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Okay, Let’s Try This Again

In June 2009, I blogged about spontaneous bystander response, or rather, the difference between that and a bunch of people jumping into their Fire SUV and driving to say, Bastrop, Texas, only to be turned away from the action. I don't expect civilians to understand. On the face of it, it looks like the Feds are turning away perfectly acceptable resources. The response community, however, obviously needs a big-ass brick dropped on their head with a note wrapped around it that says: "Don't go if you aren't invited."

Let's put some perspective on the issue AGAIN. I've been dealing with disaster response for a very long time. When I need additional resources, I have found that there is an electronic device in most response apparatus that I can use it to call for help. In case you are wondering, this would be the radio. In these days, however, a cell phone, e-mail or any other number of methods may be employed (in case you didn't know).

We are not discussing the desire for people to help their neighbors by bringing clothing, money, food, water, labor, etc. We are talking about bringing yourself (and usually not much more) and saying, "I can fight fire". We are talking about popping a sleeping bag in the car and going for a road trip, thinking that in a lot of these situations, it is going to be like camping, sans Kumbaya and S'mores, but with an extra helping of excitement.

As I and countless others have said, time after time after time:

The main problem faced by those of us in the disaster community when it comes to spontaneous response, is the fact that as the designated adult supervision at these events, we have a responsibility to insure not only mitigation (or depending on the complexity and scope, control) of the incident, but the safety of those who were not necessarily part of the problem before, but now are.

My whole reason for saying this is that while most of us in the response community can certainly appreciate the altruism in bystander response to an emergency, there are cases upon cases in every aspect of disaster and technical rescue response where the spontaneous bystander response in and of itself became an additional rescue mission for us on our arrival. If anyone wants to be bored to death, I can cite example after example, and even put you in touch with others who can do the same. This has not changed for any emergency in decades.

You may say, "Hey, these guys were calling for help and nobody came." That is YOUR perspective on the situation. The reality is not that there is a true lack of resources. At Katrina, for example, there were plenty of resources. There was just a little problem of certain parties not knowing the plan for getting those resources, or not knowing how to deliver them, or sending them to the wrong places. There isn't a lack of resources, there is a lack of knowledge on how to put them in place and make the work.

This is where the Feds come in, believe it or not. Because the Feds have a few things going for them that in a lot of cases, the locals, the counties, and the state don't have. Principally, that would be money and coordination.

Having been involved intimately with a few of these little dances, I have witnessed firsthand the dialogue going on in the command post with some of these elected officials:

Fire Chief: "Okay, we have fourteen houses burning over on XYZ Circle, but we don't have the engine companies necessary to cover that area. I need to have the authority to call the state and have them declare a state of emergency."

Mayor: "Well, that's your job, dammit! Hell no, I don't want a bunch of people from Capital City over here telling us how to do things their way! Don't you have a plan? Why don't you just use those guys with the pickup trucks who showed up this morning? Doesn't the state have a bunch of those thing-a-ma-jigs they can send over? You know, strike forces, or task teams or something?"

Fire Chief: "Strike teams and task forces. Yes, but this is the representative from the State here. They are offering their help, but since this hasn't been declared a disaster by the Governor yet, before I agree to sign this Memorandum of Understanding, I needed to let you know this is going to cost us money…"

Mayor: "Is that all you are waiting on? Dammit, sign whatever you need to sign!"

Fire Chief: "By ordinance, I am required to get your permission before creating a liability for the city over $100,000."

Mayor: "WHAT? How much are we talking about here?"

Fire Chief: "I don't know, but more than that. So this guy says we can have the Governor declare a state of emergency…"

Mayor: "I don't want those a#$%$@*s from the Capital down here telling us what to do. Just see what you can do for a little while."

Fire Chief: "Ohhhh-kay…"

Now, I have no idea if that's what is going on in this situation. I would actually doubt it, because they declared a state of emergency pretty quickly. But most localities are pretty reluctant to declare that they need help, because to them it is a loss of control, and when faced with that breakover point (where they can't control it, but don't want to release it), that's when the chaos thickens. I actually wrote a paper a number of years ago on why local fire departments won't develop plans or call for help when they need it.

So let's cut to the chase. Feel free to read the earlier article. Feel free to hunt down any other number of articles I have written on the subject. But while the dates have changed, the situation has not. The system for deploying emergency response assets around the country, while not perfect, is better than it used to be. And the situation is improving. But if you are just dying to go somewhere and help out, instead of piling into the family roadster and hiking out for the unknown, instead, determine what equipment and apparatus you can send somewhere, decide who you will send, identify their capability using relatively well-known recommendations out there, and get with your state to find out where you can list your resource through mutual aid agreements. Do this ahead of time and when the time comes, if your services are needed, they will call you.

Or even better, establish "sister community" arrangements in advance: work with other agencies and communities out there on a special agreement that if your community is impacted, you will call them and likewise, they will call you. Do this with communities who are in other regions or states that permit you to get assets no one else is likely to be drafting from.

The short story is this though: Although the sentiment is appreciated, drama is not something the locals need when chaos has come to call. They need coordinated assistance of the right kind. And they need an asset, not a liability. If you are going to help, go to help, not to add to the problem. And you may not like to hear that, but it's the truth.

Posted by Michael "Mick" Mayers on September 14, 2011 • Filed under: leadership • Tagged: angry, asset, Bastrop, brush fire, bystander, change, conflict, credentialing, disaster, education, FEMA, FHZ, fire rescue topics, fire service, Fire SUV, FireEMSBlogs, Firehouse Zen, government, Hilton Head Island, incident command, incident management, leadership, Mick Mayers, NIMS, planning, politics, resources, responder, SC-TF1, South Carolina, TX, TX-TF1, US&R, vision

You Can Quote Me On That (Before 2010)

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I was driving down the road the other day and thinking, you know, I too could have a list of quotes, just like the real writers have. So in the interest of filling up a page of useless knowledge, I went back to FHZ from September of 2008 to December of 2009 and I also threw in a few notable statements I made way back on the old Firehouse Forums as a member of the IACOJ, before some of you were born, I think.

Now, I do read a lot and listen to podcasts, etc. and I will check my quotes with a deep internet search to make sure I haven't stolen someone else's ideas, but I'm pretty sure I said this stuff at one time or another. I also left off anything I paraphrased (I hope) and added some stuff that exists in unpublished posts (there are a few dozen of those). Believe it or not, we here at FHZ have standards. They are low, but we do have standards.

So here you are, from the beginning of FHZ, some of the more memorable ones:

"When I give you an order, I want to see it done, or your dead body where you died trying to do it."
"Never eat more than your mask can hold."
"I am not your friend, I am your boss. If you want to be friends, that's okay, but that doesn't change the fact that I am your boss first."
"The company officer is the designated adult supervision in the station. Act like it."
"There won't be a group hug at the end of this. I don't do Kumbaya."
"When I call for a resource I'm gonna give you type and kind. If I call for a Lincoln-ful of Panamanians, I don't care where you got it, just give me the closest one."
"Let's put this in terms you can understand: Confined space rescue is nothing more than HAZMAT on a rope."
"Being a truckie requires resourcefulness. You are presented with a problem no one else knows how to fix and you fix it with what you brought to the party or what you can swipe. After that, it's all magic."
"Individuals have given themselves the freedom to make poor decisions, then be let off the hook because we 'shouldn't judge them', or because their mommy didn't hug them as a child, or whatever the victim story is this week." (Okay, I just used that one again the other day).
"The base cause of indignity is usually the result of inconsiderate behavior." (Oh, and that one is new. But I liked it).
"Conflict in life is inevitable. Conflict escalation and intractability is not." (Alright, that one is new as well. Back to the old stuff).
"There's enough ugly going on around us right now without our own people bringing it down on us."
"Each of us should be serving as a positive example of how to do the job, volunteer or career, and without acting like a bunch of amateurs and whackers."
"The important part in our lives, really, isn't necessarily what we can fill up our minds with at every moment, but about creating space to let more in."
"There are a few things that you should raise the stakes for, like your faith, your family, and your country. But when faced with an unwinnable scenario and a profound lack of resources, sometimes it is best to save what you can save and live to fight on another day."
"Where t = tempo, r = resources and f = frustration: increasing t multiplied by decreasing r = exponential increase in f."
"The taxpayers in your community ultimately decide what level of service they want. If they are insistent that giving you no resources is okay, then they have to be educated to what extent that investment will reap disaster. Risk is proportionate to return."
"There are other sides to every argument that get squashed by the rush of the ADD crowd to comment. Don't fall into the trap of the unenlightened. Think before you post."
"I can think of no rational society that thinks it is okay to screw the disadvantaged for the benefit of the privileged. Taking advantage of the less fortunate is simply bullying."
"When we use the phrase 'customer service", if that's not appealing to you, try saying it like this: 'doing what is right for our neighbors and the people who visit and work in our community'. That should be a little more pleasant."
"Successful coaches match schemes to personnel, not vice-versa."
"If you are going to successfully implement change in your organizational culture, there should be a reluctance to be where you were and a desire to get where you are going."
"I'm pretty sure that when my ticket , I'm not going to be quoted saying something profound, poetic, or heroic. It is likely going to be something that can't be repeated around children or the faint-hearted."
"If we really want our industry to recognized as professional, it requires consistent conduct that is professional."
'Legitimate power, in the sense of leading others, is limited to the amount of leverage the followers will permit."
"Tansformative leadership requires commitment, honesty to self, and an understanding of the world. It's yours if you can embrace change, open yourself up to it, and set the example to others."
"Our business is too dangerous to leave the teaching to amateurs."
"Perhaps if you guys are going to fight fire like you are in the '70's, you should be paid like we were then too."
"If as a team, you can't agree on the destination, someone needs to get out of the car. Ultimately, getting to the destination requires assessment, negotiation, understanding, cooperation, and ends with commitment."
"More often than I care to, my 'command presence' comes out at inopportune times, like when I am talking to my wife (she doesn't like it), my kids (they're not crazy about it either), or my colleagues (they probably think I'm insufferable anyway)."
"If you fail to illustrate a clear picture of who is in charge, someone else will come in and fill that drawing in for you."
"Sometimes the best we can do is to pin it down to the neighborhood of origin, if that's what was burning when we got there."

