Ep 51: Listener Question - Who Sets Tactical?

Ep 50: Implementing the ASIM Process

Ep 49: ASIM Checklist Endorsed as National Standard by NTOA

Jesse Watkins

Ep 48: Interview with TEEX's Jesse Watkins

Interview with ALERRT's John Curnutt

Ep 46: ASIM Basic and Counterstrike (Part 2)

Ep 45: ASIM Basic and Counterstrike (Part 1)

Ep 44: Comm Center Challenges Part 2

Ep 43: Comm Center Challenges Part 1

Ep 42: Common Day One Training Problems

This C3 Pathways Podcast series discusses Active Shooter Incident Management (ASIM). The Podcast features instructors and special guests discussing key elements and challenges of Active Shooter Incident Management and the implications for law enforcement, fire, and EMS responders. The bad guy and the clock both kill innocent victims. Don't miss the opportunity to gain key insights that may help you save lives!

C3 Podcast: Active Shooter Incident Management

Episode 02: The 5th Man (Tactical)

Episode 07: Tactical Training for Leadership

Episode 04: Command Post Integration Discussion of Command Post integration in Active Shooter Incident Management (ASIM) Bill Godfrey:  Hello, and welcome to our  next installment of talking about active shooter events. My name is Bill  Godfrey from C3 Pathways. And today's segment we are going to talk about  integration in the Command Post. How do you bring law enforcement, fire EMS  together and how do you make that work. And then, some of the common problems  that we see. I mean, in a perfect world, we want one Command Post. We want all  the disciplines together in that one Command Post. Actually, communicating with  each other face-to-face. Sharing information, updating each other as the  incident goes. And then also, coordinating with the troops downrange. But,  that doesn't always turn out to be such an easy thing to accomplish and we're  going to talk about that. With me today, we've got Tom Billington, Fire Chief.  Stephen Shaw, Sergeant. Ron Otterbacher, Division Chief. Retired Sheriff, Kevin  Beary. Fire Chief, Joe Ferrara and Fire Chief, Mark Rhame. Welcome guys, good  afternoon.  So,  Ron let me kick this to you to talk about, it seems like such a simple thing to  say. Getting everybody into one Command Post. Why is it turn out that, that's  such a problem for us? Ron Otterbacher:   Usually it's  because we don't train before we have the incident. It's so important to train  and understand what each other needs. It's also important to train so you know  who you're dealing with and, you've got the ability to communicate. We see  oftentimes where, we'll be co-located but it doesn't enhance communication  whatsoever because, each person's got their own focus and they don't understand  what the other person may need or what their agency may need or what their  needs are for that tactical situation. So,  I think training is the key to bring that familiarity together. The other thing  is, introducing yourself to the people you work with because, it's a lot harder  to just blow someone off if you know who they are. And it's evident all the  time when we do these scenarios is, once they know each other and they've got  an understanding of what's needed, they progress rapidly. Bill Godfrey:  So basically, just the  simplicity of introducing yourself to your counterpart in the Command Post and  having a name to go with it? Ron Otterbacher:   Absolutely. That  face and that name goes a long way. Then, three weeks down the road after  you've had the training, if I need something I call the Fire Chief and say.  "Hey, I need this can you help me out?" And they'll say.  "Yeah." Bill Godfrey:  It sounds simple. It  certainly sounds simple but, far too often we see a lot silos in the Command  Post. Steve, you were talking about this a little earlier offline, before we  got started. You know, what are the challenges that you see? What's the ruts  that we're falling into? Stephen Shaw:  I think as we go around the  country and we do these scenarios, we're introducing people to new models and  people kinda get ... They get in the Command Post and the co-located and we're  working on the same incident. Police have their job, fire has their job, EMS  has their job. And then you add in people like emergency management, outside  political people, things of that nature. And everyone just kinda gets stuck in  their lane or as we refer to it, a silo. And everybody just kinda does their  ... They're focused on their task, their mission and they're worried about  doing their job to the best of their ability and they forget about the people  that are standing literally, a foot away from them. We're  all here together, police, fire, EMS working together and in the Command Post a  lot of times, you're so focused on your task that we see people ... We keep  saying 'silo' themselves. Law enforcement officers, we gotta work on the law  enforcement side. Fire fighters gotta work on the fire side and they don't  communicate with each other very well.  Bill Godfrey:  Mark, how do we fix that?  What are some of the tricks that responders who are on the job working in the  field, you know, you find yourself in the Command Post or maybe even, just  trying to get into the Command Post. How do we fix this? Mark Rhame: Well, I agree with one  thing Ron said right off the bat is, that we've gotta train. But it's also got  to be in policy. You know, it's easy to go out there and get together every  once in a while and say. "Hey, let's do this." And we practice that  integrator response or integrated Command Post. But you've gotta put it in  policy, there's gotta be some enforcement on one side of it that says.  "From the management, the top management, all the way down to that brand  new fire fighter. This is what we're going to do in this scenario." So,  not only do we place it in policy, but we train and we work with our partners  across the table. Whether you're a fire fighter, whether you're in law  enforcement or EMS, or EM whatever it happens to be. You gotta understand what  those policies are, what those procedures are. Who's going to be ultimately in  command because, it's written in policy. And you train on it on a regular  basis. One  of the pitfalls we have on a regular basis is that, you look at these training  events that we have, there's a lot of middle ranks and maybe even, lower ranks  and brand new employees but you don't see the management people. Who have to  adopt this also and push it down from the top. That this is the way we're going  to behave when we arrive on scenes. Bill Godfrey:  So Kevin, Mark's talking  about this issue of the Command Posts' policies and the training. And  absolutely right on the mark with that but, we've seen all over the country  these incidents where we end up with multiple Command Posts, you know, the law  enforcement Command Post is over here. The fire Command Post is over there. And  EMS is setup over there. How do we fix that? How do we legislate that problem  into going away? And it seems like such a silly thing to have to tell everybody  to get into the same Command Post, but we've seen it over and over again, how  do you fix it? Kevin Beary:   Well, in law enforcement  the Chief of Police and the Sheriff need to have their policies mirror the  policies of the EMS as well as, the fire. In other words, they're going to have  to get together and write an active shooting policy to be able to get those  Command Post people to work together, arrive on the scene, and locate  themselves in somebody's Command Post. And you can have runners and radios and  telephones to communicate back and forth to your individual CPs, but one  Command Post needs to have all the players in it where they're talking with  each other and they're making the decisions to save lives.  Bill Godfrey:  You know, I think that's a  great point. Tom, we were talking yesterday about some dysfunction that we  sometimes in the Command Post, and Kevin's talking about trying to get  everybody ... Well, we're all talking about trying to get everybody together  and talking. What are some of the common breakdowns that you see in the Command  Post from the ... That just introduces dysfunction or causes the dysfunction? Tom  Billington:  Well, one  thing is most of your people in the Command Post are senior people that have  been in the business for many years. Training and policy is not the time to  meet your counterpart. Break bread with them, have lunch with them, have  meetings. When you have somebody come in your Command Post, you should know  their first name, their abilities, and have a good relationship with them. And  that's where some of the dysfunction comes from. We're not talking to our  neighbors, the person down the street. And when you get on scene, that is not  the time to discover what they can or cannot do for you. So,  it's as easy as making sure ... Especially if you have a large organization or  a large county or city, that you are meeting with the law enforcement or fire  together. You're doing meetings together and eating lunch together. And that's  how you can avoid some of that dysfunction. I've had instances where I've been  in a Command Post with two fire agencies and they don't talk to each other. And  that can happen to anybody. So, we have to reach out to our partners and get a  relationship going and that should avoid a lot of the dysfunction right up  front. Bill Godfrey:  So Joe, let's assume we  can get everybody into the same Command Post. We get them co-located. They  introduce themselves to each other, in some cases hopefully, they know each  other. How do we make sure that the mission that they execute moves forward?  How do they know what lane is theirs? How do they know when they're out of  their lane and when they're crossing over. Or, does that matter? Does it matter  if they stay in their lane? Where does that piece of it fit and is that an  important part of keeping your Command Post operating effectively? Joe Ferrara:    Well yes, I think it  does matter if they stay in their lane. You know, fire we have our disciplines  and we know, we're subject matter experts in those areas as well as, you know,  EMS has their lanes, and law enforcement. Now you know, the important thing to  remember in an active shooter event, this is a law enforcement event. This is a  crime in progress. And to back up a little bit, when we've lost integration, or  we've started the event without integration. So let's be realistic, law  enforcement's going to set up a Command Post probably, on this event. Fire's  going to set up a Command Post. Somebody's gotta step up, and this is where we  get out of our lanes. And it's okay in this circumstance. It's okay for law  enforcement to reach out to fire and say. "Hey, let's get this together  and let's work together on this incident." So that's the one time, I  believe, where it's okay for law enforcement to cross over and get with fire. But  once you're integrated, once you're together in the same command Post, I think  it's incumbent upon the Incident Commander, to set those expectations and say  ... One way of doing that possibly is you have a medical branch, you have a law  enforcement branch. So those two directors have specific lanes and specific  responsibilities to stick with. I think the Incident Commander becomes the  traffic cop, so to speak that makes sure that those specific branches are  staying in their lanes, because if you're going to ask each person not only to  run their respective tasks and incidents. And now, you're going to ask them to  make sure. "Okay, make sure there's a check and balance." I think  that's a role of the Incident Commander here. Bill Godfrey:  That's an interesting  point Mark, we're talking about you know, staying in the lanes. How does that  effect communication? Is both your verbal face-to-face communication but  perhaps, even more importantly, radio communication. Does staying in your lane  or wandering out of your lane effect your radio communication? Can it improve  it or make it worse? Mark Rhame: Well, I think one of the  things in regard to radio communication is, and we preach this and talk about  this when we do classes is that, clearly on the radio we need to know who those  people are. And we talk about, you gotta lose your normal identity on a  day-to-day basis and clearly identify what position you are. And that will tell  everybody that's listening to that radio channel, what your role in this  incident is. Example being that, if you're a patrol office and you're 109  normally, and you take command and on the radio you're now Command. Everybody  clearly understand that your command including, in the Command Post that you  are the Incident Commander. If you are normally the Chief 100 of a fire  department on a 24-hour shift but when you step into that Command Post, you  become the medical branch on the radio, you are medical branch. Clearly,  that defines to every single person that's listening to it, whether it's on a  radio or face-to-face or you talking to some other person exterior or outside  customer or interior customer, when they come up. They clearly know what your  position is in that Command Post and I think, that's very, very important that  we all practice that policy and make sure that everybody clearly identifies  what they are in that Command Post and what their role is. Bill Godfrey: So, talking about radio  comm Steve, how does that effect dispatch. You know, you've got presumably, law  enforcement, you know, these days there very few law enforcement agencies that  are using the same channel as fire EMS, they're usually split. Often, they have  separate dispatch centers. Where's dispatch's role in this? How does that fit  into this piece of it? Stephen Shaw:  I think if you include  dispatch in your training and you include dispatch in your policies as you're  discussing these things. It can help mitigate some of this. A lot of people are  going to revert back to what they're kind of used to doing. But if you have  dispatchers who have been involved in training and are involved in  decision-making they can say. "Well, Chief 100, I think he actually means  that he's medical branch" for example. And they can ask that over the  radio. There's been instances where fire has set up an incident Command Post  and police have set up an incident Command Post and they're unaware of each  other's existence. Dispatch would know that both of those are in existence and  can remind them that they're there. Clearing up radio channels, all this stuff,  if you include dispatch in your training and your decision-making, all those  things can be kinda mitigated ahead of time as the event is unfolding, if some  mistakes are made along the way. Bill Godfrey: So, we've talked about the  silos and dysfunction and the importance of co-location, the training together,  the policy development, relationship building and know it. Ron, what are the  key tips that you would give to that Sergeant or Lieutenant or that Captain, on  a law enforcement side for how to interact with their fire EMS counterparts to  manage the event? Whether they're the law enforcement branch or whether they're  Incident Commander, paint that picture for how that fits together and what that  outta look like.  Ron Otterbacher:   First off is,  like we've said several times here, get to know your counterpart. At that scene  may not be the best time to sit there and figure out that you've never met,  you've never worked with each other, you don't know what each other's  expectations are. The second thing is, train together and make sure you set  training that involves everyone. If someone is going to take the role of  Incident Commander, medical branch, law enforcement branch, whatever it may be.  They need to train together prior to an incident. Like Mark said earlier, a lot  of times we'll have staff people or general officers and you know, agent  company officers and everyone else, at this training but there won't be any  Command staff members there. If they're going to run the incident, they need to  train for the incident. Just  because you have a title, doesn't mean that you're able to control that  incident like it should be controlled. And that's been evident in some of the  past incidents we've dealt with throughout the country. Bill Godfrey:  Mark, on the fire EMS side,  what ... Or really, just all around. What are the things that you think are the  tips that can help them make a Command Post function a whole lot better? Mark Rhame: Well, from a fire and EMS  standpoint is, one of the first things they've got to realize and we've talked  about this previously is it, this is a law enforcement environment. It is a  murder in progress, a crime in progress, that we are supporting the mission of  law enforcement. Very important mission of saving lives but frankly, it is a crime  in progress. So, fire is really gotta get that into their mindset when they  walk into these environments. When they go into the Command Post, when they  take a role there, that we have a leader who is going to be on the law  enforcement side, and we're there to work as their partners, to work as a team.  To make sure that the mission is accomplished. At very first, we're going to  stop that killing and then, we're going to stop that dying but as a team  effort. If  they go in there with that mindset that. "No, I am the Incident Commander  or this is a going to be a unified command and I own half of this room."  They're probably going to fail. There's not going to be the relationship that's  necessary and needed in these events. You gotta allow law enforcement to step  up and identify that mission right up front and that's stopping the killing.  Taking down the threat and then, allowing a joint effort between both parties,  law enforcement, fire, and EMS on going in there and stopping the dying. And  it's gotta be that joint effort. Otherwise, we're going to continue this same  practice we've been doing for years and years and years. And people are going  to die on the scene needlessly. Bill Godfrey:  You know Mark, you're just  kinda touching on it and Otter mentioned it as well. And that's the challenges  of, leadership. Leadership not engaging in the training. We send the line folks  to training. We send the line level supervisors to training. But the senior  leadership, so often, and we see that ... And I don't think it's unique to law  enforcement or fire or EMS or dispatch or emergency management or anybody. I  think it's kinda universal. Senior leadership is busy. There's a lot of demands  on their time. But, all too often, they don't make it to the training. And,  that can have some prices to pay to it.  Kevin,  what's the real world outcome? In fact, I'm going to have you give us the final  word on this. What's the real world outcome and the impact of the senior level  leadership who's going to want to take charge, not having been in the training?  And not having the experience of working with their line people through  exercises and scenarios? What's the real world impact of that? Kevin Beary:   Well, the real world  impact on leaders that don't want to go to training. Whether it's EMS, fire, or  police, is that you're going to be inadequate and inept in a major mass  casualty shooting event. And, quite frankly, it's 2018. It's time to check the  egos at the door. We're seeing all these mass shooting events all over the  country and quite frankly, all over the world. And it is time that, as leaders  of all those disciplines, they've got to get involved. They gotta put the  Deputy Chief in charge for three days. If you've got attend the ASIM class and  if we don't do that, all we're going to do is see the next mass shooting  incident and more people are going to die because, you didn't take the time to  concern yourself that you need the training as well as, all the mid-level and  low-level employees of your own agencies. Bill Godfrey:  Succinctly put and a very  sobering thought for all of us. And with that, I think, we're going to leave  that one there. Thank you for taking time with us guys, appreciate the sit down  and look forward to the next time. Original Source: https://www.c3pathways.com/podcast/command-post-integration

