video in an instant
between responders

its used to

with departments

to
to increase situational
it’s
and it’s

See how CBS News uses VBxStream to respond to Breaking News
www.VBrick.com/CBS

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Editor’s Letter

Tragic Disconnect
Guns are far too easy to get in this country — legally

I

It’s a common theme throughout law enforcement: the vital
need to share information, to connect the dots — some call
it intelligence-led policing.

and illegally — and too many in Congress lack the fortitude to stand up to the National Rifle Association in the
name of the public good.
The rationale that a viable solution to the plague of

The idea is that the more information available and

handgun violence is to allow every citizen to pack a piece

circulated among law enforcement, the better the

is asinine and will simply lead to more bloodshed — and

chances of protecting the public from bad guys.

maybe more tragedies like the Virginia Tech shootings. We

When it comes to law enforcement’s ability to track
guns used in crimes, however, the only protection

can protect the rights of legitimate hunters and still make
it more difficult to obtain handguns. And we should.

afforded is to gun dealers, thanks to the Tiahrt

One way is to demand automated criminal history

Amendment, which has been tucked into a spending

records by state so background checks on gun buyers are

bill since 2003 and become increasingly restrictive.

more complete. According to reports after the Virginia

Chiefly the bill prevents the federal government

Tech tragedies, Seung-Hui Cho, the shooter of 32, should

from releasing data about guns used in crimes to local

never have been allowed to buy a gun under federal law

police and prosecutors. According to the Mayors

because he had been declared mentally ill by a judge.

Against Illegal Guns Web site, the provisions of the

Another way to limit handgun circulation and save

current 2006 amendment:

· prevent the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms

P U B L I C AT I O N

Repealing the Tiahrt Amendment, or at least parts of it,

use trace data to analyze the flow of guns nationally;

N E W

back to the dealers who funnel guns to criminals.

and Explosives (ATF) from publishing reports that

B E S T

lives is to allow law enforcement to track gun sales

would allow law enforcement to find illegal gun dealers.

· limit local governments’ access to ATF trace data;
· prevent law enforcement from accessing trace data

New York City Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly
recently wrote in The New York Times that his department has been successful in using crime data to identify

outside the agency’s jurisdiction;

· generally prevent law enforcement agencies from
sharing trace data with one another; and

patterns and detect trends in criminal activity. It’s commonly referred to in law enforcement as intelligence-led

· prevent trace data from being used as evidence in
any state license revocation, civil law suit or other

Associate Editor
Emergency Management

obtain gun data from the federal government to find out

administrative proceeding.

Jim McKay

policing. Yet, Kelly said, when law enforcement tries to

where the illegal guns are coming from, they are blocked

It’s pretty clear when you look at those provisions

by the Tiahrt Amendment.

just who they’re designed to protect. And it’s a disgrace.

There’s nothing intelligent about that. k

Questions or comments? Please give us your input by contacting our editorial department at
<editorial@govtech.com>, or visit our Web site at <www.govtech.com/EM>.
8

L E A D , F O L L O W O R G E T O U T O F T H E W AY.

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In the Field
Global warming is causing an increase in heavy precipitation, violent storms and intense droughts. Though scientists
may not agree on some of global warming’s possible effects,
they agree it’s happening. Officials say emergency managers
should start looking at how climate changes might affect
their region and prepare for those effects.
To read the full story, turn to page 28.
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Rebounding
Rebounding

COLLECTION OF NEAL COBB

This close-up of the area where the explosion
occurred shows the twisted steel framework of
the brick building that resulted from the explosion’s
force and the ﬁre’s heat.

The explosion occurred in the Nevada Shoe Factory,
which is the collapsed burning building on the left.


by

Seismic Explosions

Chandler Harris

Fifty years ago, two gas-fueled explosions ripped through Reno, Nev., but new technologies make a similar
scenario today unlikely.
Feb. 5, 1957, began like every other
day for Jerry Fenwick, who worked at
his family’s paint and art supply store in
downtown Reno, Nev. Yet on this day,
Fenwick decided not to check on his
prize 1957 Dodge Custom Royal Lancer,
which was being modified at the local
repair shop a few blocks away, as he usually did on his lunch break.
The decision most likely saved his life.
Fenwick’s usual stroll would have put him
at the corner of First and Sierra streets
right around the time of a deadly blast.
Alerted by complaints of strong gas odor,
a crew of five firefighters had converged
on the intersection, evacuating surrounding buildings. Moments later, at 1:03 p.m.,
two gas-fueled explosions 30 seconds apart
shook downtown Reno, completely destroying two buildings, killing two people
and injuring dozens. Fenwick, still at work
two blocks away, said he had no injuries,
and that most of those harmed were on the
same block as the blast.

Though the explosions were at ground
level, they were strong enough to register seismic reverberations equivalent to a
1.5-magnitude earthquake, according to
the University of Nevada’s Mackay School
of Mines.
“I felt a terrible loud thump like something had been dropped,” Fenwick said. “I
turned around and saw the old-fashioned
door jam lifted off the post three inches.
That’s when I knew something radically
was wrong. I looked down the street and
saw huge pieces of roof drifting down.”
The blast was so strong it shattered windows in a block-and-a-half radius, said
Jim Paterson, who at the time of the blast
worked at Paterson’s — one of the buildings
that was completely demolished.
“The blast took the roof off the building where I worked and dumped it on the
street,” Paterson said.
Reno firefighter Bill Shinners was outside Paterson’s when the blast hit; when he
looked up, the sky was red. Shinners and

other firefighters fought the fire for about
36 hours without any sleep. After the first
seven hours, Shinners stole a needed break
on top of the aerial fire ladder.
“I got up there to relax and started to
shake uncontrollably,” Shinners said. “I
think I was in a state of shock.”
The explosion was caused by a ruptured
gas main that filled an undetermined
area with gas before igniting. Damage
from the blast was estimated to be more
than $7 million, according to the Reno
Gazette-Journal.
Fast-Forward
Fifty years later, new technologies,
added safety precautions for emergency
responders, more stringent building codes
and stricter gas line controls imposed
by energy companies have lessened the
chances for another gas-fueled explosion
in Reno, said Marty Scheuerman, division
chief of the Reno Fire Department and
emergency manager of the city.

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sion
k of
on’s


Today, firefighters’ technological arsenal includes devices that detect the presence of flammable vapor in the air and
lower and upper explosion limits of gases,
which determine if a structure or area is
safe from potential explosions, Scheuerman said. Firefighters also carry an assortment of equipment for plugging gas line
leaks, and are trained on how to approach
and contain pressure leaks.
Gas line maps and computerized building schematics have improved firefighters’ ability to shut off potentially deadly
gas lines if a leak is detected or before
approaching a fire, Scheuerman said.
Sierra Pacific Power, the local gas and
electric company, also has extensive mapping systems of gas lines and excess flow
valves that automatically shut gas flow off
when a leak is detected.
Reno now has a large natural gas pipeline
that flows from Canada, which is equipped
with infrared monitors that detect the
presence or leakage of flammable vapor.
Even with more advanced technology
and mapping, however, another gas-fueled
explosion isn’t entirely improbable, especially
in mountainous areas, like Reno where the
use of propane gas is prevalent.
“There’s always a chance when there is a
structure fire with a potential for gas leak,
that it could ignite,” Scheuerman said.
“There’s always potential, but I don’t think
the potential is as high as it was in 1957.”

