Richard Burmood is a retired U.S. Army officer, now a member of the JTF-CS contract support team. He is a plank holder in JTF-CS and has been with the task force since 1999, when it was established. He now serves as a senior plans analyst in the Joint Staff J5 (Strategic Plans) and heads the Emergency Plans Analysis Team.

Carol Lucas has extensive experience with implementing quality and performance measurement systems. She has been with JTF-CS for one year, serving as a member of the Emergency Plans Analysis Team. She personally designed and developed the prototype database and has been instrumental in shaping many of the information management and continual improvement metrics used to maintain rigor and discipline in the analysis of local and state plans.

The U.S. military has a long history of providing assistance to civil authorities—for example, when requested, assisting federal, state, and local agencies during natural disasters such as hurricanes, floods, and earthquakes. JTF-CS’s role of providing assistance to the lead federal agency after a terrorist incident is in keeping with this tradition. Under the Homeland Security Act of 2002 and Homeland Security Presidential Directive-5, the Department of Homeland Security will coordinate federal response efforts, and the Secretary of Homeland Security is the principal federal official for domestic incident management. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Instruction 3125.01, “Military Assistance to Domestic Consequence Management Operations in Response to a Chemical, Biological, Radiological, Nuclear, or High-Yield Explosive Situation” (3 August 2001), provides operational and policy guidance and instructions for U.S. military forces supporting domestic consequence management operations to prepare for and respond to the effects of a threatened or actual CBRNE situation. Domestic CBRNE consequence management support encompasses both deliberate and inadvertent CBRNE situations, including terrorism, acts of aggression, industrial accidents, and acts of nature. This national instruction directs that JTF-CS will serve as the combatant commander’s action agent for domestic CBRNE consequence management operations in support of the lead federal agency, and through it JTF-CS will plan and integrate DoD’s consequence management support to the lead federal agency for CBRNE situations in the 48 contiguous states.

JTF-CS focuses on understanding the community conditions that influence how best to deal with the effects of a deliberate or accidental CBRNE incident. To more effectively accomplish this, unit members strive to improve their ability to anticipate what emergency measures might be requested of DoD to assist state and local responders. One initiative started by JTF-CS to more accurately anticipate requirements is the review and analysis of local and state emergency operations plans. The opportunity to review these and other emergency plans gives JTF-CS specific knowledge of community capabilities and procedures and an understanding of mutual support agreements with surrounding locales. This results in a win-win situation by reducing crisis action planning assumptions and facilitating more realistic planning with comprehensive response measures.

JTF-CS is conducting military area assessments of the Nunn-Lugar-Domenici Domestic Preparedness Program’s 120 largest cities. This effort does not duplicate planning and training by other federal agencies but simply assists JTF-CS and U.S. Northern Command in planning DoD’s consequence management support to the lead federal agency.

JTF-CS has an ongoing effort to identify and map the geo-location and capabilities of essential domestic infrastructure in potential deployment areas such as police, fire, emergency management services, medical facilities, emergency shelters, transportation infrastructure, key terrain, lines of communications, and population distribution patterns. It also identifies logistics data (military bases; airfields; major facilities; petroleum, oil, and lubricants; etc.) that could support DoD deployment. Hazards such as storage locations for toxic industrial materials and chemicals are also recorded in the mapping database.

Figure 1: Databases used in planning

Although this geospatial informational data, mapped using geographic information system technology, portrays resource information and location very well, it does not explain how a city’s resources will be used. The Emergency Plans Analysis project was established because an assessment of a local area’s emergency operations plans will fill in information voids as to how resources will be organized and used in an emergency response.

These local plans provide the groundwork for JTF-CS in civil support response planning to determine the type of DoD capabilities that might be required locally or regionally. By understanding local capabilities, JTF-CS can develop contingency plans for DoD forces, enabling a quicker response and possessing more refined consequence management capabilities. This could lead to regional response planning, identifying specific units for a particular crisis, and predetermining the logistical efforts necessary to speed deployment in getting them to potential high-threat incident locations. Without this level of detailed planning, JTF-CS can only estimate what capabilities might be required and rely on mass application of force instead of a more surgical application of the right force at the right time.

