The Commanding Problem of Incident Command

http://www.gsnmagazine.com/cms/industry-sectors/disaster-preparedness/2974.html

 

The commanding problem of incident command

By David W. Gaier

Published November 18th, 2009

Eight years after 9/11, the question needs asking: Have we developed a flexible and effective network for responding to a major attack or disaster?

Ingrained cultures of insularity
As fires raged unchecked on the twin towers' upper floors, an NYPD helicopter reported an inward bowing of the columns, signaling they faced imminent failure. Yet the NYPD and FDNY didn’t have compatible radio systems, and their insular cultures precluded close coordination, even on something so significant. According to a report from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), “The NYPD aviation unit reported critical information about the pending collapse of the building,'' it reported, quoting Sivaraj Shyam- Sunder, a NIST investigator. "Any time that information could have been communicated faster to the emergency responders in the buildings, it would have helped save lives."

More to the point, the fire department and the police departments of our largest city occasionally talk, but still don’t really work together. While they’re both tremendously capable and professional, their separate and distinct organizations enable this approach.

And if you think that DHS solved this problem at the federal level, think again. Essentially, DHS cobbled together 22 federal agencies under a single umbrella, but they remain separate agencies in a very real sense -- physically, culturally, logistically and with their own chains of command, politics and priorities.

ICS and NIMS to the rescue?
Of course, many point to the creation of the Incident Command System, or ICS, and its implementation under the National Incident Management System, or NIMS, as evidence that this just isn’t true. ICS/NIMS has helped federal, state and local authorities make strides in this area, and examples of inter-agency and inter-jurisdictional cooperation come to mind. But ICS is a framework, nothing more, and it relies on close, agile and constant coordination among people and organizations. And it hasn’t genuinely been put to the test since 9/11, at anything like the scope, scale and psychological impact of 9/11.

According to Dr. Donald Moynihan, an expert in public management and Associate Professor in Public Affairs at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, “One factor poses an inherent difficulty to the ICS: scale. In enormous disasters we need large networks of responders. As these networks grow larger and more diverse, members have less in common and less familiarity with each other. Such networks may be so large as to be ungovernable." Moynihan adds, “The ICS is supposed to be the means of assuring coordination, but it’s a design based on the hierarchy of a single organization rather than a network of many.”

When containment is unattainable
Some potential scenarios present specific, significant challenges. For example, a disaster or attack site with a clearly defined local perimeter is relatively easy to command, usually with local resources. But conflicts arise when a serious incident occurs, with an ill-defined geographical reach, such as a dirty bomb attack, where a lethal radioactive cloud is dispersed by the initial blast, prevailing winds and terrain features.

In that circumstance, who calls the shots? The DHS, yes. Its primary response agent is the Department of Energy, a separate cabinet department over which it has incident command, but no real control. For its part, DOE has seven different types of teams that could respond to nuclear/radiological incidents and provide assistance to state and local authorities. The four armed services also have capable, but very separate, nuclear response teams. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) would be involved, but so would the Departments of Agriculture, Housing and Urban Development, Interior and State. NASA, too, and NOAA would likely follow, as would the FAA. Add in local firefighter-based hazmat teams who will naturally focus on rescuing their friends and neighbors, as opposed to following a plan they’ve never seen, or taking direction from people they’ve never met. Plus, we have a crime scene, so where does the FBI (which is not part of DHS) fit in? Who decides the scope of evacuation and locations? The National Guard seems logical, but they’re under the control of state governors who rarely agree to federalize them. And so it goes. The ICS structure can’t -- and wasn’t -- meant to deal with these enormous complexities.

Sharing information, intelligently
One of the underlying problems that we haven’t come close to solving is intelligent, practical information-sharing in advance of a crisis or potential attack. Even when we know a problem may be headed our way, we often receive seemingly random pronouncements about the problem’s seriousness or how to react.

For example, one day several years ago, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg revealed details of a possible terrorist plot against the city’s transit system, while Police Commissioner Ray Kelly flooded the subways and commuter rail stations with NYPD officers. While the city was moving to protect commuters, DHS officials in Washington, DC, were saying that the initial report -- their report -- was of “doubtful credibility.” Ironically, they provided several pages of guidance on how to react to a situation that they didn’t think warranted a response.

React…or adapt?
Many responses often fall apart simply from the rush of events, the natural turf-focused posture of local officials and the natural inclinations and hierarchy of responder organizations. Well before Hurricanes Katrina and Rita came ashore, Amtrak offered would-be victims a ride out of town on an empty train, while hundreds of school buses were available to transport tens of thousands more…and were never used. No one could agree “whose job” it was to command those resources and make the calls, so no one did. As a result, thousands unnecessarily languished in the Superdome, in the convention center or trapped on their own roofs when the levees fell.

Enter the cigar-chomping, Creole-spouting Army Lt. General Russel Honoré, who wrestled control from a paralyzed mayor and squabbling emergency management bureaucrats, and began doggedly solving the next problem in front of him. Most are thankful he did, yet the response and marshalling of resources was FEMA’s legal province and operational responsibility, not the military’s, irrespective of “Brownie’s” glaring incompetence. For all the relief that Honoré’s troops provided, they also contributed to a larger problem because they did what armies typically do: they received orders and marched on them, but made little effort to coordinate with FEMA or anyone else while they worked.

Even in cases where an incident would be specific and confined, the legacy of 9/11 looms: put lots of resources in the public eye, regardless of their ability to respond to a rapidly evolving situation. For example, we still see uniformed National Guardsmen at major rail transit hubs in modified battle dress, carrying automatic weapons. While this probably comforts commuters, it raises many concerns, not because of the Posse Comitatus Act but because Guardsmen are not trained in law enforcement, nor how to respond effectively during a crisis in a crowded and labyrinthine mass transit environment. Moreover, they are not integrated with the existing incident command structure, nor conditioned to take orders from civilians when they’re in uniform.

The bottom line
Big issues are at play here. We still focus most of our post-9/11 transportation security efforts on commercial air travel, and largely neglect mass transit. Our land borders are still porous -- though this is improving -- but our huge coasts are woefully under-protected by a Coast Guard that is disgracefully underfunded. Our urban hospital capacity and triage capability in case of mass-casualty attacks is a huge liability. In this sense, disaster prevention and disaster response cannot be separated.

As for the value and effectiveness of ICS, Professor Moynihan notes, “There are examples where it’s worked well; for example, the response to the Oklahoma City Bombing, and the Pentagon on 9/11. But these disasters were simpler than, say, Katrina, involving areas of limited geography and specific tasks that the incident command could control. Response networks were relatively small and there were generally strong working relationships in place among responders.” 

That won’t be the case for major-casualty, wide-area and multi-jurisdictional disasters. Static response plans based on formulaic scenarios can’t substitute for realistic, frequently-practiced drills across organizational, functional and geographical boundaries, with lots of “wild cards” thrown in. And that isn’t happening very often.

NIMS and the ICS have helped the nation prepare for disasters and attacks, and many states and major cities have established professional, if often understaffed, emergency management agencies. But there is further to go than most of us can or want to imagine. The bottom line is that disaster preparedness is a journey, not a destination at which we’ll ever arrive. If you think we’re there, think again.