This ﬁre truck was damaged from the explosion’s heat
and debris. It was out of service for some time, but
eventually was returned to service.


Forming Partnerships
About 30 miles west of Reno, the town
of Truckee, Calif., has experienced its
share of gas problems.

In 1989, a three-story building was leveled in downtown Truckee because a propane leak ignited, and in 2003, a largescale propane gas leak lasted for several
months, with an estimated 22,000 gallons
of propane seeping into the ground. The
gas didn’t ignite, but a school, businesses
and homes in the area were evacuated for
weeks at a time. Donner Pass Road, a
major thoroughfare, was also closed while
firefighters and energy officials attempted
to locate the leak.
The gas leak was finally pinpointed to
Amerigas, a company that provides propane gas to the area. The leak was caused
by a damaged gas line whose coating had
been scraped off and was weakened by
corrosion, said Gene Welch, public safety
and information officer for the Truckee
Fire Department. The area of the leak was
covered by asphalt, Welch said, so the gas
traveled a longer distance before being diffused in the air.
“It’s not uncommon he said, because of
the territory we live in and conditions of
the area for snow to build up and damage
gas lines,”
When a leak is detected, fire crews first
evacuate a home or building, and then
shut off all power to reduce the number of
ignition sources, Welch said, adding that
the safest and fastest way to handle a propane leak is to cut off the source and let
the propane dissipate naturally.
Homes in Truckee powered by natural
gas are required to have a “two-state regulator” that helps prevent gas leaks. In areas

with freezing temperatures, regulators often
freeze, requiring two regulators in propane
valves. Homes are also required to have two
propane shut-off valves: one inside the house
and one outside, near the propane tank.
Strong partnerships between gas companies and emergency responders can
help avoid such disasters. Both the Reno
and Truckee fire departments work closely
with gas companies when gas leaks occur and share information about gas
lines. When a leak occurs, agencies work
together to find the leak and prevent
another devastating blast like the one that
occurred 50 years ago in Reno.
“Our techniques are better, our equipment is better, our ability to detect gas is
better,” Scheuerman said, “and quality of
gas mains is a lot better.” k
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Major Player
Aaron Kenneston
Emergency manager of Washoe County, Nev.

Could you outline the different planning phases
for an emergency response and discuss why it’s
important to break down training into phases? I

Aaron Kenneston is responsible for all-hazards training, response and recovery.
He served in the Army National Guard for nearly 25 years, retiring as a colonel. During his career, Kenneston
ran a military emergency operations center, and responded to floods, civil unrest, state-level security events, and
search and rescue missions.
Kenneston has served during major emergencies, including a local flood, a snow emergency, a fire and the
Hurricane Katrina evacuation. He holds two master’s degrees.

describe the four phases of emergency management
as mitigation, planning, training, and response and
recovery. There are some variations on the names of
these phases and actions, for example the Department
of Homeland Security (DHS) often replaces the term
mitigation with “prevention.”
I use mitigation because FEMA [the Federal Emergency Management Agency] requires every jurisdiction
to prepare a hazard mitigation plan. This is the basis
of all actions, identifying and ranking hazards in the
community and collaboratively developing strategies to
reduce the impact or eliminate these hazards.
Planning and training are the ways we test our
written emergency plans for validity, identify areas
for improvement, and ensure that our procedures
are practiced and fresh in the minds of public safety
officials and first responders.
The response phase involves coordinating the actions
of the various response agencies and disciplines, providing strategic guidance and material support to incident
commanders, as well as coordinating resources from
the state and federal government.
Recovery takes the longest period of time and begins
with preliminary damage assessment, includes individual and public assistance, and continues until every
mitigation project approved as a result of the disaster
is complete.
Of course, these phases can be concurrent and are a
continuous process.

During your tenure as emergency manager for
Washoe County, which disaster made you the most
nervous or was the most difficult to manage? In the

PHOTO BY: SCOTT SADY

few short years I’ve been a civilian emergency manager, our county has experienced about a half-dozen
local, state and federally declared disasters. We had
a major winter storm on New Year’s Eve 2004-2005,
and the very next New Year’s Eve we experienced a
50-year flood.
Both events had federal disaster declarations, and
taxed state and local resources to the maximum. But
it also brought out the best in our region and caused
our response community to work together even more
closely on emergency preparedness. k

by

To read more on Kenneston’s experiences, visit
<www.govtech.com/em>.

Jim McKay

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s e:
er lin
ap ad 7
r P e 00
fo D 2
ll ion 5,
Ca iss st 1
bm gu
Su Au

ESRI Homeland Security GIS Summit

The Geographic Advantage: Turning Knowledge into Actionable Information

Plan now to attend the 2007 ESRI Homeland Security GIS
Summit in Denver, Colorado, and see how government,
business, utilities, and other organizations are deploying
geographic information system (GIS) technology for homeland security. Learn from leaders who set priorities for their
organizations and use GIS to collect, analyze, and communicate complex data for the protection of people and critical
infrastructure.
The ESRI Homeland Security GIS Summit is a forum for
management teams to evaluate levels of readiness in
collaborative partnerships, technology strategies, and
geographic information management for

Identify critical infrastructures and calculate risks using buffer zone analysis

The ESRI Homeland Security GIS Summit offers an
opportunity to discuss methods to integrate disparate
data and serve geographic analysis and content in real time
to create a common operating picture. Participants will also
be able to share information on current projects, information
networks, and collaborative opportunities that extend the
GIS framework for situational awareness.

For speaker, panel discussion, and session
information, visit www.esri.com/hssummit.

ESRI Homeland Security GIS Summit

3D Visualization of Social and Critical Infrastructure

November 5–7, 2007
Adam’s Mark Hotel
Denver, Colorado

1-800-447-9778

Register now and save! Early bird registration ends October 6, 2007.
Copyright © 2007 ESRI. All rights reserved. ESRI, the ESRI globe logo, @esri.com, and www.esri.com are trademarks, registered trademarks, or service marks of ESRI in the United States, the European Community, or certain other jurisdictions.
Other companies and products mentioned herein may be trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective trademark owners.

G
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EM Bulletin

Disaster Funding
THE U.S. GOVERNMENT is offering
$968 million in grants to help state and
local public-safety agencies buy sophisticated radios and technology for communications during disasters, according to
the Department of Commerce.
The program aims to equip police and
fire departments, and other emergency
agencies in all 50 states, with more dependable and interoperable communications.
Funding for the grants will come from
expected proceeds of the Federal Communications Commission’s 700-megahertz
spectrum auction, scheduled for later
this year.
— Reuters

Campus Warning
THE UNIVERSITY of Mary Washington
in Fredericksburg, Va., can notify students, staff, faculty, campus security and
university officials across its 175-acre
campus — and a nearby graduate and
professional studies campus — during a
crisis or routine incident in seconds using
the Roam Secure Alert Network, deployed
in late June. The system can reach any
text-enabled device, and was procured via
the Virginia Department of Homeland
Security’s Statewide Alerting Network
contract. To read more about how other
universities are focusing on campuswide
communication, turn to page 46.

