2011 fema webinar

Orange County Citizen Corps Exercises

Presentation by:

Brenda Emrick Community Education Officer Volunteer

Coordinator City of Costa Mesa

Mary Jo Flynn

Emergency Management Assistant Director City of Anaheim

Presenter

Presentation Notes

Brief explanation of Citizen Corps Roles for Brenda and Mary Jo

Orange County Citizen Corps Partners

Presenter

Presentation Notes

The Orange County California Citizen Corps Council includes the main Citizen Corps Programs and one major affiliate. We have additional affiliates, and have chosen to concentrate affiliate coordination through the establishment of the COAD, or Community Organizations Active in Disasters, similar to VOAD groups in many communities.

What Sparked the Momentum

• Established the CERT Mutual Aid Program (CMAP) in 2006

• Conducted the County’s first Volunteer Mutual Aid Drill (VMAD)

• A few months later, the program was activated for the 2007 Santiago Fires

Presenter

Presentation Notes

In early 2005, 13 CERT coordinators began meeting monthly to discuss funding, resources and training needs with the OC California Citizen Corp Council managed by the Orange County Emergency Management Bureau. This group identified important issues including: limited funding, lack of resources and support of broad based citizen preparedness exercises and the long term need to organize trained and affiliated volunteers. The first wide-scale effort to bring the Citizen Corp partners together was the Orange County Volunteer Mutual Aid Drill in the fall of 2007. This drill incorporated every Citizen Corp partner with over 250 volunteers participating. Shortly after this drill, the volunteer mutual aid program was activated to provide volunteer resources during the 2007 Santiago Wildfires. This activation was the catalyst for much of our future planning. We had an abundance of lessons learned including how the program is perceived by first responders and the types of training necessary to better fulfill the new volunteer missions. Some key lessons learned: Volunteers needed more training on the Incident Command System (ICS) system and their role within the system. Volunteers needed training on handling confrontations, putting aside program uniqueness and coming together for a common goal. Most were used to following direction from “their coordinator” and were reluctant to follow direction from those they did not know. Preparing volunteers for disappointment: Many volunteers expected to help put out fires, do search and rescue and some of the skills involved in their CERT training. Some were disappointed when their role was to hand out coffee to first responders, provide traffic direction or handle very mundane tasks.

Our Next Steps

• Finalized a mutual aid agreement with the County

• Garnered the interest of California Volunteers who used our program as a model for Disaster Corps

• Developed a training program to address lessons learned

Presenter

Presentation Notes

We started focusing our energies on bringing more Citizen Corps partners into our activities and planning. Within Orange County many of the Citizen Corps programs had disparate agendas and was lacking centralized leadership for regional missions and volunteer activity. Using grant funds we were able to purchase needed response and training equipment. Our goals were to take our lessons learned in the formation and development of the CERT Mutual Aid Program (CMAP) and enhance our regional capabilities by strengthening and developing the additional Citizen Corps programs. Our Urban Area Security Initiative (UASI) grant partners recognized a need to support Citizen Preparedness, and we were able to obtain buy-in for a three year exercise plan. Our coalition of partners was able to work with UASI and include our citizen preparedness development goals into their overall regional strategy. Obtaining this support from UASI was critical in obtaining additional buy-in in our community from first responders. We communicated our needs and capabilities to both our grant partners and first responders and included them in the planning and training.

The 3-Year Exercise Strategy

• First exercise was a morning seminar and afternoon tabletop

• Goal of the exercise was to provide an overview of each program’s capabilities and discussion based TTX that identified the capabilities of citizen responders

Presenter

Presentation Notes

Objective 1: Assess existing policies and procedures to establish and maintain a multi-disciplinary/jurisdictional communications network within and among volunteer organizations, first responders, and emergency management personnel during a response to a catastrophic event. Objective 2: Examine the coordination and management of volunteer organizations and private sector groups in the ASAUA/OCOA supporting the response to a catastrophic earthquake incident. First Responders were asked to participate in the seminar portion. Colleagues speaking to colleagues regarding the merits of the citizen corps programs helped create additional buy in and was a learning opportunity for those unfamiliar with all of the programs and their capabilities. Volunteers enjoyed this part of the program because they learned about the other programs, but also heard about these programs from professional leaders within the community. This was one key step in continuing to build trust between the first responders and volunteers. Grant funded equipment was highlighted and communities recognized for the their efforts to improve citizen preparedness efforts. First Responders were able to see the potential of volunteers including: continued training, response capabilities and management tool in the these grant funded resources. 184 players: volunteers and first responders representing fire, police, volunteer coordinators and emergency management participated in the October 2010 exercise. (128 volunteers, 56 first responders) Evaluators: 3 Facilitators: 5 Observers: 11