Since at some point perhaps I'll add another page of these for the next years, if one of the sentences I uttered strikes a chord with you, point it out to me and I'll add it. I'm all about customer service. Until next time, thanks for reading.

Posted by Michael "Mick" Mayers on June 29, 2011 • Filed under: administration-leadership, change, Command & Leadership, customer service, EMS Topics, Fire Rescue Topics, Firefighter Nation, Firefighter Safety & Health, Fires, Funding & Staffing, leadership, Line of Duty, Major Incidents, motivation, officership, planning, politics, rebellion, Rescues, revolution, Special Operations, Training & Development • Tagged: change, conflict, credentialing, customer service, disaster, economy, education, EMS, FEMA, FHZ, fire service, FireEMSBlogs, Firefighter Nation, Firehouse Forums, Firehouse Zen, government, Hilton Head Island, IACOJ, incident command, incident management, kind, management, marketing, media, Mick Mayers, motivation, NIMS, officer, opportunity, politics, professionalism, quotes, resources, risk reduction, safety, South Carolina, team, Training, type, vision

Credibility

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One of the biggest problems the fire service has is its credibility. I received multiple e-mails over the past few weeks about a confined space training near-miss that in reading the information, I found to be pretty troubling. Once again, it appears (at least from the published report) that training can get pretty hairy, especially when there is a certain amount of complacency among students and instructors. But it goes to a deeper question: When training, at what point do we raise our hand and say, “Hey, something doesn’t seem right here”?

When we engage in fire, EMS, and rescue activities, we are participating in what is considered to be an extraordinarily dangerous setting. In training, we have the ability to create scenarios that test our students, but we as course designers must consider the alternative outcome to successful completion of a task, and by that, I am referring to failure. When someone is unable to complete a task, or the environment becomes too daunting, or unforeseen events occur, there has the be the ability to directly swing into normalcy (read: safety).

In burn buildings we provide extra exits and in high-line rescue training we continually monitor redundant belays. Whatever the topic, we intentionally build our scenarios to consider the “what if?” events that might occur. While crawling through an active 18-inch pipe might provide a “confidence building” exercise, what is the plan if someone gets stuck? Or in the case at hand, weather creates a very real scenario? Thankfully a greater disaster didn’t occur. But while in confined space situations we must “train in representative spaces”, and nothing provides more realism than using the spaces themselves, we are also obligated to monitor those spaces and aggressively manage safety concerns for personnel.

When an instructor is telling you to do something that doesn’t seem right, there is also an obligation on the part of students to respectfully raise a hand and question the scenario. Unfortunately, not every instructor out there is experienced or dedicated enough to insure that the proper learning environment is provided and adequately managed. As real professionals, we need to not only do risk management on the emergency scene, but in training as well. There are plenty of instructors from whom I have taken a class, only to walk away shaking my head. If I am responsible for hiring instructors, I at least qualify them myself or seek the advice of colleagues who have worked with those people before. Our business, however, is too dangerous to leave the teaching to amateurs. Look for credible instructors with a history of work when you are trusting someone with the lives of your personnel. We kill and injure enough of our people in real situations. There’s no reason to do the same when the urgency doesn’t exist.

Posted by Michael "Mick" Mayers on December 1, 2010 • Filed under: change, customer service, education, EMS Topics, FEMA, Fire Prevention & Education, Fire Rescue Topics, Firefighter Nation, government, leadership, motivation, National Fire Academy, planning, politics, professionalism, Training & Development • Tagged: change, education, executive fire officer, FEMA, FHZ, fire service, FireEMSBlogs, Firehouse Zen, government, Hilton Head Island, leadership, management, Mick Mayers, motivation, National Fire Academy, opportunity, planning, politics, professionalism, research, risk reduction, South Carolina, Training

Breaking News: Huge Earthquake Hits Chile

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SCTF1 Personnel performing search training at SCFA US&R site in Columbia, SC

I reported to work this morning and caught this news as I walked in the door. This quake was reported as being an 8.8 and is also the cause of a tsunami that is expected to strike various nations in the Pacific basin. I’m sure we’ll be hearing more about this over the next few days and since I’m not a “news” blog, I’d suggest keeping an eye on this from our other FireEMSblog partners who are. Here’s the article from Reuters.

While I have been hearing reports that Chile’s infrastructure is significantly more robust than Haiti’s was prior to the quake, an 8.8 magnitude quake can’t be good for anything requiring stability, so once daylight hits there, I’m sure we’ll hear a lot more. As far as US&R assets, I’m sure we’ll also be hearing about requests for those although just like before, I think Haiti was an anomaly in the deployment of any American teams other than the ones who are contracted through USAID (so if you are a FEMA or State team not on that very short roster, I wouldn’t be packing my bags quite yet). However, I felt pretty stupid the last time when I said, “oh, no, only teams assigned through USAID go to disasters out of country”, and a day later all kinds of teams were getting put on standby. Never say never, I guess; Just goes to show you there really aren’t any experts in emergency service management.

Keep these folks in our prayers. They’ll need them.

Posted by Michael "Mick" Mayers on February 27, 2010 • Filed under: FEMA, Fire Rescue Topics, Firefighter Nation, Major Incidents, SAR, US&R, USAR • Tagged: Chile, disaster, earthquake, FEMA, FireEMSBlogs, Haiti, incident management, Mick Mayers, Pacific Rim, SUSAR, tsunami, US&R

US&R in Haiti: Wishing vs. Planning

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SC-TF1 US&R working in St. Tammany Parish, LA after Katrina.

I’m sure everyone out there continues to keep an eye on Haiti. I’m not easily shocked, yet even I have been amazed at some of the scenes from down there. Every time I see another bit of news, I want to go hug my children and remind myself how fortunate we are.

When friends and family see the situation there, not knowing how US&R deployments really work, I get asked if SC-TF1 is going. Each time, I have taken that opportunity to explain the workings (and separation) between the USAID/DART assets and domestic response (FEMA US&R and State US&R assets) and how “task forces just aren’t sent to international disasters through FEMA”. Of course, by saying “never”, something I NEVER thought I’d see in all of my years working in this business is occurring: the cooperation and coordination of FEMA with EMAC for the possibility (note I said, “possibility”, not “probability”) of State US&R Task Forces being deployed along with FEMA-sanctioned assets to an international disaster.

But all that being said, in watching the events unfolding, I continue to try to get my head around the response and it frankly has been a challenge. With any disaster, there needs to be an attack plan, but in most cases, these plans hinge on some basic tenets of organization, none of these which seem to apply in Haiti. Having been hit by several prior disasters recently, the country was already in extremis and the current situation obviously doesn’t improve things.

I have already heard from my sources that the teams that are there are working under heavy force protection. Any of us that thought operating in New Orleans post-Katrina was sketchy, one look at the situation in Haiti makes us understand that at least we had the force of law SOMEWHERE on our side. Reports have indicated that aside from the overwhelming number of missions and dangerous conditions, another part of the reason that engaging missions is problematic is because there simply isn’t any way to get the equipment from the airport to the disaster: roads were bad to begin with, there’s only one active runway at the airport, and there’s no machinery to off-load equipment and supplies. Once the materials do happen to get onto the ground, no matter what conventions you try to apply for allocating the resources, there isn’t any guarantee the locals will comply with it anyway.

So for this disaster, there are other “sub-disasters” that make it much more dire, and even the media isn’t astute enough to understand it. This situation is going to get MUCH worse before it gets better, because there’s no way to effectively get the help to where it needs to go, and if it did get there, there’s no guarantee that it will be applied to the right area anyway (unless you count “at gunpoint” as an effective means of allocating resources).

While equipment and supplies are arriving, we could just send everything we have to the area, but without the people who know how to work it, the equipment is useless. While one friend of mine said to this, “If you gave me a concrete cutting saw, I could probably figure it out”; I mentioned to him that if you didn’t know water was an important part in making the saw blade cut more effectively, failing to do something as simple as that might mean the difference between extricating someone with one blade or a half-dozen blades. It occurs to me that there are nuances of working with our US&R tools that are completely lost on the uninitiated. I said this the other day: “It’s the definition between an organized US&R resource and ‘mobs with shovels’”.

My point is, after all this rambling, is that this is very much a teachable moment for everyone, just as I hoped Katrina and other disaster have been. Even for some of my non-emergency service readers out there, there is an extremely important lesson to be learned: Every community must understand its vulnerabilities and the potential for disaster, and plan accordingly.

The caveat to this is, that despite the presence of a written plan, you can have every contingency covered and discussed, if you don’t understand and practice the plan, it isn’t worth the paper it is written on (Anybody remember Katrina?).

It is imperative that elected officials along with those of us who serve the public safety sector of our respective communities (AND the citizens living in those communities) understand what likely scenarios can occur, know where the vulnerable populations exist, and understand what resources are needed.

For responders: If those resources aren’t readily available, it is then incumbent upon us all to know where to get those resources, how to legally obtain and use them, and even more important, when and how to call them.

For the elected officials: It requires insistence on development of these plans as well as FUNDING to support the plans.