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PHOTO BY DAVID ILIFF

International Waters

Lifetime Sentence

Foiled Attempt

POURING RAINS BATTERED China,
killing 94 people and displacing more than
half a million in early July. As of July 10,
floods and landslides left at least 25 people
missing, ruined crops, destroyed 49,000
houses and caused economic losses of 3.8
billion yuan ($500 million) in seven provinces, according to the People’s Daily. The
paper also reported that downpours in the
central province of Henan and the eastern
provinces of Anhui and Jiangsu have left
the huge Huai River overflowing at alarming levels. More than 326,000 people were
mobilized to monitor embankments along
the river.
— Reuters

FOUR MEN WERE EACH given life sentences for taking part in a botched suicide attack on London’s public transport
system on July 21, 2005, two weeks after
bombers murdered 52 commuters.
Muktar Said Ibrahim, Yassin Hassin
Omar, Hussein Osman and Ramzi Mohammed were convicted by a jury in London
on July 9 of conspiracy to murder. The men
were charged with attacks on three trains
and a bus. No one was hurt when the explosives failed to detonate completely.
The July 21 attack came as Londoners were recovering from the deadliest
attacks on the city since World War II
and the first suicide bombings in Western Europe. On July 7, 2005, four others
blew themselves up, killing commuters
in attacks also aimed at three trains and
a bus. — Bloomberg News

IN THE EARLY HOURS of June 29, UK
police dismantled a car bomb found outside a nightclub packed with hundreds of
people near London’s Piccadilly Circus.
The incident prompted a manhunt for the
driver of the green four-door Mercedes,
abandoned about 1 a.m. local time. The
car held a large bomb made from gas canisters, containers of gasoline and nails,
and was likely to be set off by mobile
phone, according to police, who manually defused it.
Explosive material was also found in
a second car in London near Trafalgar
Square, which officials say was linked to
the first car.
Though early investigations showed
no link between the first car bomb and
any terrorist group, further investigation
showed the opposite, according to officials, who also said their initial inquiries
yielded no suspects and no definitive description of anyone leaving either vehicle.
The second car had been towed because it
was illegally parked, and was later found
to contain the explosives, officials said.
So far, eight suspects have been
detained in connection with the two
bombs.
— Bloomberg News

Lake Tahoe Troubles
IN JUNE, severe wildfires destroyed 3,100
acres of land and more than 250 buildings
in South Lake Tahoe, Calif. As of July 2,
firefighters had the blaze fully contained,
and allowed the 2,000 evacuees back into
their homes. More than 2,100 Forest Service personnel worked the Lake Tahoe
Basin fire, but with new fires breaking
out in other parts of the county, 500 were
deployed elsewhere.


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In the News

PHOTO BY JILL PALMER

The U.S. Geological Survey estimates
there’s a 62 percent chance a major
earthquake will hit the San Francisco
Bay Area in the next 26 years — but only
about 17 percent of local residents say
they are prepared for such an emergency.
So earlier this year, the American Red
Cross Bay Area Chapter designed a
campaign to “shock, force people to think,
and then take action to get prepared.”
The campaign consisted of images on
mobile billboards — as well as on TV and in
print publications — of destruction from an
earthquake that toppled downtown highrises and reduced buildings to hollow shells
and clouds of ash.
“The only thing that seems to get
people’s attention is when a catastrophic
event takes place somewhere in
the world,” said Harold Brooks, chief
executive ofﬁcer of the Bay Area Chapter,
in a press release. “So we wanted to do
something that would stimulate people to
get prepared even during peacetime.” k
— Stuart Hales, manager, Redcross.org

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L
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N
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“When you talk about emergency preparedness and disaster response, the important thing
to keep in mind is that most of that work is done
at the state and local level,” said David Quam,
director of federal relations for the National
Governors Association (NGA). “National
solutions sound easy and important, but it is
their implementation and their respect for the
different roles at the different levels of government that really become the most important.”
A lack of a clearly defined, long-term,
national consensus on what a prepared America
is, he said, cripples the nation’s biological and
chemical preparedness efforts.

RHYME AND REASON
The U.S. Department of Health and Human
Services (HHS) handles most biological and

chemical preparedness initiatives for the federal
government, which in turn spends hundreds
of millions on such initiatives for state and
local government. The HHS currently funds
activities the public health community typically advocates, like state and local pandemic
influenza preparedness, hospital equipment
upgrades and similar initiatives.
The problem, according to some public
health officials, is that the type of preparedness
funding Congress allows seems to shift with
whatever preparedness priorities are politically
chic at the time.
“There is no long-term plan. There’s
not even a five-year vision. Everything is
just reacting to the political issue of the
moment,” said Tara O’Toole, who was assistant energy secretary for Environment, Safety

A Los Angeles County Sheriff’s HAZMAT deputy
dons protective gear during a Southern California
weapons of mass destruction exercise.
Photo by Jon Androwski

22

and Health during the Clinton administration,
and currently is the CEO of the Center for
Biosecurity at the University of Pittsburgh
Medical Center. “After Katrina, it was, ‘What
happened to FEMA? Let’s elevate FEMA in
the hierarchy so it can report to the Homeland
Security secretary during a crisis.’”
The federal government began ramping
up disaster preparedness during the Clinton
administration, said O’Toole.
“Congress first started putting money on the
streets to train first responders,” she said. “But
they didn’t really think through what we were
responding to, or who the first responders were,
so all police and fire got a piece of the pie.”
That money, she said, was used to purchase a
lot of equipment that is largely useless.
“There were constraints against spending
it on people,” O’Toole added. “You had to
buy equipment. They bought a lot of test kits
to diagnose whether a powder was anthrax,
which didn’t work very well. They bought suits
to protect against chemical attacks, some of
which were OK, some of which were just kind
of sitting in lockers moldering away.”

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Photo

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“WHEN YO
YOU HAVE U START TALKING AB
TO BE VER
O
— David Qu
Y CAREFUL UT NATIONAL SOLU
am, direct
or of fede
TION
BECAUSE A
ral relatio
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LMOST ALW S TO WHAT ARE RE
s Associat
ion
AL
AYS, ONE S
IZE WILL N LY LOCAL ISSUES,
There was no rhyme or reason to what people
OT FIT ALL
bought, she said, and there weren’t any standards
.”
to guide agencies on what type of equipment to
purchase. “Some people bought good stuff,” she
said. “Other people bought low-quality or unreliable stuff. It was all over the place.”
Lack of a cohesive plan for those involved
in incident response may have cost the nation
an opportunity, said Elin Gursky, principal
deputy for biodefense in the National Strategies
Support Directorate of ANSER, because future
funding availability is difficult to forecast.
“We’ve wasted a lot of money that we may not
see again because of competing fiscal priorities,”
she said.
What would help local governments receive
federal medical equipment funding on a more
systematic basis, Gursky said, is a clearly defined
national vision for disaster preparedness.
“Do I expect every local community to have
biological containment and negative pressure
medical facilities?” she asked. “Probably not,
but they don’t need to.”
They may not need a negative pressure
facility, which uses a ventilation system to keep
contaminated air from escaping to other parts
of a medical facility, but they need a systematic
process for routing patients to nearby hospitals
that have those facilities.
“We have 5,000 acute care hospitals that are
stretched to the limit. We need to recognize
where we can stretch further, or what reasonable expectations are that we build greater
capacity at a regional level, and not a community level,” Gursky said, adding that a national