Episode 04: Command Post Integration

Episode 03: Triage and Transport Discussion of the Triage and Transport Group Supervisor positions in Active Shooter Incident Management (ASIM) Bill Godfrey: Hello again, everybody.  Bill Godfrey from C3 Pathways, here with a number of the instructors to talk  about triage and transport and the challenges of integrating our medical roles  in an active shooter event. Today  I've got with me retired fire chief Tom Billington, both fire chief and  paramedic. Another retired fire chief, Mark Rhame, also a paramedic. And not to  be outdone, a third retired fire chief, Joe Ferrara, also a paramedic. Guys,  thanks for taking the time to sit down and talk about this today.  So  just to kind of set the stage for us, when we talk about, in typical EMS, when  you talk about mass casualty incidents, we always hear them throw out triage,  treatment, and transport. It's kind of the three classic things that we talk  about. But in an active shooter event, it's a little different. The triage  officer, normally is ... The bus rolls over on the interstate, triage is  walking among the bodies and doing their thing. But in an active shooter event,  it's not safe to do that. But the job still has to be done. So  Mark, can you open up by kind of talking a little bit about what's different  about triage in an active shooter event? And how do we do the integration with  law enforcement to set that up and get it rolling? Mark Rhame: In a traditional sense, the  triage activity, or the triage person as you said, is walking amongst the  individuals who are injured and trying to determine who is the most critically  injured and which patient's gonna go first to the hospital, which patient's  gonna get treated first. In the sense of a active shooter event, as you stated,  that triage person, the person who's in that position, cannot go into that  environment, because it may be still hot in the very beginning. It becomes warm  when we take down the shooter or we put the shooter in a place where we can  actually get to our patients safely with our rescue task force. But that triage  officer is going to make and determine basically from a distance, utilizing  rescue task force and standing right next to the tactical officer who has  contact teams inside whose relaying information back to him or her about what  kind of patients and how many patients and how severe they are so they can come  up with their tactical considerations. For  the triage officer in this environment, they're going to stand up rescue task  force. And the rescue task force are a combination of our fire EMS people and  law enforcement at a security envelope for that team to go in there and start  counting our patients, start doing some very quick treatment on those patients,  getting them to a location where they're all the patients are in one place,  which we call our casualty collection point, determining the quickest route out  of that location to an ambulance exchange point so we can load them up into the  ambulances and move them off that scene, working hand in hand with our  transportation officer who will be standing next to us. One  of the considerations we have to have, though, is a triage person who's in that  position, is they have to go down to a safe environment where that tactical  officer is. So there is a consideration for that triage officer working with  our medical branch to say, "Is it safe for me to send my people into that  location? Is it safe for me to send my triage person and my transport officer  down to that location so they can be standing next to each other talking face  to face, coming up with their strategy and tactics?" So once that area is  determined to be safe for them to go to that area -- it's a warm zone, so  there's still some consideration of a threat -- but they can go down to that  location. They cohabitate with them. At that point in time, they can stand up  their rescue task force and get them inside and start working on these  patients. Bill Godfrey: Fantastic. Joe, we were  talking on another podcast with the law enforcement guys who really, really  were talking about the importance of co-locating triage and transport with the  tactical group supervisor to be able to work the problem very directly. Can you  talk about, from the fire EMS perspective, from the medical perspective, why is  it so important to put the triage and transport supervisors forward with the  tactical group supervisor? Why can't they just take it over and run it and do  what they gotta do? Why is that co-location location so important? Joe Ferrara: Well, I think if we look into some of the common problems that occur on scenes from an incident  management perspective, it's always communication. Communication always seems  to be the number one gap. So in one scenario, we could take our triage and  transport group supervisors, and they could be in a fire command post, and they  can be directing the rescue task force and directing the ambulances, but yet  the gap there is they're not talking to tactical. Tactical has the operational  picture of the scene. Tactical knows where the boundaries of the hot zone is.  Tactical knows about the security threats occurring. Tactical knows when it's  safe to start the rescue operation.  So  if we're gonna create a gap by not co-locating, by forcing triage and transport  to pick up a phone, or worse yet, have a cross-patch radio channel that may or  may not work ... Because typically, fire and EMS are not on the same radio  system as police. So why not, when the medical branch is stood up, and the  medical branch sends triage and transport group supervisors as a command  function, as an ICS function, downrange, send them to the tactical folks? The  tactical guy, who was maybe that fifth man. I know we talked about it in a past  podcast. It's not the counted fifth man. It could be the fifth, sixth, seventh.  Whoever that law enforcement person is that's running the tactical operation,  who better to have the folks in triage and transport that are gonna be moving  patients and getting them out of scene as expeditiously as possible, why not  have them with the law enforcement supervisor? By  doing that, those triage folks will have no question about whether it's safe to  put an RTF in with a security bubble. The transport group supervisor will have  no question about where the ambulance exchange points need to be, because  getting that information directly from the person that has the operational  picture, the tactical group supervisor. Bill Godfrey: So Tom, Joe, obviously,  talking very passionately about a lot of the challenges in understanding the  security side of this thing, which, of course, for fire and EMS folks, that's  not our area of expertise. That's not normal for us. But being there with  tactical to get that, can you talk a little bit about some of the difficulties  or the challenges in getting the patients transported? I mean, okay ... the law  enforcement's neutralized the threat. The rescue task forces have moved  downrange. They've got contact with the patient. We're ready to get the  patients out of there. What are some of the challenges that are faced on the  transport side in making that happen in a timely fashion? Tom Billington: Well, one of  the things we discuss is neutralizing the threat, which is done. So now we're  fighting the clock. And as a transport group supervisor, you are that final cog  in the wheel to get these patients to the correct facilities as soon as  possible. And so it's really important that the transport group supervisor have  situational awareness. They should know where the hospitals are located, the  best routes, how many patients each hospital can take. And this has to be done  rapidly. Again, we're fighting the clock. We have to get these injured people  to a hospital as soon as possible and to get them treated. Again, by being  located with the other groups, you have a better chance of understanding the  clarity of what's going to happen, where you want to send them. And it's really  a important task. Bill Godfrey: Tom, walk me through the  process of how the rescue task force who has the patients picks a spot to hand  them off to the ambulances. Walk me through how that happens and what that  looks like. Tom Billington: Okay, when  the rescue task forces are ready for the ambulances, the first thing they need  to do is establish an ambulance exchange point. It has to be a location close  to their casualty collection point. It has to be easy access. And obviously,  there needs to be security. So once they have identified a location close to  the casualty collection point that is outside that the ambulances can come and  leave freely, they need to make sure they have a security bubble, and set up  the ambulance exchange point. When all of this is completed, only then do we  bring the ambulances in. And of course, we bring them in one at a time with  security, load the patient. This  is a very important point. When we load the patient, we're not sitting there  treating the patient anymore. We do not want to be sitting target, as you may  call it. We want to get the person moved and get on the way to the hospital. So  it's a very important part. Remember, security's important. Remember, don't box  up your ambulances one at a time, and it should go pretty good after that. Bill Godfrey: So mark, talk a little bit  about the challenges that are faced realistically. The triage and transport  group supervisors, they're physically co-located, maybe at the trunk of a car.  Maybe they're working off a desk somewhere, or they're just standing in a  parking lot, but they're working with tactical, and you've got these three  people that are putting their heads together, trying to kind of coordinate that  ballet. Talk a little bit about what are some of the typical challenges you see  and maybe some of the ways to overcome those challenges. Mark Rhame: Well, probably one of the  biggest things is they've got to trust the teams that are inside. The tactical  officer along with the triage and transport have eyes inside of the building.  They are with the patients. They have identified a casualty collection point,  and they are giving a recommendation for an ambulance exchange point. Those  individuals who are outside, who are running that inner perimeter, that warm  zone that was a hot zone previously, being the tactical officer, that triage  person and that transport person, they have to trust the people inside to give  them a good recommendation of a good pathway from that place that they're  bringing their patients to, that casualty collection point, to the outside as  an ambulance exchange point. Simply  standing outside and looking at a map doesn't always work. We can all look at  maps, and especially if you get a multi-story structure, and think we can  determine the quickest route from inside the structure to the outside where the  ambulances are waiting to take the patients to the hospital. But truly, you've  got to trust the people inside who have physically walked it and who have an  understanding of where the quickest methodology or the quickest path to get  them out. You've got to trust them to make a good decision, a good  recommendation. Now,  you have every right as a triage officer, or a tactical officer, to overrule  that, because you're seeing the bigger picture. You own that inner perimeter.  You may see other threats they're not seeing, or other considerations. But  really, you've got to trust those people inside to given you good intel, good  patient counts, and a recommendation of the quickest methodology of getting  those patients off the scene. Bill Godfrey: So, Joe, I'm gonna put you  on the spot with this one. Why not just drag or shuttle the patients out of the  hot and warm zone back to some cold zone area where you can lay them out,  really do a good assessment on them, treat them if you need to and then load  them in more of a traditional transport area where you've got a line of  ambulances? Why not do it that way? Joe Ferrara: Well Bill, that's  certainly a good perspective, and that's traditionally the way we've done it in  EMS. We've set up those treatment, transport, and triage areas. We've set up the  tarps and we start moving patients out from there. However, as we've stressed  in active shooter events and learned lessons from the military, when people are  shot ... time. Time is the killer. So the longer that we let these people sit  on scene, then the less their chance of survival. The only thing that is gonna  save these people is rapid movement, and rapid transport to an appropriate  facility. So  we have our choice here. We co-locate with tactical. We organize a rescue task  forces downrange. We push them to do indirect threat care to get the patient  briefly stabilized, and we move them directly to ambulances. So if we're gonna  move once from a casualty collection point to the back of an ambulance, why not  make it the shortest move? And that shortest move is from inside the CCP to  outside in the ambulance exchange point. Rather than moving them inside the  CCP, over to the cold zone, and now we're gonna re-triage them and retreat them  and load them back into ambulances and cause another delay. So  because of that killer of time, the best thing to do here is to get those  patients directly in the AEP, directly in the ambulance and on their way to the  appropriate facility. Let's cut out the other steps that are killing our  patients. Bill Godfrey: Good points. Good points.  Tom, from your perspective ... I know you've done a lot of training on the RTF  side, and on the transport side and trying to help people integrate that  ballet, I'm gonna call it ... What are some of the challenges you see? Where do  people slip up? What are the common mistakes that you see in that process of  trying to get into the patients quickly, do whatever emergent ... as Joe said,  emergent indirect care you need to, and then get on an ambulance and get out of  Dodge? What's the common mistakes you're seeing? Tom Billington: Well, the  first is hesitation. You need to make sure that, when you're on a RTF, a rescue  task force, that you're comfortable, that the law enforcement officers are  going to protect your life, and the law enforcement officers are comfortable,  that you're going to listen to them for safety reasons. So the first thing is,  don't hesitate. You need to move in as a team and be ... Rapidly assess these  folks. Start treating them as quickly as possible. On  the transport side, some of the tangles we get into, I'll give you an example,  is we think a lot about helicopters. Transport isn't only by ambulance, it can  be by helicopter. But a problem with that is as a transport officer, again,  situation awareness should let you be able to decide is it quicker to put them  in the back of an ambulance and drive to them the hospital? Or is it quicker to  drive an ambulance to a landing zone, transport the patient to a helicopter?  The helicopter crew has their procedures that they have to do before they take  off. We may even be adding time by using that helicopter. So it's just another  issue you have to weigh out. Again, we're fighting the clock, so the quickest  way is always the best. Bill Godfrey: Mark, what about your  perspective? What are the common mistakes that you see? Mark Rhame: Well, Tom hit a very good  on there in regard to delays that we artificially create. The delays that  aren't driven by the shooter, who has been taken down, secured. The delays of  believing that you can't enter a building after you've secured that area, even  though the threat still may be within that hot, warm zone. Those delays are  what's killing these patients. And we've got to come to the conclusion, the  reality, that we're creating a lot of these problems ourselves. We can have the  solution right in front of us with proper training, with practice, with  integrating our response, but we've got to eliminate these delays by trusting  our judgment on these issues. There is nothing wrong with entering a structure where you still have a threat in it,  so long as you've held that threat at bay, you've placed that threat somewhere  that it's not gonna harm anyone else. That it's law enforcement it's held that  person in place. And then you can send in your rescue task force, get those  people off the scene, even though you haven't taken down the threat. So we  can't get into this mode where we're gonna back up a half a mile or a mile and  wait for the scene to be totally secure and become cold, because those patients  are gonna die right in front of us. We've  got to get into that environment where delays are killing these people, and  we've got to be a little bit more aggressive. Bill Godfrey: Joe, if you were giving  advice to a new, young paramedic, or a young company officer, who is gonna have  to play the triage or transport role, what's the one piece of advice? In fact,  I'll pass this question to each of you guys. What's the one piece of advice  that you would give a young medic or a young company officer who's gonna have  to play either the triage or the transport roles in an active shooter event?  What's the one piece of advice you'd give them? Joe Ferrara: Don't waste time. One of  the biggest problems that I always saw as a supervisor on the scene, as a  company officer, was we do a great job getting the patient extricated, and  suddenly, we get them in the back of the ambulance and we think some magic is  gonna happen in there and the patient is gonna be cured. Get in the truck. When  the patient is loaded, get that driver up front and let's move to the hospital.  Trauma patients will benefit from surgery, not from paramedic intervention. So  don't waste the patient's time. It's way too valuable. Bill Godfrey: Tom, how about you? One  piece of advice you'd give to the young paramedic or company officer? Tom  Billington: He or she  must trust the people that are in those positions, that are in the RTF. Trust  them. The only time you want to override a decision is if it is a danger to  health. If there's a threat they don't know about. But other than that, you  have to let these people do their jobs. Give them the tools they need. Support  them, and trust that they are making the right decisions. And overall, you  should have a better outcome. Bill Godfrey: And Mark, you? Mark Rhame: Get organized. I'll give  you an example. If you are placed in the position of transport, you need to  find out what hospitals are able to take what type of patients right up front.  You cannot wait until the patients are starting to be dragged out, placed in  the back of an ambulance, and then calling dispatch and asking hospitals what  patients they can take. You've gotta be way ahead of the curve on this issue  and get organization very, very quickly. Get that information that's necessary  for you to be successful in getting those patients off the scene as quick as  possible.  Bill Godfrey: Great stuff. Great stuff.  Well, that's our time today, chiefs. I want to say thank you guys for sitting  down and taking the time to talk about this. I enjoyed it. Look forward to  doing some more of these in the future. Original Source: https://www.c3pathways.com/podcast/triage-and-transport

Episode 03: Triage and Transport

Episode 06: What Makes Managing an Active Shooter Event Different?