For non-responder citizens: Maybe you should understand that you have a part in this as well, to insure you are prepared to go it alone for at least 72 hours and maybe have some ability to rely on your own preparedness and not look to government for the total solution. Try checking out the recommendations here at the FEMA website.

So without too much further delay, maybe this is a moment for all of you (elected officials, responders, and citizens) to dig out your volumes of plans and look through them and begin to understand not only what is in them, but at least what your part in that plan will be if, God forbid, you have to utilize them. While we here in the United States are subject to the same disasters as other nations, at least here, there is the force of law to keep this type of situation from getting out of hand (note the sarcasm). My suggestion: have a plan, support it, practice it, and if things go badly, USE IT.

Stay safe and let’s keep the responders as well as the citizens of Haiti in our prayers.

Posted by Michael "Mick" Mayers on January 16, 2010 • Filed under: DHS, FEMA, Fire Rescue Topics, Firefighter Nation, Funding & Staffing, government, Major Incidents, News, NIMS, politics, Rescues, SAR, Special Operations, US&R, USAR • Tagged: contingency, disaster, earthquake, EMAC, FEMA, FireEMSBlogs, Haiti, incident management, Katrina, leadership, Mick Mayers, New Orleans, NIMS, OFDA, planning, politics, rescue, research, SC-TF1, South Carolina, urban search and rescue, US&R, USAID, vulnerability

Urban Search and Rescue – Rockbreaking 101

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SC-TF1, GA, and MD-TF2 working with St. Bernard, LA at Katrina

Since there seems to be a huge lean forward from people who want to know more about US&R, and since US&R is (and has been) one of my main projects for over twenty years, I figure I’ll take the opportunity to point you all in some directions for information, as well as provide some useful links other than the standard FEMA sites. I’ll start off with one or two and add some more as time permits.

Also, if I have missed a good link (or source), please add it, because any errors or omissions are likely just my failure to remember someone while sitting here for a moment, rather than deliberate exclusion.

I’ll start of course with my baby: the South Carolina US&R Task Force, which is a state-sponsored NIMS Type 1 equivalent US&R Task Force. Our deployment to St. Tammany and St. Bernard Parishes during Hurricane Katrina established us on the map as a viable response asset. While I am no longer the Director of this organization but serve as Deputy Director in an advisory role, it is still my pride and joy.

There is another US&R project of which I am very fond: the State Urban Search and Rescue Alliance, better known by its acronym, “SUSAR”. This began as a consortium of 19 states, including Puerto Rico, meeting for the first time in July 2005 at the South Carolina Fire Academy in Columbia, SC. Now it has representatives from over 41 states and we have earned the consideration by many other affiliated organizations as we help to advocate for these state teams which previously had no voice.

One Firefighter Nation there are several US&R “social” groups: Urban Search and Rescue, of course; USAR/FEMA; and USAR. You can join into the discussions there and say your piece, or at least get to meet other like-minded individuals. There is also the Cancel The Engine site on there, which has a lot of rockbreakers hanging out looking for something to tear up.

I’ll take the time to add some more later, but if you have a link near and dear to you, feel free to add it on a comment, and if it is appropriate, I’ll add it in.

Posted by Michael "Mick" Mayers on January 15, 2010 • Filed under: DHS, FEMA, Fire Rescue Topics, Firefighter Nation, government, leadership, News, NIMS, politics, Rescues, SAR, Special Operations, US&R, USAR • Tagged: disaster, earthquake, education, FEMA, fire service, FireEMSBlogs, government, Haiti, media, NIMS, politics, rescue, SC-TF1, South Carolina, SUSAR, task force, US&R

Vigilance and Haiti

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South Carolina US&R Task Force at Vigilant Guard

As is always the case in times like these, fire and emergency service providers stand ready to send whatever relief is necessary to aid the survivors of disasters. While we continue to keep the residents and visitors to Haiti in our thoughts and prayers, an open letter to the fire and emergency service community from FEMA Deputy Administrator Richard Serino reminds the response community that self-deployment to the disaster areas is not advisable. For a number of reasons, there needs to be a coordinated response so that well-meaning people and resources don’t ultimately overwhelm what is already bedlam.

While it may seem counterintuitive to some not to send EVERYTHING to the region, I’m reminded of the scenario that presents itself in football when the defensive end is told repeatedly, “Seal the ends and don’t let anyone out” and after being told that twenty times (and having no backs running around the end), he decides to “get involved” and leaves his assigned area, only to be left in the dust by a screen or a reverse. His job was to protect the flanks from just such a move, and failing that, this weakness was not only recognized by the offense, but exploited.

It is imperative that we take this opportunity to recognize that these disasters also affect our own communities, and this is the time when increased education of your customers is important: what to do if something like this happens here, who will respond, what your capabilities are and how you plan to address your needs in a disaster, and so on. This is the time when you contact your representatives and reinforce to them that we have emergency operation plans in place and resources, and educate local responders what to do and how to obtain these resources.

Most importantly, someone needs to be watching the outside, anticipating that at any time, events can also happen at home. In that event, teams selected to move into the Caribbean to aid Haiti may need reinforcement back in their home jurisdictions and we should be ready to help in those situations as well.

Everyone has a part on the team. Take this unfortunate situation and at least turn it into a “teachable moment”. If you fail to do this while it is fresh in the minds of the public, I can reassure you, look at past disasters and see how fast those moments faded from view. We can prevent death and injury often by educating people as to what we do and how to get us when they need us. But in order to do all of this, we need support, not just during the disasters, but in the times in between.

Keep our fellow US&R teams in your prayers as well as the citizens and other responders in this most distressing of situations and make sure we are ready if anything else goes down on our watch.

Posted by Michael "Mick" Mayers on January 14, 2010 • Filed under: DHS, FEMA, fire service, Firefighter Nation, Funding & Staffing, government, politics, rescue, Rescues, Special Operations, US&R, USAR • Tagged: disaster, earthquake, education, FEMA, fire service, FireEMSBlogs, government, Haiti, opportunity, politics, SC-TF1, South Carolina, US&R

The Thanks of a Nation

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webDSC01875 Author’s Note: I updated this post from the original due to what looked like, in hindsight, to be mostly whining. My apologies to those of you subjected to the original garbage.

Maybe it’s the observation that many of the politicians who are quick to take credit for the nation’s preparedness are slow to ever visit a fire station, or maybe it’s my expectation that instead of having to beg for the table scraps that our law enforcement brethren leave for us, we might also get a seat at the main table, but I just don’t see the fire service gaining the amount of respect that we deserve for the sacrifices we make. And if you’ve been following this blog for any period of time, you’ll know that I am fully cognizant of the reason why.

We have friends in high places that can help us. Despite your individual politics, Vice-President Joe Biden has long proven his support of the fire service, and there are others out there who are as well. If you don’t want the fire service to continually get what’s left over; if you are tired of watching FIRE and SAFER grants get thinner and thinner; if you expect that the fire service should be considered for a bigger piece of the decision-making that goes on in our homeland defense, I’d suggest you get involved. Learn what legislation is pending that affects the fire service, what is beneficial and what is detrimental, and call your Representatives and Senators. Join the Congressional Fire Services Institute and support our efforts to get help from the government in furthering our mission. Participate at the National Fire Academy and make sure your elected officials know how valuable it is to us.

While we speak here on Firehouse Zen about change and progress, tradition is good when it comes down to the meaningful things, like our history and our preservation of the courage and sacrifice of our brothers who have gone before us. One of the beautiful traditions of our service is the recognition of a job well done and award of something meaningful to most of us. I knew this method of conveying our certificate upon us was going to happen, so it wasn’t a surprise. And regardless, the best thing I honestly took away from this experience was the friendship and the sharing with some of the finest people I will ever know, which in and of itself is one of the best traditions of our job. But over the last ten years, the current method of awarding you your certificate says to me that our government thinks so much of our efforts that they wad up a certificate in a cardboard tube and ship it off.

What do we need to do to end this and other shots at the fire service? Get involved and show them we are here. We need to work together and stop shooting ourselves in our collective feet in order to agree on some basic principles and move forward. We need to agree on at least some things, and put them out there, and not pull everything off the table when our pet project doesn’t get funded. We need to work together as a team, and get our government to understand that we will not be going away anytime soon.

Posted by Michael "Mick" Mayers on November 19, 2009 • Filed under: change, DHS, FEMA, Fire Rescue Topics, fire service, Firefighter Nation, Funding & Staffing, government, leadership, motivation, National Fire Academy, politics, professionalism • Tagged: activism, Biden, change, congress, congressional fire services institute, education, executive fire officer, FEMA, fire service, government, Hilton Head Island, Homeland Security, leadership, management, National Fire Academy, Onieal, politics, representative, senate, US Fire Administration

Use of Faith-Based NGOs As Disaster Response Partners

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For some of the new readers here, not only is Firehouse Zen about enlightened leadership, it is about management issues and creative solutions to ongoing problems in the emergency service industry. If you are a long-time reader, you may recall our discussions in the past regarding disaster response and credentialing, and in an effort to dip back into some of the issues of disaster management, I’d like to point you all toward the excellent website of the Natural Hazards Research Center at the University of Colorado – Boulder.

In their latest issue of Disaster Research, there is an article regarding government response and recovery and the increase in governmental partnerships with faith- and community-based organizations to assist in cleaning up catastrophes. In the recent past, we have seen ineffective response from certain portions of government that have assumed responsibility for this service at the local, state and federal levels. I don’t think anyone who works in our field and is taken seriously about their views on the subject feels like “government” alone can deliver an entire package of assistance to a disaster-stricken community. However, there is plenty of debate about how to most effectively coordinate assistance in the wake of a calamity.

Of all things in our industry, our frustration with failure of some politicians to continue to apply heat (and funding) to the problem BEFORE disaster strikes is only compounded by the political “outrage” when disaster occurs and we are accused with not properly preparing in advance (still with limited or no budget or legislative action on our behalf).

In an answer to some of these challenges, some state and local governments are forming coalitions that guide organizations providing emergency response. Missouri, Florida, Texas, and a few others have, according to a recent article in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, begun to develop alliances between emergency managers and NGOs.

There are many discussions regarding the potential for blurred church and state separation which can’t even begin to be adequately addressed in a short blog post. However, those issues aside, NGOs over the past decade have been efficiently providing disaster recovery assistance and have been successful in finding resources that governmental bodies can’t seem to scare up.

This discussion doesn’t also begin to factor in the entire over-reliance on “outside” help in the event of disaster. This was a point made by Alan Kirschenbaum in earlier works referring to the growth of the disaster response community that seem to be related to the decline in perception of individual responsibility for preparedness.

While this all has some serious discussion ahead of it, I have less of a problem with this type of assistance than I do with pseudo-qualified responders self deploying to events with little or no capability or self-sufficiency. I think there are plenty of avenues for a person with altruistic motives to get involved with an organized response; it’s the poseurs and con-men I’m interested in keeping away.

I’m open to some observations on the subject. I think if managed correctly, these NGOs have access to resources currently limited to those of us charged with response, and we should take advantage of creative partnerships, as the organizations I am affliliated have already done. Look around your community and identify capability that lies outside of the conventional response. You’ll be surprised by the resources that lie out there and I think you’ll find that instead of spending essential funds on assets that already exist, you can find better uses for that money in areas that are currently underserved.

Posted by Michael "Mick" Mayers on November 4, 2009 • Filed under: Command & Leadership, credentialing, DHS, Fire Rescue Topics, Firefighter Nation, Funding & Staffing, government, leadership, Major Incidents, National Fire Academy, NIMS, planning, politics, revolution, Special Operations, US&R, USAR • Tagged: change, credentialing, disaster, education, FEMA, fire service, government, Hilton Head Island, incident management, leadership, management, motivation, NIMS, politics, SC-TF1, South Carolina, US&R

Distance Separates Us

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Distance separates us. Of course it does, you are probably thinking. That’s not that much of a revelation. But distance separates us all the more so because by being distant, or more so, by not being alike, it also indicates a schism between you and I. The fire and emergency services are united in our history, but at some point we evolved into many different representations of the same idea: service to others. As to whether that space can be broached or not is the big question. While we can all claim brotherhood and a desire to do this job, whether we are career or not; whether we are urban or not; whether we provide EMS or not; and a whole host of other differences keep us from effectively saying “We Are One”.

Over the past decade, the efforts Dave Iannone and Chris Hebert have put together brought a lot of us old crusties to the digital age. These innovative experiences took firefighters (and non-firefighters) from around the world and brought us closer together. But while this has been a good thing because I now know and can better understand the perspectives of a volunteer firefighter in Moosejaw, AK as well as a firie in New South Wales, Australia, it is saddening because I see some of what I had hoped not to see.

Although I was first promoted to officer rank in 1985, I’m afraid I wasn’t a very good officer. Sure I could run tactics and make sure people were doing their jobs, but I lacked maturity and looking back on it, depth. In 1988, my eyes were opened. During a weekend seminar on Fire Service Leadership, Chief Harry Diezel (Ret, Virginia Beach Fire Department) opened my eyes and put me on the path that I have since continued along. Twenty years ago, this guy said that networking was one of the single most important elements of leading. Yes, twenty years ago.

I quickly found out what firefighting was and was not about. In that one class, I realized that there was firefighting, there was being a fire officer, and there was fire service leadership. While I never had the opportunity to work with Chief Diezel, his words have never left me. Although some of his ideas still are met with resistance from some of our colleagues and did that weekend from people in the class, the ideas have only been confirmed over the years to me as his concept of emergency service delivery made Virginia Beach one of the model departments of the Eighties. Over the years, people like Howard Cross, a legendary instructor at the National Fire Academy, have also reinforced those concepts to me.

Like these individuals did for me, I have always wanted to do for others. Firehouse Zen is part of that legacy. I want others to look at this job with renewed perspective, to comprehend, rather than simply demonstrate knowledge. To understand, rather than to just repeat memorized information. To seek alternatives, to improve, and to be about positive change rather than to be about the status quo.

FireEMSBlogs.com is just a natural evolution of sharing this body of knowledge. Dave and Chris have done a tremendous job to bring us together and to allow us to share experiences, to bond, and to better appreciate the situation each of us must face daily. We have, however, light years ahead of us and so long as we refuse to acknowledge that our differences are actually a good thing, we will never be united.

To effect change, we must seek to understand. To understand, we have to be presented with knowledge and that knowledge comes from others. As the internet bridges the miles and brings our world closer together, we are finding that we share a lot more than we thought we had in common, and yet we also find ourselves unwilling to accept the views of others and even assault those who happen to share a contrarian view. In order to grow, it is imperative that we open our minds and take the tools we are given, and use them to the best advantage. Do us all a favor this year; point a colleague toward some of the networking opportunities out there, especially the one afforded by FireEMSBlogs.com, and tell them that there’s no time like the present to start working toward tomorrow.

Posted by Michael "Mick" Mayers on November 4, 2009 • Filed under: change, Command & Leadership, education, Firefighter Nation, leadership, National Fire Academy, politics, professionalism, revolution, Training & Development • Tagged: change, Diezel, disaster, education, FEMA, fire service, fire training props, government, Hilton Head Island, leadership, management, marketing, motivation, Training

I Wanna Be A Libertarian

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For the most part, I consider myself a Libertarian in that I’d just as soon the government not tell me what to do. In some aspects, I guess, I’m pretty conservative in my values, so I’m a little Republican, and I like the idea of people on welfare getting off of it someday, especially since I had to eat a lot of PBJs and continue to drive a car with 100k+ miles on it to afford the house we live in (but that’s called choosing your priorities). And although I’m all for funding the arts, I’m pretty sure I don’t want to fund anything called “Piss Christ”.

Socially, I guess, I’m pretty Democratic. While I want people off of welfare eventually, I’m also realistic in that there are people who really need help. I also believe that just because I believe in certain things, others do not. Just as soon as I would never force anything down your throat, though, I’d just as soon you didn’t force me to either. So I’m all in favor of saying “One country, under God” and courthouse lawn manger scenes, in season, of course.

Our government should help when it can and stay out of our business when it can not. But when public safety is involved, time and time again the public has shown it can’t be trusted to do what is right for their neighbors, so there are times when the government should really step in and set things straight.

What am I talking about? Well, in Breckenridge, Colorado, an ordinance was passed to create a defensible space between properties. While some people see this as a sane thing to do, others think that it infringes upon their rights. As I see it, it is the right to have highly combustible timber and brush leading right to your home (or your neighbors), and then, I guess, your right to bitch about it when it catches on fire and the fire department is overwhelmed trying to help all the other Libertarians in your neighborhood.

Now, I don’t for a minute think all these people are Libertarians (nor do I care, and the same for any other political affiliation, just bear with me), but there really does come a time when the common good trumps that of your personal rights. Call it a slippery slope, but you know, as much as I embrace your religious rights, I don’t see a problem with being able to see your face when you enter a public building. And I as much as I believe in my First Amendment rights, I think race-baiting and hate speech should be banned, because it is apparent some people lack a certain amount of civility.

When we in emergency services make proposals for public safety, we should always consider the effect we have on individual rights. The decisions we make really do affect those rights, but so long as we are using good logic in doing so, the public has to understand that we need a LITTLE HELP sometimes. If you choose to exercise your right to build right up to the interface, you are going to have to give us a little break when we ask you to cut back the forest from your house a little. When we tell you that you need to leave your home because the fire is heading in your direction, trust me, if I could leave you in place, I would, because frankly, you’re just going to get out there and tie up the highway and gawk and get in my way instead of evacuating anyway, so I’d just as soon leave you there. I do, however, realize that leaving you to burn up in your property, regardless of your individual rights, is going to land me in court because I left you to do what you wanted anyway.

How do we take into consideration individual rights versus the right to protect people from themselves? By educating people, and sometimes that requires bold and candid speech. It is this exact kind of speech that politicians hate, because it shakes up the status quo. So long as the populace is happy, the politicians are happy and it’s a lot less work. When we make decisions to cut back trees or not to respond to calls for help at a certain windspeed during a hurricane, or to evacuate people from harms way, it certainly upsets people and they take that moment to complain.

We have to make the grown-up decisions, though; it’s why we exist. Sometimes it’s best to leave things be, but sometimes you need to point out to people that their decisions could very well result in injuries and fatalities. If people can’t see their way through those choices, then maybe we should just restrict our response to help them when all Hell breaks loose. After all, we wouldn’t want the government to interfere with your life, would we?

Posted by Michael "Mick" Mayers on July 9, 2009 • Filed under: change, customer service, DHS, FEMA, fire service, firefighting, government, insurance, leadership, planning, politics, professionalism, safety • Tagged: Breckenridge, change, Colorado, Democrat, disaster, FEMA, fire service, government, incident management, leadership, Libertarian, management, marketing, politics, Republican, resources, risk reduction, wildland fire

1984

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I woke up very early this morning with some reflections of how the last week has gone and was thinking back to how much easier it was in the “old days”. While the year 1984 has certain significance to many (you know, the book), the year has certain significance for me because it was my last year to be “one of the guys” and in 1985, I earned my first promotion.

In 1984, things were relatively easy. I only had to worry about coming to work and making sure my Captain was okay with the things I did, and making sure I didn’t screw anything up. So long as I did what I was told and tried not to overthink things too much, I could blend in with the team and work together, not worrying too much about how my individual issues affected anyone else.

When I was hired in 1982 I already had some experience in rescue and I was already a certified EMT. So in 1984, with my prior experience and the two additional years, I had some credibility that I brought to the team. My job was to drive the squad, which in our department, carried all the rescue and medical tools we had in those days. If we had a structure fire, I would slide over to drive the ladder truck instead and my officer would drive the squad. The rest of the crew was on the engine. That was pretty much the extent of my decisionmaking responsibility.

In 1984, we hadn’t embraced the computer as a tool. Alarm and routine information was entered by hand into the station log book, so one of my most important tools was one of those Bic multi-color pens. Alarms could be entered in red, other stuff in black or blue, and I can’t even remember why we used green, but we did. Now that was technology. Things changed in 1985.

By the end of 1984, we had the beginnings of huge changes. We were adding fire stations and personnel. The numbers of occupancies in our jurisdiction were growing by leaps and bounds. We were going through Fire Chiefs as fast as they could be replaced as our commission was being challenged on issues. We unionized and I was elected the Vice-President of the local.

But my main focus was on the changes in the national industry, because they intrigued me. As the guy who brought in updated rescue technology from my previous department, I struck forward with the effort to train personnel in confined space entry and rope rescue, in advanced extrication techniques and in the techniques used for structural and trench collapses (when I went through Rescue I and II in Montgomery County, PA in 1981, we were creating tripods, gantries, and a-frames from hemp rope and timber, but the technology went through the roof in a matter of four years). I got involved on a deeper level and at times, took a lot of heat for it from my colleagues and my superiors as well (nothing like being teased with “Calling Dr. Mick, calling Dr. Mick” because you decide to get your paramedic; ah, but those were the days).

I talked about Heifetz and Linsky in an earlier post and their observation that with change, there is danger. If you are an agent of change, you will undergo attacks and even character assassination (or ACTUAL assassination: just ask MLK and Gandhi) because you represent a shift from what is comfortable and safe, to unstable and experimental.

Now that we have global access and reach we can share ideas that can both be widely popular and widely challenged. We have a much more diverse audience and what seems to be understood as a logical solution to an issue may not even be feasible in a different culture or under a different circumstance. To us, what may be the obvious might be the unreal. Therefore, it is our responsibility, no matter how surreal the situation, to at least listen and try to comprehend, in an effort to achieve understanding.

That all being said, we all, from our differing viewpoints, carry a responsibility to accept what is right – and by right I mean understood to be realistic and applicable as a result of scientific evaluation and confirmation of our theory, as well as what is right by our fellow man – and not rely on innuendo and supposition. But when we confirm something to be fact, we need to appreciate it for the change it represents, and regardless of our views on the subject, consider embracing change for the sake of doing what is truly right; that is, what is considered efficacious and for the betterment of our fellow human beings.

Just because someone claims to be the expert, or has insinuated that they should be followed as a result of their experience, fails to understand that what is accepted today is not necessarily the reality, nor is it the ultimate. Things change. When someone makes spurious claims, they should back them up with evidence. Evidence isn’t someone saying “this happened”, evidence requires substantiated proof.

Things have changed a lot since 1984. We now have expectations in the emergency service field that require us to challenge the people who say “this is true” not for challenging their authority, but to prove that what it is we take for gospel is correct, and that the service we provide based upon those theories are accurate and for the best of the people we serve. Failing to operate in a transparent manner is only asking for trouble. We have to accept criticism for what it is and understand that if we put emotion aside, there might be a grain of truth in what is being said. By being introspective and realizing our faults, we achieve enlightenment. ‘Nuff said.

Posted by Michael "Mick" Mayers on June 22, 2009 • Filed under: change, credentialing, DHS, FEMA, leadership, officership, politics, professionalism, SAR, US&R, USAR • Tagged: change, credentialing, disaster, education, FEMA, government, incident command, leadership, management, NIMS, opportunity, politics, rescue, research, US&R

The Case for Credentialing – An Opposing View

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I’m distressed that a comment got sent to my spam filter regarding an earlier post and for that I apologize. The poster made the comment that he didn’t think I’d print it. As it is, I would hope by now that readers understand that I welcome opposing views, because it is only by listening to what others have to say that we can grow. Thus, I’m interested in discussing the issues intelligently and understanding the emerging challenges in the emergency service industry. So since the comment got sent to the spam folder, I don’t feel that it was shared with you all, and I wanted to insure we had equal opportunity to present our views. If you have a point to make and it can sway my view, then I encourage it.

First, an excerpt from a letter Mr. Doug Copp sent to my employer:

In his zeal to please some nefarious people at FEMA I believe he has decided than he will promote himself, at my expense..and your town’s expense. I have had a running battle with FEMA for 20 years because they have used major disasters as an opportunity for military and espionage activities while the ‘victim’ country has been in chaos, from the disaster.

As a person who only cares about saving lives..they hate my guts.

Before 911, I was the most experienced rescuer, in the world; since, 911 I have been sick every minute of every day and after 8 years am still being treated by 7 MD Specialists, for my 911 injuries.

This is twisted, perverted and a disgrace that this little man should find it necessary to cause me harm.

How much do I have to suffer? How much abuse do I need to put up with? If he is so twisted…then he should spend his time mutilating small animals and leave me alone.

Then, his comment, which I retrieved from the spam folder:

This is what I submitted to him as a comment, on his blog site. I do not expect that he will have the courage to post it:

http://www.firehousezen.com/2009/05/29/the-case-for-credentialing/

“It is disgusting that my name which was so destroyed by a psychotic, twisted pervert,,,aka Thomopson Lang..owner of the Albuquerque Journal ..because I refused to give him an emergency pass,,not because he was wearing women’s clothes..not because of his disgusting behavior but mainly because he was an evil, evil man..and even more so because some wannabee phony pretend rescuers see me as an easy target..get a life..go credential your phony ass.

My 20 years of selfless volunteering saved the lives of more than 200,000 lives..go see the proof at www.amerrescue.org

<http://www.amerrescue.org/> “

As far as Mr. Copp’s claims that I have offended him in some way, I hope he continues to read this blog and understand that I’m not about divisiveness but about seeking the truth, and as far as I am concerned (and this is my blog) there is a discussion that should be made about the merits and demerits of credentialing. We presented some opposing ideas and we will discuss others as well. But as far as dismissing the idea of credentialing because Mr. Copp feels it goes against him and some of the others out there, well, I’m sorry that he feels this animosity toward me.

Instead of threatening me with a lawsuit, perhaps he can let us all know just what it is he has in the way of scientific evidence defending his points. I’m only interested in discussing the facts. I happen to be opposed to self-deploying groups posing as rescue teams and not showing evidence of having met any recognized consensus standards.

I have nothing to gain from only presenting one point of view here on FHZ. As I said before and I’ll say a thousand times, I don’t blog on duty and I don’t speak for any of the organizations I work for on this blog, so they have nothing to do with anything on here except to serve as good examples of organizations using best practices.

Enjoy and have a nice day.

Posted by Michael "Mick" Mayers on June 18, 2009 • Filed under: change, credentialing, DHS, FEMA, government, leadership, NIMS, politics, professionalism, rescue, SAR, Uncategorized, US&R, USAR • Tagged: change, credentialing, disaster, FEMA, fire service, government, incident management, leadership, NIMS, politics, rescue, US&R

The Case for Credentialing – Answering Your Comments

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I hate to break free in the middle of this series like this, but there were some comments made that I wanted to discuss. Since one is on one post and the other is on another post, I felt the need to tie them together and talk really quickly to the issue.

On June 15, Steve said:

Yes, credentials would help but WHO is the final authority on issuing them? WHO sets the standards? How are you going to avoid the age old paid vs volunteer bias in any credentialing agency?

My quick answer: I am against the bias in the career vs. volunteer. If you can meet the standard, you can meet the standard. I think there is plenty of room for volunteers, especially in disaster response. So some career guy is going to tell me my docs can’t be part of the team because they aren’t career guys somewhere? And I have said in regard to SC-TF1, where I do have some pull, if one person in a one-station volunteer department down the road wants to be part of our team, we need to let him if he meets our criteria (background check, physical agility, etc.) As Ray Wilkinson, our past Director once said, “I can teach someone to break rocks, what I can’t teach is desire.” If someone wants to do the job, and goes through the requirements to meet a position, why should I care if he’s a member of FDNY or of Acme Fire Department? So Steve, I’m with ya, brother.

On June 16, Kevin said:

I live in a state where there is no agency tasked with certifying or credentialing Search and Rescue dogs. I have seen (many times) where someone will buy lights for their POV and load their pet dog into the truck and call themselves a SAR team! If I didn’t know better, I might think all volunteer SAR teams were like this. However, there are a number of excellent non-governmental SAR teams in my state as well. I myself and a member of a volunteer K9 team.

Kevin goes on to say that they have a volunteer K9 SAR team because there isn’t an existing asset and law enforcement has asked for it. Well, Kevin, as they say in Australia, “good on ya”. You have identified a need and you have tried to meet that need. No one else has that asset and it sounds like you have tried to do a good job of using accepted industry standards to meet the need. THAT is good stuff.

However, I just went to discuss the concept of “those of us who want to do this right, but there are people with authority screwing things up so we can’t get in”, and realized that the post I wrote for that last week never posted as scheduled! So that is now on the post schedule and I hope it does discuss some of the feelings I personally have in that regard.