If there is one truth in the complex world of emergency management, it is that all disasters are local. It is self-evident that those suffering most are the victims in the immediate area of the disaster. Emergency response procedures such as the Incident Management System ensure that local authorities stay in charge of disaster response. Mutual aid agreements, state assistance, and federal response are all forms of support, and state and federal government officials never come in to replace local civil authorities. All DoD policies and procedures are also consistently applied to keep the military in support of civil authorities.

Like all disasters, CBRNE incidents must be considered local. This has a special implication in the realm of terrorism and attack upon the United States. It doesn’t matter what the president, the Secretary of Homeland Security, the Department of Justice, or the Department of Defense is doing to protect the rest of the country—there is only one opportunity to help a community attacked by terrorists, and it must be done right and quickly. Lessons learned, after-action reports, and improved procedures for the next time in some other place do not mean anything to these victims.

Public trust is often identified during CBRNE consequence management planning as a national center of gravity. Terrorists seek to instill fear, want people to distrust authority, and attempt to elevate public concern that the government can’t protect them. To the victims, successful response is measured by timely and appropriate assistance for their problems. They already feel let down by the government because it has failed to protect them from the terrorist. How the victims feel about the adequacy of response will be expressed to the nation through the press and will influence public trust. Therefore, at least a part of DoD’s role in maintaining public trust in the government is to provide timely and appropriate support to the lead federal agency in assisting local and state authorities as they meet the needs of the local victims.

After studying weapons of mass destruction and modeling their effects during exercises, JTF-CS has determined that every CBRNE incident is going to be different.

Even if the same WMD agent is employed on two cities, the impact on the cities will be different. Based on the location of the CBRNE incident, there will be differences that result from the cumulative variables such as weather, terrain, population density, and buildings.

• Climatic conditions. Biological agents are directly affected by the weather—wind direction and speed are significant factors, as are temperature, humidity, and precipitation. Indirect factors such as seasonal population behavior can influence biological agent effectiveness.
• Geographical variables. Geographical terrain barriers influence metropolitan areas’ development and therefore will affect the population’s potential exposure levels to the hazard. Considerations include whether the city is on the seacoast or by another large body of water, channeled in a valley, bounded by hills, or spread out on the plains. Rivers and canals in a city can result in sudden barriers if bridges are destroyed.
• Demographics. The number of people exposed to the WMD effects really determines the size and impact of the CBRNE incident. Population density patterns and variables between day and night populations for business districts will significantly influence casualty counts. Also important in a contagious biological incident is whether the release occurred at something like a sports venue or airport where there is a transient population instead of where most initial victims are residents in the community. Age and personal health can also influence the life-and-death outcome of a CBRNE incident.
• Infrastructure. The dynamic of commercial enterprise and construction—not only building type and style (for example, high-rise offices versus suburban sprawl), but what industries are in the affected area—may result in huge variables during a CBRNE incident. Hazardous material manufacture or storage facilities can contribute to secondary effects. If the metropolitan area is a rail hub or seaport, there will be hazardous cargo that may be targeted or will add to the overall effects.

CBRNE incident response capabilities will vary greatly among cities. As with most community services, they are affected by tax-based funding and demographic demand for emergency services and health care. The most significant variables exist in the capabilities of first responders and the local medical system to save lives and prevent further injury.

• First responders. Police, fire, and emergency medical services are usually the first responders on the scene of a CBRNE incident. The catastrophic effects of WMDs can quickly overwhelm the capabilities of a community’s first responders. The number of trained teams available; their access to personal protective equipment; the quality of their chemical, radiological, and biological training; and the rescue assets they can bring to the problem affect not only their survival but also the survival of the victims they came to help.
• Medical capacity. Available medical capacity, compared to potential requirements, continues to decline—for private hospitals, this is the result of spiraling operating costs and their effect on profit margins; for public hospitals, this is the result of competition for tax revenues. Communities vary greatly in how many hospitals will be available during a CBRNE incident, their available bed count, the quality of specialized care such as burn and radiation treatment, and critical equipment such as ventilators. A community’s ability to respond during a CBRNE incident is also affected by whether its hospitals have decontamination capability and whether they have exercised mass-casualties events.
• Emergency response survival. Regardless of how well prepared or protected they are, many first responders will be victims of the initial attack due to their location and proximity to the incident. Others will succumb to the WMD effects during the initial response. The survival and availability of the city’s hospitals and other medical response assets will be determined in large part by where they are in relation to the incident. As demonstrated by the world’s experience with SARS, hospital staffs can easily get exposed to contagious diseases and have to be subtracted from the pool of local response assets, or they will contribute to spreading the bio-contagious threat. Type of agent and size of release are significant variables in which emergency response assets become part of the problem rather than part of the solution.
• The delta (or difference). This survival discussion is important because it reflects a delta between disaster response expectations and reality. Planning and modeling are important tools that can shed some light on this unknown. Understanding and anticipating the potential delta will help disaster response authorities anticipate the fact that requests for assistance will generate much more quickly and be greater in a CBRNE incident than in natural disasters.

