The Noggin Blog

Emergency managers are well acquainted with the after action review, a qualitative evaluation of actions taken to respond to a given emergency. A staple of the recovery process, the after action review provides the best means of identifying best practices, gaps, and lessons learned, so as to respond better next time.

However, the COVID-19 crisis was a shock to the system. Normal processes were upended; plans turned out to be inadequate. How to do better next time? 

The emergency threat has grown like never before. Natural disasters alone have increased ten-fold since the 1960s.

Add in an unprecedented pandemic, and these figures only up the ante on the need for not just any emergency management platform but the right emergency management platform. What capabilities matter in this age of disasters? 

From tornadoes to floods to explosions, emergency agencies bring experts together in emergency operations centers (EOCs) to manage and coordinate operations. Before the pandemic, they did so largely in person. The risk (and reality) of infection, however, has forced EOCs to go virtual – out of necessity.  

Makeshift affairs, many of these virtual emergency operations centers (VEOC) are virtual in name only. How, then, to get the most out of your VEOC?

In this age of increasing emergency threats, informal volunteer emergency workers often provide critical first responder help, usually search and rescue, first aid, damage, and need assessment.

But because they tend to lack pre-established relationships with emergency managers, informal volunteers can also pose operational risks. Dispatchers, for one, can’t verify training or credentials, so they are unable to accurately match volunteer skills with service areas. And that’s not the only management challenge relief organisations face. What are they?

With the double-whammy of COVID-19 and a hyper-active weather season, volunteer disaster relief agencies already have enough on their plate. But the rapid increase in the number and severity of disasters is causing a worrying new phenomenon in volunteer management.

That trend is disaster fatigue. What is it, and how to plan for it this coming severe weather season?

Mere days into the hurricane season, the Atlantic basin is already experiencing its third named storm. Meanwhile, China, faced with flooding in its south and east, is upping flood defense emergency response to level III. Western Australia, for its part, is less than a month removed from a “once-in-a-decade storm,” so dubbed by the state’s acting commissioner of Fire and Emergency Services.

In the past, emergency management agencies and other organizations might have become accustomed to bleak forecasts of powerful hurricane seasons – like the one they received this year. They’ve never, however, had to prepare for an “above-normal” storm season while simultaneously fighting a “once-in-a-generation pathogen.” How can they beef up critical infrastructure resilience to respond to multiple events at once?

We’ve all seen the stories. The rapid spread of the coronavirus has caused demand spikes for personal protective equipment (PPE), with healthcare workers in areas hardest hit by the spread of the virus reporting alarming shortages of PPE like masks, gowns, and shields.

At this point, the majority of people who get COVID-19 only experience mild symptoms. But one in six become seriously ill, according to the World Health Organization. Throughout the entirety of the crisis, those numbers have carried serious implications for the healthcare COVID-19 response, as the resultant severe disease has caused hospitalization, even admission to an intensive care unit for weekslong stints.

The Incident Command System sprung out of a fire suppression event in the 1970s. But it didn’t take too long for non-fire organizations to begin using the system, as well.

The question is now as emergency response agencies mobilize against the COVID-19 pandemic, can ICS be relevant to their efforts?