Episode 18 #10 Overall, what are the gaps in our preparedness?10 Questions for the Mayor to ask the Police and Fire Chief SeriesQuestion 10: "Overall, what are the gaps in our preparedness?"Bill Godfrey:Thank you for joining us and welcome back to the final instance of our podcast series that we've been doing, on 10 questions for the mayor or the city manager, county manager to ask their police and fire chiefs. Today we are going to be looking at kind of an overall summary, what are the gaps and our preparedness, what are the common problems we see? My name is Bill Godfrey, I'm one of the instructors with C3 Pathways, retired fire chief. Joining me today is Tom Billington, also a retired fire chief and one of the C3 instructors, Stephen Shaw, a Sergeant with Chapel Hill, North Carolina and one of our C3 instructors, Ron Otterbacher, retired division chief with the Orange County Sheriff's office and an instructor and Don Tuten with the Jacksonville Sheriff's office where he's the chief over Homeland Security and also one of our instructors.Good afternoon guys, thank you for joining us for this final one. So Tom, I'm going to start off with you. What are the big gaps? Let's kind of work this down. You know, the first one that comes to my mind, is just the very basics of agencies that just are not really even working together on the ... you know, across the disciplines or across jurisdictions because it's more than just your jurisdiction. Let's start there and kind of work down.Tom Billington:Well, you're absolutely right. One of the big issues is, if you have individual fire departments, where you have a Sheriff's office and a separate police department. A lot of these organizations or separate animals’ company, a lot of these organizations have their own plans. They have their own silo, their own little box, and they're not communicating with each other, which is very dangerous. In addition to that, even if you have single agencies, you still need to involve your dispatch, emergency management, school board personnel. Everybody has to work together and come up with one plan that everybody agrees on and trains onBill Godfrey:So Tom highlights, Don, the importance of the one plan. And of course everybody here all knows that we recommend that literally there is one plan. So you know, normally a police department's going to have its set up policies and procedures and a fire department is going to have its set of policies and procedures. We're saying that this is one case, where there should be a single policy and procedure that is literally the same piece of paper co-signed by the police chief and the fire chief and the EMS chief and whoever else needs to sign. Why is that so important?Don Tuten:You know, the main reason why that's so important is if leadership changes and that document has not been updated or is in transition to being updated, that an understanding is already been established on how things are going to work. The second biggest one is the leadership within these organizations. Your mayors, your city council people, your commissioners, basically you're showing them that you have a unified front of all emergency services, as well as your outlying private and public sector entities, your schools, your hospitals, that they have taken the initiative to come together, create a plan that is acceptable for all. We're not going to deviate from that plan and that we're all working together to solve the incident or the challenge within our community.Bill Godfrey:Steve, your agency, not nearly as large as Don's agency, so if you had an event, you got others coming, everybody in the world is coming and in some cases people, agencies that you may not know or work with. What kind of issues does that pose and how do we solve that?Stephen Shaw:Well, one of the biggest issues is obviously going to be communication. One of the ways that we kind of tackle that in our area, is when we updated our radio several years ago, we made sure to get a radio that was on the same system as pretty much every other law enforcement or first responder agency, basically within driving distance. And so what that does is even though everybody's on separate channels, we can all at least monitor our own channels and our dispatch center can monitor everybody's channels and we can at least communicate that way. Another issue is going to be with self-deploying officers and things like that. How are you going to keep accountability of those resources that come in? And so, what we discussed is basically just having a way to ... instead of having them come and just go somewhere, you use them for something like a perimeter.They're not going to be on our channel, they're not going to be familiar with their way around town. They're not going to be familiar with our buildings, but we can still use that person for a perimeter or go on a rescue task force, something like that. So we always have to think about how are we going to use these people. And then, I mean again, the biggest issue is just going to be communication. We talk a lot about policy, but really they just need to understand that we have our own systems in place, our own practices, and we try to reiterate that to everybody that's going to be coming and helping. And then when we have exercises, we try to invite everybody. Anybody who's around, we try to invite everybody, Hey, come on. Even though you're a a county over or a couple of cities over, come to our area, participate in this exercise so that we can kind of see what everybody's doing and make sure that everybody's on the same page.Bill Godfrey:Yeah, making sure everybody gets invited to training together and exercising together is a key element. Ron, talk to me a little bit about the challenges with, you know, the fire service has been using ICS (Incident Command System) for a long time and in many ways has got a pretty rigid reliance on ICS (Incident Command System). Whereas law enforcement, in some cases like in Don's case, their agency embraced it years ago and has done a lot of work, but there's other law enforcement agencies that don't use it at all or use it a very little. How much does that play a role here in trying to let us all inter-operate and work together?Ron Otterbacher:It plays a huge role and the reason for that is as we teach across country, we see that some agencies don't necessarily embrace ICS (Incident Command System). Others do it, like Jacksonville does a great job of it. There's agencies all throughout the country that do a great job with it, but having that understanding of how to operate next to each other, and again, you may be co-located, but we don't want you to be co-located with your own silo next to each other, we want you to be able to work together. We often talk about unified command, although unified command in a lot of examples is not necessarily unified, it's co-located command that has no focus, that's the single focus and that's probably the biggest thing we see is when we talk about unified command or working together as a command structure, you've got to understand what's going on. You've got to communicate.Bill Godfrey:It's interesting you mentioned that. I mean, you and I and Tom were or are old enough and we were on the job when unified command kind of was added to ICS (Incident Command System) and invented, if you will. And back then it had a very specific meaning of, you know, when more than one agency had a legal authority to be in charge of, of an incident and somewhere on the streets over the last, I don't know, 10 plus years, it seems to have come to mean that the law enforcement guy runs a law enforcement show. The fire guy runs a fire show, the EMS guy runs the EMS show, they stand next to each other and somehow magically they share information and that that's going to make everything okay. And, and we always, you know, we, we talk about that in class and we demonstrate on a regular basis why that's an ineffective way to do it. Unified commands got great value, but you've got to use it as the tool that it was intended to be and still speak with one voice. How big of an issue do you think is and you know how many people have that misunderstanding and you think it's that common and big issue?Ron Otterbacher:I think it's getting better, but yes, I think it's a common issue and it's not just within the public safety sector, it's other partners that we deal with that just they've got the belief that if an incident happened at their location, they would be running the incident and everyone else would be just kind of assisting them when in fact that's not going to be the case. The understanding of what goes on is critical.Bill Godfrey:So Tom, I'm going to bounce over to you. You've spent a lot of years as an emergency manager in wearing dual hats as the fire chief and the emergency manager. A lot of experience with natural disasters as well as some manmade ones. How do you make sure that your policies and procedures are de conflicted with your mutual aid partners? How do you, okay, great. So you got the fire department, you got your fire chief, you've got your police chief in your city who is on the same page. And they've signed off on a joint policy. Now how do we make sure that and what's the process for making sure that we work with the mutual aid agencies to de-conflict those policies and make sure that we're, if we're not all on exactly the same page, that we're on a close enough page that we can inter-operate together.Tom Billington:Well, Bill, that's an excellent question. Actually in my organization about 15 years ago, we were involved in just that issue. It took a lot of work, but we were able to get eight separate jurisdictions from different counties in different towns to all agree on a mutual aid plan or an automatic and mutually plan that talks about what each agency does when they come into your area, what medical protocols they use or don't use, what the indemnification is. It took a lot of work getting everybody in the same room, but in the end it really worked really good. It clears up any misinterpretation on the various policies. And of course that comes with meeting with people, talking to them together. And it really, it was successful. We were very proud of it.Bill Godfrey:What role in your mind, Tom, can the county managers, city managers, mayors potentially play, what in a helpful way, what role can they be? How can they be advocates when the inevitable politics rears its head and you're having trouble getting agency A to work with agency B or a, you know, get everybody on the same page. What, how can the city manager, the County manager, the mayor help their police chief and their fire chief get this done.Tom Billington:Actually the same way we talked about emergency responders doing it. They need to be connected to the mayor or city manager or County manager of the County next to them. They need to be involved in tri-county committees, knowing each other, working with each other. I know that in my county we had a really good relationship with the several towns and cities that were within our area. We had the local emergency planning council, which had all these key players, the County managers, mayors represented on them. And so just keeping your feet on the ground and then working with these various other organizations rather, elected officials and mayors and county administrators. It's just the way to go.Bill Godfrey:Okay. So to wrap us up here, I'm going to come around to each of you and say what's your number one thing that you think that you see with your experience as an instructor, your experience in the field. What's the number one issue that you would identify that is a common gap. And I'll start off cause it makes it easier on me cause I don't want you guys to repeat. I'll start off, the one that I see that strikes me the most is this misconception that managing an active shooter event is all about what happens down range in the hot zone and the warm zone and while that obviously is a key critical piece, there is so much more to it that if you don't manage is still going to send your incident sideways and slowdown that clock and delay the time that it takes to get the injured people out and to a hospital. And so my big one is this, that managing one of these events takes a whole lot more than just being focused on the downrange hot zone and warm zone. Don coming to you.Don Tuten:For me personally, I think we fail to include our city leaders in our plans and informing them what our plans are working in unity with all of our partners and by doing that it raises questions. So when an event does happen, unfortunately it may raise some questions where there's uncertain or somebody's not sure with something. So I think we need to educate, inform and train with, for lack of better terms, our city leaders, our city managers, so they understand that what is going to happen in that critical event is agreed upon by all as well as informs them on kind of the roles of each one of the agencies.Bill Godfrey:Tom, how about you?Tom Billington:My big one is boxes. Everybody has their little box, they stay in and they're not getting out of the box and meeting their counterparts or the people in the next county or the next organization and that is so harmful and I've seen it before where you're on an incident in a command post with two agency personnel and you don't even know their name or they don't know your name, there's no excuse for that. We have to get out of our boxes, meet, talk, work together, train together and know each other and a first name basis.Bill Godfrey:Steve.Stephen Shaw:Well, from an instructor perspective, one of the things that always worries me and the kind of a term that makes me cringe as an instructor is full scale exercise. And the reason I say that is because full-scale exercises have a very valuable place when it comes to active shooter training, a critical incident preparedness. But where I see a big gap is we have these full scale exercises and then there's no follow-up to the things that we learned from the weaknesses that we displayed or the strengths that we displayed during that exercise. And a lot of that comes from, especially in my area, there's not a lot of big agencies like where Don works. It's all smaller agencies. And to commit the manpower, the resources and the time to run one of these events and then follow it up with several training scenarios after that really leaves us a lot of gaps. We identify these areas that we need to improve, but then we don't follow up with the proper training or policy implementations that we need to cover those gaps in the future.Bill Godfrey:Ron, over to you for the final word.Ron Otterbacher:I think unification of response plans is an important direction for us to go. I think that we, even within a city, usually a fire department has a different response plan than the police department does. If you go beyond your city or your county, then you've got six or seven different response plans and we need to figure out how to unify those response plans. So if I've got an officer responding from two counties over, because it's that big a scene, they all know this is the same response plan we've gotten no matter where you go in that area, in that region, in that state, if it has to be, but it doesn't look like these situations are letting up. So we've got to do better at managing these situations and the only way you can do that is by developing plans that everyone understands, everyone abides by. And that's how we all operate.Bill Godfrey:Well-put. Gentlemen, I can't thank you enough for your participation in this final podcast of the series, and I want to say a special thanks to all of the instructors that have participated in all 10 of these particular podcasts on this very, very important topic and thank you to the listeners for taking the time to go through this. Look forward to seeing you in our next podcast.

<h1>Episode 18 #10 Overall, what are the gaps in our preparedness?</h1><h2>10 Questions for the Mayor to ask the Police and Fire Chief Series</h2><h2>Question 10: "Overall, what are the gaps in our preparedness?"</h2>Bill Godfrey:Thank you for joining us and welcome back to the final instance of our podcast series that we've been doing, on 10 questions for the mayor or the city manager, county manager to ask their police and fire chiefs. Today we are going to be looking at kind of an overall summary, what are the gaps and our preparedness, what are the common problems we see? My name is Bill Godfrey, I'm one of the instructors with C3 Pathways, retired fire chief. Joining me today is Tom Billington, also a retired fire chief and one of the C3 instructors, Stephen Shaw, a Sergeant with Chapel Hill, North Carolina and one of our C3 instructors, Ron Otterbacher, retired division chief with the Orange County Sheriff's office and an instructor and Don Tuten with the Jacksonville Sheriff's office where he's the chief over Homeland Security and also one of our instructors. Good afternoon guys, thank you for joining us for this final one. So Tom, I'm going to start off with you. What are the big gaps? Let's kind of work this down. You know, the first one that comes to my mind, is just the very basics of agencies that just are not really even working together on the ... you know, across the disciplines or across jurisdictions because it's more than just your jurisdiction. Let's start there and kind of work down.Tom Billington:Well, you're absolutely right. One of the big issues is, if you have individual fire departments, where you have a Sheriff's office and a separate police department. A lot of these organizations or separate animals’ company, a lot of these organizations have their own plans. They have their own silo, their own little box, and they're not communicating with each other, which is very dangerous. In addition to that, even if you have single agencies, you still need to involve your dispatch, emergency management, school board personnel. Everybody has to work together and come up with one plan that everybody agrees on and trains onBill Godfrey:So Tom highlights, Don, the importance of the one plan. And of course everybody here all knows that we recommend that literally there is one plan. So you know, normally a police department's going to have its set up policies and procedures and a fire department is going to have its set of policies and procedures. We're saying that this is one case, where there should be a single policy and procedure that is literally the same piece of paper co-signed by the police chief and the fire chief and the EMS chief and whoever else needs to sign. Why is that so important?Don Tuten:You know, the main reason why that's so important is if leadership changes and that document has not been updated or is in transition to being updated, that an understanding is already been established on how things are going to work. The second biggest one is the leadership within these organizations. Your mayors, your city council people, your commissioners, basically you're showing them that you have a unified front of all emergency services, as well as your outlying private and public sector entities, your schools, your hospitals, that they have taken the initiative to come together, create a plan that is acceptable for all. We're not going to deviate from that plan and that we're all working together to solve the incident or the challenge within our community.Bill Godfrey:Steve, your agency, not nearly as large as Don's agency, so if you had an event, you got others coming, everybody in the world is coming and in some cases people, agencies that you may not know or work with. What kind of issues does that pose and how do we solve that?Stephen Shaw:Well, one of the biggest issues is obviously going to be communication. One of the ways that we kind of tackle that in our area, is when we updated our radio several years ago, we made sure to get a radio that was on the same system as pretty much every other law enforcement or first responder agency, basically within driving distance. And so what that does is even though everybody's on separate channels, we can all at least monitor our own channels and our dispatch center can monitor everybody's channels and we can at least communicate that way. Another issue is going to be with self-deploying officers and things like that. How are you going to keep accountability of those resources that come in? And so, what we discussed is basically just having a way to ... instead of having them come and just go somewhere, you use them for something like a perimeter. They're not going to be on our channel, they're not going to be familiar with their way around town. They're not going to be familiar with our buildings, but we can still use that person for a perimeter or go on a rescue task force, something like that. So we always have to think about how are we going to use these people. And then, I mean again, the biggest issue is just going to be communication. We talk a lot about policy, but really they just need to understand that we have our own systems in place, our own practices, and we try to reiterate that to everybody that's going to be coming and helping. And then when we have exercises, we try to invite everybody. Anybody who's around, we try to invite everybody, Hey, come on. Even though you're a a county over or a couple of cities over, come to our area, participate in this exercise so that we can kind of see what everybody's doing and make sure that everybody's on the same page.Bill Godfrey:Yeah, making sure everybody gets invited to training together and exercising together is a key element. Ron, talk to me a little bit about the challenges with, you know, the fire service has been using ICS (Incident Command System) for a long time and in many ways has got a pretty rigid reliance on ICS (Incident Command System). Whereas law enforcement, in some cases like in Don's case, their agency embraced it years ago and has done a lot of work, but there's other law enforcement agencies that don't use it at all or use it a very little. How much does that play a role here in trying to let us all inter-operate and work together?Ron Otterbacher:It plays a huge role and the reason for that is as we teach across country, we see that some agencies don't necessarily embrace ICS (Incident Command System). Others do it, like Jacksonville does a great job of it. There's agencies all throughout the country that do a great job with it, but having that understanding of how to operate next to each other, and again, you may be co-located, but we don't want you to be co-located with your own silo next to each other, we want you to be able to work together. We often talk about unified command, although unified command in a lot of examples is not necessarily unified, it's co-located command that has no focus, that's the single focus and that's probably the biggest thing we see is when we talk about unified command or working together as a command structure, you've got to understand what's going on. You've got to communicate.Bill Godfrey:It's interesting you mentioned that. I mean, you and I and Tom were or are old enough and we were on the job when unified command kind of was added to ICS (Incident Command System) and invented, if you will. And back then it had a very specific meaning of, you know, when more than one agency had a legal authority to be in charge of, of an incident and somewhere on the streets over the last, I don't know, 10 plus years, it seems to have come to mean that the law enforcement guy runs a law enforcement show. The fire guy runs a fire show, the EMS guy runs the EMS show, they stand next to each other and somehow magically they share information and that that's going to make everything okay. And, and we always, you know, we, we talk about that in class and we demonstrate on a regular basis why that's an ineffective way to do it. Unified commands got great value, but you've got to use it as the tool that it was intended to be and still speak with one voice. How big of an issue do you think is and you know how many people have that misunderstanding and you think it's that common and big issue?Ron Otterbacher:I think it's getting better, but yes, I think it's a common issue and it's not just within the public safety sector, it's other partners that we deal with that just they've got the belief that if an incident happened at their location, they would be running the incident and everyone else would be just kind of assisting them when in fact that's not going to be the case. The understanding of what goes on is critical.Bill Godfrey:So Tom, I'm going to bounce over to you. You've spent a lot of years as an emergency manager in wearing dual hats as the fire chief and the emergency manager. A lot of experience with natural disasters as well as some manmade ones. How do you make sure that your policies and procedures are de conflicted with your mutual aid partners? How do you, okay, great. So you got the fire department, you got your fire chief, you've got your police chief in your city who is on the same page. And they've signed off on a joint policy. Now how do we make sure that and what's the process for making sure that we work with the mutual aid agencies to de-conflict those policies and make sure that we're, if we're not all on exactly the same page, that we're on a close enough page that we can inter-operate together.Tom Billington:Well, Bill, that's an excellent question. Actually in my organization about 15 years ago, we were involved in just that issue. It took a lot of work, but we were able to get eight separate jurisdictions from different counties in different towns to all agree on a mutual aid plan or an automatic and mutually plan that talks about what each agency does when they come into your area, what medical protocols they use or don't use, what the indemnification is. It took a lot of work getting everybody in the same room, but in the end it really worked really good. It clears up any misinterpretation on the various policies. And of course that comes with meeting with people, talking to them together. And it really, it was successful. We were very proud of it.Bill Godfrey:What role in your mind, Tom, can the county managers, city managers, mayors potentially play, what in a helpful way, what role can they be? How can they be advocates when the inevitable politics rears its head and you're having trouble getting agency A to work with agency B or a, you know, get everybody on the same page. What, how can the city manager, the County manager, the mayor help their police chief and their fire chief get this done.Tom Billington:Actually the same way we talked about emergency responders doing it. They need to be connected to the mayor or city manager or County manager of the County next to them. They need to be involved in tri-county committees, knowing each other, working with each other. I know that in my county we had a really good relationship with the several towns and cities that were within our area. We had the local emergency planning council, which had all these key players, the County managers, mayors represented on them. And so just keeping your feet on the ground and then working with these various other organizations rather, elected officials and mayors and county administrators. It's just the way to go.Bill Godfrey:Okay. So to wrap us up here, I'm going to come around to each of you and say what's your number one thing that you think that you see with your experience as an instructor, your experience in the field. What's the number one issue that you would identify that is a common gap. And I'll start off cause it makes it easier on me cause I don't want you guys to repeat. I'll start off, the one that I see that strikes me the most is this misconception that managing an active shooter event is all about what happens down range in the hot zone and the warm zone and while that obviously is a key critical piece, there is so much more to it that if you don't manage is still going to send your incident sideways and slowdown that clock and delay the time that it takes to get the injured people out and to a hospital. And so my big one is this, that managing one of these events takes a whole lot more than just being focused on the downrange hot zone and warm zone. Don coming to you.Don Tuten:For me personally, I think we fail to include our city leaders in our plans and informing them what our plans are working in unity with all of our partners and by doing that it raises questions. So when an event does happen, unfortunately it may raise some questions where there's uncertain or somebody's not sure with something. So I think we need to educate, inform and train with, for lack of better terms, our city leaders, our city managers, so they understand that what is going to happen in that critical event is agreed upon by all as well as informs them on kind of the roles of each one of the agencies.Bill Godfrey:Tom, how about you?Tom Billington:My big one is boxes. Everybody has their little box, they stay in and they're not getting out of the box and meeting their counterparts or the people in the next county or the next organization and that is so harmful and I've seen it before where you're on an incident in a command post with two agency personnel and you don't even know their name or they don't know your name, there's no excuse for that. We have to get out of our boxes, meet, talk, work together, train together and know each other and a first name basis.Bill Godfrey:Steve.Stephen Shaw:Well, from an instructor perspective, one of the things that always worries me and the kind of a term that makes me cringe as an instructor is full scale exercise. And the reason I say that is because full-scale exercises have a very valuable place when it comes to active shooter training, a critical incident preparedness. But where I see a big gap is we have these full scale exercises and then there's no follow-up to the things that we learned from the weaknesses that we displayed or the strengths that we displayed during that exercise. And a lot of that comes from, especially in my area, there's not a lot of big agencies like where Don works. It's all smaller agencies. And to commit the manpower, the resources and the time to run one of these events and then follow it up with several training scenarios after that really leaves us a lot of gaps. We identify these areas that we need to improve, but then we don't follow up with the proper training or policy implementations that we need to cover those gaps in the future.Bill Godfrey:Ron, over to you for the final word.Ron Otterbacher:I think unification of response plans is an important direction for us to go. I think that we, even within a city, usually a fire department has a different response plan than the police department does. If you go beyond your city or your county, then you've got six or seven different response plans and we need to figure out how to unify those response plans. So if I've got an officer responding from two counties over, because it's that big a scene, they all know this is the same response plan we've gotten no matter where you go in that area, in that region, in that state, if it has to be, but it doesn't look like these situations are letting up. So we've got to do better at managing these situations and the only way you can do that is by developing plans that everyone understands, everyone abides by. And that's how we all operate.Bill Godfrey:Well-put. Gentlemen, I can't thank you enough for your participation in this final podcast of the series, and I want to say a special thanks to all of the instructors that have participated in all 10 of these particular podcasts on this very, very important topic and thank you to the listeners for taking the time to go through this. Look forward to seeing you in our next podcast.

Ep 18: #10 Overall, what are the gaps in our preparedness? - "10 Questions from the Mayor" Series

Episode 17 #9 What is your comfort with schools' Violent Event and reunification plans?10 Questions for the Mayor to ask the Police and Fire Chief SeriesQuestion 9: "What is your comfort with our public and private schools' Violent Event procedures and offsite reunification plans?"Bill Godfrey:Welcome to our next podcast. We are continuing our series, 10 things for the mayor or the city manager, county manager to ask their police and fire chief together. Today, we're going to talk number nine, what is your comfort with our public and private schools, violent event procedures, and offsite reunification plans. My name is Bill Godfrey. I'm one of the instructors with C3 Pathways and a retired fire chief. And, I'm joined today by Don Tuten, chief with Jacksonville Sheriff's Office. Don's in charge of Homeland Security. Steve Shaw from Chapel Hill, North Carolina, a Sergeant with the police department there, also one of the instructors at C3, as is Don, and Ron Otterbacher, retired division chief from the Orange County Sheriff's office and also one of our C3 instructors. Welcome, guys. Thanks for being here.So, as we talk about this today, I kind of want to set the stage a little bit. In many states now, public schools are required to not only have emergency plans, but to have reunification plans, which has some interesting bumps in the road as we found out through practice. But, the other one that kind of surprised me a little bit was the situation with private schools. They're not necessarily subject to exactly the same regulations and requirements. I was, my daughter in private school, and I mentioned this in podcast series eight that when I sat down and talked with them about their procedures, there was a little room for improvement.We've worked on that and closed the gap, and I feel really good about that, but it made me wonder how big of a problem is this, not just with the public schools and the plans they have, but private schools who may have done little or no planning and never really even thought about doing an exercise? Don, tell me a little bit about what you guys do in your region there in North Florida. How do you approach that? What do you see as the things that are common between the public schools, and what's different with the private schools?Don Tuten:So, one of the things that we identified was, we got together with our private, or correction, our public school system, which has their own police department and has their own school board. What we did was, we partnered with them to take on that responsibility in our area on the law enforcement side for private schools, so we take care of any issues with the private schools. What we do is we meet with them. We establish contact with them, also with our community affairs, our intelligence unit, and our community affairs unit works very closely with the private schools. We do meet biannually with them. We make sure that everybody's on the same page on what their plans are. We emulate the same plans that the school board system is using, the public school board system is using, but the different challenges are, as we also partner, have a private partnership with churches as well as some of our community affairs folks to ensure that our public bus system is going to work for the private schools if they have an incident there.So, we basically have a plan in place. We're utilizing some of the same resources that public school program uses, but we're accepting that responsibility within my agency to ensure that that's going to continue to flow. And, we train with them, and we meet with them, like I said, on a biannual basis to ensure that that plan is still in effect and it is practiced.Bill Godfrey:So, Steve, obviously Don is from a very large organization. Yours is more common. I don't want to say it's a smaller organization, but it's more of a common size for police departments. What do you guys do in your region? How do you approach it?Stephen Shaw:So, we don't have as many resources as what Don has in his area, but one of the things that we do try to incorporate into all of our school response is the SROs that we do have, before the students come back at the end of a summer break, they will meet with all the teachers, and they will basically have a presentation and kind of a walk through. These are the procedures. These are the things that that you need to be thinking about. If we have an event, this is what a lockdown looks like. This is what you can expect from the responders, which is another important piece of that.Then, as the year progresses, as they have lockdown drills, as they have any kind of bomb threat drills or anything like that that they do throughout the year, we will try to invite patrol officers, investigators, people from other agencies like the neighboring jurisdictions to come and participate in these drills so that they can, A, see the layout of the school, B, see what's happening at that particular school, and kind of interact with some of the teachers and some of the students there. But, that's for public schools. For private schools, this is a little different. We don't have SRO's (School Resource Officer) in private schools, so we have to really take the initiative in our area to reach out to these schools to make sure that they're kind of on the same page as the public schools are, and that the officers are as aware of the private schools as they are the public schools.So, it creates a little bit of a challenge because some of these schools are ... A lot of times they kind of show up, and we have a new Montessori school in town for example, and we didn't really know that it's coming. It just kind of shows up. So, we have to really make sure that our people that are out on the street, patrol officers, community services people, anybody who's out there is kind of identifying these locations and taking the initiative to reach out to them, introduce themselves. Hey, I'm officer so-and-so. I generally work this area, just want to kind of introduce myself, see what you have going on. And, again, making sure that we're all on the same page as far as what we are telling them our response should look like.Bill Godfrey:That's really interesting that you've got your patrol officers kind of going out and making that first contact. Has that produced success for you guys in the area and enabled you to be able to follow up and help, either help them or work with them to get some meaningful plans that have been effective?Stephen Shaw:It does help, but again, it's one of those things that's subject to change. A patrol officer's primary function is to answer calls. So, if they don't have time, if they don't have time to introduce themselves, then that gap may go unfilled. So, it's really up to us as an agency. The ones that are there that look at the active shooter instructors, the community services people, the people who are planning these events, the emergency management people in town, they really have to make sure that we're on top of getting in contact with all of these places.Bill Godfrey:So, Ron, something Steve mentioned a second ago on, he was using the example of Montessori schools. As you and I have talked offline a few times, there's in some cases with the reunifications, offsite reunifications, some real challenges with age of kids, special needs kids, in some cases infants, daycare centers that are taking care of very, very small children. It's not really just a question of being able to throw them into a vehicle and move them. I mean, you have to worry about things like the car seats, and having the supplies that the kids need, and all that kind of stuff. What are some of your experiences in the work that you've done with schools over the years and some of the exercises that you've picked up on?Ron Otterbacher:Absolutely, and it's not just the private schools and Montessori. It's any school, because you have public schools that are heavy with special needs children, and you've got to be prepared for that. It's different than your regular elementary school, because you may need 15 special buses to take them away from there. The other thing you've got to do is, we talk often about off-campus reunification areas, but so many campuses still are unifying their people on campus. So, you've got to get out, and you've got to talk to the schools. You've got to check their plans. We started similar to what they did up in Chapel Hill, but we'd have our SRO’s (School Resource Officer) go review the plans, and if they had any issues or questions, then we'd have staff go and help with that issue. But, there's a lot of things to think about. It's not a simple thing, and until you exercise those plans that they have in place and figure out if they'll work or not, then you may not be successful.Don Tuten:I want to say one thing also, just a catalyst on what both of them said is, another opportunity is to have that information with the special needs and any other special challenge schools to put that information within your CAD system and your dispatch system. There's ways with the CAD systems now that you can put that information in so the responding officers, even if it's a newer officer writing that area, that information would come up on the call screen of what those challenges are within that school, how many kids there are, how many are special needs so they can start getting those resources en route as soon as possible.Bill Godfrey:I think those are all great points. Ron, in fact I believe you and I were working together when we ran into the school who brought us their reunification plan, which was a great plan that called for the kids to be reunified on their own football field. That was actually where in close proximity to where the shooter had fled. It was interesting. Of course, for those of you that may not know, we certainly endorse and support the I Love U Guys Foundation's standard response protocol and standard reunification method. We've looked at just a myriad of different programs out there, and it hands down, bar none is the best one out there, which is why we use it and teach it and support that method.But, I know when John-Michael Keyes who's the lead over at the foundation came down to do the training for my daughter's school, one of the interesting conversations is, with public schools there's usually a district or a school board or some sort of downtown office that's going to have personnel that can come out and facilitate the reunification offsite. Whereas with a private school, it's usually just that one campus. I know that was a pretty stunning conversation for the superintendent in my case to realize that it wasn't realistic that his staff was going to be able to go run that reunification site, and that his buses that were in the parking lot of the school weren't going to be leaving, because that was going to be part of what's been shut down, and that he was going to have to find some other community partners to work with, either another school or the local school board or emergency management to actually manage the reunification for them, because they weren't going to be able to do that. Have you seen that be a common issue across the country?Ron Otterbacher:Yes, I have, and I think that's why it's so important to exercise your plan, is because although you may have school board downtown, I don't know that in most of the plans I've seen, they called for them to go down and run reunification. Its usually teachers are going to go with the students, and they're going to account for them wherever they go. So, that's why it's important to sit down and discuss it ahead of time. There's no pressure on us today to discuss it. When an incident's happening, the pressure is immense, and we're setting ourselves up for failure if we haven't practiced it.Bill Godfrey:I completely agree with you. It's such an important thing to do, even in getting the school principals, and if there is a district office or a school board, getting those representatives to kind of understand what their role is in the incident management of one of these events, that you're not going to just kind of go off and do this separate thing. The kids have to be moved in a secure and safe way. There's going to be security issues at the reunification site that law enforcement is certainly going to be engaged with.There's accountability issues for the kids, releasing them back. Law enforcement is going to want to interview everybody to figure out who saw what and who knows what. Yeah, custody issues. There's a whole lot of stuff that that goes on with this. So, I think your comment is right on the money, that it's not only important to have these plans, it's important to actually take the time to exercise them and, to some degree, I don't know. Don, wouldn't you even say it's important to some degree include the parents so that they have some idea of what to expect if you're going to do one of these things?Don Tuten:Absolutely, and I think that works on several levels. Number one, it gives them the opportunity to understand what is going to take place if an event does happen. So, it pre-educates them on what is to be expected by law enforcement, what is to be expected by the school, as well as what is to be expected of them, the parent when they do arrive at that reunification location. And, some of the question is already answered, so hopefully, and we all hope that this does not continue to happen, and we don't have another event, but hopefully if something does happen, it helps increase their awareness of how safe their children really are when it comes to the reunification process, how professional it is going to be run, and it speeds up the process on getting the kids back.Ron Otterbacher:I agree. I think it's important that we bring them into the fold, so they have a knowledge. If they don't, the unknown is what causes fear. If they don't know what's coming about, it's going to increase their anxiety and fear level. By increasing that, it's going to increase the probability that something will go wrong, and there'll be some sort of confrontation. I think the more you can give them, the better they'll be.Stephen Shaw:Bringing in the parents, it's just like when we talk about integration with other agencies. I think a lot of it begins with ... We don't need to necessarily wait for a crisis event to practice our reunification. One of the things that we deal with in North Carolina and the South is tornadoes, ice storms. If we have a significant weather event that shuts down a school, we can start to practice some of our reunification methods at the school, let the parents know this is how we're going to get you back together with your kids. It doesn't necessarily have to be an active shooter event for us to start working on some of these methods and ironing out what our issues may be.Bill Godfrey:I think these are all great points. So, guys, if I wrap this up and summarize it, our big gaps that we commonly see is a school that doesn't have a plan, or they've got a plan, but there's flawed assumptions in the plan that they're going to use their own campus or use their own people and facilities, don't exercise the plan, and to some degree, we may not have told parents what to expect. Did I miss anything. Ron?Ron Otterbacher:The one thing I would add to it is reunification is beyond schools. Businesses need to have plans. Any group of people that are together need to have a plan for reunification if something goes awry.Bill Godfrey:Absolutely, absolutely. Gentlemen, I can't thank you enough for taking the time. I hope those listening enjoyed it, and I invite you to come back and listen to our final podcast in this series, which is going to be just an overall summary of what the gaps in our preparedness are and some of the things that we can do about them. Until then, stay safe. We look forward to having you back soon.

<h1>Episode 17 #9 What is your comfort with schools' Violent Event and reunification plans?</h1><h2>10 Questions for the Mayor to ask the Police and Fire Chief Series</h2><h2>Question 9: "What is your comfort with our public and private schools' Violent Event procedures and offsite reunification plans?"</h2>Bill Godfrey:Welcome to our next podcast. We are continuing our series, 10 things for the mayor or the city manager, county manager to ask their police and fire chief together. Today, we're going to talk number nine, what is your comfort with our public and private schools, violent event procedures, and offsite reunification plans. My name is Bill Godfrey. I'm one of the instructors with C3 Pathways and a retired fire chief. And, I'm joined today by Don Tuten, chief with Jacksonville Sheriff's Office. Don's in charge of Homeland Security. Steve Shaw from Chapel Hill, North Carolina, a Sergeant with the police department there, also one of the instructors at C3, as is Don, and Ron Otterbacher, retired division chief from the Orange County Sheriff's office and also one of our C3 instructors. Welcome, guys. Thanks for being here. So, as we talk about this today, I kind of want to set the stage a little bit. In many states now, public schools are required to not only have emergency plans, but to have reunification plans, which has some interesting bumps in the road as we found out through practice. But, the other one that kind of surprised me a little bit was the situation with private schools. They're not necessarily subject to exactly the same regulations and requirements. I was, my daughter in private school, and I mentioned this in podcast series eight that when I sat down and talked with them about their procedures, there was a little room for improvement. We've worked on that and closed the gap, and I feel really good about that, but it made me wonder how big of a problem is this, not just with the public schools and the plans they have, but private schools who may have done little or no planning and never really even thought about doing an exercise? Don, tell me a little bit about what you guys do in your region there in North Florida. How do you approach that? What do you see as the things that are common between the public schools, and what's different with the private schools?Don Tuten:So, one of the things that we identified was, we got together with our private, or correction, our public school system, which has their own police department and has their own school board. What we did was, we partnered with them to take on that responsibility in our area on the law enforcement side for private schools, so we take care of any issues with the private schools. What we do is we meet with them. We establish contact with them, also with our community affairs, our intelligence unit, and our community affairs unit works very closely with the private schools. We do meet biannually with them. We make sure that everybody's on the same page on what their plans are. We emulate the same plans that the school board system is using, the public school board system is using, but the different challenges are, as we also partner, have a private partnership with churches as well as some of our community affairs folks to ensure that our public bus system is going to work for the private schools if they have an incident there. So, we basically have a plan in place. We're utilizing some of the same resources that public school program uses, but we're accepting that responsibility within my agency to ensure that that's going to continue to flow. And, we train with them, and we meet with them, like I said, on a biannual basis to ensure that that plan is still in effect and it is practiced.Bill Godfrey:So, Steve, obviously Don is from a very large organization. Yours is more common. I don't want to say it's a smaller organization, but it's more of a common size for police departments. What do you guys do in your region? How do you approach it?Stephen Shaw:So, we don't have as many resources as what Don has in his area, but one of the things that we do try to incorporate into all of our school response is the SROs that we do have, before the students come back at the end of a summer break, they will meet with all the teachers, and they will basically have a presentation and kind of a walk through. These are the procedures. These are the things that that you need to be thinking about. If we have an event, this is what a lockdown looks like. This is what you can expect from the responders, which is another important piece of that. Then, as the year progresses, as they have lockdown drills, as they have any kind of bomb threat drills or anything like that that they do throughout the year, we will try to invite patrol officers, investigators, people from other agencies like the neighboring jurisdictions to come and participate in these drills so that they can, A, see the layout of the school, B, see what's happening at that particular school, and kind of interact with some of the teachers and some of the students there. But, that's for public schools. For private schools, this is a little different. We don't have SRO's (School Resource Officer) in private schools, so we have to really take the initiative in our area to reach out to these schools to make sure that they're kind of on the same page as the public schools are, and that the officers are as aware of the private schools as they are the public schools. So, it creates a little bit of a challenge because some of these schools are ... A lot of times they kind of show up, and we have a new Montessori school in town for example, and we didn't really know that it's coming. It just kind of shows up. So, we have to really make sure that our people that are out on the street, patrol officers, community services people, anybody who's out there is kind of identifying these locations and taking the initiative to reach out to them, introduce themselves. Hey, I'm officer so-and-so. I generally work this area, just want to kind of introduce myself, see what you have going on. And, again, making sure that we're all on the same page as far as what we are telling them our response should look like.Bill Godfrey:That's really interesting that you've got your patrol officers kind of going out and making that first contact. Has that produced success for you guys in the area and enabled you to be able to follow up and help, either help them or work with them to get some meaningful plans that have been effective?Stephen Shaw:It does help, but again, it's one of those things that's subject to change. A patrol officer's primary function is to answer calls. So, if they don't have time, if they don't have time to introduce themselves, then that gap may go unfilled. So, it's really up to us as an agency. The ones that are there that look at the active shooter instructors, the community services people, the people who are planning these events, the emergency management people in town, they really have to make sure that we're on top of getting in contact with all of these places.Bill Godfrey:So, Ron, something Steve mentioned a second ago on, he was using the example of Montessori schools. As you and I have talked offline a few times, there's in some cases with the reunifications, offsite reunifications, some real challenges with age of kids, special needs kids, in some cases infants, daycare centers that are taking care of very, very small children. It's not really just a question of being able to throw them into a vehicle and move them. I mean, you have to worry about things like the car seats, and having the supplies that the kids need, and all that kind of stuff. What are some of your experiences in the work that you've done with schools over the years and some of the exercises that you've picked up on?Ron Otterbacher:Absolutely, and it's not just the private schools and Montessori. It's any school, because you have public schools that are heavy with special needs children, and you've got to be prepared for that. It's different than your regular elementary school, because you may need 15 special buses to take them away from there. The other thing you've got to do is, we talk often about off-campus reunification areas, but so many campuses still are unifying their people on campus. So, you've got to get out, and you've got to talk to the schools. You've got to check their plans. We started similar to what they did up in Chapel Hill, but we'd have our SRO’s (School Resource Officer) go review the plans, and if they had any issues or questions, then we'd have staff go and help with that issue. But, there's a lot of things to think about. It's not a simple thing, and until you exercise those plans that they have in place and figure out if they'll work or not, then you may not be successful.Don Tuten:I want to say one thing also, just a catalyst on what both of them said is, another opportunity is to have that information with the special needs and any other special challenge schools to put that information within your CAD system and your dispatch system. There's ways with the CAD systems now that you can put that information in so the responding officers, even if it's a newer officer writing that area, that information would come up on the call screen of what those challenges are within that school, how many kids there are, how many are special needs so they can start getting those resources en route as soon as possible.Bill Godfrey:I think those are all great points. Ron, in fact I believe you and I were working together when we ran into the school who brought us their reunification plan, which was a great plan that called for the kids to be reunified on their own football field. That was actually where in close proximity to where the shooter had fled. It was interesting. Of course, for those of you that may not know, we certainly endorse and support the I Love U Guys Foundation's standard response protocol and standard reunification method. We've looked at just a myriad of different programs out there, and it hands down, bar none is the best one out there, which is why we use it and teach it and support that method. But, I know when John-Michael Keyes who's the lead over at the foundation came down to do the training for my daughter's school, one of the interesting conversations is, with public schools there's usually a district or a school board or some sort of downtown office that's going to have personnel that can come out and facilitate the reunification offsite. Whereas with a private school, it's usually just that one campus. I know that was a pretty stunning conversation for the superintendent in my case to realize that it wasn't realistic that his staff was going to be able to go run that reunification site, and that his buses that were in the parking lot of the school weren't going to be leaving, because that was going to be part of what's been shut down, and that he was going to have to find some other community partners to work with, either another school or the local school board or emergency management to actually manage the reunification for them, because they weren't going to be able to do that. Have you seen that be a common issue across the country?Ron Otterbacher:Yes, I have, and I think that's why it's so important to exercise your plan, is because although you may have school board downtown, I don't know that in most of the plans I've seen, they called for them to go down and run reunification. Its usually teachers are going to go with the students, and they're going to account for them wherever they go. So, that's why it's important to sit down and discuss it ahead of time. There's no pressure on us today to discuss it. When an incident's happening, the pressure is immense, and we're setting ourselves up for failure if we haven't practiced it.Bill Godfrey:I completely agree with you. It's such an important thing to do, even in getting the school principals, and if there is a district office or a school board, getting those representatives to kind of understand what their role is in the incident management of one of these events, that you're not going to just kind of go off and do this separate thing. The kids have to be moved in a secure and safe way. There's going to be security issues at the reunification site that law enforcement is certainly going to be engaged with. There's accountability issues for the kids, releasing them back. Law enforcement is going to want to interview everybody to figure out who saw what and who knows what. Yeah, custody issues. There's a whole lot of stuff that that goes on with this. So, I think your comment is right on the money, that it's not only important to have these plans, it's important to actually take the time to exercise them and, to some degree, I don't know. Don, wouldn't you even say it's important to some degree include the parents so that they have some idea of what to expect if you're going to do one of these things?Don Tuten:Absolutely, and I think that works on several levels. Number one, it gives them the opportunity to understand what is going to take place if an event does happen. So, it pre-educates them on what is to be expected by law enforcement, what is to be expected by the school, as well as what is to be expected of them, the parent when they do arrive at that reunification location. And, some of the question is already answered, so hopefully, and we all hope that this does not continue to happen, and we don't have another event, but hopefully if something does happen, it helps increase their awareness of how safe their children really are when it comes to the reunification process, how professional it is going to be run, and it speeds up the process on getting the kids back.Ron Otterbacher:I agree. I think it's important that we bring them into the fold, so they have a knowledge. If they don't, the unknown is what causes fear. If they don't know what's coming about, it's going to increase their anxiety and fear level. By increasing that, it's going to increase the probability that something will go wrong, and there'll be some sort of confrontation. I think the more you can give them, the better they'll be.Stephen Shaw:Bringing in the parents, it's just like when we talk about integration with other agencies. I think a lot of it begins with ... We don't need to necessarily wait for a crisis event to practice our reunification. One of the things that we deal with in North Carolina and the South is tornadoes, ice storms. If we have a significant weather event that shuts down a school, we can start to practice some of our reunification methods at the school, let the parents know this is how we're going to get you back together with your kids. It doesn't necessarily have to be an active shooter event for us to start working on some of these methods and ironing out what our issues may be.Bill Godfrey:I think these are all great points. So, guys, if I wrap this up and summarize it, our big gaps that we commonly see is a school that doesn't have a plan, or they've got a plan, but there's flawed assumptions in the plan that they're going to use their own campus or use their own people and facilities, don't exercise the plan, and to some degree, we may not have told parents what to expect. Did I miss anything. Ron?Ron Otterbacher:The one thing I would add to it is reunification is beyond schools. Businesses need to have plans. Any group of people that are together need to have a plan for reunification if something goes awry.Bill Godfrey:Absolutely, absolutely. Gentlemen, I can't thank you enough for taking the time. I hope those listening enjoyed it, and I invite you to come back and listen to our final podcast in this series, which is going to be just an overall summary of what the gaps in our preparedness are and some of the things that we can do about them. Until then, stay safe. We look forward to having you back soon.

Ep 17: #9 What is your comfort with our schools' plans? - "10 Questions from the Mayor" Series

Episode 16 #8 What are you doing with community partners?10 Questions for the Mayor to ask the Police and Fire Chief SeriesQuestion 8: "What are you doing with community partners regarding Active Shooter Hostile events?"Bill Godfrey:Welcome back to our next podcast. We are continuing our series on 10 questions for the mayor, the city manager, the County manager to ask their police and fire chief together. Today we are covering topic number eight what are you doing with community partners regarding active shooter hostile events? Today I'm joined by Tom Billington, retired fire chief, Stephen Shaw, Sergeant with Chapel Hill, North Carolina, Ron Otterbacher, retired division chief of the Orange County Sheriff's office and Don Tuten, Chief over Homeland Security at Jacksonville Sheriff's office. Welcome guys. Thanks for joining me. My name is Bill Godfrey. I'm one of the instructors at C3 pathways along with the gentleman I just introduced, also a retired fire chief. So Ron, let me start with you because you've got an interesting perspective from the hospital side as well as just decades of law enforcement experience. Talk a little bit about what are the things that we should be doing with our community partners and what in particular you think are the relevant things with hospitals?Ron Otterbacher:The big thing is you need to talk to them. There needs to be some adequate discussion and then the private entities or the community partners need to understand what law enforcement or fire or EMS may need should we have an active shooter event. Some of those things is do you need to create a go bag? The go bag should contain such things as your floor plans for your buildings, your keys, your access control cards. If you've got video capabilities, do you have access to view those video capabilities while the incident is ongoing? Is it a permanent position or do you have an iPad this hook to your video systems that you can, the first responders as they're moving through the building have access to that because not every place they go in a building will they be able to be accompanied by someone from your business.Bill Godfrey:Interesting stuff. Steven, I'm going to tangent over to you is just a little bit some of what Ron was talking about with the go bag planning and the response planning. You of course have a fairly sizable university in your region, right in your backyard. Talk a little bit about some of the challenges with that large student population working with the university. They have their own police department that's there on campus. Talk a little bit about working with them as a community partner in this.Stephen Shaw:A lot of times what it takes is working together ahead of time on just regular incidents, regular calls. Can we communicate over the radio? Do we know who we are? Can we navigate around campus? Can we navigate around town? A lot of this stuff is pre-work that is done before we have a significant event and then as we're planning these significant events, we need to work together on our exercises. Are we training the same things? Are we teaching the same principles? Do we have the same line of thought as far as reunification, as far as intelligence gathering? Can we use each other's facilities? All of these questions need to be asked ahead of time and a lot of it takes place on the regular call level as far as when we go to traffic crashes, can we communicate with each other? If we have a crash that happens on campus, but our jurisdiction responds to for whatever reason.Bill Godfrey:I'm curious have either one of you, Steve or Ron worked out, beyond the idea of a go bag, any type of prearranged access plans for responders. I mean obviously we don't want to get into specifics here on a general public podcast, but what are the types of things that, if you've got a large, and I'll call it a campus facility, just using that generically, whether it's a large business, a large hospital, a large school, university, large church, what are the types of things that those folks should do to prepare for receiving responders and having access beyond just the typical go bags? Where do they keep the go bags? Can you guys, Steve, you want to talk a little bit about some of that again? Avoid any specifics to those facilities, but just in a general sense?Stephen Shaw:Well, one of the things that we try to do is, especially, so say for example, a new apartment building, a lot of times they will have secured doors that have punch codes for a password or something like that. What we try to do is they have to pass that information usually along to the fire department per codes and so what we try to do as our community services people get up with the fire department, get up with those entities so that we have access to those codes ahead of time. If it's not a code, is it a key and something like a Knox box? Do we have access to the Knox box so we can get in there, finding all that stuff out and then if we have access to floor plans, can we get that information again, in my area, the fire department generally has access to floor plans of new construction. The same with the university. Do we have access to that ahead of time and our people in the field that deal with that kind of stuff? We try to remind them to try to gather that information as much as possible. So it is put out to responding officers and also to incident commanders for an event.Bill Godfrey:Yeah, it's a really interesting comment. Tom, I'm going to come over to you. Can you talk a little bit about the general idea of Knox box. Not everybody listening may actually know what that program is, but certainly something in the fire service generally has been doing for years and address a couple of those things that Steven just mentioned.Tom Billington:Yes. In the fire service, the Knox box program is a key vault that either holds keys, so you can enter a facility 24 hours a day, seven days a week or it may have some codes in it that you can access coded doors and it's usually accessible by a County fire departments and even law enforcement if they share that information. And so it's a good way to make access 24 hours a day, seven days a week to these facilities.Bill Godfrey:And Tom while you're talking about it, what are some of your perspectives from the fire and EMS side on the community partnerships or the outreaches? What are the things that when you were a fire chief concerns you about this that you'd want to meet and talk with folks about?Tom Billington:Well, most of your county managers as mine did know that the EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) requires a local emergency planning council, which has, you're supposed to have politicians, responders, hospitals all involve meeting to discuss plans. As a County manager, I would want to know are we using the LEPC (Local Emergency Planning Council) to talk to these partners about an active shooter plan? How are we all responding together as a community or a county? And so if you have a LEPC (Local Emergency Planning Council), which you should, hopefully this is an issue or these issues are brought up here on a regular basis on that committee.Bill Godfrey:That's a really interesting perspective. The getting the LEPC involved, which then loops you in with a whole bunch of community partners. Don, you've got some experience with some fusion centers and I know that not everywhere in the country is necessarily covered by one, but there are a number of them that are pretty active. Is there a role here for the fusion centers? Do we need to work with them ahead of time? How does that fit?Don Tuten:Absolutely. So most places around the country do have fusion centers, either on the state level or local level and both. The local levels will talk with the state levels as well, but the local fusion centers, primary contacts are within each one of those agencies. For instance, I know locally where I'm at, our fusion center works directly with our critical infrastructure unit on some of the same things that our other guests have talked about and in conjunction with specifically keys and plans, we put critical information into our CAD system and also share it with our fusion center. For instance, some of the critical infrastructures within our areas may have products that they produce that have certain standoff distances if there is a fire or if there is an explosion or certain security concerns if somebody were to break into that facility. That information is shared with the fusion center who then works directly with our intelligence community, pushes that out in a pretty timely manner and in fact has the access also to push that out to our patrol officers while they're on scene or conducting an investigation at a specific location.Bill Godfrey:Don, speaking of pushing out information, I'm curious when we have some of these tragic events that have occurred frankly in the world, not just here in the US but where there's targeted attacks, whether it's terrorism or religious attacks. Do you reach out to the community partners and kind of brief them out, obviously, I know you can't go into specifics, but can you talk in general detail about what you would see as being best practices for sharing information or talking to those community partners?Don Tuten:Absolutely. I think each agency has to have that community element, whether it's run through the intelligence side of things through the investigative side of things or through community services within that agency to foster those relationships with your leaders of churches, synagogues, a mosque, as well as the school system as well as private schools. A lot of times private schools get overlooked because nobody wants to take that responsibility on. So that's one thing they have to be made a part of the team for lack of better terms. And it's incumbent upon the agencies that oversee those areas and provide services to them to engage in that two way communication in a timely manner, especially after a significant event in the world to foster those relationships. And then the most critical is maintain those relationships even in times when there's not a critical incidents going on around the country.Bill Godfrey:You know, it's really interesting you mentioned private schools, which some of you who work in the office with me or know this, but too long ago, my youngest daughter attends a private school and I had a conversation with the superintendent about their plans and their level of preparedness. Now granted I'm biased and obviously pay great attention to these things. Let's just say there was plenty of room for improvement which we went to work on right away. And to the school's credit, they did a 180 almost overnight and really implemented some, great cutting edge stuff. Is that a problem across all our communities? I mean, Steve or how are you guys up there in your area? Do you see that same problem where your private schools or your daycares and churches may not have the level of planning that the public schools do?Stephen Shaw:The biggest reason is because the state schools basically fall under state guidelines. State guidelines have requirements for SRO’s (School Resource Officer). They have requirements for where they keep information as far as floor plans and keys to the school. Private schools don't have those same guidelines and so we see a lot of variants. Some of them want to be prepared, they just don't have necessarily the tools to get there. So we see a lot of variance there. So it's up to individual agencies. It's up to the schools themselves to make sure that those people are educated, that they're current on best practices. And that's one of the things that we try to do with our community services people is try to reach out to these places and make sure that they're getting up to date on lock down procedures, what information they should have, do they know what to expect from responding officers in the event of an active shooter or any sort of critical incident. Making sure that they are aware of best practices surrounding how they do reunification, how they keep track of people. All that stuff comes into play and it's important and it does vary, especially for private schools.Tom Billington:And then Steve, if I could jump in. I know in my community there's a big issue with charter schools which received funding from the state but don't necessarily fall under the same rules and we found that some of the charter schools in our community do not have the same plans as the public schools, and so that's another group that needs to get together and talk about how they're going to work together.Bill Godfrey:Interesting stuff. Ron, I'm curious, I know I said this in the last one. Obviously you've got a lot of background with schools, but you've spent years running patrol. Who needs to go knock on the door of the school and make that initial contact? Is that something that we should be encouraging more at the line level trying to build those partnerships with these private schools, with these churches and talk to them about the issue? How do we get that done?Ron Otterbacher:Absolutely. Most of the public schools have SRO’s (School Resource Officer) or DARE (Drug Abuse Resistance Education) officers, whatever there may be assigned to those schools, which is no problem. We can't negate the fact that the private schools may not have it and we've got to do community outreach. Maybe your community policing groups can go out there and talk to them. There are all kinds of groups that can do it. If for some reason the agency doesn't feel it's right for them to step in there, there's also organizations throughout the country that will help and those planning such ASIS International, which is American society for Industrial Security. They've got people that are trained and board certified. Actually they can go out there and help with those assessments too. So if the agency doesn't feel that they should be the ones stepping in, they should have community partners in those organizations. They can step in and also help in those areas.Bill Godfrey:Interesting stuff. And I know on the fire side we're having some really serious conversation at the national level about the fire safety codes and the alarms in schools and the fire alarms being triggered and some of those not necessarily being the greatest plans for some of these hostile events. And we're trying to work through those. And unfortunately that's going to take time and there aren't necessarily easy answers in that. Gentleman, I can't thank you enough for taking the time to join me this afternoon to talk about this topic. And if you're listening, I hope that you will return and join us for our next in this podcast series, we'll be coming up to question nine where we're going to dive in a little bit more into schools, specifically both public and private, to talk about what is our comfort level with not only their violent event procedures on campus, but also their plans for offsite reunification. Hope you'll join us next time. Thank you.

<h1>Episode 16 #8 What are you doing with community partners?</h1><h2>10 Questions for the Mayor to ask the Police and Fire Chief Series</h2><h2>Question 8: "What are you doing with community partners regarding Active Shooter Hostile events?"</h2>Bill Godfrey:Welcome back to our next podcast. We are continuing our series on 10 questions for the mayor, the city manager, the County manager to ask their police and fire chief together. Today we are covering topic number eight what are you doing with community partners regarding active shooter hostile events? Today I'm joined by Tom Billington, retired fire chief, Stephen Shaw, Sergeant with Chapel Hill, North Carolina, Ron Otterbacher, retired division chief of the Orange County Sheriff's office and Don Tuten, Chief over Homeland Security at Jacksonville Sheriff's office. Welcome guys. Thanks for joining me. My name is Bill Godfrey. I'm one of the instructors at C3 pathways along with the gentleman I just introduced, also a retired fire chief. So Ron, let me start with you because you've got an interesting perspective from the hospital side as well as just decades of law enforcement experience. Talk a little bit about what are the things that we should be doing with our community partners and what in particular you think are the relevant things with hospitals?Ron Otterbacher:The big thing is you need to talk to them. There needs to be some adequate discussion and then the private entities or the community partners need to understand what law enforcement or fire or EMS may need should we have an active shooter event. Some of those things is do you need to create a go bag? The go bag should contain such things as your floor plans for your buildings, your keys, your access control cards. If you've got video capabilities, do you have access to view those video capabilities while the incident is ongoing? Is it a permanent position or do you have an iPad this hook to your video systems that you can, the first responders as they're moving through the building have access to that because not every place they go in a building will they be able to be accompanied by someone from your business.Bill Godfrey:Interesting stuff. Steven, I'm going to tangent over to you is just a little bit some of what Ron was talking about with the go bag planning and the response planning. You of course have a fairly sizable university in your region, right in your backyard. Talk a little bit about some of the challenges with that large student population working with the university. They have their own police department that's there on campus. Talk a little bit about working with them as a community partner in this.Stephen Shaw:A lot of times what it takes is working together ahead of time on just regular incidents, regular calls. Can we communicate over the radio? Do we know who we are? Can we navigate around campus? Can we navigate around town? A lot of this stuff is pre-work that is done before we have a significant event and then as we're planning these significant events, we need to work together on our exercises. Are we training the same things? Are we teaching the same principles? Do we have the same line of thought as far as reunification, as far as intelligence gathering? Can we use each other's facilities? All of these questions need to be asked ahead of time and a lot of it takes place on the regular call level as far as when we go to traffic crashes, can we communicate with each other? If we have a crash that happens on campus, but our jurisdiction responds to for whatever reason.Bill Godfrey:I'm curious have either one of you, Steve or Ron worked out, beyond the idea of a go bag, any type of prearranged access plans for responders. I mean obviously we don't want to get into specifics here on a general public podcast, but what are the types of things that, if you've got a large, and I'll call it a campus facility, just using that generically, whether it's a large business, a large hospital, a large school, university, large church, what are the types of things that those folks should do to prepare for receiving responders and having access beyond just the typical go bags? Where do they keep the go bags? Can you guys, Steve, you want to talk a little bit about some of that again? Avoid any specifics to those facilities, but just in a general sense?Stephen Shaw:Well, one of the things that we try to do is, especially, so say for example, a new apartment building, a lot of times they will have secured doors that have punch codes for a password or something like that. What we try to do is they have to pass that information usually along to the fire department per codes and so what we try to do as our community services people get up with the fire department, get up with those entities so that we have access to those codes ahead of time. If it's not a code, is it a key and something like a Knox box? Do we have access to the Knox box so we can get in there, finding all that stuff out and then if we have access to floor plans, can we get that information again, in my area, the fire department generally has access to floor plans of new construction. The same with the university. Do we have access to that ahead of time and our people in the field that deal with that kind of stuff? We try to remind them to try to gather that information as much as possible. So it is put out to responding officers and also to incident commanders for an event.Bill Godfrey:Yeah, it's a really interesting comment. Tom, I'm going to come over to you. Can you talk a little bit about the general idea of Knox box. Not everybody listening may actually know what that program is, but certainly something in the fire service generally has been doing for years and address a couple of those things that Steven just mentioned.Tom Billington:Yes. In the fire service, the Knox box program is a key vault that either holds keys, so you can enter a facility 24 hours a day, seven days a week or it may have some codes in it that you can access coded doors and it's usually accessible by a County fire departments and even law enforcement if they share that information. And so it's a good way to make access 24 hours a day, seven days a week to these facilities.Bill Godfrey:And Tom while you're talking about it, what are some of your perspectives from the fire and EMS side on the community partnerships or the outreaches? What are the things that when you were a fire chief concerns you about this that you'd want to meet and talk with folks about?Tom Billington:Well, most of your county managers as mine did know that the EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) requires a local emergency planning council, which has, you're supposed to have politicians, responders, hospitals all involve meeting to discuss plans. As a County manager, I would want to know are we using the LEPC (Local Emergency Planning Council) to talk to these partners about an active shooter plan? How are we all responding together as a community or a county? And so if you have a LEPC (Local Emergency Planning Council), which you should, hopefully this is an issue or these issues are brought up here on a regular basis on that committee.Bill Godfrey:That's a really interesting perspective. The getting the LEPC involved, which then loops you in with a whole bunch of community partners. Don, you've got some experience with some fusion centers and I know that not everywhere in the country is necessarily covered by one, but there are a number of them that are pretty active. Is there a role here for the fusion centers? Do we need to work with them ahead of time? How does that fit?Don Tuten:Absolutely. So most places around the country do have fusion centers, either on the state level or local level and both. The local levels will talk with the state levels as well, but the local fusion centers, primary contacts are within each one of those agencies. For instance, I know locally where I'm at, our fusion center works directly with our critical infrastructure unit on some of the same things that our other guests have talked about and in conjunction with specifically keys and plans, we put critical information into our CAD system and also share it with our fusion center. For instance, some of the critical infrastructures within our areas may have products that they produce that have certain standoff distances if there is a fire or if there is an explosion or certain security concerns if somebody were to break into that facility. That information is shared with the fusion center who then works directly with our intelligence community, pushes that out in a pretty timely manner and in fact has the access also to push that out to our patrol officers while they're on scene or conducting an investigation at a specific location.Bill Godfrey:Don, speaking of pushing out information, I'm curious when we have some of these tragic events that have occurred frankly in the world, not just here in the US but where there's targeted attacks, whether it's terrorism or religious attacks. Do you reach out to the community partners and kind of brief them out, obviously, I know you can't go into specifics, but can you talk in general detail about what you would see as being best practices for sharing information or talking to those community partners?Don Tuten:Absolutely. I think each agency has to have that community element, whether it's run through the intelligence side of things through the investigative side of things or through community services within that agency to foster those relationships with your leaders of churches, synagogues, a mosque, as well as the school system as well as private schools. A lot of times private schools get overlooked because nobody wants to take that responsibility on. So that's one thing they have to be made a part of the team for lack of better terms. And it's incumbent upon the agencies that oversee those areas and provide services to them to engage in that two way communication in a timely manner, especially after a significant event in the world to foster those relationships. And then the most critical is maintain those relationships even in times when there's not a critical incidents going on around the country.Bill Godfrey:You know, it's really interesting you mentioned private schools, which some of you who work in the office with me or know this, but too long ago, my youngest daughter attends a private school and I had a conversation with the superintendent about their plans and their level of preparedness. Now granted I'm biased and obviously pay great attention to these things. Let's just say there was plenty of room for improvement which we went to work on right away. And to the school's credit, they did a 180 almost overnight and really implemented some, great cutting edge stuff. Is that a problem across all our communities? I mean, Steve or how are you guys up there in your area? Do you see that same problem where your private schools or your daycares and churches may not have the level of planning that the public schools do?Stephen Shaw:The biggest reason is because the state schools basically fall under state guidelines. State guidelines have requirements for SRO’s (School Resource Officer). They have requirements for where they keep information as far as floor plans and keys to the school. Private schools don't have those same guidelines and so we see a lot of variants. Some of them want to be prepared, they just don't have necessarily the tools to get there. So we see a lot of variance there. So it's up to individual agencies. It's up to the schools themselves to make sure that those people are educated, that they're current on best practices. And that's one of the things that we try to do with our community services people is try to reach out to these places and make sure that they're getting up to date on lock down procedures, what information they should have, do they know what to expect from responding officers in the event of an active shooter or any sort of critical incident. Making sure that they are aware of best practices surrounding how they do reunification, how they keep track of people. All that stuff comes into play and it's important and it does vary, especially for private schools.Tom Billington:And then Steve, if I could jump in. I know in my community there's a big issue with charter schools which received funding from the state but don't necessarily fall under the same rules and we found that some of the charter schools in our community do not have the same plans as the public schools, and so that's another group that needs to get together and talk about how they're going to work together.Bill Godfrey:Interesting stuff. Ron, I'm curious, I know I said this in the last one. Obviously you've got a lot of background with schools, but you've spent years running patrol. Who needs to go knock on the door of the school and make that initial contact? Is that something that we should be encouraging more at the line level trying to build those partnerships with these private schools, with these churches and talk to them about the issue? How do we get that done?Ron Otterbacher:Absolutely. Most of the public schools have SRO’s (School Resource Officer) or DARE (Drug Abuse Resistance Education) officers, whatever there may be assigned to those schools, which is no problem. We can't negate the fact that the private schools may not have it and we've got to do community outreach. Maybe your community policing groups can go out there and talk to them. There are all kinds of groups that can do it. If for some reason the agency doesn't feel it's right for them to step in there, there's also organizations throughout the country that will help and those planning such ASIS International, which is American society for Industrial Security. They've got people that are trained and board certified. Actually they can go out there and help with those assessments too. So if the agency doesn't feel that they should be the ones stepping in, they should have community partners in those organizations. They can step in and also help in those areas.Bill Godfrey:Interesting stuff. And I know on the fire side we're having some really serious conversation at the national level about the fire safety codes and the alarms in schools and the fire alarms being triggered and some of those not necessarily being the greatest plans for some of these hostile events. And we're trying to work through those. And unfortunately that's going to take time and there aren't necessarily easy answers in that. Gentleman, I can't thank you enough for taking the time to join me this afternoon to talk about this topic. And if you're listening, I hope that you will return and join us for our next in this podcast series, we'll be coming up to question nine where we're going to dive in a little bit more into schools, specifically both public and private, to talk about what is our comfort level with not only their violent event procedures on campus, but also their plans for offsite reunification. Hope you'll join us next time. Thank you.

Ep 16: #8 What are you doing with community partners? - "10 Questions from the Mayor" Series

Bill Godfrey:Hello, and welcome back to our continuing podcast series on ten questions that the mayor should ask the police chief or the fire chief together, or any elected official, city manager, county manager. My name is Bill Godfrey, I'm one of the instructors with C3 Pathways, a retired fire chief. With me today, I've got Don Tuten, he's chief with the Jacksonville Sheriff’s office, over see's homeland security. Don, thanks for joining us today.We also have Ron Otterbacher. Ron is a retired division chief with the Orange County Sheriff’s office. Ron, thanks for taking the time to join us. Good to have you here.And last but not least, we have Joe Ferrara, retired fire chief, paramedic from south Florida, from Martin County. Joe, thanks for being here today.So guys, our question today, we're on number seven, which is how will public information and social media be managed real time during the response? You know Don, I think I'd like to start with you. Is this really a problem?Don Tuten:It is, and this is something that we try to get ahead of in the very beginning, and we practice this by using our PIO's (Public Information Officer), getting together in JIC (Joint Information Center), even for all of our preplanned events. So they all know each other, they all have the opportunity to work together, so when we do have that major incident go out, as you know Bill, information moves at the speed of light because everybody is on Twitter or Facebook Live. And when there's multiple messages being put out over social media, it's really imperative that the city entity, whether it be police, fire, a combination of both, as well as the mayor's office, have one message that is put out, and the correct information in a timely manner, because such misinformation gets put out so quick. Unfortunately, your media outlets, as well as unknown information gets put out there to parents, let's say if it does involve kids or other businesses, we want to get that information out, the true information out as quick as possible and be as informative as possible in a timely manner.Bill Godfrey:So Ron, I know that you've done a lot of work with schools over the years. Are there any particular challenges on that front with social media and you know, the kids having cell phones and instant access to the parents? Has that impacted our response at school events?Ron Otterbacher:It absolutely has. We've got to remember that most of the kids, especially in school events, their number one focus isn't dialing 911, it's dialing mom or dad. They want to get the information that either their okay or they're in trouble. We've got to manage that information and we've got to understand the flow of that information, because it may tell us that I've got 25 people sending messages from the gymnasium of that school, and that'll tell us we may have a pocket of people that are sitting there waiting to be rescued in some fashion. So it's all critical. Used to be, the school wouldn't allow use of cell phones, but they even recognize that it's so important, especially in these types of situations. Now everyone lets them have the cell phones in the schools.Bill Godfrey:So, before I jump over to EMS, does this have implications for you guys at the perimeter line when you're trying to get security wrapped around an active shooter event? Don, Ron, what are the implications of... You know, I'm a parent. In fact, we all are, and I know every time I get a message from my daughter that even when it's a drill it gives me that anxiety level. And the natural reaction I think of most parents is to try to get to their kid very quickly, but how does that turn into a challenge for us, or does it?Don Tuten:You know, it does and it doesn't. I think it's imperative on each agencies dispatchers as well as command staff to work properly with that police information consortium, whether it be through the Joint JIC (Joint Information Center) or the PIO (Public Information Officer), to push that information out over the radio to those officers working the perimeter to give that information so when you do have walk ups of, "Hey, this is where you need to go, this is a reunification place, this is the information to call, either a hospital, this is the online information that we're updating by every minute," and that's the information that we have to inform our officers and our EMS folks and those people that are on the perimeter to be able to push out. And if we fail to do that, then we're just slowing the timeline on getting that information out.Ron Otterbacher:Parents are a lot like the media. If you don't control the media, the media will control you. If you don't control the parents, they will control you, because they are going to get to their children, the word they’re in trouble. And if you're not prepared to handle them or give them an assignment, tell them where to go, start getting ready for the children to arrive, then they will be trying, however they can, get into where the target area is.Bill Godfrey:Interesting. It really is fascinating how much the impact of social media and cell phones have really changed the emergency response. Joe, let's talk a little bit on the EMS side. You know, one of the challenges, obviously, for us on EMS is we've transported people, where are they, and try accounting for them. Talk a little bit about some of the challenges and pitfalls and maybe some of the potential ways to help or solutions.Joe Ferrara:So this is where integration is extremely important. I know Don spoke earlier about the PIO's (Public Information Officer) working together in a JIC (Joint Information Center), and of course, and especially from the city manager's perspective, that city manager should be asking the PIO from the police agency, the PIO from the fire agency and there may even be a city PIO, that they all work together and that they all work together and craft one message, and it is approved through incident command. That is paramount to this process so that the fire department is not going off with one set of information, and the police department is going off with another set of information. Maybe we haven't talked or integrated and maybe private information is being share that shouldn't be. Certainly fire and EMS is well aware of privacy issues, but as fire and EMS, are we aware of investigative issues that law enforcement has? Maybe it's not a good idea to release certain information because it's sensitive intelligence. We won't know that as fire and EMS, unless we partner and integrate with law enforcement. And law enforcement won't know what patient information to release or not to release, unless there's integration between the two.Bill Godfrey:And I think one of the classic challenges is, you post the hotline phone number, and you get phone calls from people who are purportedly concerned family members, how do you vet that? How do you determine that there's a reasonable probability they are who they say they are, and then provide information about their loved ones or provide information about where the hospitals have transported, or which hospital the patients have been transported to. One of the frustrating parts of that is that you can't always take people at face value. I know one of our other instructors talked about the Southern land Springs shooting and his own personal experience with really what borders on almost unethical conduct on the side of the press in trying to get access to information and trying to figure out who had gone where and then sending reporters to the hospitals, which created some tough issues.So it's certainly some tough challenges. You can't just post names out there on social media, but you've got to be able to kind of correct the misinformation and of course for EMS, you got to walk that fine line on privacy, as do the hospitals. Don, Je - I'm sorry. Don and Ron, have you guys run into any really good ways of approaching handling security at the hospitals or how to handle identifying who's there or who isn't there? Don?Don Tuten:Yeah. So in my agency where we're at, the watch commanders automatically that work those areas where there's trauma centers are, they train and we unfortunately have events that involve police officers as well as larger events that we had. For instance, the mass shooting at the landing, we actually send those officers there to manage a scene that is a whole separate scene. And what they do, is they work with our PIO's, they're given the information on where family members can go to, what credentials or information they need to bring with them, for us to be able to release that information.The city where I'm from, we also have our services division that works with survivors as well as victims, and then we utilize them by working together to vet the proper people that come in to release the proper information at the right time. And then we also, like I said, by having the officers there, we have that security element in place to ensure that runs smoothly.Bill Godfrey:You know, something you just said in there made me think, the NTSB (National Transportation Safety Board), who is of course responsible for investigating plane crashes and those issues, has call centers that are designed and trained with people for asking those kinds of questions and vetting those information. Probably a good model for us to look at as responders, but I think the moral of the story is that, not only do you have to manage the message through your joint information center with all your PIO's on the same page, but you've got to have a plan for dealing with social media real time as the event is unfolding. The PIO is no longer an after thought that's an hour later. The PIO has a role almost as quick as the incident kicks off in communicating that information to the public. Final thoughts, Ron?Ron Otterbacher:And remember it's important to use your resources. If you've got a regional fusion center, use that because they can monitor the social media traffic and they can help you get ahead of it, because if you don't get ahead of it, you're going to be trying to catch up the entire time.Bill Godfrey:Joe, final thoughts?Joe Ferrara:Yeah. I think it's really important not only, you know, we already talked about integrating the PIO's into a JIC, we talked about how to deal with this at a hospital, but the really important thing for police chiefs and fire chiefs and city managers, is have policies and have joint policies that address these. Have good solid social media policies in place, because not only are the people at the scene going to use social media, your responders are. And unless you get in front of that and control that with a policy and proper training, the information is just going to run wild. So, my advice to those chief officers is to get those policies in place, especially on social media and release of information, and practice it.Bill Godfrey:I think that's a great point, alright. Gentlemen, thank you very much for taking the time to talk out to talk about this one. We're going to wrap that one up there, and we hope y'all will join us for the next series, which is our question number eight, what are you doing with community partners regarding active shooter hostile events? Thank you very much for joining us.

Bill Godfrey:Hello, and welcome back to our continuing podcast series on ten questions that the mayor should ask the police chief or the fire chief together, or any elected official, city manager, county manager. My name is Bill Godfrey, I'm one of the instructors with C3 Pathways, a retired fire chief. With me today, I've got Don Tuten, he's chief with the Jacksonville Sheriff’s office, over see's homeland security. Don, thanks for joining us today. We also have Ron Otterbacher. Ron is a retired division chief with the Orange County Sheriff’s office. Ron, thanks for taking the time to join us. Good to have you here.And last but not least, we have Joe Ferrara, retired fire chief, paramedic from south Florida, from Martin County. Joe, thanks for being here today. So guys, our question today, we're on number seven, which is how will public information and social media be managed real time during the response? You know Don, I think I'd like to start with you. Is this really a problem?Don Tuten:It is, and this is something that we try to get ahead of in the very beginning, and we practice this by using our PIO's (Public Information Officer), getting together in JIC (Joint Information Center), even for all of our preplanned events. So they all know each other, they all have the opportunity to work together, so when we do have that major incident go out, as you know Bill, information moves at the speed of light because everybody is on Twitter or Facebook Live. And when there's multiple messages being put out over social media, it's really imperative that the city entity, whether it be police, fire, a combination of both, as well as the mayor's office, have one message that is put out, and the correct information in a timely manner, because such misinformation gets put out so quick. Unfortunately, your media outlets, as well as unknown information gets put out there to parents, let's say if it does involve kids or other businesses, we want to get that information out, the true information out as quick as possible and be as informative as possible in a timely manner.Bill Godfrey:So Ron, I know that you've done a lot of work with schools over the years. Are there any particular challenges on that front with social media and you know, the kids having cell phones and instant access to the parents? Has that impacted our response at school events?Ron Otterbacher:It absolutely has. We've got to remember that most of the kids, especially in school events, their number one focus isn't dialing 911, it's dialing mom or dad. They want to get the information that either their okay or they're in trouble. We've got to manage that information and we've got to understand the flow of that information, because it may tell us that I've got 25 people sending messages from the gymnasium of that school, and that'll tell us we may have a pocket of people that are sitting there waiting to be rescued in some fashion. So it's all critical. Used to be, the school wouldn't allow use of cell phones, but they even recognize that it's so important, especially in these types of situations. Now everyone lets them have the cell phones in the schools.Bill Godfrey:So, before I jump over to EMS, does this have implications for you guys at the perimeter line when you're trying to get security wrapped around an active shooter event? Don, Ron, what are the implications of... You know, I'm a parent. In fact, we all are, and I know every time I get a message from my daughter that even when it's a drill it gives me that anxiety level. And the natural reaction I think of most parents is to try to get to their kid very quickly, but how does that turn into a challenge for us, or does it?Don Tuten:You know, it does and it doesn't. I think it's imperative on each agencies dispatchers as well as command staff to work properly with that police information consortium, whether it be through the Joint JIC (Joint Information Center) or the PIO (Public Information Officer), to push that information out over the radio to those officers working the perimeter to give that information so when you do have walk ups of, "Hey, this is where you need to go, this is a reunification place, this is the information to call, either a hospital, this is the online information that we're updating by every minute," and that's the information that we have to inform our officers and our EMS folks and those people that are on the perimeter to be able to push out. And if we fail to do that, then we're just slowing the timeline on getting that information out.Ron Otterbacher:Parents are a lot like the media. If you don't control the media, the media will control you. If you don't control the parents, they will control you, because they are going to get to their children, the word they’re in trouble. And if you're not prepared to handle them or give them an assignment, tell them where to go, start getting ready for the children to arrive, then they will be trying, however they can, get into where the target area is.Bill Godfrey:Interesting. It really is fascinating how much the impact of social media and cell phones have really changed the emergency response. Joe, let's talk a little bit on the EMS side. You know, one of the challenges, obviously, for us on EMS is we've transported people, where are they, and try accounting for them. Talk a little bit about some of the challenges and pitfalls and maybe some of the potential ways to help or solutions.Joe Ferrara:So this is where integration is extremely important. I know Don spoke earlier about the PIO's (Public Information Officer) working together in a JIC (Joint Information Center), and of course, and especially from the city manager's perspective, that city manager should be asking the PIO from the police agency, the PIO from the fire agency and there may even be a city PIO, that they all work together and that they all work together and craft one message, and it is approved through incident command. That is paramount to this process so that the fire department is not going off with one set of information, and the police department is going off with another set of information. Maybe we haven't talked or integrated and maybe private information is being share that shouldn't be. Certainly fire and EMS is well aware of privacy issues, but as fire and EMS, are we aware of investigative issues that law enforcement has? Maybe it's not a good idea to release certain information because it's sensitive intelligence. We won't know that as fire and EMS, unless we partner and integrate with law enforcement. And law enforcement won't know what patient information to release or not to release, unless there's integration between the two.Bill Godfrey:And I think one of the classic challenges is, you post the hotline phone number, and you get phone calls from people who are purportedly concerned family members, how do you vet that? How do you determine that there's a reasonable probability they are who they say they are, and then provide information about their loved ones or provide information about where the hospitals have transported, or which hospital the patients have been transported to. One of the frustrating parts of that is that you can't always take people at face value. I know one of our other instructors talked about the Southern land Springs shooting and his own personal experience with really what borders on almost unethical conduct on the side of the press in trying to get access to information and trying to figure out who had gone where and then sending reporters to the hospitals, which created some tough issues. So it's certainly some tough challenges. You can't just post names out there on social media, but you've got to be able to kind of correct the misinformation and of course for EMS, you got to walk that fine line on privacy, as do the hospitals. Don, Je - I'm sorry. Don and Ron, have you guys run into any really good ways of approaching handling security at the hospitals or how to handle identifying who's there or who isn't there? Don?Don Tuten:Yeah. So in my agency where we're at, the watch commanders automatically that work those areas where there's trauma centers are, they train and we unfortunately have events that involve police officers as well as larger events that we had. For instance, the mass shooting at the landing, we actually send those officers there to manage a scene that is a whole separate scene. And what they do, is they work with our PIO's, they're given the information on where family members can go to, what credentials or information they need to bring with them, for us to be able to release that information. The city where I'm from, we also have our services division that works with survivors as well as victims, and then we utilize them by working together to vet the proper people that come in to release the proper information at the right time. And then we also, like I said, by having the officers there, we have that security element in place to ensure that runs smoothly.Bill Godfrey:You know, something you just said in there made me think, the NTSB (National Transportation Safety Board), who is of course responsible for investigating plane crashes and those issues, has call centers that are designed and trained with people for asking those kinds of questions and vetting those information. Probably a good model for us to look at as responders, but I think the moral of the story is that, not only do you have to manage the message through your joint information center with all your PIO's on the same page, but you've got to have a plan for dealing with social media real time as the event is unfolding. The PIO is no longer an after thought that's an hour later. The PIO has a role almost as quick as the incident kicks off in communicating that information to the public. Final thoughts, Ron?Ron Otterbacher:And remember it's important to use your resources. If you've got a regional fusion center, use that because they can monitor the social media traffic and they can help you get ahead of it, because if you don't get ahead of it, you're going to be trying to catch up the entire time.Bill Godfrey:Joe, final thoughts?Joe Ferrara:Yeah. I think it's really important not only, you know, we already talked about integrating the PIO's into a JIC, we talked about how to deal with this at a hospital, but the really important thing for police chiefs and fire chiefs and city managers, is have policies and have joint policies that address these. Have good solid social media policies in place, because not only are the people at the scene going to use social media, your responders are. And unless you get in front of that and control that with a policy and proper training, the information is just going to run wild. So, my advice to those chief officers is to get those policies in place, especially on social media and release of information, and practice it.Bill Godfrey:I think that's a great point, alright. Gentlemen, thank you very much for taking the time to talk out to talk about this one. We're going to wrap that one up there, and we hope y'all will join us for the next series, which is our question number eight, what are you doing with community partners regarding active shooter hostile events? Thank you very much for joining us.

Ep 15: #7 How will Public Information be Managed? - "10 Questions from the Mayor" Series

Episode 14 #6 What joint exercises have you done and what is planned? - "10 Questions from the Mayor" Series10 Questions for the Mayor to ask the Police and Fire Chief SeriesQuestion 6: "What joint exercises have you done and what is planned?"Bill Godfrey:Welcome back to the next in our podcast series. We are in the middle of our mini-series, talking about 10 questions that the mayor or city manager, County administrator want to ask their police and fire chiefs together to kind of help them understand what their preparedness level is for responding to an active shooter event.Today we are going to talk about question number six, chiefs, what joint exercises have you done and what are planned for the future? My name is Bill Godfrey. One of the instructors with C3, a retired fire chief. I have with me today, Pete Kelting, Lieutenant with Seminole County Sheriff's office, also one of the C3 instructors. And we have Tom Billington, retired fire chief and one of the C3 instructors. Tom, you want to lead us off?Tom Billington:Sure. I think that the city manager or mayor needs to be prepared, because a lot of your fire chiefs may say, "Well, we don't have any money." That's not an answer that the city manager or mayor wants to hear. There are so many opportunities out there for fire chiefs and emergency services managers to try to find funding, whether it's grants, whether it's partnerships, whether it's using private vendors who sponsor things.That's what you want to hear as the city manager, that your fire chief has gone out of the box and doesn't just say, "Well I don't have any money." They're coming out of there saying, "I've tried these avenues here. Here's what we're doing and here's how we're going to fund it." That's the answer. Nothing's worse than somebody just blaming things on money and it happens so often. It's an easy way out.Bill Godfrey:It occurs to me, I probably ought to set the context because this question very much dovetails with our previous question, which is what joint training have you done and what's planned? The difference between training and exercises, training, you're trying to build up the skill levels. Exercises you're trying to evaluate whether you've pulled it all together. For the most part in this question, we're talking about full scale exercises. These things can get quite large. They require a lot of participation from your agencies, from mutual aid partners. They require people to take the time to plan them out. They require sites to facilitate. They can be monsters and they can be expensive.So with that as the context, Pete, talk a little bit on the law enforcement side. What should the mayor want to hear from the sheriff and the fire chief when they're asked this question? What are the joint exercises you've done and what do you have planned?Pete Kelting:Yeah. That's a great question, Bill. I think a mayor or elected official asking downward what their agencies have done for training and how they're preparing starts with their yearly budgeting of training and that they start from the ground level of what they're going to do individually as an agency. Then offering that, I think in one of the other podcasts we talked about that our training opportunities are offered across jurisdictions, just starting from the local level of it, from law and fire, that we train together. Then we build upon that, that those trainings then merge into trainings with other counties, other cities.As we look into our regional effort, then we move outside of our own budget constraints and we plan together. We look at what funding is available to support these type of exercises, tabletops, full-scale exercises. It's very important that we keep our eye on the ball. And most agencies are eager to train that way, their training committees and the folks leading the effort for training look towards that avenue, to be able to move from individual training inside their agency to regional and multi-jurisdictional training supported by the funding that's out there. So it's extremely important that we keep our eye on the ball and train in that in that way.Bill Godfrey:Pete, I know you've got quite a bit of emergency management experience and background. Can you talk a little bit about the role that emergency management can play both in helping plan these events and staff these events, but also in securing grant funding? Because I'm sure that there's fire chiefs and police chiefs that may not be aware of how much the emergency management lane can help in getting this stuff done.Pete Kelting:Absolutely. The emergency management function is an integral part of sustaining a training program, across all hazards, not just active shooter but all hazards, in the sense that we have regional airports, we have colleges, we have schools, we have malls, we have all sorts of locations that your emergency management function and your EM coordinator can assist you with, with planning and reaching out to the community and integrating our training responses with the community responses.There's churches out there that, now there's accreditation standards for certain community places that they want to have that training at their location, at their venue. So it's really been a great thing for all of us to work together with our partners and again, with emergency management, who are resourced deep. They are able to reach out and get the people that can assist us in putting those training exercises together.Bill Godfrey:Yeah. Fantastic. Tom, I know you've spent well over 20 years responsible for emergency management and probably can offer some insights on the fireside. But also touch on the State Homeland Security opportunities in of grant funding and resources that can help you plan some of these things.Tom Billington:Right. Again, if your fire chief or emergency manager is not reaching out to these people, in the state emergency management or FEMA, there's usually UASI funds, which is the funds that come from the federal government that usually come into areas that could be considered targets. In Florida, I know Miami, Orlando, Jacksonville, those type areas, there's a lot of funding. You have to go find it.To touch on what Pete said, your emergency manager usually knows where those funds are or where they could be found. We go to fire chief conferences and they talk about fire chief stuff and union stuff and funding opportunities like Pete just mentioned, you really don't hear a lot about. So touching base with your emergency manager to find out where the funding opportunities, what's out there, very important. Next thing again, joint exercises, does that mean fire, EMS, police? Joint exercise means a lot of things. Sometimes we consider our professions as being islands, but we're not an Island.As Pete started to allude to, we want to make sure that joint exercises include the private sector included utilities, include courthouses, hospitals, and also these are other facilities that may have some money to help out, so 911 one systems and so again, beating the bushes, working with your local partners, finding that funding. You can pull it off.Bill Godfrey:It occurs to me as we come to a close on this one, this one's not a terribly complicated topic. Again, the mayor, when he asked this question, the answer you want to hear is, "Well, we've done this, this and this. And we've got these on the books and this is where we're going. We're working on funding for this." I mean, that's the obvious part.But I think the other thing that's important for mayors and city managers, county administrators to remember, especially in more suburban settings and in rural settings, your police chief and fire chief may or may not have had the opportunity to be exposed to some of these funding mechanisms. I mean, there's so many different grant avenues and so many different funding mechanisms. It can be hard to know where they are and where to look.So the mayor, the city manager, they may need to help their police chief, their fire chief kind of understand where some of these opportunities may be, support them by sending them to some training sessions on funding, or even putting the city in a position to kind of help them go get that stuff. Gentleman, I can't thank you enough for taking the time to come in this afternoon. Pete, thanks for being here.Pete Kelting:Thank you for having me.Bill Godfrey:Tom, thank you for taking the time to participate.Tom Billington:Thank you.Bill Godfrey:Everyone, thank you for joining us and please come back for our next one. Our next question in this mini-series, which is how will public information and social media being managed real time during the response? This will be an interesting topic, I'm sure. Until next time.

<h1>Episode 14 #6 What joint exercises have you done and what is planned? - "10 Questions from the Mayor" Series</h1><h2>10 Questions for the Mayor to ask the Police and Fire Chief Series</h2><h2>Question 6: "What joint exercises have you done and what is planned?"</h2>Bill Godfrey:Welcome back to the next in our podcast series. We are in the middle of our mini-series, talking about 10 questions that the mayor or city manager, County administrator want to ask their police and fire chiefs together to kind of help them understand what their preparedness level is for responding to an active shooter event. Today we are going to talk about question number six, chiefs, what joint exercises have you done and what are planned for the future? My name is Bill Godfrey. One of the instructors with C3, a retired fire chief. I have with me today, Pete Kelting, Lieutenant with Seminole County Sheriff's office, also one of the C3 instructors. And we have Tom Billington, retired fire chief and one of the C3 instructors. Tom, you want to lead us off?Tom Billington:Sure. I think that the city manager or mayor needs to be prepared, because a lot of your fire chiefs may say, "Well, we don't have any money." That's not an answer that the city manager or mayor wants to hear. There are so many opportunities out there for fire chiefs and emergency services managers to try to find funding, whether it's grants, whether it's partnerships, whether it's using private vendors who sponsor things. That's what you want to hear as the city manager, that your fire chief has gone out of the box and doesn't just say, "Well I don't have any money." They're coming out of there saying, "I've tried these avenues here. Here's what we're doing and here's how we're going to fund it." That's the answer. Nothing's worse than somebody just blaming things on money and it happens so often. It's an easy way out.Bill Godfrey:It occurs to me, I probably ought to set the context because this question very much dovetails with our previous question, which is what joint training have you done and what's planned? The difference between training and exercises, training, you're trying to build up the skill levels. Exercises you're trying to evaluate whether you've pulled it all together. For the most part in this question, we're talking about full scale exercises. These things can get quite large. They require a lot of participation from your agencies, from mutual aid partners. They require people to take the time to plan them out. They require sites to facilitate. They can be monsters and they can be expensive. So with that as the context, Pete, talk a little bit on the law enforcement side. What should the mayor want to hear from the sheriff and the fire chief when they're asked this question? What are the joint exercises you've done and what do you have planned?Pete Kelting:Yeah. That's a great question, Bill. I think a mayor or elected official asking downward what their agencies have done for training and how they're preparing starts with their yearly budgeting of training and that they start from the ground level of what they're going to do individually as an agency. Then offering that, I think in one of the other podcasts we talked about that our training opportunities are offered across jurisdictions, just starting from the local level of it, from law and fire, that we train together. Then we build upon that, that those trainings then merge into trainings with other counties, other cities. As we look into our regional effort, then we move outside of our own budget constraints and we plan together. We look at what funding is available to support these type of exercises, tabletops, full-scale exercises. It's very important that we keep our eye on the ball. And most agencies are eager to train that way, their training committees and the folks leading the effort for training look towards that avenue, to be able to move from individual training inside their agency to regional and multi-jurisdictional training supported by the funding that's out there. So it's extremely important that we keep our eye on the ball and train in that in that way.Bill Godfrey:Pete, I know you've got quite a bit of emergency management experience and background. Can you talk a little bit about the role that emergency management can play both in helping plan these events and staff these events, but also in securing grant funding? Because I'm sure that there's fire chiefs and police chiefs that may not be aware of how much the emergency management lane can help in getting this stuff done.Pete Kelting:Absolutely. The emergency management function is an integral part of sustaining a training program, across all hazards, not just active shooter but all hazards, in the sense that we have regional airports, we have colleges, we have schools, we have malls, we have all sorts of locations that your emergency management function and your EM coordinator can assist you with, with planning and reaching out to the community and integrating our training responses with the community responses. There's churches out there that, now there's accreditation standards for certain community places that they want to have that training at their location, at their venue. So it's really been a great thing for all of us to work together with our partners and again, with emergency management, who are resourced deep. They are able to reach out and get the people that can assist us in putting those training exercises together.Bill Godfrey:Yeah. Fantastic. Tom, I know you've spent well over 20 years responsible for emergency management and probably can offer some insights on the fireside. But also touch on the State Homeland Security opportunities in of grant funding and resources that can help you plan some of these things.Tom Billington:Right. Again, if your fire chief or emergency manager is not reaching out to these people, in the state emergency management or FEMA, there's usually UASI funds, which is the funds that come from the federal government that usually come into areas that could be considered targets. In Florida, I know Miami, Orlando, Jacksonville, those type areas, there's a lot of funding. You have to go find it. To touch on what Pete said, your emergency manager usually knows where those funds are or where they could be found. We go to fire chief conferences and they talk about fire chief stuff and union stuff and funding opportunities like Pete just mentioned, you really don't hear a lot about. So touching base with your emergency manager to find out where the funding opportunities, what's out there, very important. Next thing again, joint exercises, does that mean fire, EMS, police? Joint exercise means a lot of things. Sometimes we consider our professions as being islands, but we're not an Island. As Pete started to allude to, we want to make sure that joint exercises include the private sector included utilities, include courthouses, hospitals, and also these are other facilities that may have some money to help out, so 911 one systems and so again, beating the bushes, working with your local partners, finding that funding. You can pull it off.Bill Godfrey:It occurs to me as we come to a close on this one, this one's not a terribly complicated topic. Again, the mayor, when he asked this question, the answer you want to hear is, "Well, we've done this, this and this. And we've got these on the books and this is where we're going. We're working on funding for this." I mean, that's the obvious part. But I think the other thing that's important for mayors and city managers, county administrators to remember, especially in more suburban settings and in rural settings, your police chief and fire chief may or may not have had the opportunity to be exposed to some of these funding mechanisms. I mean, there's so many different grant avenues and so many different funding mechanisms. It can be hard to know where they are and where to look. So the mayor, the city manager, they may need to help their police chief, their fire chief kind of understand where some of these opportunities may be, support them by sending them to some training sessions on funding, or even putting the city in a position to kind of help them go get that stuff. Gentleman, I can't thank you enough for taking the time to come in this afternoon. Pete, thanks for being here.Pete Kelting:Thank you for having me.Bill Godfrey:Tom, thank you for taking the time to participate.Tom Billington:Thank you.Bill Godfrey:Everyone, thank you for joining us and please come back for our next one. Our next question in this mini-series, which is how will public information and social media being managed real time during the response? This will be an interesting topic, I'm sure. Until next time.

Ep 14: #6 What joint exercises have you done? - "10 Questions from the Mayor" Series

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