During a weapons of mass destruction drill, a Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department
HAZMAT deputy leads Los Angeles Fire Department HAZMAT deputies into a building where
in the staged scenario, occupants registered as a fumigation company are a front for a
terrorist cell producing sarin nerve gas.
Photo by Jon Androwski

vision would also ensure better use of preparedness equipment funding.
Immediately after 9/11, local governments
received such funding on a somewhat equal
basis, she said, adding that Congress began
funding more strategically since then, but needs
to make more progress.
“Two-thirds of our local public heath departments treat populations of 50,000 or less. That’s

not the best distribution of resources,” Gursky
said. “Let’s look at vulnerabilities, population
densities, and plan accordingly.”
In addition, Congress funds parts of biodefense preparedness on a year-to-year basis, so
the HHS is unable to develop sturdy, mature
programs capable of growth, O’Toole said, and
public health departments don’t know if they
can rely on future funding.

NUCLEAR ATTACK
In addition to a biological attack, the 2005 National Intelligence Estimate also identified a nuclear attack
as one of the gravest threats to the United States. Such an attack lacks federal attention, said Tara O’Toole,
CEO, Center for Biosecurity, University of Pittsburgh Medical Center. She added that emphasis on nuclear
weapons should favor prevention, rather than response.
“The appropriate strategic approach to a nuclear attack, in my opinion, and virtually everybody else’s, is
to prevent it from happening,” she said. “By the time you get a nuke in a city, there’s not a lot you can do
because it’s so devastating.”
The consequences of a nuclear detonation would be so overwhelming that devising a response plan
would be virtually unrealistic, O’Toole said, and the focus should be on securing loose fissile materials in
other countries, which are essential to activating a nuclear bomb. Many of these fissile materials originated
in the former Soviet Union.
“I’ve been in Russia at a nuclear weapons site,” she said. “Their sites and our sites have got a lot of stuff
in them. I’m pretty well persuaded that our stuff is tied down. Their stuff is a lot less assuredly secure, to
put it mildly.”

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1-800-SPRINT-1
sprint.com/government

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AGAIN
T SEE
AY NO
WE M.”
HAT
NEY T RIORITIES
F MO
LOT O G FISCAL Port Directorate, ANSER
TED A
pp
N
E WASF COMPETIe, National Strategies Su
E’V E O
“W US
fens
CA rincipal deputy for biode
BE sky, p

Photo courtesy of the Los Alamos National Laboratory

— Elin

Gur

Because it’s so easy to attain, anthrax — a close-up of which is shown here —
poses the most likely biological threat to the United States, according to ofﬁcials.

Congress should commit to multiyear
funding for all biodefense activity, she said,
the way it funds Department of Defense
(DoD) projects.
When the DoD decides it’s ready to deal
with a new threat, O’Toole said, it has a
specific planning process that assesses what
its budget will look like for the next few years,
so it can commit to training more special
forces troops, for example.
“Nothing like that is happening in the
Department of Homeland Security (DHS),
or in the HHS, for biodefense,” she said. “And
HHS is where most of the bio stuff lives.”
Biological and chemical response is not
intended as a primary issue for the department,
according to Larry Orluskie, a spokesman for
the DHS.
Marc Wolfson, HHS public affairs specialist,
said the agency gets some multiyear funding for
preparedness and response programs. Specifically Congress set up a special reserve fund
for Project BioShield, the program to identify
and acquire medical countermeasures against
chemical and biological threats identified by
the DHS. The special reserve fund for BioShield
is available for 10 years — from 2003 to 2013.

Also, funding for the strategic national stockpile (SNS) can be carried over from one fiscal
year to the next. The HHS uses the SNS to
store and deliver medical supplies, equipment,
vaccines and other drugs during a public health
emergency.
The United States, O’Toole said, needs to
rethink some of its national security funding
priorities. “Why are we spending more than
$10 billion per year — and have been doing so
for decades — on missile defense, when a covert
bioattack would be more devastating, and is
thought by the National Intelligence Council to
be more likely?”

ASSESSING THREATS
Because Mother Nature strikes the United
States more often than terrorists, some think
preparedness for natural disasters should
receive more funding than biological and
chemical preparedness.
Though O’Toole said she agrees natural
disaster preparedness needs attention, it
shouldn’t receive more consideration than
chemical and biological weapons.
“Unless it’s California falling into the Pacific,
a natural disaster is not going to take down the

country,” she said. “A thinking enemy, and in
particular, our current adversary, al Qaeda, is
determined to take down the country. I think
a bioterrorist attack could do it. I also think a
nuke going off in an American city could totally
transform people’s willingness to live in cities.”
Though the NGA and U.S. Conference
of Mayors are working to solve the lack of
preparedness issue, Gursky said, state and local
governments need to establish preparedness
benchmarks to enable effective congressional
oversight.
“Congress needs to know its investment is
paying off,” Gursky said. “We have to put some
metrics in place and figure out if people are
meeting these — and, if not, why.”
This lack of a national vision for preparedness
makes any catastrophe — natural or manmade
— more feasible, Gursky said, and groups like
the U.S. Conference of Mayors and the NGA
should initiate collaboration involving federal
agencies to create standards.
There also needs to be strong leadership that
articulates what a prepared America is, she said,
adding that the executive branch and Congress
must encourage state and local governments to
develop that national vision.
The problem, Gursky said, ultimately stems
from a foggy definition of homeland security
— the DHS needs to shift more of its emphasis
toward disaster response.
“There has been so much attention paid to
borders, issues of watch lists, tracking terrorists
and connecting the dots that the response issues
have gotten much less attention,” O’Toole said.
“[The DHS is] mostly a giant police organization, focused on borders, the Coast Guard and
that kind of thing, with a tiny little directorate
of science and technology stuck on the side.”
Establishing national standards would
likely be difficult for the United States,
Gursky noted, given that the Constitution lets
states plan independently of their neighbors.
But that doesn’t mean national standards
shouldn’t be created.
“Diseases do not respect borders. Hurricanes
do not respect borders,” she said. “We have to
develop a focused effort to harmonize our capabilities across geopolitical boundaries.”
If an anthrax attack occurred in Sacramento,
Calif., O’Toole said, the governor would have
difficulty evaluating the number of attacks, their
size and who was infected. Some of those who

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were in Sacramento when it happened might
travel post-exposure to other places.
And the lack of good diagnostic techniques
and data sharing makes it difficult for public
health officials to react quickly and effectively
to biological threats.
“We don’t have good diagnostic techniques,
so a guy who gets sick in San Francisco may
not even be recognized as [having] anthrax
for a while,” O’Toole said. “Getting a count
of how many people are ill, given the incubation period, could be a day, or many days. It’s
not going to happen right away. That’s going to
cause a lot of consternation.”
A lack of that data would severely handicap
the response planning.
“If it was the beginning of a campaign of attacks,
you wouldn’t want to take all of your best CDC
[Centers for Disease Control and Prevention]
people and park them in Sacramento,” O’Toole
said. “None of this has been thought through. This
is why a conduct of operations plan — exactly
what actions we are going to take if this happens
— is important. The fact that it’s missing, even for
an anthrax attack, is another symptom of our lack
of any kind of strategic thinking.”
In addition, the 2005 National Intelligence
Estimate identified a biological attack as one of
the gravest threats the country faces, and a lack
of a national vision for emergency preparedness has kept federal agencies from developing
effective prevention and response programs for
biological weapons, O’Toole said.

