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Five Years Later, Gulf Coast Reflections – Part Four

Wednesday, September 1st, 2010

Lake Charles, Southwest Louisiana

In a state as disaster prone as Louisiana has been over the past few years, it’s hard to remember that when something bad does occur, it doesn’t impact everyone. I was reminded of this when I sat down for lunch with two friends in Lake Charles, LA. Over bowls of gumbo, I asked Ernie Broussard, the Executive Director for Planning & Development for Cameron Parish, “So how are things with the oil spill and the ruined shore line?”

Before he could answer, George Swift, the President & CEO of the Southwest Louisiana (SWLA) Partnership for Economic Development sat back in his chair, looked at Ernie and just smiled.

“Well gee Rich, I wish I could tell you but that is one problem I don’t have because I don’t have any oil on my shores.”

Expressing surprise, I looked up from my bowl and said, “What do you mean you don’t have any oil on your shoreline?”

“I’m telling you that it didn’t wash up here. We were ready for it with booms and spill response teams, but we didn’t get any of it this far west.”

Ernie and George then asked me why I thought they had oil on their coastline. I explained that based upon maps and the ongoing news reports on the spill, it seemed there was no stretch of Louisiana or Mississippi’s coastline that didn’t have an oil sheen to it. I assumed that they had fallen victim as well. Docks

Both assured me that while they were waiting and ready for it, they never had to release any boom lines to protect their coastline from the mess that BP unleashed earlier in the year. Needless to say, both of these guys couldn’t be happier about it either.

While Ernie and George had significant empathy for their families, friends and neighbors to the east who were dealing with the mess that seems to have no end, they had other problems to contend with. Their problems though are fortunes that that the rest of the state and Gulf Coast would love to have.

Both gentlemen explained that they had the fortune of dealing with communities where growth and opportunity are availing themselves in spades. While the region is still rebuilding from the aftermath of Hurricane Rita, it still was a place where jobs could be found and investments were ripe for the making. Rita Memorial

Southwest Louisiana is truly a world away from the rest of Louisiana. Whether it is the fact that they have a higher elevation from the southeastern part of the state or they are just closer to Texas, this section of the state has always impressed me as having more of its act together than other portions of Louisiana.

When I first met Ernie and George, it was literally just a few weeks following the wrath of Hurricane Rita. That storm, for whatever reason, is often overlooked by the media and general public when recounting the disastrous storms that have struck the United States. For all of the fury, devastation and media savvy-ness that was Katrina, Rita was actually bigger and stronger when it tore into southwest Louisiana.

Why is it overlooked and often forgotten? Probably because it did not kill the hundreds of people that Katrina did. Furthermore, the region did a tremendously better job preparing for and responding to the storm than its brethren in the southeastern part of the state. The regional parish governments, their leaders and emergency services actually had functioning and productive relationships with one another rather than some of the incompetence that other areas had in place. While the parish governments of southwest Louisiana certainly didn’t agree on everything, they certainly knew how to work together, and that is how I found them back in November-December 2005.

Truth be told, this region had essentially dealt with emergency evacuations three times in 2005. The first was when they were bringing in people from the southeastern part of the state who were seeking refuge from Katrina in the Lake Charles Civic Center, as well as their churches and homes. The second time was when they had to evacuate the Katrina evacuees because Hurricane Rita was making a direct beeline for them. The third time was when they had to evacuate themselves from the path of Rita because no one was interested in seeing the scenes of the Louisiana Superdome and New Orleans Convention Center play out in their community. Despite all of this and having areas consumed by 50-plus feet of water and laying waste to town halls, churches, courthouses and multi-generational family-owned homes, this area demonstrated incredible resilience in being able to weather the storm and move forward.

Back in 2005, I met Lakes Charles Mayor Randy Roach who introduced me to a saying that has stuck with me ever since. He said, “Just hand me a piece of plywood, and we’ll take it from there.”

As simple or even trite as that statement might sound, his message was very simple. It meant that while they may need a hand to get up after a storm, as a people and as a region, they were self reliant, entrepreneurial and confident enough to forge ahead.

Just weeks after the destructive winds and surges of water had taken so much from them, the region had put together plans to enhance its port operations; build business incubators; construct a new and sustainable lakeside waterfront in the City of Lake Charles; and more for the region to have for its future. As a community, they decided to take the fury and consequences of Rita and commit to shaping a renaissance that was true to the values and interests of the region’s citizens; this while also inviting the outside world to do business, invest and even make their home in the area.

You couldn’t help but feel an overwhelming sense of confidence and hope residing in the area. It was incredibly awe inspiring. Whereas other portions of the state were still fighting and finger-pointing at one another over the floods of the 1930s, as well as the Katrina aftermath and who did what to whom, this portion of Louisiana skipped the dysfunctional conduct and hand-waving rhetoric and was full speed ahead on its future. That was then and seeing the results now tells me how right those feelings were.

A gleaming new environmentally conscious waterfront along the Lake Charles waterfront is just finishing construction and will be formally dedicated on September 18. A new regional business incubator at McNeese University will soon break ground and host entrepreneurs of all kinds. Regional highways have been widened and improved. The area is also home to the only newly chartered U.S. bank of 2010, Lakeside Bank, and ongoing construction boom. With regional unemployment (7.2 percent) below the national average, the post-Rita vision for the future, started in late 2005, is becoming the promising reality of today.

As George Swift shared with me in his office later that afternoon, “I hate to say it takes a crisis to motivate people, but unfortunately it does. Rita brought us together as a region like never before,” adding, “We took an unfortunate situation and planned for the future.”

While they realize they dodged a bullet in not having any oil on their shores, George, Ernie and many others know they are not out of the woods yet. With fears that spilled oil remains out in the Gulf and could come ashore in the future, and with the Obama Administration’s drilling moratorium still in place, George estimated that upwards of 20,000 jobs could be lost if this situation continues.

Despites these potential dark clouds, southwest Louisiana remains a place where hope and opportunity have taken root. But like any community in America, forces external to it are always present to cause a problem or two. I have no worries though. All they need is a piece of plywood to continue building their future. They’ll take care of the rest and leave you inspired along the way.

Check out the other pieces in this series.

Five Years Later, Gulf Coast Reflections – Part One

Five Years Later, Gulf Coast Reflections – Part Two

Five Years Later, Gulf Coast Reflections – Part Three

Statue

Posted in Critical Infrastructure, Emergency Preparedness & Response, Homeland Security Industry & Private Sector, Homeland State & Local | Comments

Five Years Later, Gulf Coast Reflections – Part Three

Monday, August 30th, 2010

Bay St. Louis, Waveland and Gulfport, Mississippi

It’s hard to say what the real ground zero of Hurricane Katrina was. For most Americans, they think of the City of New Orleans. They remember the raw and emotionally powerful images of human anguish at the Superdome, the Convention Center, the dramatic rooftop rescues by Coast Guard helicopters, as well as the watery carnage of the Lower 9th Ward.

For as awful as each of those events were, similar catastrophes were experienced by St. Bernard and Jefferson Parishes, as well as Plaquemines and Slidell, LA. While the media certainly covered the earth-shattering events that occurred there, it seems to me that the Gulf Coast of Mississippi seems to have been lost in the coverage. Five years ago, I distinctly remember taking a helicopter trip from New Orleans over to Gulfport, MS. As heartbreaking as it was to hover over broken levees and destruction in southeast Louisiana, it could not compare to what I saw in Mississippi. The only word I used to describe what I saw back then was very simply Hiroshima. Areas that I had long known from my time doing work at NASA’s Stennis Space Center, long before 9/11 and DHS ever happened, had literally been wiped from the face of Earth. The destruction was beyond catastrophic.

Catastrophic

From the helicopter, the only discernable structures that you could identify were the makeshift tents that emergency personnel and National Guardsmen had put up. In scanning the area, I wanted to see about one piece of property in particular. The more than century-old bed and breakfast along North Beach Blvd in Bay St. Louis that I used to stay at during my extended stays was nothing but shattered debris. After surviving the “big storm” that everyone in Mississippi had never stopped talking about (Hurricane Camille) and countless other storms in its 100-plus years of existence, Miss Ann’s Bed & Breakfast, like thousands of other homes and businesses, finished their lives in destructive ruin.