Emergency Planning in America

Figure 2: The impact of city assessment on planning

Emergency planning in America has generally been comprehensive, based on preparing for disasters in general rather than focusing on specific hazards. Emergency managers usually think in terms of general functions and who will do them rather than develop a highly detailed operational plan. This process and thinking are sometimes foreign to military planners who are trained to work through the most minute details and war-game the procedures to identify weakness so that branch planning can be developed to overcome risk. All-hazard rather than agent-specific planning is common in local and state plans, based on an understanding that preparedness is more a process than a product.

In 1996, FEMA published its state and local Guide for All-Hazard Emergency Operations Planning. To be relevant, FEMA’s planning guidance had to reflect three basic changes:

1. Congress eliminated emphasis on the nuclear attack hazard and restated federal Civil Defense Act authorities in the Stafford Act
2. FEMA and the federal government had acquired a broader role in disaster response
3. Emergency management planning in the states and many localities had matured beyond the sample plans FEMA had provided in earlier planning guidance

It is important to recognize what guidance was given.

• Chapter 1 explains what an emergency operations plan is at the state and local levels, why the plan is a necessary part of a comprehensive approach to emergency management, and how the plan relates to other aspects of the comprehensive, risk-based, all-hazard approach.
• Chapter 2 describes the approach FEMA recommends for a step-by-step process of risk-based, all-hazard emergency operations planning.
• Chapter 3 suggests how to format the results of the planning in a written emergency operations plan.
• Chapters 4 and 5 list and discuss elements that, if applicable for a jurisdiction, should be addressed in its all-hazard emergency operations plan.
• Chapter 6 notes unique aspects of certain hazards, including associated regulatory requirements. It suggests how to address these aspects in the all-hazard plan rather than in standalone plans. The chapter is not meant to replace hazard-specific planning guidance issued by FEMA’s Radiological Emergency Preparedness Program and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the Chemical Stockpile Emergency Preparedness Program, or the National Response Team.
• Chapter 7 contains information on integrating state emergency operations plans with the Federal Response Plan so that all levels of government can provide a coordinated response to communities in need.

The guide does not establish requirements for the preparation of standard operating procedures, but it does recommend that procedures be developed by each organization tasked in the plan. Standard operating procedures provide the means to translate organizational tasking into specific action-oriented checklists that are very useful during emergency operations. They tell how each tasked organization or agency will accomplish its assigned tasks.

The Defense Against Weapons of Mass Destruction Act of 1996 (or Nunn-Lugar-Domenici amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 1997) stipulated that first responders would be trained to deal with WMD terrorist incidents. The Nunn-Lugar-Domenici Domestic Preparedness Program began in fiscal year 1997 to train first responders—firefighters, police, and emergency medical technicians—in the country’s 120 largest cities. Along with training and equipment, a significant part of community preparedness is planning, and cities received federal funding to write WMD annexes to their emergency operations plans.

Public Law 104-201, the National Defense Authorization Act of 1996, authorized funding for DoD to develop a domestic preparedness program to enhance the capability of federal, state, and local emergency responders in incidents involving nuclear, biological, and chemical terrorism. The law directed that the Secretary of Defense act as the interagency lead to develop this program; however, under Sec. 1412(a)(2) and 1415(d)(1) of the legislation, on or after 1 October 1999, the president could designate the head of an agency other than DoD to assume responsibility for carrying out the program. On 6 April 2000, the President designated the Attorney General to assume programmatic and funding responsibilities for several elements of the Nunn-Lugar-Domenici Domestic Preparedness Program as of 1 October 2000.