On June 16th, SAR Volunteer also commented:

I totally agree with your points. Please understand this are a handful of small volunteer K9 SAR teams in the state of SC who do NOT self deploy, do NOT work for anyone but the proper state or municipal authorities, train hard, carry their own liability and workmenscomp insurance, align their standards with NIMS Resource Typing, and are working to ensure they meet the proposed credentialing requirements.

And to you too, SAR Vollie, I applaud your efforts. I think there is a place for the small volunteer K9 teams at the table as well, if they meet a standard. Let’s take SC-TF1 again for example. I have said over and over again, if we have people out there who want to do this stuff, let’s get them involved. But not being a canine guy, I have some difficulty understanding some of the things the canine types are telling me. So when I get national experts telling me one thing, and some guy with Rover in a pickup truck (or Expedition, as it were) saying his dog can detect live scent, cadavers, lost pets, and get a beer and catch a frisbee, understand that I am skeptical. And the self-deploying thing is just purely bad in my book, but that’s a whole other issue as well that doesn’t stop with canine SAR teams, and DOES include career guys, departments, and organized teams, etc. Frankly, if you (SAR Vollie) or anyone else in SC have dogs trained to find LIVE HUMANS in collapsed or damaged buildings, and feel like you can meet a standard, send me an e-mail. I’d love to hear from you. But anyone who calls themselves “Urban Search and Rescue” and they are running around doing wilderness searches, well, go back to my box of rocks comment. Be what you say you are.

Anyway, I hope this illustrates some of the issues considered so far and we’ll get back on track with the next post (which should have published before the last one- go figure). Please continue with your comments. I certainly appreciate your perspectives. Stay safe.

Posted by Michael "Mick" Mayers on June 16, 2009 • Filed under: change, command, credentialing, DHS, education, FEMA, government, leadership, National Fire Academy, NIMS, officership, politics, professionalism, rescue, safety, SAR, Uncategorized, US&R, USAR • Tagged: change, credentialing, disaster, education, FEMA, incident command, incident management, leadership, NIMS, politics, resources, SC-TF1, South Carolina, US&R

The Case for Credentialing – Opportunists and Profiteers

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SC-TF1 in Chalmette, LA during Katrina ops.

And then, there are the profiteers. My intent with Firehouse Zen is not to use it as a place to vent, but as a place to enlighten. Venting may be entertaining for some, but for the most part, productive it isn’t.

So let’s talk about why opportunists would be against credentialing, which should probably be obvious. The reason is because for most of them, it would require them to validate their claims of expertise, and thus exposed as not having the skills or knowledge, would blunt their mercenary motives for financial reward.

These are not “buffs” or “whackers”. I have heard some of my colleagues use the term “buff” when referring to these groups, but I feel that this gives the real fire buff community a bad name, since there are so many out there who genuinely have a deep interest in the fire service but are unable for whatever reason to gain membership, (or just don’t care to be IN the fire service) and many really do contribute in their own way either by helping operationally, or contributing to the body of knowledge about the history of the fire service. And although I wonder if those who choose to call themselves “whackers” really get that we aren’t laughing with them, we are laughing at them, the “whacker” mindset might be annoying and mostly about self-esteem issues; they act on more of an emotional reward for their ego, and still don’t come close to the opportunists I am referring to.

Opportunists are those who profit financially from being associated with response to a disaster. How does this work? Those who attempt to profit by defrauding the response community do so either by direct effect or by diverting attention from legitimate organizations.

Profiteering also comes in the form of using the event to establish credibility, despite the individuals questionable contribution toward the outcome (and again, detracting from the actual attempts to mitigate the event), which also often comes through self-deployment to an event. In doing so, these groups divert attention from the real responders. While they were taking short-cuts, the ones who did all the hard work of meeting requirements and responsibilities given to them by their legal authority were not able to get the legitimate message out. Likewise, these individuals and groups intentionally or unintentionally siphon off donations and community support from groups that legitimately could use that support.

In one way or another, these opportunists find ways to profit from their involvement in the disaster, be it reinforcing their claims for injury or from “credibility”, despite their lack of official involvement. It should really go without saying that credentialing will help keep these people away; if forced to produce a recognized credential, most of these people would have been stopped at the door. In the case of others, it would allow us to at least force them to affiliate themselves with a legally authorized responder, hopefully requiring them to undergo some background check and examination of their reason for obtaining credentials (“Why do you want to be a disaster responder?”). But by requiring the credential it also causes them to be placed in a group of some sort for accountability and would keep them from wandering off to do their own thing.

I wrote an article in 2002 for withthecommand.com discussing even back then, accountability in regard to disaster resource management. Accountability doesn’t stop at causing you to know where people are, as you know, it keeps people from freelancing and doing things outside of the operational plan, as well as eliminating the unauthorized from accessing the scene. Control and command of an incident requires that you isolate and deny entry to anybody that doesn’t have the authority to be in that hot zone. These types of people clearly have no business being where they are and the negative things they bring to this type of incident don’t even begin to scratch the surface against requiring credentials, in fact, they reinforce the argument.

In the next installment, we’ll talk about the final area of concern with credentialing, which really isn’t a valid argument against credentialing, but the concern of who determines who gets credentials and how they go about measuring the KSAs of people who genuinely desire to help. After that, we’ll talk about the pros and cons and discuss other initiatives that also benefit from credentialing.

Posted by Michael "Mick" Mayers on June 7, 2009 • Filed under: change, command, credentialing, DHS, FEMA, fire service, NIMS, planning, politics, SAR, technology, Uncategorized, US&R, USAR • Tagged: change, credentialing, disaster, education, FEMA, fire service, government, incident management, politics, risk reduction, US&R

Update to the Series – Spontaneous Bystanders Unite

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I guess I had an idea ahead of its time, even if it was only 48 hours ahead.:

There are indeed a few challenges with this kind of emergent response, problems that if resolved, would go a long way toward goodwill with the community in general (it seems like everyone’s got some kind of beef with FEMA in every disaster, despite their extraordinary efforts to educate people that they need to be more self-sufficient and less reliant on the government), and provide resources to the jurisdictionally responsible agencies that seem to be strapped for bodies when the big one rolls around to their neighborhood.

What am I talking about? This announcement, from FEMA’s Craig Fugate, which came out in today’s Washington Post, advocates the idea that the public could effectively be used. What a concept.

Posted by Michael "Mick" Mayers on June 4, 2009 • Filed under: change, command, credentialing, DHS, FEMA, fire service, government, motivation, NIMS, planning, politics, professionalism, SAR, US&R, USAR • Tagged: change, credentialing, FEMA, government, incident management, NIMS, US&R

The Case for Credentialing – Organizations That Need to Go Away

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HHIFRD Truck 6 working a grinder.

Here’s one for you; a subject near and dear to my heart and the reason why we have standards. As a matter of clearing up any legal challenges, I have to make an official statement here as a result of some of the positions I hold:

My opinions and views as expressed here and throughout the Firehouse Zen blog site, are not, nor shall ever be, an official statement representing the Town of Hilton Head Island, Hilton Head Island Fire and Rescue, the State Urban Search and Rescue Alliance or its board, the State of South Carolina and the South Carolina Emergency Response Task Force, the National Fire Protection Association, and the committees on which I serve. If I have missed someone, I’m sure I’ll hear about it. And if I do have something official to say from any of them, it’s not likely going to come out on here, but you’ll be the first to know if I do.

The reason for all the disclaimers? Because I happen to work with a few bodies who get taken to task when we start talking about making people do things they should be doing anyway. When we do these things, you know, make standards, the inner libertarian in some people comes out with a vengeance. I mean, really, who do I think I am, telling people that you should have a means to measure what you are and how you do it?

Well, you can begin by blaming organizations and people who currently hold jurisdictional responsibilities and fail, for whatever reason, to adhere to consensus standards. Why is the failure to uphold a consensus standard such a big deal? Well, first off, when we break down what standards really do, they are really more of a definition than anything else. Yes, a standard can be a way to tell you how to get to that defined place, or standards may be in place to define how something should be developed or occur, but the case of professional qualifications and those operations and training standards, the standards say, “you must achieve THESE things to be THIS”. It is a label.

It doesn’t hurt that there are people or groups or things that want to wear that label, for whatever reason. In most communities, people or groups or things require a label. The label is there to make asking for that thing easier, but it also tells you what it is you are getting, especially if the standard has any acceptance at all. If you went to the store and bought a box of Cheerios, and you opened it up at home and it was a box of rocks, I’ll bet you wouldn’t be happy. But at least at the store, when you picked up that box of what should be Cheerios, and it was full of rocks, the weight would probably give it away that you had a problem. The difference is, when I’m at a command post in the middle of Disasterville, if you tell me you are a box of Cheerios and the box of rocks shows up, how am I supposed to know that until you get there and I can see it for myself?

Then of course there’s that little thing called negligence that can be found at the intersection of: 1) duty; 2) breach; 3) causation; and 4) damages. Why do we care? Standards are created to define what a competent person would do. It defines their capability and provides not only the user and the teacher and everyone else an objective benchmark to measure against, but provides the lawyers a ruler to hold up against a case and say, “was what happened here considered to be an industry standard?”

But before we kill all the lawyers (I have friends who are lawyers and they’re actually nice guys, or at least these guys are), let’s pause for a little putting ourselves in someone else’s shoes. I think I said it before in another blog, but it merits repeating. A well respected South Carolina jurist once said this to a group I was with about lawyers:

“Lawyers are like vultures – most people look upon the vulture as a vile creature, eating carcasses and garbage, reprehensible to watch. However, if there were no vultures, think about all of the roadkill that would rot on the highways, in the forests, and elsewhere. Vultures take care of the messes we find distasteful. If people would just get along and deal with each other in a civil manner, we wouldn’t need lawyers.” (Judge Thomas Kemmerlin, in a Leadership Hilton Head session)

Standards, too, are just that; if people (and subsequently, organizations) did their job the way it SHOULD be done, we wouldn’t need them (standards, that is). But there are plenty of people and organizations who don’t. And like I said, looking at standards as some sort of evil developed to help the legal community is actually a pretty cynical way of thinking. The best (but certainly not the ONLY reason) for standards are that they give us a benchmark to measure against, they provide guidance for where to shoot for, they allow us to call an apple an apple and an orange an orange. And this is where the discussion comes in regarding credentialing, and those agencies that should go away.

In all of this, the credentialing reinforces the idea that you put on the label, and you are what you say you are. I don’t mean to suggest for a minute that a firefighter from Ajax Fire Department in Podunk, Saskatchewan has the same experience as a firefighter working a busy truck in North Philadelphia, but if they both carry credentials saying they met a minimum standard, at least you can trust that if they are both certified and credentialed through the same standard, that they both will be able to tell you which end of the ladder goes to the roof. Does one have more firepower than the other? You bet. But we all at least know they started out on the same footing.

Of course, we have the organizations who are made up of people who are not comfortable with credentialing. The agencies who insist that their organization is the rightful responder to a given incident, by way of statute or whatever legal standing that empowers them. They then, for the means of deception, because that’s really what it is – you are deceiving others or deceiving yourself – you make the claim that your group/jurisdiction/etc. is equipped, trained and has a plan. At least that’s what you do when you declare, “I am Task Force so-and-so”, or put a patch on your jacket, or a sticker on your car, or wear the t-shirt, and then open your doors for business. And you aren’t.

Case in point:

Years ago, I was given the responsibility to do some research about the claims of an agency who purported to be an “urban search and rescue task force”. In fact, there were two really interesting statements made to me (and even put in writing): ”FEMA said that when the next teams are brought into the system, we will be the next one”, and “We finished in the top two teams that will be brought into the FEMA US&R system”. So it was my responsibility, as given to me by an emergency management agency, to find out just what it was and wasn’t that this organization could really do. To be short and sweet, it only took me a half-day. Despite the presence of a patch, I was unable to find a plan, funding, or a cohesive legally authorizing document to even declare they were what they were.

When I was serving in Horry County, SC during Hurricane Floyd, and before my current status as a pointer-of-fingers, I was impressed even then at the variations in type and kind that came waltzing into the staging areas. Why is that a problem? Just for example, let’s say that you have declared you and your pound hound a “US&R Canine Task Force”. You then put it on the side of your car along with red lights and a siren, and you quickly get to be the guest of honor at several 11:00 news shows, saying that this is your label. Well, if I’ve got ten stories compacted into about three, and I declare an incident, and I’m on the RECIEVING end, I’m gonna be pretty pissed when I call for a “US&R Canine Task Force” (whatever that is, anyway), and a guy, Fido, and a well-lit vehicle show up. Because right off the bat, and I’m no genius, but a task force is at LEAST a multiple of SOMETHING and if this label is attached to an asset, then I am at least expecting a pick-up truck and maybe another dog (maybe).

So that label, then, well what does it get you? Well, a label is only as good as the standard that defines it. I’m not going to beat the old drum on here (it’s been roundly beaten), it would seem to me that if you (a credentialing authority) had some agency that got your highest mark and that agency was indisputably so far off the track of using modern incident management, currently accepted strategies and tactics, personnel accountability, etc., well, you’d probably change things pretty quickly to give your credential some real meaning. I mean, if you don’t, it pretty much points the measurement out to be unreliable, doesn’t it? But that measuring stick continues to exist in the same form, and yes, people are trying to change it, but the progress is slow. You tell me- what kind of damage does that do to the argument in support of credentialing when currently existing measurement and validation processes we commonly use are such a joke?

There are plenty of organizations out there who claim to be doing the job that they were tasked to do, and they are simply squandering the taxpayers’ funds. There are organizations out there who don’t get a dime of tax money that are taking up space and interfering with trained and equipped response assets. There are people out there who wear a sleeve of patches saying they are this and that and they’re the last person I’d pick in a kickball game, much less to extricate my family out of a wreck. So why do I want these groups to just go away? Because there are those of us who genuinely want to provide the best service to my community (and yours, if I am deployed there) and when these clowns show up, they’re wasting my time and yours. When I call for a “Type II Collapse Rescue Team” as defined by NIMS, then I’m expecting two six-man squads with a team leader and a logistics officer to show up, with equipment, trained and self-sufficient to a point. If you show up with three bubbas in a pick-up with a tool box, just save me the energy of telling you to leave. If we had credentialing, it would be easy to say, “THIS is what I am”, but right now, we have to take your word for it.

Who is against credentialing so far? Well, the “Good Samaritan” has been, or at least many have made that satement clear to me. I’m of the opinion they shouldn’t be worried about it because we really SHOULD incorporate them in somehow, but they’ve got to understand that if we can’t be sure of who they are or what they can do, we can only trust them to do things like direct traffic or man a chow line, and not run a track-hoe.

Secondly, we have the people and agencies who are against credentialing because it’s going to point out to everyone that they aren’t exactly what they purport themselves to be, or are measuring themselves with an inappropriate, or ancient, or idiotic standard. Like I said with them, they need to get with the program, do the right thing, and either step up to the 21st Century, or get out. If you are advertising yourself to be a box of Cheerios, be the tastiest and crispest Cheerios anyone ever poured into a bowl, and not a box of rocks.

In the next installment, let’s talk about the thrill seekers and glory hounds. If you thought I was hard on this last group, guess again.

Posted by Michael "Mick" Mayers on June 4, 2009 • Filed under: change, command, credentialing, DHS, FEMA, fire service, government, officership, politics, professionalism, revolution, SAR, Uncategorized, US&R, USAR • Tagged: change, credentialing, disaster, FEMA, fire service, government, leadership, politics, resources

The Case for Credentialing – The Spontaneous Bystander

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First, we have the genuine thing, the spontaneous bystander, who sees a need for action, then does something about it. Rescue911 commented on the story of the Good Samaritan and how a traveler, with no reason to do so other than to help his fellow man, went out of the way to assist another. This lends a certain amount of credibility to the discussion that nothing should prohibit people who wish to help others in their time of need. Now realize, of course, when I am referring to these individuals, I am referring to people who just have a desire to help their neighbors and do the right thing.

Quarantelli discusses the social aspects of the emergent response of spontaneous bystanders in Katrina, but also in the Guadalajara gasoline spill and fire. There is also discussion on the subject by Kirschenbaum that the current philosophy of governmental and NGO response to disasters effectively dilutes the response of neighbors and has resulted in an over-reliance on these agencies to provide assistance. After all, man has been besieged by disasters since time immemorial and it’s not like they had FEMA to come to the rescue back in biblical times.

There’s something very beautiful (albeit, chaotic) in the spontaneous response of the altruistcally motivated. But call me skeptical, I see a lot of response from people who claim that altruism is their motive, but I’m not seeing that generosity of spirit coming out when they’re busy operating video cameras to sell tape to the media or taking souvenirs, rather than manning a sand-bag line. More about THAT kind of person later.

There are indeed a few challenges with this kind of emergent response, problems that if resolved, would go a long way toward goodwill with the community in general (it seems like everyone’s got some kind of beef with FEMA in every disaster, despite their extraordinary efforts to educate people that they need to be more self-sufficient and less reliant on the government), and provide resources to the jurisdictionally responsible agencies that seem to be strapped for bodies when the big one rolls around to their neighborhood.

Let’s step down a wee bit and look at it from the perspective of the first-due engine arriving at the scene of a water rescue. Let’s even go further to relieve the complication of the situation, and let’s say this is a static water body and it’s just one person involved. Now I understand that the vast majority of those of you reading the are responders, so bear with me as I educate those who are not.

If, as the officer of the first arriving fire apparatus on scene, we have a single person in need of assistance in a pond (or lagoon as we call them here on Hilton Head Island), it’s really just a cut-and-dried approach to the situation. Providing we have the resources (water rescue equipment, trained and prepared personnel), it’s a matter of assessing the scene, determining the problem, solving and planning a solution, and putting the solution into action.

Our problem, however, is that more often than not, it isn’t that easy. In a lot of cases, when we roll up, there are people in the water trying to make a rescue. In a lot of cases, one or two of these people are now ALSO in distress. There are bystanders who are interfering with the operation because they don’t understand that standing for a second and looking over the scene for additional hazards is necessary so that we ourselves don’t also become part of the problem (“WHY AREN’T YOU DOING SOMETHING?!!!”). There are those who parked their vehicle in our way so they could get a better look. These days there are people video taping so they can sell it to the media or even better, catch you doing something wrong. Without beating this horse too much, suffice it to say that there are a whole lot of other things going on here.

Now how, you might ask, does this apply to me as a spontaneous responder? Well, the video taping and the access issues aside (you are a Good Samaritan, after all), let’s go to that first issue: those of you in the water. Think for a moment, while you are in front of your computer, why this person got into trouble to begin with. It might very well mean that they can’t swim. It might be, however, that there is another danger you don’t see. Thus the need for experienced and equipped responders who can provide an effective rescue. There is an oft-quoted saying in the confined space rescue community, that 50% of the victims in confined space emergencies are the first responders. These are often well-intentioned, but less-than-educated or undisciplined responders who failed to take into account the dangers associated with space entry themselves.

My whole reason for saying this is that while most of us in the response community can certainly appreciate the bystander response to an emergency, there are cases upon cases in every aspect of disaster and technical rescue response where the spontaneous bystander response in and of itself became an additional rescue mission for us on our arrival.

So, how can the person who doesn’t have a desire to be part of an organized response help? Take CPR and first aid courses. Attend a seminar on what to do in a disaster. Know that there are other ways to help (“throw, tow, row” come to mind BEFORE “go”). Put your name on a volunteer reserve list or call your local jurisdiction and ask if there is some way to help if needed. But more importantly than anything, when you are inclined to go and help, if the legally authorized incident commander (or their designee) gives you an assignment, no matter how mundane, it is what they DO need done for the management of the incident. You may not understand or appreciate the IC’s request, but in our eyes, there may very well be a method of allowing you to contribute at your level of expertise and to permit your contributions without adding to the complexity of the situation (when something goes wrong and you aren’t equipped or prepared).

This all being said, in times of disaster, people do want to help and the response community has to be proactive enough to have a mechanism for channeling the energy of these responders. The big issue in my eyes is to make sure people know in advance what they can do, create programs to educate lay responders, and tap them when you can to promote interest. Furthermore, it is a good practice to identify a place they can report to and get information on them, credential them to the extent possible, and assign them according to their quickly-identified expertise.

I will tie this into the argument about credentialing later, but this is the first discussion regarding the “interested parties” against the argument for credentialing, so be on the lookout for the next post. Thanks and feel free to comment or help illustrate your view on the subject.

Posted by Michael "Mick" Mayers on June 2, 2009 • Filed under: change, credentialing, DHS, education, FEMA, fire service, government, leadership, professionalism, rescue, safety, SAR, US&R, USAR • Tagged: credentialing, education, FEMA, fire service, government, incident management, leadership, politics, rescue, risk reduction, US&R

The Case For Credentialing – The Argument

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SC-TF1 in Chalmette, September 2005

As discussed in the last post, there are those who are against credentialing, for their own reasons. Because I have had plenty of discussions about the subject, I think I have the discussions channeled into four groups (and if you have a different argument, let me know, because I don’t want to miss anything on the subject). I plan to talk about each of these in a little more depth, but I wanted to at least put the parameters of the argument out there.

First, we have the genuine thing, the spontaneous bystander, who sees a need for action, then does something about it. The discussion I have heard so far from this camp is that there should be nothing that would stand in the way of people who just have a desire to help their neighbors and do the right thing. Quarantelli discusses the social aspects of emergent response from spontaneous bystanders in Katrina, but also in the Guadalajara gasoline spill and fire. Plain ol’ people like every other neighbor you ever had saved lives, and were not agents of the government, had no training, and only did so in the effort to help others. There’s something very beautiful in that, but call me skeptical, I see a lot of response from people who claim that is their motive, but I’m not seeing that altruism coming out when they’re out operating the video camera or taking souvenirs, rather than manning a sand-bag line. More about THAT kind of person later.

We also have the disaffected group/person I call the “outsider”. Having been one on a few occasions, I can certainly empathize with their cause, but I don’t necessarily sympathize with their way of handling things all the time. Often, these are people who have a lot of training, or maybe come from somewhere where they had a lot of training and experience, and the place they are now in life won’t make room to allow them in. There are dozens of reasons we will discuss, but there are also some issues regarding the credentialing side of things that would STRENGTHEN their position if they were in fact, truly qualified but being marginalized.

Then there are those who are currently the jurisdictional responder but are afraid the light of truth will expose that their organization/agency is not following industry standards, or that they are not ready, or are failing in any number of reasons. These people really don’t have much sympathy from me in regard to their argument against credentialing. However, there might be some discussion that merits a look. I’ll reserve my judgement for now.

And finally, there are the thrill and glory seekers. They might be there for the attention, they might be there for the notch in their gun, or they may be there to profit by defrauding the response community. So as of now, this is where I stand and these are the arguments I want to discuss at first. There are in some, compelling ideas. There are in the others, no possible way you’ll be able to get me to support their theory. But we’ll talk about them and I’d love to get your thoughts on the subject. See you in a few.

Posted by Michael "Mick" Mayers on May 30, 2009 • Filed under: command, credentialing, DHS, FEMA, General, Media Relations, NIMS, planning, politics, professionalism, rescue, safety, USAR • Tagged: change, credentialing, disaster, FEMA, government, incident management, kind, NIMS, rescue, type, US&R

Multiplicity of Command

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How many more times does disaster have to strike before responders finally learn the lesson of the need for unified command? How many times do agencies need to experience a tug-of-war over resources, slow response to needs due to poor inter-agency communication, and lousy coordination all because the “powers that be” refuse to put their egos aside and agree to play nicely together?

As evidenced by disaster after disaster, when jurisdictions experiencing wide-spread disaster fail to work together to coordinate, their problems become exacerbated.

I know there are plenty of responders out there who have their own little bit of heartburn over NIMS. Sometimes it is a little too clunky, and the feelings have been documented by researchers like Buck, Trainor and Aguirre. Decision-making in disasters has been a problem for long before we began to study disaster management. An interesting paper by Thomas Drabek in the 1983 International Journal of Mass Emergencies and Disasters, “Alternative Patterns of Decisionmaking in Emergent Disasters“, indicated several qualities found in disasters that influenced decision-making. The disasters were multi-organizational in that they exceeded the capabilities of locals and thus required outside assistance. The disasters had a diverse array of resources needed, therefore there was much in the way of technical understanding that needed expert overview. There were “loose couplings”, in that the players often had little to no interaction prior to the event taking place, therefore unfamiliarity with personalities and capabilities. The organization that emerged from the disaster grew over time, often overwhelming the initial responders. Finally, the disasters still retained much in the way of local control and for whatever reason, the AHJ maintained that control even when faced with being overwhelmed by the incident.

I found the last point to be an interesting one; while in my opinion it is important that the AHJ retain control over an incident, the incident commander must have the courage and the intelligence to determine when and at what point the incident is overwhelming his/her ability to manage the incident, and to not be afraid of developing a unified command. With rare exception, local managers are generally lacking in the experience of confronting a managerial problem of this complexity, and instead of riding it out and insisting everything is “just fine”, they need to reach out to the assistance being offered from regional and state (and federal authorities, if indicated) to provide advice and resources to bring the suffering of their community to bear. Failing to do so is tantamount to abandoning your community.

The basics of NIMS are sound; the principal tenets revolving around division of labor and the unity of command are borne out on a daily basis on firegrounds and every other kind of emergency we can think of. Multiple “commands” at a large, wide-area incident, absent the coordination of a local emergency operations center and a more centralized command structure, will only end up in the waste of valuable resources, time, and patience. One unified incident command managing several Area Commands works. Doing so will minimize the confusion and add to the proper allocation of resources, and insure that the overall incident is managed.

When you don’t play the game, you are saying that it is your world, and we’re all just living in it. I realize the intense pressure of having to deal with a rapidly deteriorating condition and the inability, sometimes, to just get your hands around it. When I have had this happen, I have found that sometimes its best to take a step back, look over the situation, and take it one bite at a time. But when you have entrenched yourself and refuse to plan in advance for disasters, thinking that you are going to handle everything yourself and that your community doesn’t need help from the outside, well, you are setting yourself up for a fall. And when you stray from the basics of incident management, something will eventually give.

Don’t be afraid to let others help, especially in areas where you may not be as experienced. If you have resources being offered to you to help manage things, consider them a tool to use, not a crutch. And realize that in the face of a major disaster, it’s not just about you; your community has neighbors and they too may need assistance. It’s a good idea to work with them ahead of time so you know where everyone is coming from. Realize that all resources are limited and that’s a good reason to be talking with everyone involved, because each of these stakeholders have a lot to contribute, but as stakeholders, they also have a lot to lose. A unified command at a major incident is definitely the way to go.

Posted by Michael "Mick" Mayers on April 24, 2009 • Filed under: command, FEMA, fire service, officership, planning, politics, professionalism • Tagged: disaster, FEMA, incident command, incident management, leadership, NIMS, wildland fire

Fugate Nominated to Head FEMA

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I’m always happy to see a fellow firefighter and paramedic do well for themselves, so I was pleasantly surprised to see that Florida Emergency Management Chief Craig Fugate was nominated to head up FEMA. I don’t know him personally, but I think that among the preparedness aspects that he has championed for his state that keeps them ahead of the others, the US&R model he advocated (and with the help of his great team, implemented) is exactly along the lines of the South Carolina plan which I blogged about earlier.

I think he is probably someone I have on my list of people I’d like to meet and talk with however, based on this quote from the AP article:

In a 2006 letter to a high-ranking homeland official, Fugate slammed the department’s review of hurricane preparedness exercises for Florida’s region. “The products are wonderful in terms of color enhancement, texture, physical craftmanship, etc.,” Fugate wrote, sarcastically. But, he said, the reviews did not reflect the work Florida had done to respond to Hurricane Katrina.

Posted by Michael "Mick" Mayers on March 5, 2009 • Filed under: change, DHS, FEMA, fire service, government, leadership, politics, US&R • Tagged: FEMA, government, politics, US&R

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The Case for Credentialing – An Opposing View

The Case for Credentialing – Answering Your Comments

The Case for Credentialing – Opportunists and Profiteers

Update to the Series – Spontaneous Bystanders Unite

The Case for Credentialing – Organizations That Need to Go Away

The Case for Credentialing – The Spontaneous Bystander

The Case For Credentialing – The Argument

Multiplicity of Command

Fugate Nominated to Head FEMA

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