2010 Exercise Background Planning

• Work with HSEEP guidelines • Vendor Selection • Citizen Corp Partners Planning Team • TTX Scenario:

– Identify CC partners and their capabilities in a simulated earthquake response

– Short and Long Term goals for response – Training and outreach post response

Presenter

Presentation Notes

Timeline Partners What made this successful: Back-to-basics with the HSEEP process and guidance. While volunteers would often times rather be more “active” in their participation, this gave them an opportunity to get a global perspective on all of the programs and the roles within the disaster services community. The networking and interaction with other volunteer members and first responders proved to be genuinely valuable. Knowing that this was a step in a larger planning process and those more “active” roles would come in later years, helped build trust from the first responder community who was initially skeptical of allowing volunteers to engage in certain response activities. This show-and-tell opportunity allowed some of these concepts to permeate the first responder community.

Exercise Outcomes & Challenges

• Costs & Logistics • Planning Team Commitment • Working with a Contractor • Discussion vs. Action Oriented Event • Lessons Learned

Presenter

Presentation Notes

Budget to cover cost of the contractor, venue, consummables / printables. Funding does not cover cost of food, or any forum of rehab and must be considered in the planning stages Meeting the needs of over 28 different programs and the calendar to fit an exercise in to “fit the majority.” Time and day of week (half day, work day vs weekend event) limited participation for some volunteers. Volunteer coordinators adding another meeting to their schedule. The diversity of the planning team fire, police, emergency management, volunteer coordinators brought many ideas to the table. Volunteers are action-driven. Some seasoned volunteers were looking for an avenue to try out their skills. For the majority this exercise was an eye-opening experience of what is to come in Orange County Key lessons learned: Major Strengths: The TTX provided volunteers and public safety personnel an opportunity to gain knowledge and awareness regarding all Citizen Corps programs in the Operational Area The TTX served as a great networking opportunity for volunteers to foster relationships with other CC members The utilization and incorporation of volunteers through CERT Mutual Aid Program (CMAP has developed strong CERT relationships in the OA Volunteers were afforded an opportunity to explore and observe volunteer resources and apparatus during the onsite exhibition. Areas for Improvement: Identified the need to properly credential affiliated volunteers which impacts the capacity to identify, deploy, track, schedule, and demobilize trained/affiliated volunteers. All volunteer organizations belonging to OC5th should participate during regional training opportunities. OC5th group members are in need of increased organizational knowledge and thus, will need to develop additional integrated training and exercises among volunteer organizations. Some volunteers lacked working knowledge of the Incident Command System ICS 100 and ICS 700 Some exercise participants expressed that sworn agencies were not familiar with volunteer group scope and objectives. OC5th is encouraged to facilitate activities that will foster familiarization between volunter and sworn responders. ICS Training still a continuing need Increased visibility of Citizen Corps programs in the county for the community and first responders Specific training and response deficit identified was the coordination of post event counseling and debriefing for volunteers

Sustained Exercise Planning

Presenter

Presentation Notes

In order to qualify for grant funds, we had to demonstrate how we would sustain this program year after year. We initially began with a 3-year exercise and training strategy that was folded into the regional UASI strategy. As each exercise and training has gone forward, we’ve been able to adapt within the lessons learned and continue planning. Our calendar has been planned through 2013 with a full-scale exercise in 2012 based on California’s State-Wide Golden Guardian Earthquake Exercise. This system also requires a back-to-basics approach every once in awhile to catch-up new volunteers and allow them to have some of the same experiences their more veteran volunteers may have enjoyed. Full-scale exercises year after year are financially unsustainable and difficult to pull off. Following the HSEEP model and starting with discussion based seminars allowed us to broaden our regional scope, even through our CERT programs had already been involved in full-scale exercises and participated in activations for real disasters; we felt it was important to provide the broad overview and build the citizen corps programs together.

In Review: A Building Block Approach

• Started with a small coalition of partners within one of the Citizen Corps programs, CERT

• Developed an agreement with the county for volunteer mutual-aid

• Provided exercises and active experiences and reviewed Lessons Learned

How We Did it in Review • Involved key stakeholders and first

responder partners in the planning , delivery of the exercise and long term citizen preparedness goals

• Allowed the key first responder colleagues to offer information colleague-to-colleague to build buy-in and trust

• Worked within “their” system to incorporate Federal exercise planning strategies and guidance to increase buy-in

Questions & Contacts

Brenda Emrick • (714) 327-7406 • [email protected]

mesa.ca.us

• Costa Mesa Fire Department

• 77 Fair Drive • Costa Mesa, CA 92626

Mary Jo Flynn • (714) 765-6955 • [email protected]

• Anaheim Fire Department

Emergency Management Division

• 500 E. Broadway • Anaheim, CA 92805

mailto:[email protected]�

