Emergency Management Response Paper

In North Kensington’s Grenfell Tower, a 24-story residential structure, a fire broke out on June 15, 2017, leaving 12 people dead, 18 people in critical condition, and 78 people hospitalized with minor bruises. (Berlinger, Angela, & Grinberg, 2017). According to eyewitnesses, the structure was quickly consumed by a “unprecedented fire,” trapping occupants and forcing some of the victims to leap out of the structure to safety. According to the information retrieved from a website and managed by the “Grenfell Action Group,” residents raised concerns over the security with all safety issues pointing towards fire risks. It is, therefore, not strange that the flame that broke out around 1.00 a.m. London time could have resulted from power failure or short circuit. It was necessary for the emergency response team to act swiftly to prevent more injuries and deaths.

By 2.30 a.m., 200 firefighters, over 40 well-equipped fire trucks, and about 20 ambulance squads arrived at the scene. Despite the challenges faced during the operation, the London Fire Brigade and emergency team recorded the most successful recovery process. Both the fire brigade and the emergency response team members were involved in a long and complex operation to contain the situation and reduce the number of fatalities. While the fire fighters worked tirelessly to put off the fire, the emergency response team members were charged with specific roles such as restricting access to the scene and other surrounding areas, requesting medical help from the deployed nurses, identifying and isolating sources to reduce further losses, evacuating the victims to a safer place, and engaging in cleanup activities. By 12.30 p.m., the response team had established temporary emergency centers in all nearby churches and police posts. With these centers, the response team was able to provide first aid to victims before taking them to the hospital. Furthermore, it became easy for organizations to provide food, clothes and other supplies to the fire victims.

Terms Related to Emergency Management

The most common terms related to emergency management utilized in this article include safety certificate, fire brigades, evacuation, emergency center, first aid, recovery process, fire fighters, and emergency response team. Fire brigades or firefighters represent a group of persons trained, equipped, and employed to extinguish fire. While the key responsibility of these individuals included extinguishing fire, they also played other managerial roles such as planning, organizing, and executing strategies during the field operation. Evacuation or recovery process as used in the article means identifying and reallocating the victims and their properties to a safer environment (Chen et al., 2008). Dead bodies, those who had sustained injuries, and people who had not been injured were to be removed from the fire scene. Emergency centers are structures that were set up by the emergency response team and used by the victims of the fire incident as temporary residences. The same structures were used by the response team as temporary healthcare centers, especially when providing first aid services and minor treatment to the victims. It was also necessary for some of the victims of the fire incident to be given first aid so that they can be in a more stable conditions before they get full medical examination and treatment. Frist aid as a process remained specific to those who were injured, both with minor bruises and fatal injuries.

Alternative Courses of Action

Apart from the steps taken by the emergency response team, the following courses of action would have helped the parties involved to manage the flame and prevent further damages.

Just like the case of Grenfell fire, all emergency cases require complete evacuation of the affected area, and this means that the response team members must all have the relevant knowledge and skills. Alternatively, the response teams should have started by facilitating and organizing the resident into manageable groups for easy evacuation that removing people one at a time (Chen et al., 2008). The emergency response should have begun by identifying the safest place within the building that can be used as an assembly point. It is also important for the response team to understand that all evacuation plans can only work best when they allow players to record and share information on the procedures, escape routes, and order of control. Instead of relying on one or two team leaders, the evacuation process could be faster if each member was allowed to play the role of a field commandant, retrieve information, and make such information available to other team players.

The Impact of Emergency Management

From the forgoing, it appears that the management team at Grenfell focused more on one component of emergency management plan, which is preparedness. Although this phase of emergency management is vital, it only focuses on the need to remain alert and respond promptly when faced such kinds of problems. Residential preparedness means isolating resource and necessary skills prior to the occurrence, and strategizing how the resources and skills can be used to reduce the level of damage. However, the managers should not have relied on preparedness because it is a one-phase approach to disaster management. Probably, this could be one of the reasons why there were high number of deaths recorded during the fire incident.

The Overall Outcome of the Situation

After the recovery process, the emergency response team reported only 12 people who died. Although this figure has raised several concerns especially among families who lost their loved ones, there is no evidence showing that some dead bodies were trapped and buried inside the building. Among the 78 people who were hospitalized, only 18 individuals were in critical condition and required intensive care. The rest of the victims were treated for minor injuries and discharged. The London fire brigade also recorder to have saved close to 65 people. The 65 individuals are among those who were advised by the fire brigade to remain in the apartment as the flame raged. According to the figure given by the recovery team, about 125 families lived in the apartment. The building also had a private section that was being used as a nursery.

2nd Paper: Emergency Management Communication Paper

While state laws maintain that it is the legal responsibility of the local jurisdiction to provide a conventional emergency management plan, it is important to note that disasters are recurrent, and their life cycles can only be matched by a series of management strategies. Therefore, in addition to the universal regulations, every emergency response department has to develop workable strategies that can help team members to mitigate hazards (Comfort, 2007). Moreover, it is fundamental for the response team to prepare adequately, respond to situations immediately they occur, and help the victims to recover from both physical and psychological traumas. Even though the emergency response team could have used other strategies to manage the situation, there are five crucial components of emergency management, which include preventive measure, preparedness, reaction, recovery, and mitigation.

Prevention as the first component of emergency management means providing permanent protection from hazards by ensuring that people live in safe environments. However, it is worth noting that not every hazard is preventable but the risk of people losing their lives when such instances occur can be still be reduced through good evacuation plans. Therefore, Grenfell managers could have used appropriate design standard to reduce the chances of fire breaking out (Comfort, 2007). Preparedness is the second phase of emergency management. Preparedness means conducting a cyclical planning, control, training, empowerment, and taking into account corrective measures that will help improve the safety conditions. The management should have put in place mechanisms that would help them respond to all kinds of disasters and emergencies. Response is the third component of the emergency management plan, and it focuses on effective coordination and resource management. The resources here include workers, equipment, and supplies that are used during hazard incidents. This phase of emergency response is known as a reactive phase and occurs at the time of the disaster.

The fourth component of the recovery plan focuses on those activities that will restore fundamental community functions or ensure that people become stable and ready to continue with their daily functions. In most cases, emergencies and disaster incidents leave people vulnerable, heartbroken, and discouraged. However, through the recovery process, people find it easy to accept the incident and move on with their lives. The recovery process as part of the emergency management plan should always begin immediately after the incident with the aims of bringing the affect people back to normalcy. The final component of emergency management is known as mitigation (Comfort, 2007). Mitigation include all the efforts levied with the intentions of preventing deaths and harm to properties, consequently, reducing the impact of hazard incidents and emergencies. Mitigation in this context include putting in place both structural and non-structural measures that can reduce the impact of emergencies on the populations and property. For instance, Grenfell managers responded prior to the fire incident by changing the structural characteristic of the building as well as its surrounding. The specific structural changes included the introduction of modern kitchens and more improved lighting systems while non-structural changes included positive response to new building codes and operational standards.

In every emergency planning, the most fundamental step involves establishing a response team and assigning roles to each player. In several instances, we have come across situations where teams miss important recovery activities simply because part of the members did not have prior information regarding their roles and key responsibilities. In other words, the success of a recovery process during an emergency relies on effective communication and interoperability of the response teams (Kapucu, 2006). Communication interoperability, therefore, is a system of network and infrastructure that allows emergency response teams and their respective field commandants to make communications within and across organizations and jurisdictions when need arise. The communication platform and network system must allow for easy transmission of voice information, data, or recorded video within the appropriate time (Manoj & Baker, 2007). Therefore, system managers must ensure that the communication channels are capable of interoperability. This is because, successful emergency management and response to disasters can only happen when there is free and continuous flow of critical data or information between jurisdictions and organizations or between disciplines and respective agencies.

From the case study, it is evident that disaster, whether natural or human facilitated, can occur at any time and to any city, state or country. Most disasters are unprecedented, and when occur, they tend to compromise public functions. We have come across several instances where the emergency response teams throw around ”interoperability” with the main intention of organizing, planning, and responding to a security situations. Undoubtedly, the question of communication interoperability often occur in after-process reports (Kapucu, 2006). In most factual hazard incidents, the inexistence of interoperability means that the recovery response teams lack the capacity to communicate amongst themselves or transmit data to a central unit using the radio system.

Communication system and recovery infrastructure are among the components that are necessary for a response team to execute successful operations. However, there is also a need to differentiate between private and public interoperability communication systems. In most cases, field operators using private communication systems complain of fixed peak usage capacity. Furthermore, the cost costs of operating private communication systems seem to override the capacity of the players to effectively deal with disasters. The incident of 9/11, for example, demonstrated that under certain circumstances, a private communication system may not scale an emergency as required by both the participants and recovery agencies. The only way to improve interoperability communication is by establishing a strict emergency communication protocol. However, in such circumstances, the field commandant and members of the team must engage in subjective decision-making processes so as to enhance information movement.

To sum up, the relationship between interoperability and communication revolves around the simple fact that without a proper link between the two components, recovery teams may not have the ability to respond to emergencies. Ineffective communication can also lead to confusion during field operation. Therefore, when evaluating the emergency incident communication plan, it is wrong for an agency to ignore the physical elements. The evaluation should go beyond deciding the method of communication, service provider, equipment and systems that can be used as backup. Additionally, interoperability communication demands that system users must have prior knowledge regarding the time and place of the disaster incident.

3rd Paper: Multi-Agency Emergency Event Paper

”9/11 Attacks Event on the World Trade Center”

Al-Qaeda terror group organized the September attack on the World Trade Center. The operation was carried out at 8.45 a.m. The al-Qaeda commanded four airliners, whereby the two airlines were directed to hit specific targets (Hirst et al., 2015). Two of the aircrafts were set to hit the World Trade Center, New York, the third aircraft was directed to strike the Pentagon near Washington, D.C, and the fourth crashed in Pennsylvania. At least 3400 people including the police officers and the fire fighters lost their lives following the attack. Following the calamity, U.S. started the anti-terrorism initiatives which marked the presidency of Bush. The impact was severe; it left a burning hole near the 80th floor of the 110-storeyed skyscraper which comprised dozens of people being trapped and others losing their lives instantly.

The second Boeing 767, the United Airline Flight 175, appeared out of the sky, flying directly into the Center, and slicing the 60th floor. Unfortunately, America suffered from the massive attack (Ghuman et al., 2014). The attackers were from several Arab nations, especially from Saudi Arabia. The terror group was financed by Saudi fugitive Osama bin Laden. The exploision of the World Trade Center was the reaction to America’s support of Israel involvement in the Persian Gulf War and its continued military operation in the Middle East.

Response of Police and Fire Agencies

Following the incidence, there was a need for military group intervention; firefighters including those who had their day off were called upon, Port Authority Officers flocked to the scene, and the city emergency group also came in (Schweinberger, Petrescu-Prahova, & Vu, 2014). The groups were ambushed, and their unpreparedness made the situation worse. Due to poor disaster management plan, 343 firefighters lost their lives in the process. The radio system in the fire department was unable to communicate effectively, vital orders and messages went unheard or lost. The elevators were disrupted making the fire department operation difficult to carry out the rescue operation. It is important to note that the coordinated interagency communication and interagency command structure were absent during the event when they were needed most by both police department and firefighters.

The Port Authority acknowledged the response that it did not have the protocol of rescuing people who were trapped above the fire. According to Alan Reiss, the Head of Port Authority’s World Trade Department, some of the workers might have climbed the roof top which he terms as a false sense of security. Miscommunication process between police and fire fighter turned the situation desperate.

Roles within Structured Command

The emergency group led to an increase in the United States into the south tower. Communication between the commander and those who were trying to rescue process became critical and challenging to the point the commander did not know what was going on. There was no proper flow of information and coordination. The result was an increase in the number of deaths. The structure of organization and procedure of giving command should depend on the nature of the challenge, and these should have a specialist review. It is important to note that there were different structures of command in various departments. However, there was no unified command through the incident command system, though police claim that the system worked efficiently in about three minutes after the crash before the whole process got into a mess.

Battalion Chief Bob Cornell affirmed that within those three minutes they were able to establish incident command and that the responding agencies were able to operate under specific framework which was referred as Incident Command System. Following the September attack, The Metropolitan Council of Governments adopted National Interagency Incident Management System in March 2001, with the aim of getting a unified command system. The Military District of Washington also has its different command structure which is in cooperated with ACFD as a member of unified command and responsible for providing the required resources.

Under the suggested command structure, the police would play a leading role in the in rescuing the hostage and responding to bombing threat, while Fire Department will take charge of a situation like structural collapses, explosion, and fires. It’s quite clear that there has been a frequent clash between the police and fire fighters during an emergency situation. The official is required to come up with a workable structure that should integrate the unifying roles of both police and fire fighters during the emergency. Significantly, the leadership guideline should well spell out which department should lead during an emergency situation.

Crisis Response Objectives

The sense of September 11 tragedy and the nature of damage that occurred left America with a lot of lessons that were learned. Terrorist attacks did not have warnings, unlike the earthquake. The damage occurred to well-engineered structures which were believed to be uncertainty and risk proof, but the engineers failed in making them jet fuel proof. It is crucial to point out that the emergency response system in New York was considered to be effective in all events, particularly terrorist attacks. Depending on the situation, some of the scopes of most of the emergency response targets include;

Ensure management of people’s safety and their reactions;

Establishing plans that promote equal treatment of different victims;

Identify affected individuals from the group;

Ensuring smooth and successful operation so that normal activities quickly come into play; and

There should be a proper way of addressing people affected so that they can get out of it

Strategies and Challenges Faced by Leaders

Being effective leader is a challenging task that every leader tend to achieve. Different challenges affect leaders when it comes to decision-making; this is based on strategies that he or she adopts. Also, there are external and internal factors that face people working at the strategic level, which differs from operational and predetermined levels (Ghuman et al., 2014). Some of the challenges include complexity and convergence, uncertainty, and risk reduction among others. The social media is currently a major challenge to the global security. The leaders can come up with a good strategy in addressing this issue. Moreover, to come up with a well strategic plan, leaders need to engage all the key stakeholders in all levels of decision making; this is essential in ensuring that all different ideologies are embraced. However, the strategy suggested should be able to support the leaders and all stakeholders to be effective.

4th Paper: Leadership Lessons Paper

Summary of the Event and the Response by Police and Fire Agencies

The September, 2001 attack was carried out by the al-Qaeda terrorist group that was financed by Osama bin Laden (Hirst et al., 2015). The attack which carried out on World Trade Centre at 8.45 a.m. was in response to America’s support of Israel involvement in the Persian Gulf War and in the Middle East. The al-Qaeda commanded four airlines. Two airlines were directed to hit specific buildings in New York, the third attacked the Pentagon near Washington, D.C, while the fourth aircraft crashed in Pennsylvania. The attack caught American Intelligence unaware. Hundreds of staffs were trapped on the upper floors of the building while more than three hundred and forty-three fire fighters lost their lives.

The communication system failed during the police and fire fighter response on the situation. Three minutes after the collision of the South tower of the center, the police helicopters flew over the North tower building, as it tried to check the condition. However, there was communication failure on between the pilots and the police and firefighters on the ground. Thus, miscommunication affected the whole process of police and fire fighters response. The fire commanders and police focusing on the rescue efforts did not communicate with each other during the disaster accident.

Roles within Structured Command

Following the attack on World Trade Center, the fire fighters officials and the police of New York are subjected to criticism for failures in communication and command in their reaction to the accident. There was a need to have a unified command structure that oversees numerous emergency agencies are dealing with that kind of catastrophe. The police department figured out that it was not necessary to have central command system.

According to the police commissioner, Raymond W.Kelly, and the fire commissioner, Nicholas Scoppetta, the top leaders can ”cooperate, communicate and coordinate to share responsibility in a future disaster” (Rashbaum & O’Donnell, 2003). Moreover, Kelly (2003) points out that the problem might again arise on who can take the lead during such an event. Also, the city officials had been trying to come up with the work plan which suggests that the Police Department will be responsible for being in charge of the hostage situation and the bomb threats, while the Fire Department will take charge of a situation like structural collapses, explosion, and fires. It’s quite clear that there has been a frequent clash between the police and fire fighters during an emergency situation.

Emergency Management Leadership Theories Utilized in the Event

Transformational leadership tends to inspire and motivates the workers or followers, whereas the transactional leadership is based on exchanges and reinforcement (Dinh et al., 2014). The transformational leadership is characterized by managing style. The response on the 9/11 provides a telling example of the transformational leadership on how it can be utilized. During the 9/11 there was mutual animosity between New York City fire and the police, this is evident in communication. Studies reveal that there is continued aggressiveness in the competence of priorities and resources during management of the emergency situation (Hu, Knox, & Kapucu, 2014).

Confidence is vital to the leaders as the leader’s influence is essential in the emergency conditions. Leaders should concentrate on three skills, namely clarity of vision and values, caring for others, and communication. Transformational leader has the capability of transforming the emergencies into developmental challenges by representing crisis as an intellectual stimulus to encourage staffs to be creative, thoughtful, adaptive solutions to stressful condition, instead of being defensive and hasty.

How Leadership Deals with the Community as Part of the Emergency Management

Addressing all potential threats which the community face;

Including all response stakeholders that seek community participation during a disaster incident;

Developing a preliminary planning for the necessary assumptions about the possible impact of a disaster and the kind of response action that should be adopted;

Addressing the links between the emergency and the recovery strategy;

Providing training opportunity and evaluating the emergency response action to the community.

Leaders Approach and Media

The leaders normally restrict the media from publishing unauthorized reports concerning security issues, for instance, terrorist attacks. The reports at times fuel the activities of the terror group and times causing tension across the country. Media is widely known for its role in an emergency situation by bringing out the real picture of an event, but its activities are also limited.

How Emergency Management Training Assisted with the Management Approach

The emergency management training is essential for everyone when it comes to disaster management (Hirst et al., 2015). All the staffs, police, and fire fighters could have reduced the number of causalities if they were well trained despite having the Federal Emergency Management (FEMA) in place. There is a need for improving the competence of the United States officials in emergency management at all levels of government to prepare, respond, protect against and recover from disaster.

Ethical Challenges Faced by Leaders

The technological issue is one of the ethical challenges that face leaders. Currently, everything has turned to technology, thus all the decision made by the leaders should embrace technology. The earthquake can be detected using a sophisticated device. The leaders have to come with ideal technology that can be used to track terror activities to avoid disaster.

The attitude of the leaders may influence certain activities either negative or positive. For instance, there was a misunderstanding of the police and fire officials concerning their roles during the terror attack on the twin-towers. There was a problem with command structure which brought the issue of poor communication, leading dozen of fire fighters losing their lives.

The most effective ethical consideration would have been a fair working environment for both police and fire fighters; this could have brought to the effective emergency management process. Fair pay and benefit are essential for all the followers in enhancing good performance.

References

Berlinger, J., Angela J. D, & Grinberg, D. (2017). Fire tears through residential tower in London, leaving 12 dead. CNN News Article. Retrieved from http://edition.cnn.com/2017/06/13/europe/west-london-fire/index.html

Chen, R., Sharman, R., Chakravarti, N., Rao, H. R., & Upadhyaya, S. J. (2008). Emergency response information system interoperability: development of chemical incident response data model. Journal of the Association for Information Systems, 9(3), 7.

Comfort, L. K. (2007). Crisis management in hindsight: Cognition, communication, coordination, and control. Public Administration Review, 67(1), 189-197.

Dinh, J. E., Lord, R. G., Gardner, W. L., Meuser, J. D., Liden, R. C., & Hu, J. (2014). Leadership theory and research in the new millennium: Current theoretical trends and changing perspectives. Leadership Quarterly, 25(1), 36-62.

Ghuman, S. J., Brackbill, R. M., Stellman, S. D., Farfel, M. R., & Cone, J. E. (2014). Unmet mental health care need 10–11 years after the 9/11 terrorist attacks: 2011–2012 results from the World Trade Center Health Registry. BMC public health, 14(1), 491.

Hirst, W., Phelps, E. A., Meksin, R., Vaidya, C. J., Johnson, M. K., Mitchell, K. J., ... & Mather, M. (2015). A ten-year follow-up of a study of memory for the attack of September 11, 2001: Flashbulb memories and memories for flashbulb events. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 144(3), 604.

Hu, Q., Knox, C. C., & Kapucu, N. (2014). What have we learned since September 11, 2001? A network study of the Boston marathon bombings response. Public Administration Review, 74(6), 698-712.

Kapucu, N. (2006). Interagency communication networks during emergencies: Boundary spanners in multiagency coordination. American Review of Public Administration, 36(2), 207-225.

Manoj, B. S., & Baker, A. H. (2007). Communication challenges in emergency response. Communications of the ACM, 50(3), 51-53.

Rashbaum, K. W., & O’Donnell M. (2003). City Police and Fire Department Pledge Cooperation in Disasters. The New York Times. Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/2003/07/12/nyregion/city-police-and-fire-department-pledge-cooperation-in-disasters.html?mcubz=0

Schweinberger, M., Petrescu-Prahova, M., & Vu, D. Q. (2014). Disaster response on September 11, 2001 through the lens of statistical network analysis. Social networks, 37, 42-55.