NO CONDUCTOR
Though she credits the Bush administration
with taking biological threats seriously, O’Toole
said the approach needs more specifics.
The conceptual categories — threat awareness, prevention and protection, surveillance
and detection, and response and recovery — are
a pretty good rendering of the necessary facets
in the bioterrorism arena, O’Toole said.
“But it doesn’t say, ‘In five years, the country
is going to have achieved this. And these are our
top priorities. And this is how much we think
it’s going to cost.’”
She said the federal government could more
easily produce those specifics if it had an official
whose sole responsibility was to direct biodefense for the entire federal government.
“There are some people in DHS who have
responsibility [over biological threats] — a

number of people in HHS headquarters,” she
said, adding that some are in the National Institutes of Health, the CDC, the DoD and the State
Department.
“There’s no conductor of the orchestra. And
it’s not clear what sheet of music we’re singing
from,” O’Toole said. “They try to coordinate
from the White House, from the Homeland
Security Council, but there really hasn’t been
any clear articulation of our overall strategy.”
And that strategy, she said, needs to include
state and local governments.
Many preparedness obstacles in local government stem from an absence of protocols — how
officials should respond after discovering a
biological or chemical weapon emergency,
Gursky said, adding that officials need established information flows.
If a patient with smallpox — which also
poses a great danger to the country due to its
contagious nature — enters a doctor’s office, for
example, the doctor needs a pre-established line
of communication to follow. A communication

flow starting at the local level and leading up to
state and federal agencies must exist in all local
governments, Gursky said.
“If police don’t know how to reach the public
health official, and don’t know how to get the
mayor, and how to get Transportation or Sanitation, then there’s a real fundamental problem
of information flow.”

BUILDING PROTOCOLS
To establish such a protocol, local, state and
federal agencies need to formally gather to form
a consensus as to what preparedness means,
said William Yasnoff, managing partner of the
National Health Information Infrastructure
(NHII), an initiative aimed at improving health
care in the United States through a network of
interoperable information systems.
“You can agree on things such as, ‘We want
all emergency responders to be able to communicate with each other. We want local, state and
federal officials to have real-time situational
awareness.’”
Continued on p.52

A NEW ROLE FOR TECHNOLOGY
William Yasnoff, managing partner of the National Health Information Infrastructure, said
local governments should agree on standardized descriptions of disasters and responses,
and submit them to all local emergency operations centers. “They can put them together in an
information system to give those organized in the response, accurate, real-time situational
awareness of what’s happening.”
Each local government’s information system would offer responders key data about their
area’s resources.
“If it’s a medical problem, you need to know what medical facilities and personnel are
available; where they are, what capabilities you have to move them to another location,
if necessary,” Yasnoff said. “Then you need to know what’s going on at the locations the
problems are occurring. How many cases are there? Where are they located? How serious
are they? Where are they being treated?”
He also advocates a national electronic laboratory reporting system, and said a national
system would enable the nation’s medical ﬁeld to immediately detect and isolate biological
and chemical infections.
“You can’t have effective early detection of biological attacks, or disease outbreaks, until
you have a fully electronic health information infrastructure,” Yasnoff said. “The system
needs to produce information that can lead to detection as a byproduct of the ordinary care
that people receive.”
The theme running through most solutions for biological and chemical preparedness is
standardization. Yasnoff said the absence of health infrastructure IT standards deters many
local governments from building interoperable systems.
“Regardless of what the requirements may be, if the information we’re trying to understand
and communicate is not represented in a standardized form,” he said, “then it becomes very
difﬁcult to move that information from one place to another.”

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A D V E R T I S E M E N T

Maximize your mobile workforce
Visionary company is doing just that…
If you’re reading this, chances are you have
already made a substantial investment to place
computers in the field. As the mobile
computing industry matures, many agencies
find themselves connected, but not necessarily
productive due to excessive downtime, bad
ergonomics and substandard hardware.
One company in metro Detroit is striving to
ensure mobile users achieve maximum
productivity through better notebook
mounting and docking solutions. As the fastest
growing company in their industry, LEDCO is
leading the way in optimizing mobile
workforce productivity.
So exactly how did a business operating
under the radar in the Midwest get noticed by
the likes of the NYPD, U.S. Customs and the FBI?
According to LEDCO President Mike Zani, it
had everything to do with their company
culture. “We pushed ourselves constantly to
go above and beyond the industry standard.
We raised the bar and attempted to exceed
expectations for every client. We settled for
nothing less.
“At the end of the day, our clients want to
spend less time worrying about how they will
get their job done and more time actually
doing it,” he adds.
LEDCO’s approach is completely dictated
by each client’s needs. When a project starts,
all aspects of the mobile environment are
analyzed: from the vehicle’s make, model and
year to the computing platform. A solution is
then created that meets the customer’s
needs—keeping in mind their key issues of
safety, ergonomics and system reliability.

Comfortable, ergonomic solutions
increase user productivity
Designed to position the keyboard and screen at
the same height and angle as the traditional
office solution, LEDCO’s flexible mounting
hardware positions a laptop so that the user can
type more efficiently and with less strain. It’s
proven that when people are comfortable, they
are more productive.

High quality solutions maximize
device uptime
LEDCO’s products are constantly put through
rigorous testing to continually improve their
performance. This not only ensures the quality of
their goods, but substantiates their safety as well.
“Quality is only as good as the weakest
link. We test every product to failure to weed
out the weak links so our clients can be
confident that they are protected in the
toughest real world situations,” says Jay Shaw,
LEDCO’s Director of Engineering.
Shaw goes on to explain, “We test and
build to extremes because we want our clients
to know that we also prepare for the worst.”

Safe solutions protect your
assets…people and hardware
LEDCO’s approach to safety takes into account
not only extreme events, but the day-to-day
activities of employees and equipment in the
mobile environment and ways to reduce or
eliminate any harmful impact.
Chris Veit, Technical Director of the
Hurricane Research Center, shares his personal
experience with LEDCO: ”When our computer
systems arrived, we were left with a perplexing
problem: how do we mount the devices so
that they don’t become a projectile during an
accident? We had no luck at our vehicle
dealership. Then we heard about LEDCO. They
mounted the computers in no time flat and
got us up and running.
“Recently their work was put to the test
when I was hit from behind as I was sitting on
an off-ramp waiting for the light to change. I
was amazed once I shook the cobwebs clear
and looked over at my laptop to see it closed,
but still firmly in place and still running. These
people make some serious mounts.”
Agencies will continue to search for better
ways to maximize their productivity; LEDCO is
leading the way with quality mounting and
docking solutions that maximize productivity
with the most comfortable, safest and highest
quality solutions. The bottom line is, their
clients really like their work.