The Department of Justice’s Office of Domestic Preparedness provides targeted technical assistance to state and local jurisdictions to enhance their ability to develop, plan, and implement a program for WMD preparedness. Specifically, the Office of Domestic Preparedness provides assistance in areas such as response plan development; exercise scenario development and evaluation; specialized training; risk, vulnerability, capability, and needs assessments; and development of three-year domestic preparedness strategies.

The Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Emergency Preparedness is also funding emergency preparedness of the 120 largest cities through a program called the Metropolitan Medical Response System to respond locally to terrorist incidents and other public health emergencies that create mass casualties or casualties requiring unique care capabilities. This system enables a metropolitan area to manage the event until state or federal resources are mobilized. The Metropolitan Medical Response System is always a locally developed, owned, and operated mass-casualty response system, intended to enhance the local health and medical response to victims of terrorist incidents and other public health emergencies. Included in a fully implemented Metropolitan Medical Response System are detailed system response and operations plans, specially trained responders at all levels, specialized response equipment, specialized medical equipment and a pharmaceutical cache, and enhanced medical transport and treatment capabilities. Planning products that must be produced in order to receive full funding include

• A basic Metropolitan Medical Response System concept of operations plan
• A plan for managing the consequences of a biological event
• A plan for responding to chemical, radiological, and nuclear events
• A plan for forward movement of patients
• A plan for integration of local hospitals and regional healthcare systems
• A plan for training hospital and first responder personnel
• A plan for equipment acquisition and maintenance

JTF-CS Takes Action

Figure 3: The emergency plans analysis process

In the spring of 2002, the commanding general of JTF-CS determined that military planning and preparedness could be significantly enhanced if the military understood how the local authorities planned to respond to a CBRNE incident. The initial interest was in reviewing city emergency operations plan WMD annexes. The vision was that understanding these local plans would provide the groundwork for military planning to determine the type of DoD capabilities that might be required. Conceptually, the logic was that we could develop consequence management response contingency plans for a specific locality based on the capabilities identified in local plans. These contingency plans would include capability-based requirements for DoD forces and might even identify specific units to meet those requirements. This would allow U.S. Transportation Command to work out the logistics required to get the units to the incident location. Without this level of detailed planning, it was clear that planners could only estimate what assets might be required. The desired outcome is to be able to anticipate requirements, rather than be reactive and have to wait for the needs to be manifested only after it becomes obvious that all other available resources were consumed by the disaster.

After only rudimentary research and review, it became apparent that while all disasters may properly be described as local in the sense of who suffers the direct consequences and where response and recovery must occur, emergency support planning extends far beyond the city plan itself. There is often not just one all-hazard plan, but multiple plans and annexes that are not thought of as a single plan at the local level. Standard operating procedures are also important but not necessarily readily available. When a city relies extensively on standard operating procedures, it does not put details such as checklists, call-down rosters, resource listings, maps, and charts in the base emergency operations plan. Standard operating procedures may also be the only source for information such as step-by-step procedures for notifying staff; obtaining and using equipment, supplies, and vehicles; obtaining mutual aid; reporting information to organizational work centers and the emergency operations center; and communicating with staff members who operate from more than one location. There is also an interrelated, but not necessarily synchronized, hierarchy of planning to provide essential resources when they have been exhausted by lower levels of government. In many cases, mutual support agreements and emergency compacts between cities or states supplement or provide resources against developing requirements across the spectrum. Emergency plans analysis takes this into consideration when projecting what requirements might develop that could become requests for assistance and mission assignments for JTF-CS.

Getting the Plans

JTF-CS took a systematic approach in gaining a more accurate understanding of what resources and plans already exist in certain cities. We began by concentrating our data-gathering efforts on the 120 Nunn-Lugar-Domenici cities. In many cases, we followed up with phone calls to civil authorities to request additional documentation, including Metropolitan Medical Response System plans and WMD annexes. We also sought associated county and state emergency plans, as they can provide important insights into local emergency response procedures.

Initially we had a few city and state emergency operations plans obtained through open sources. The simple thing seemed to be to just request copies of the 120 cities’ WMD response plans from the Office of Domestic Preparedness, which had been supporting and facilitating the review and development of these plans through its State and Local Domestic Preparedness Training and Technical Assistance Program. What we did not know was that to ensure confidentiality, the Office of Domestic Preparedness had assured the communities that its purpose in obtaining the plans was to assist the communities in improving them, not to establish a national library. Therefore the Office of Domestic Preparedness could not and would not provide copies of the 120 cities’ plans to JTF-CS.

Instead, JTF-CS wrote to the mayor of each city, requesting a copy of the emergency operations plan addressing the response to a WMD incident. We explained who we were, why this was important, and that our intent was not to evaluate the plan or compare it to plans from other cities. We made it clear that the local plans provide the groundwork for our military planning to determine the type of military assets that might be required to continue consequence management when the capabilities outlined in the city’s plan are exhausted. For the most part, communities were receptive to sharing their plan with us for this specific purpose. City emergency managers commonly asked that their plan be protected, and we established a conditional sharing relationship based upon our not giving away the plan. We take that trust seriously and will not violate the integrity of the confidence they have in us, even though there have been numerous requests for access to the local and state plans we have collected in our library.

This demonstrates the need for a national repository of state and local plans—protected because plan information may reflect vulnerabilities, but accessible to homeland security planners with the need to know. In this republic, the proprietary nature of information, even public documents, is honored. States and local governments are not bound by national policies unless the policies are enacted into law or unless the governments are enticed into program compliance through federal funding. Homeland Security Presidential Directive-5, dated 28 February 2003, directs that the Secretary for Homeland Security will coordinate with state and local governments to ensure adequate planning, equipment, training, and exercise activities. The Secretary will also assist state and local governments in developing all-hazards plans and capabilities, including those of greatest importance to the security of the United States, and will ensure that state, local, and federal plans are compatible. This language is broad, but it may finally accomplish the national collection of plans to allow responders at all levels to better anticipate requirements and facilitate coordination. The Department of Homeland Security will have funding and authority, which is far better than what JTF-CS has in this area, which is only good will.

Emergency Plans Analysis Requires Tools to Ensure Rigor and Consistency

City and state emergency plans are key to JTF-CS consequence management pre-incident planning. We initially collected the plans of the 120 Nunn-Lugar-Domenici cities for two reasons: First, the federal government has identified these cities as high-probability, high-impact targets; second, because of funding, these cities are more likely to have WMD annexes and Metropolitan Medical Response System plan documentation in their emergency operations plans.

Reviewing the cities’ plans will increase the speed and accuracy of JTF-CS’s response once the lead federal agency issues a mission assignment to JTF-CS. The core of JTF-CS’s emergency plans analysis is the functional questions matrix. As an analysis tool, the matrix builds rigor and consistency into the process and allows us to replicate that consistency over time. Each question is linked to Civil Support Operating System categories so that information is staged for the military planners. The questions are crafted so that the answer will do one of the following:

• Describe a procedure
• Describe a capability
• Lead to an understanding of how the city communicates and coordinates (explaining the organization and delineation of leadership)
• Lead to an understanding of state and multi-jurisdictional coordination procedures

Besides the descriptive answer, the matrix captures other data to facilitate the layering of information: the analyst’s initials, the date of analysis, the name of the plan where the information is found, and a data call rating. Data call ratings are designed to reflect the level of information availability within the documents in the JTF-CS library and are not in any way a judgment of the city’s emergency plans. Data call ratings can be searched by individual question or by functional category and can be sorted by city, state, or FEMA region. The result is a comprehensive picture of what we know about a city’s emergency operations. This allows the command to quickly focus requests for information so as to fill any information gaps and ensure that JTF-CS responds with the right resources at the right time.

Emergency Plans Analysis Follows the Pattern of Continuous Improvement

Developing and implementing a rigorous process for extracting information from emergency plans must follow the principle of continuous improvement to successfully integrate into organizational responsibilities. The principle holds for both the macro-level development of an analysis process (see figure 4), as well as micro-level use of the process. The key success factors are periodic reviews of the system and involvement of the stakeholders in validating the methodology. The stakeholders are subject matter experts who have an interest in situational awareness and area assessment within the various J-code directorates of the Joint Staff.

Developing a rigorous method of analysis consisted of a series of trial efforts, with the pendulum swinging from the extremely quantitative to the extremely qualitative and coming to rest at an appropriate mixture of both. This balance came about because both stakeholder feedback and the nature of the emergency plans documents that we have obtained.

Figure 4: Development of the functional questions matrix

While the true test of the revised functional questions matrix can occur only at the onset of a catastrophic event, JTF-CS has high confidence that this tool reflects the organization’s most current understanding of those things that constitute critical knowledge for consequence management pre-incident planning.

Information Management Tools Are Essential to Accessing the Critical Information in City and State Emergency Plans

As we began acquiring city and state emergency plans, it became apparent that keeping data in the form of lists and flat files could not serve the needs of the military planners during the onset of a crisis. Data such as local contact information and regional response capabilities must be available at a moment’s notice. JTF-CS has developed a prototype relational database to ensure immediate access to analysis and key information gained from the city and state emergency plans, to preserve data integrity, and to display patterns of data availability.

• Immediate access to the information. The emergency plans prototype database requires an up-front investment in modeling the relationship of the data items. Data items are stored in fields within tables, and tables are related by linking like fields. This up-front investment pays off during a crisis because, within a matter of seconds, pre-established queries and reports draw the most recent information from the linked fields according to the user’s criteria (such as a entering a city, state, or FEMA region.)
• Data integrity. The prototype database is a relational database, where the tables that house the data items are designed according to mathematical principles of set normalization. While data items appear in many places in various reports, the data themselves are housed in only one location, eliminating the possibility of update anomalies and saving valuable time.
• Patterns of data availability. The prototype database has exponentially increased JTF-CS’s ability to find patterns within the collection of data items. The prototype database stores not only data pieces but also the relationship between those pieces. This is especially valuable as we ascertain whether specific topics are covered in regional plans. Besides extracting pertinent information for each topic, we annotate the degree of data availability for each topic. We can quickly scan the reports by topic and layer the results by city, state, and FEMA region to anticipate where we will need to initiate requests for information to local officials and to gauge the magnitude of the effort.

Besides providing useful information to our civil support planners, the prototype relational database is a cost-effective way to refine the business requirements that will shape the permanent database. The final database will use Oracle, which is robust enough to accommodate multiple users in a fast-paced operations environment and large amounts of data.

Conclusion

This JTF-CS effort is consistent with its responsibility to plan and integrate the DoD disaster assistance provided under the Federal Response Plan in the event that terrorists use a WMD within the United States. The effort does not duplicate planning and training actions by other federal agencies, but simply prepares JTF-CS in planning DoD’s consequence management support to the lead federal agency so as to respond rapidly with the right civil support forces to meet the requirements of the nation.

Bibliography

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Instruction 3125.01, “Military Assistance to Domestic Consequence Management Operations in Response to a Chemical, Biological, Radiological, Nuclear, or High-Yield Explosive Situation” (3 August 2001).

Defense Against Weapons of Mass Destruction Act of 1996 (or Nunn-Lugar-Domenici amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 1997), Public Law 104-201 as amended.

Thomas E. Drabek and Gerard J. Hoetmer, eds., Emergency Management: Principles and Practice for Local Government (Washington, DC: International City Management Association, 1991).

Overview of the Incident Command System (Washington, DC: FEMA Emergency Management Institute, 1992).

State and Local Guide (SLG 101): Guide for All-Hazard Emergency Operations Planning (Washington, DC: FEMA, 1996).

Federal Response Plan—Interim, U.S. Government, January 2003.

Incident Command System for Emergency Medical Services (FEMA U.S. Fire Administration–National Fire Academy).

A Governor’s Guide to Emergency Management, Volume 1: Natural Disasters (Washington, DC: National Governors Association, 2001).

A Governor’s Guide to Emergency Management, Volume 2: Homeland Security (Washington, DC: National Governors Association, 2002).

Robert T. Stafford Disaster Relief and Emergency Assistance Act, Public Law 93-288, as amended.

Homeland Security Presidential Directive-5, Management of Domestic Incidents (Washington, DC: White House, 28 Feb. 2003).

The National Strategy for Homeland Security (Washington, DC: White House, July 2002).