Disasters are possible -- maybe inevitable. Although their consequences may be uncontrollable, the effects are, to some extent, and in many cases, quite controllable, if proper attention is given to planning for a disastrous event. An organization cannot necessarily depend on help when a disaster strikes. It must be prepared to tackle the disaster on its own. This is especially true if the event is area wide, regional, or national in scope. This book essentially is a stand-alone publication that provides the "how to" ready an organization for a catastrophic or lesser event. It is a template for an organization to internally develop in a cost-effective manner a plan to cover prevention techniques to minimize potentially adverse consequences from a disastrous event; how to prepare for an event, such as, planning, training personnel, and acquiring and maintaining the supplies and information that will be crucial in responding to and handling a crisis event, as well as recovering from the event. Strategic methods are given on these processes, whether the event is natural, technological, or man-made. The disaster management system is defined through its seven principal tools. Numerous examples are given to facilitate a better understanding of the disaster management system. Required teams and task forces are identified, as well as internal and external information that may be needed, Guidelines are given for determining an organization's critical assets; determining their vulnerability and rating and ranking critical assets. Other areas covered include pre- and post-financial issues; impact determination; fiscal analyses and decisions needed to be made (pertinent questions to be asked) in order to make prudent decisions); organizational areas of concern (legal, security, HR, business, etc.); incident and crises responses to be undertaken; plans to be developed; training of personnel; recovery and closeout operations; tabletop exercise scenarios; and much more.

Readying a Company for a Catastrophic Event

A Template for SuccessBy Paul C. Constant, Jr.

AuthorHouse

Copyright © 2010 Paul C. Constant, Jr.
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4520-0587-4

Contents

Acknowledgement...................................................................vForeword..........................................................................viiIntroduction......................................................................xv1 The System......................................................................12 Teams and Task Forces...........................................................93 Information.....................................................................214 Disastrous Events to Consider...................................................275 Critical Assets.................................................................336 Financial Issues................................................................457 Impact Determination............................................................538 Fiscal Analyses.................................................................619 Decisions.......................................................................7310 Training.......................................................................8111 Responses......................................................................8512 Recovery.......................................................................9113 Plans..........................................................................93Glossary..........................................................................105Acronyms..........................................................................107References........................................................................109Appendix A Supplies and Other Needs Categorized...................................111Appendix B Forms..................................................................121Appendix C Incident and Crisis Response Activities................................125Appendix D Decision Questions.....................................................131Appendix E Areas of Concern for Organizational Units..............................133Appendix F Monetary Issues........................................................139Appendix G Property...............................................................141Appendix H Strategies for Remedying Vulnerabilities...............................143Appendix I Tabletop Exercise and Two Scenarios....................................149Appendix J Responsibilities of Command Post Units.................................165Appendix K Recovery Assessment Input Items........................................167Appendix L Recovery Decision-Making Information...................................175Appendix M Representative Restoration Concerns....................................179Appendix N Candidate Material for Response and Recovery Plans.....................181Index.............................................................................185

Chapter One

The System

It is prudent to know the makeup of the basic disaster system. This system, shown in Figure 1, is composed of seven elements: people, prevention, maintenance, preparedness, event, response, and recovery. These elements are summarized in this chapter and elaborated upon further in the later chapters.

People

The first element, people, is divided into two classes: internal and external. Internal people are management and employees. The external group includes consultants/contractors, emergency services, employee assistance, clients, employee families, the public, service providers, the government, and religious institutions.

Internal People

Management. This covers all levels of management, particularly senior management, whose support is quite critical. The company's board has to `buy in" to the disaster management program and be kept apprised of all progress. Senior management needs to be involved, as well as lower-level managers, and kept aware of progress, needs, and problem areas so they can help provide the support needed. If senior management is not firmly committed, it is probably best not to start the program.

Employees. Each employee has a part in the disaster system. Some will be commissioned to serve as members of one or more of the following major areas of this endeavor: information acquisition, prevention, preparedness, maintenance, response, recovery, and closeout. To accomplish the tasks necessary in these areas, teams will need to be formed and commissioned with responsibilities (see chapter 2 for more on this topic).

