Emergency Management - Fall 2008 - (Page 15)

The cleanup cost the city $26.8 million. “We felt good about getting it all cleaned up,” McHenry said. “It took 12 hours of work a day for 81 days.” McHenry said it was obvious the storm’s aftermath would leave the city needing state and federal funding, and it would be only a matter of time until a state of emergency was announced. “FEMA comes in a pretty big way, because they deal with public [and] private property and set up a disaster-relief office,” he said. Spurs Growth After the storm, the city realized it needed an improved and reliable emergency management office. The city’s emergency command center has advanced greatly compared to the makeshift office the task force used in the City Hall basement. “It’s a very convenient location, and whenever we have an emergency now, we’ve all got our station,” McHenry said. “It’s got everything; it’s very modern and has upscale technology,” Shaw said. “It looks like NASA to me. We can display visuals of different parts of the city connected to our radio system, so we can dispatch and deploy resources as needed.” The cleanup effort reinforced the importance of having emergency management clauses in contracts with private companies. The Parks and Recreation Department had a clause in its tree maintenance contract that said during an emergency, the city could request up to 100 extra crews with 72 hours notice. “That was a major success, and we were really lucky we had that in our contract, but now it’s become pretty standard in all of our tree maintenance contracts,” Decker said. Shaw agreed that the use of emergency management clauses should be examined for every contract, and agencies should also understand how it will affect billing and FEMA reimbursement. “You need to know what the federal emergency management guidelines are, and ensure you have clauses in those contracts that allow you to activate and switch billing practices or whatever is in line with those federal guidelines to ensure you are reimbursed,” Shaw said. PHOTO BY DAVID STONNER/FEMA McHenry said if he could redo the clean up, he would’ve brought in more contractors and kept most of the city workers at everyday tasks so they wouldn’t fall too far behind. “We tried to do a lot without disrupting normal service,” he said. “We knew we had to clean the city up, but we also didn’t want to disrupt picking up trash or getting our parks ready for the spring season or things of that nature.” something were to happen like this again, having the number of employees to meet the span of control could be a problem,” he said. “Small incidences, more isolated incidences — no problem — but we are talking about 320 square miles of damage in one storm.” Recovery Lessons It’s impossible to be completely prepared for an emergency, but Kansas City officials have some advice for other governments: · Stage a dry run to ensure all systems are in place and know who’s in charge of what, McHenry said. “Make sure your law department is ready to go if you have to run some legal issues on a contract through them,” he added. “Legal, finance and budget people need to be on task as well as field operations. … Administrative support is important.” · Decker recommends evaluating storms that have happened in other cities and applying that information to their localities. · Also, communicate with contractors to keep informed about available resources during emergencies. “Be familiar with your FEMA cost codes and understanding every piece of equipment you have,” Shaw said. “When you launch and start recording your costs, a lot of your work is already done because it’s hard to do that in the heat of the battle.” k 15 National Standards On Feb. 28, 2003, President George W. Bush prompted the creation of the National Incident Management System (NIMS) as the framework for all levels of government during an emergency. Kansas City officials said NIMS would’ve likely changed the city’s response to the ice storm had NIMS been available in 2002. “I think NIMS allowed us to educate our entire staff,” Decker said. “Now everybody who works for the city has at least a basic foundation of emergency management.” McHenry said the city has learned from NIMS and is participating in the training; practicing what has been learned and using different scenarios is an integral part of preparation. According to Shaw, using NIMS will be hard in Kansas City because the city covers 320 square miles and the system focuses on span of control, which is the number of personnel a supervisor is responsible for. “If

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Emergency Management - Fall 2008

Emergency Management - Fall 2008 Contents Contributors Editor’s Letter In the Field Deep Freeze EM Bulletin Major Player In the News Uncharted Waters Bio-Sensing Bluegills Joint Accounts Education Directory Degress of Change Triage in 3-D Products Eric's Corner Last Word

Emergency Management - Fall 2008

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