LEDCO clients include:
I New York Police Department
I Federal Bureau of Investigation
I Palm Beach Sheriff’s Office
I Texas Department of Public Safety
I Miami Police Department
I U.S. Customs & Border Patrol
I Chicago Police Department
I New York Fire Department
I Detroit Police Department
I Washington State Patrol
I Hillsborough County Sheriff
I Ohio State Highway Patrol
I Colorado State Patrol
I Fairfax Fire & EMS Department

1.877.88LEDCO

For more information about LEDCO, call 1.877.88LEDCO
or visit their website at www.ledco.net.

www.ledco.net

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Changin

A

R

What does global
warming mean to
emergency managers?

B Y

J E S S I C A

W E I D L I N G

FOR SEATTLE RESIDENTS, RAIN

— and
lots of it — is a fact of life. But they’d never seen
a month quite like November 2006. With 15.59
inches of rain — including snowfall and hail
— it set the record for wettest month, according
to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) National Climatic Data
Center. In 115 years of record keeping it was the
most rain the Emerald City had ever seen in a
one-month span.
If that weren’t enough, mid-December
brought supercharged winds of 60 to 90 mph
that cut power to about 1 million people, some of
whom lived in the dark for prolonged periods.
“It wasn’t just for a couple of hours, a couple
of days,” said Eric Holdeman, former director of
the King County, Wash., Office of Emergency
Management. “There were folks without power
for 10 days in isolated areas, or even longer
than that.”
That same month, drought plagued parts
of Minnesota, Wyoming, Nebraska, Texas
and Oklahoma; thunderstorms and tornadoes
whipped through the South; a cyclone lashed

the Eastern coastline from South Carolina to
Virginia; and the earliest snowfall on record fell
on Charleston, S.C., and Savannah, Ga., according to the National Climatic Data Center.
Worldwide patterns show an increase in
heavy precipitation and intense droughts caused
by a warmer atmosphere, increases in water vapor and a rising sea-surface temperature — all
results of global warming.
Holdeman, now principal at ICF International’s Emergency Management and
Homeland Security team, holds last winter’s unusually hazardous weather events as
anecdotal evidence that our weather reality
is shifting.
“Whatever the cause is, the weather is changing,” Holdeman said. “There’s been any number
of extreme weather events happening.”
Scientists may not agree on some of the
possible effects of global warming, but most
do agree that it’s happening, said Gabriel
Vecchi, research scientist at the NOAA
Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory in
Princeton, N.J.

According to a February report by the
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
(IPCC), the nation is already seeing warming
effects, such as melting snow pack; increased
winter flooding and summer warming; pests
and wildfires plaguing forest environments;
and intensifying heat waves and hurricanes.
Unfortunately any changes related to the
planet’s increased temperature will be magnified in developing countries, where resources
won’t be available to delay or minimize effects.
But in richer nations, like the United States,
where the resources are forthcoming, it’s time
to adapt and plan for changes we might see, or
are seeing now.

Lemming-Like March
The most egregious global warming
effects will occur on global warming’s frontlines — at the poles, where there’s damage to
ecosystems and thawing of glaciers and ice
sheets, and on small islands, where beach erosion and storm surges are expected to further
deteriorate coastlines, according to the IPCC.

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ing

Reality
Though most scientists agree that global
warming is happening, the question of how
exactly it will manifest remains. Many believe
warming oceans may be contributing to more
devastating hurricane seasons.
The 2004-2005 period was one of the most
active 24 months ever witnessed in the Atlantic
basin, setting records for number of hurricanes
and tying the 1950-1951 record for most major
hurricanes with 13.
But hurricanes don’t just endanger lives;
they also threaten people’s livelihoods, businesses and homes, and cities’ economies. And
because tropical storms tend to hit the United
States in its sweet spot — expensive and growing coastal stretches from Texas to Maine
— they represent one of the country’s gravest
storm challenges.
Hurricanes that hit the Gulf Coast region
during the 2004 and 2005 storm seasons produced seven of the 13 costliest hurricanes to hit
the United States since 1900 (after adjusting for
inflation), according to an April 2007 report by
the National Hurricane Center in Miami.

According to the NOAA, Hurricane Katrina
cost approximately $60 billion in insurance
losses to the Gulf Coast region — almost triple
the $21 billion in insurance losses from Hurricane Andrew, the second costliest hurricane,
which struck south Florida in 1992.
This year’s hurricane season, from June 1
to Nov. 30, already looks grim. Experts at the
NOAA Climate Prediction Center project a 75
percent chance the season will be above normal.
They predict a strong La Niña — which favors
more Atlantic hurricanes, while El Niño favors
fewer hurricanes — will cause three to five
major hurricanes.
Also a factor is a phenomenon called “the
tropical multidecadal signal” — the notion
that two or three decades of reduced storm activity are followed by two or three decades of
increased activity. Since 1995, conditions have
been ripe for more hurricanes.
Yet despite signs of a rough hurricane season
ahead, a surprising phenomenon is occurring:
People are increasingly moving to the Atlantic
coast. Census Bureau data shows that in 1950,

10.2 million people were threatened by Atlantic
hurricanes; today more than 34.9 million are
threatened, according to USA Today.
“The areas along the United States Gulf and
Atlantic coasts where most of this country’s
hurricane-related fatalities have occurred are
also experiencing the country’s most significant
growth in population,” the National Hurricane
Center report confirmed.
But since coastal communities won’t stop corralling newcomers, the report concluded that
communities themselves should take action.
Jim O’Brien, professor emeritus of meteorology and oceanography at Florida State University,
said emergency managers and policymakers
should address the hurricane issue by enforcing stricter building codes, readdressing evacuation strategies and educating people about the
imminent problem.
However, more drastic action must be taken
to stop people’s risky behavior, according to
Kerry Emanuel, an atmospheric scientist at
the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
in Cambridge.

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Super Storms?
Surveys show that when worrying about
global warming, people fear hurricanes
most, but the scientific community has
yet to agree on how climate change really
impacts tropical storms.
Kerry Emanuel, an atmospheric scientist
at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, is one of the scientists
who think global warming and hurricanes
are connected.
“When we looked at the data, we saw a
very strong response in the Atlantic Ocean
to global warming,” he said. “The new
finding was that there’s a strong correlation
between hurricane power and ocean
temperature.”
His study, documented in a 2005 issue
of the journal Nature, found no increase in
hurricane frequency due to global warming,
but he did see that the energy — through
wind speed and storm duration — released
by the average hurricane increased by 50
percent since the mid-1970s.
On the flip side, Jim O’Brien, professor
emeritus of meteorology and oceanography
at Florida State University, isn’t convinced
that global warming is causing hurricane
intensity to increase.
“There is a climate variability that occurs
that has to be considered,” said O’Brien, a
past state climatologist for Florida and a
widely known El Niño expert. He added
that climate change trends can’t be
derived from hurricane data that’s limited
The coastal migration is made possible,
he said, through an unwise mix of state
and federal policies, like government regulation of property and flood insurance
(which covers storm surges), and federal
disaster relief given to flooded regions.
While such policies help people in the
short term, Emmanuel explained, they also
enable the risky behavior to continue.
Scientists have long feared America’s vulnerability to hurricanes because its shores are lined
with some of the nation’s wealthiest residents.
Emanuel, in conjunction with nine scientists,

and only recently has been improved
by technology.
Alternatively Virginia Burkett, global
change science coordinator for the U.S.
Geological Survey, worries the real danger is
the intensification of storms accompanied
with the acceleration of sea rise.
“Low-lying coastal areas will become
more frequently inundated during normal
tides and during tropical storm passage,”
she said.
Though the disagreements about global
warming effects can confuse nonscientists
looking for answers, said Gabriel Vecchi,
research scientist at the NOAA Geophysical
Fluid Dynamics Laboratory in Princeton,
N.J., challenging of others’ conclusions is
an integral part of the scientific process.
Vecchi cautions people from reading too
much into any one scientific conclusion,
including his own. His study found that
warming waters might actually decrease
the number of hurricanes in the Atlantic
because of increased wind shear — the
difference in speed and direction
of atmospheric winds. Wind shear
counteracts hurricanes and disrupts the
ones that do form.
“In a broad sense, a conclusion from
this paper is that the relationship between
global warming and hurricanes is certainly
complex,” he said. “One can’t just extrapolate
out [that] warming temperatures means
more hurricanes.”
released a July 2006 statement about the U.S.
hurricane problem: “We are optimistic that continued research will eventually resolve much of
the current debate over the effect of climate
change on hurricanes. But the more urgent
problem of our lemming-like march to the sea
requires immediate and sustained attention.”

Preparedness Challenge
Paul Milelli, director of public safety for
Palm Beach County, Fla., contends that global
warming’s effects may inherently force people
to change their ways.

“If we start having to build homes to meet a
200 mph wind, the cost would probably stifle
some growth,” he said, “and then [there’s] the
fear factor of people moving in.”
Because the county uses an all-hazards
approach, emergency planning won’t change
much with global warming in the equation,
he said.
“The economy is just going to be affected tremendously, and that, to me, is going to be the
biggest concern. Because we can prepare our
people for a hurricane, whether it’s a Category
1 or a Category 5, and how we prepare the people really doesn’t change — except that as the
categories get higher, we start asking people to
make their plans earlier and earlier.”
For a statewide evacuation, Floridians would
have to begin leaving days before the hurricane
hit — a logistic impracticality.
“It’s bigger than me. It’s bigger than what I
can plan for as a planner of the county,” said
Milelli, whose 31-year emergency management
career ends in January when he plans to retire
in Wisconsin — far away from hurricanes.
To help combat storm destruction, the Gulf
Regional Planning Commission in Mississippi
focuses on hurricane preparation as well as
planning and redevelopment.
“We’re certainly well aware of the dramatic
impacts of climate change and also the need
for looking outside of our localized area when
we’re starting to talk about the impacts of climate change,” said Elaine Wilkinson, the commission’s executive director.
The commission is working to build bridges
that withstand high winds (similar to the effects
of an earthquake), and building up seawalls to
match the roadbed.
After Hurricane Katrina, the commission
took an extra year to engineer its long-range
transportation to plan for major storms. Transportation planning is important to ensure safe
evacuation, she said.
Wilkinson was also involved in a U.S. government study on how global warming could
affect the nation’s coastal transportation systems. The study, which just released its first
phase for scientific review, concluded that with
climate change, the sea level is rising and the
land is sinking, according to a National Public
Radio news report.
Listening to scientists provided a good opportunity for Wilkinson, who said scientists

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ON THE FRONT LINE
WE ARE THERE WITH YOU
ICF International’s experts have not
only worked for the country’s leading
emergency management and homeland
security agencies, but also have been
first responders.

EMERGENCY PREPAREDNESS | DISASTER RECOVERY | IT SOLUTIONS | EXERCISES
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Contact Michael Byrne at mbyrne@icfi.com or visit www.icfi.com

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must share global warming findings with people who can effect change.
“We need to find a way to bring the scientific
data into the planning process,” Wilkinson said.
“That’s something that’ll challenge us. But we’re
very much in need of information to make
some good decisions.”

Ask the Question
Working with science, King County integrated
global warming policies into its government.
In October 2005, the county sponsored a
conference to understand Washington’s climate
changes in the coming 20, 50 and 100 years,
and identify approaches to adapt to climate
change predictions.
The Climate Impacts Group (CIG), along
with King County, developed conference
materials, including Pacific Northwest climate
change scenarios. CIG, which is funded by
Washington University’s Center for Science
in the Earth System in Seattle and by NOAA,
explores climate science with an eye to the public interest in the region. The group is one of
eight NOAA teams that assess regional climate
change in the United States.
From the conference, CIG and King County
established a relationship and jointly wrote
Adapting to Global Warming — a Guidebook,
to be released this November following a peer
review process.
As a resource for regional leaders, the
guidebook outlines King County’s global
warming approach, addressing its water supply, wastewater and floodplain management,
agriculture, forestry and biodiversity. The
county approved an aggressive levee improvement plan and adopted a climate plan in February that includes a two-page outline for the
King County Office of Emergency Management to revise its strategies given projected
climate changes.
In the guidebook, CIG tells how scientists
can communicate climate change information
to emergency managers and policy leaders. But
government officials are also responsible for
opening the dialog.
Elizabeth Willmott, global warming coordinator for King County, stepped into her
position upon its creation in January 2007, and
works to coordinate projects, ideas and information related to the county’s climate change
mitigation and preparedness plans.

“What we suggest simply,” Willmott said,
“is that regional leaders ask the climate question, ‘How is climate change going to affect
my region?’”
Just asking, she said, can plant the issue in
people’s minds.
Though weather seems to be telling us something about how climate change will impact our
future, there’s uncertainty in many circles about
what to do to prepare and how to mitigate
its consequences.
ICF’s Holdeman said we must focus on finding global warming’s regional effects and work
to lessen them now.

“We end up being so reactive as a society, and
certainly the United States is,” he said. “We don’t
address issues — like Social Security or Medicaid. Everybody knows it’s a problem, but we’re
not going to do anything about it until it’s staring
us in the face, and there’s a trillion dollar deficit.”
It’s up to emergency managers, he said, to
spread the word and ensure global warming
consequences are known.
“For emergency managers themselves,” Holdeman said, “if we’re not talking about it generally and trying to educate elected officials about
it and the hazards, then you’re counting on them
to stumble on it as an issue.” k

The Likely Culprit
Evidence of a progressively warmer planet
is “unequivocal,” according to a Feb. 2, 2007,
report from the Intergovernmental Panel on
Climate Change (IPCC), a United Nations
and World Meteorological Organization effort
established to recognize the potential
problems of climate change.
This report, the IPCC’s fourth since
1990, also states that human activity
— from burning fossil fuels and large-scale
deforestation — is “very likely” the culprit of
the warming trend over the past 50 years.
Though the warming from trapped
carbon dioxide and methane gasses in the
atmosphere is a natural and necessary
occurrence, the accelerated release of these

gasses from humans helped temperatures
creep up nearly three times the average
in the 20th century — the Earth’s surface
temperature has increased by more than 1
degree Fahrenheit since 1900.
Though most scientists agree coastlines
will shrink in coming centuries — from
melting ice caps and sea-water expansion
— the pace of sea-level rise is still under
debate.
If the IPCC is correct, the sea level
will rise 7 to 23 inches by 2100, and the
climate will continue to rise between
3.5 and 8 degrees Fahrenheit as carbon
dioxide reaches twice the amount of its
preindustrial levels.

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Tape Drive Replacement
Remote/Branch Office DR
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Call Sales at 888.984.6723 x410 for more information

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Cracking

Books

the

BY JESSI C A JONES
AND JIM McK AY

Education programs for emergency
management professionals are growing
nationally and internationally.

I

n today’s world of emergency management, a four-year degree is a must, said
Aaron Kenneston, emergency manager
of Washoe County, Nev., though it’s not
necessarily critical the degree relate specifically
to emergency management.
“The idea is to gain a body of knowledge on
common core subjects, undergo the rigors and
discipline of academic study, and learn perseverance,” he said. “Certainly it is a bonus if
you can attend an emergency management or
homeland security degree program.”
B. Wayne Blanchard, project manager of the
Higher Education Project at the Emergency
Management Institute, part of the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s (FEMA) National

Emergency Training Center in Emmitsburg,
Md., agrees that it’s important for emergency
managers — or future emergency managers
— to get a college education.
“Dealing with hazards, disasters and what you
do about them is a very difficult task to perform,”
he said. “Having the skills one picks up in college
puts one on the right track forward in dealing
with administrators and policymakers, and the
political context within which hazards, disasters
and what you do about them are placed.”
Also, Blanchard said, an education in emergency management means students start a
job with a background understanding of the
complexities surrounding hazards, disasters
and emergency management.

Learning Lessons

When the Higher Education Project started
in 1994, Blanchard said, most emergency
managers didn’t have a college degree in
any subject.
“And most had only, at best, a passing
acquaintance with the social science research
literature on hazards, disasters and what to do
about them.”
The goal of the Higher Education Project,
according to Blanchard, is to increase collegiate study of hazards, disasters and emergency
management; enhance emergency management
professionalism; support development of an
emergency management academic discipline;
make a long-term contribution to enhanced
hazards footing; and support a long-term,
greater collegiate role in emergency management and disaster reduction.
Since 1960, monetary losses from natural
disasters in the United States have doubled or
tripled per decade, wrote Harvey Ryland, president of the Institute for Business and Home
Safety, in 1999.

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“And the century’s steady progress in reducing
deaths and injuries due to natural disasters had
begun to level off,” he wrote. “Furthermore,
there was concern that a single disaster — for
example, a catastrophic East Coast hurricane or
a repeat of the 1906 San Francisco earthquake
— could kill thousands, cost hundreds of billions
of dollars, disrupt the national economy, and
exhaust the reserves of the insurance industry.”
The background problem in the United States,
Blanchard said, is that the country isn’t on the
right path as far as mitigating disasters. “Thus,
it doesn’t matter what kind of cadre you have
working in and around emergency management.
I’m aware of no one who thinks disaster losses
will flatten out or go down, but I have heard a
number of people who do hazard and disaster
research give voice to their fears that [the]
disaster loss curve is in fact going to steepen.”
Our country would be in a better position,
Blanchard said, if those in the emergency
management field and in schools focus their
studies on emergency management — which is
a broad term.
“It could be disaster studies, emergency
administration and planning — a wide range
of titles I loosely call emergency management,” he said. “But you put all those things
together, and it does justify the leap of faith
that the country would be on better footing
in the future.”
The more college students become aware of
hazards and disasters and how to respond to
them, and become acquainted with the social
science research literature on these topics, the
better, Blanchard said.
If only the findings from that research literature were put into practice, Blanchard said,
because much — if not most — of disaster
loss could have been avoided had knowledge
in hand been applied.
“But the fact is, most of the lessons learned,
most of the social science — or certainly much
of it — is not implemented,” Blanchard said.
“The lessons really aren’t learned for very long.
How long the lessons actually stay in one’s mind
depends on how traumatic the disaster is.”

Growing Support
Many colleges and universities, nationally
and internationally, are starting to offer certification programs, bachelor’s degrees and even
master’s degrees in emergency management.

“The lessons really aren’t learned for very long.
How long the lessons actually stay in one’s mind
depends on how traumatic the disaster is.”
— B. Wayne Blanchard, project manager of the Higher Education Project, Emergency Management Institute

Boston University, Eastern Michigan University and California State University at Long
Beach are just a few of the more than 100 schools
offering such education programs. In addition,
the International Association of Emergency
Managers (IAEM) created its Certified Emergency Manager (CEM) Program to raise and
maintain professional standards.
“It is an internationally recognized program
that certifies achievements within the emergency management profession,” according to
the IAEM, which also states that CEM certification is a peer review process administered by
IAEM, and is maintained in five-year cycles.
Internationally the Emergency Management
Certificate from York University in Canada uses
lectures, case studies and class discussions to
help students develop an understanding of the
Emergency Response Cycle, including hazard
identification, risk analysis, risk evaluation
and mitigation, preparedness, response and
recovery. Students also develop the ability to
read, interpret, prepare and implement emergency plans, policies and procedures, and learn
how to work as team members while providing
effective leadership, according to the university.
“Emergency managers require strong
analytical, communication and integrative
skills, which help them establish a meaningful
dialogue with experts in a wide range of fields
and make sense of the complex information
they provide,” according to a statement from
the university.
“My advice to aspiring emergency managers
is to focus on gaining experience, join a professional organization and then become certified,”
Washoe County’s Kenneston said. “Experience is

crucial and can be gained through employment
with a response agency, participating in mutual
aid to a disaster site, or by volunteering with a
citizen corps program or nongovernmental
organization that provides disaster support.”
It’s very important, he said, that emergency management professionals possess a
common experience base, such as the Incident
Command System and the National Incident
Management System.
Though important, education alone won’t
make a great emergency manager. In addition
to education, it takes training and experience
to make a professional 21st-century emergency
manager, Blanchard said.
Education, he emphasized, must acquaint
the student with social science literature. Once
the student has graduated — though education
continues over his or her lifetime — training
comes next, Blanchard said. “There are so many
details, procedures and protocols that aren’t the
province of education, but are the province of
training, and are absolutely necessary.”
Then there’s the third arm — experience.
“It’s sort of a truism,” he said. When you’ve
actually worked a disaster, it’s like an epiphany,
it opens your eyes, expands your field of vision.
So experience, I think, is essential as well.”
Still, Blanchard cautioned, experience isn’t
the be-all and end-all.
“In fact, I know people who’ve had lots of
experience and lots of training, and are far
from being what I would call a professional
emergency manager who’s on the path of
helping their community become disasterresistant and resilient.” k

38

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E

UPR
PHOTO COURTESY OF KORBIN JOHNSON

THE

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Preparing for Bioterrorism: Critics Say U.S. Lacks Vision

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