The selection of team members is an important consideration. This is especially crucial with regard to the incident response team leader and other personnel who are involved in onsite tactical operations, because they must be able to fully understand what a catastrophic event can cause-absolute chaos.

The responsibilities of employees who are not team members are to:

1. Know who is in authority during a disaster and the disaster plan's specific assignments given to them.

2. Immediately respond to a command given to them during the response to the event by people in authority.

3. Help the handicapped people evacuate.

Devolution. It is prudent to have a complement of backup personnel. This way, the responsibility of a certain office/person will automatically be transferred if that person is unavailable, whether because of illness, death or incapacitation as a consequence of the event, or some other reason.

External People

Emergency Services. These include fire, police, ambulance service, hospital emergency room, employee assistant program office, American Red Cross, Salvation Army, Federal Emergency Response Agency, Federal Bureau of Investigation, city emergency management office, city industrial waste control department, local and state health departments, state department of health, poison center, Center for Disease Control and Prevention (Emergency Response Center), spill hotline, Environmental Protection Agency, United States Secret Service, United States Marshall (state office), Nuclear Response Center, Nuclear Regulatory Commission (Operations Center), Department of Transportation (National Response Center), and religious institutions.

The specific emergency sources that should be sought will depend on the company's need. The telephone numbers and points of contact for all emergency services should be available in a secured place, and specified company personnel with backups are responsible for making the contacts. Disaster response leaders can assign contact responsibility on the spot, if required.

Employee Assistance. During and following an event (and this can be a significant period-weeks, months, even years), people do not necessarily act normally-not quite their usual selves. The effects of the trauma will vary from person to person and over time. Immediate symptoms can include denial, fright, shock, anger, helplessness, depression, irritability, inability to concentrate, sadness, fear, anxiety, and confusion. Long-term effects can include sleeplessness, distressing dreams, and sadness as well as some lingering immediate symptoms, such as sadness and depression.

It is important for the company to offer individuals who suffer some of the symptoms mentioned above effective assistance as well. Professional employee assistance should be made immediately available and on a continuing basis as long as required. Many companies have an employee assistance program. For those companies that do, any employee can usually obtain assistance free by telephone or the Internet.

It also is important that response teams' staff be composed of individuals who will be able to maintain their composure, be impervious to the aforementioned effects, maintain effective control of operations, and handle personnel who may have been affected by the trauma, especially until employee assistance arrives on site.

Client/Customer. For most companies, this category of people is their main income stream; therefore, it is crucial for the company to keep its clients/customers aware of the situation in real time. How this is accomplished depends on whether the income stream is a client or a customer. For clients, such as in the contract-research business, direct contact should be executed electronically through the telephone, written communiqus, or visits. For customers, such as commercial companies where the income stream is principally from product purchases, contact through the news media using paid notices/information bulletins is a viable approach. Direct mailings could be applicable in cases of production companies as well as commercial ones.

It is quite important in many cases to maintain the client/customer revenue stream, even at a reduced flow, to help ensure recovery. A prudent move, and a pre-event action, is to incorporate a protection clause in your client/customer applicable contracts regarding disastrous events. Some post-event considerations are: continuing project activities via reciprocity agreements (pre-event) that allow the use of facilities and their personnel; distributing work to other company facilities not experiencing the event; having redundant facilities for critical operations available at other locations; and any other innovative ideas that are applicable to a company's situation.

A critical aspect of income stream continuation is people-having backups in case of loss of personnel by death, injury, or other reasons. Some potential means for backups are cross training company personnel, the use of consultants, and sub-contracting work. Allied concerns relative to continuation of the work are finances, time, supplies, and materials to make it happen (more on financial issues in chapter 6). A time extension may be achieved by negotiating with clients. Other types of needs, such as supplies and materials, are discussed in chapters 3 and 5.

It can be more difficult to retain customers who buy the company's products than clients who buy services. The severity of customer retention related to continuation of product production for a company with all its production capabilities located where the event occurs can be quite difficult. The key elements relating to customer retention are rapid recovery, financial stability, and communication via appropriate means, such as the media.

Employee Families. Employee family contact information needs to collected, which is usually done by the human resources department. This includes names (in priority order), relationship, addresses, telephone numbers, e-mail addresses, and fax numbers. It is vitally important to keep the family well-informed about the situation and provide assistance in handling any suffering that may befall the family related to a spouse, son, or daughter who may have died or been injured. It also can be a means by which to contact the employee when necessary to apprise him or her about the situation or discuss returning to work.

Public. Dispatching of event information is done in a controlled manner by the public affairs officer, who obeys company policy in the dissemination of information. The primary way to inform the public is through the news media. It is prudent to inform the news media by meeting with them as soon as possible after the event has occurred and keeping them current. Inquiries from the public should not be ignored. They should be appropriately addressed in a timely manner and a log of pertinent information on media contacts should be kept.

Consultant/Contractor. Management may determine that it would be more effective to contract external assistance for some aspects of disaster management, such as a cooperative venture to establish a disaster management plan and provide some special training instead of doing everything in-house. It may be advantageous to subcontract some work in the recovery phase.

Service Providers/Vendors. These are the sources that can fulfill the needs the company can't meet when responding to and recovering from the event. These needs include such items as material and equipment needed for safety, health, security, cleanup, transportation, and communications.

The service providers cover an organization's needs relative to building, facility, and grounds to include heavy equipment, e.g. debris removal; carpentry; boarding windows and isolation of areas; fuel oil for generators; lock and key; electrical; plumbing; HVAC; boiler; elevator; roofing; electronic security; sewer; snow and ice removal; and other services. The company and individual contact persons' names and telephone and fax numbers need to be available. The contact information should include after-hours as well as business-hours. It may be prudent to have a contract with key providers that include an escrow fund for potential events so as to receive priority service.

The vendor is for supplies to carry on operations as well as for crisis response needs, such as health, security and transportation. These supplies cover a wide range of needs shown in appendix A. Contact information is needed for regulatory agencies, religious organizations, suppliers of items, service providers, and utilities and vendors as well. Forms for these type contacts as well as for storage location items, and off-site command post supplies are given in appendix B.

Government. These people include local, county, state, and federal employees. Individuals or offices that belong on the company's list depend to a degree on the regulations under which the company operates. Emergency sources that may be needed as well as government offices are specified on page 3 under Emergency Services. If the company is doing contract work for the government, the client contact information (both technical and contract) is needed.

Religious Institutions. These are also included under Emergency Sources. In disastrous events where there are people injured, some near death, and emotionally disturbed people, this type association may be a paramount comfort for the individual and his or her family, resulting in their unwavering appreciation.

Prevention

Prevention covers the measures that are undertaken before an event to reduce the likelihood or degree of losses and damages. Some people consider prevention a part of preparedness.

For preventive measures to be effective, the assets critical to the company's survival need to be identified. These assets are things that can be protected to some degree, such as people, people capabilities, processes, property, grounds, facilities (production, research, and so forth), software, procedures/methods, and liquid assets. More complete information on critical assets is provided in chapter 5.

Preparedness

Preparedness describes the degree to which a company has the needed resources and information available for immediate and effective response action when a disastrous event occurs. Some information and items needed for the recovery response will not be known until the event occurs (incident response), during the crisis response, or even after the response.

Further preparedness requires trained staff, contact information, supplies, and equipment to effectively care for and protect people and the environment. The company must be prepared to contain the event; secure buildings, grounds, and other property, both company and client; communicate with emergency sources, employees and their families, clients, regulatory agencies, and the public; maintain operations to the degree possible; and initiate recovery activities.

Maintenance

Maintenance covers the proper and timely care of facilities, equipment, materials, and supplies required to effectively respond to a disastrous event. This will enable the company to better protect and secure employees and property, care for the injured, prevent further damage to facilities and the environment, and continue operations to the extent feasible. It includes trained staff and the proper storage, checking, testing, and replacement of all resources involved in being prepared.

Event

An event in disaster management is something that causes significant adverse consequences. It is a serious occurrence or emergency situation that requires an immediate response. I discuss the types of events that should be considered during planning in chapter 4.

(Continues...)

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