In returning there today, the only remnants of one of the storied old homes of the South is the old oak that stood at the corner of North Beach Blvd and deMontluzin.

As sad as it was for me to see that, it can’t compare to the lingering heartbreak that residents there have for their lost homes. A longtime friend of mine who lives in Bay St. Louis, Lynn Francis, took me to the place where the first home she had ever purchased once stood. Turning onto Adrienne Court, Lynn seemed to catch herself becoming emotional and quickly apologized. Telling her to not worry about it, she parked the car and pointed out the car window and said, “This is it.”

Behind the overgrow weeds and shrubbery rested a concrete slap with broken tiles all around it. While the debris of what had once been her home with its inviting screened porch had long since been removed, the place that had once been a source of warmth and pride for Lynn was now a scar upon the land as well as her heart. For as personal as the visit wa Stairs to nowhere s for her, it is the same for any number of residents. It was not an unusual sight to drive around the area and see brick staircases going up to nowhere because there was no porch or home to connect them to.

Driving closer to the beach, steel beams driven into the ground to anchor the frame of the home against the wrath of Mother Nature were all that remained from any number of places residents of the Mississippi Gulf Coast called home. Another set of stairs, these being spiral, again led to nowhere.

While barren concrete slabs and stairs to nowhere are around for all to see, there is also tremendous rebirth in the area. The once shattered bridge linking Bay St. Louis and Pass Christian now rises high out of the Gulf with artistic brass plaques at points along the walkway telling the story of the area. Stately homes that had been wiped out have been replaced by gleaming structures that would probably send most of the hosts of Home & Garden Television into utter euphoria. Brightly colored condos and beautiful new Catholic churches rise up across from the beach. It was hard not to be inspired at the turn around for the devastated but for every high there seems to be another low around the corner.

Walking along the beach were BP crews looking for oil. With screened shovels, rakes and buckets, nearly a dozen people with bright neon vests and rubber boots and gloves were combing the sand for any remnants of the event that truly ruined the entire region’s summer. What they found appeared to be minuscule, but it was enough to remind me as a visitor of what these people have been through. In speaking with restaurant owners, wait staff and others during my visit, any lingering angst they may have had about Katrina and the area’s recovery was replaced by pure venom for BP.

BP Clean up

No one I spoke to believes any of the promises that BP has made in their television and radio ads. Mississippi residents, like their Louisiana neighbors, fully expect BP to find every possible way of getting out of their responsibilities to the region. They see the oil spill as one more knife into the heart of an economy that depends on fishing and tourism. As to the forthcoming claims process being led by Ken Feinberg, the people I spoke with echoed complaints that I heard in Louisiana about what value a forthcoming damages payment for this year’s losses would be if the oil still in the Gulf prevents people from coming to vacation or eat the fish in their restaurants in future years. If the oil washes up again in future years, residents and business owners fear what they have left will become a waterfront ghost town.

As Jimmy Trapani, the owner of Bay St. Louis’ famous Trapani’s Eatery shared during lunch: “I can handle a storm and move on from that but there’s no moving on when that stuff [the oil] is still out there and people won’t come here to eat in restaurants, go into the water or visit here. What the hell am I supposed to do to prepare this place [his restaurant] for that?”

Trapani's Eatery

Despite his frustrations and those of other MS residents, the citizens of the Magnolia State have proven their abilities to reclaim what was lost as their own. They are one with the coastline and have built smarter and stronger as a result of the lessons learned from the natural fury five years ago. As they look west to their Louisiana neighbors, many take great pride that their recovery seems to be coming along at a better pace, even if they are not receiving the lion’s share of media attention and recognition. Many of them are OK with that, but others fear they will remain overlooked by their noisier next-door neighbors.

Louisiana, and New Orleans in particular, has always made for more compelling media attention than the people of the Magnolia State. In the end though, everyone knows that it’s the end results that matter. The Mississippi Gulf Coast has come back from oblivion before, and the residents there are more than confident in their ability to remain steadfast against lingering threats. They’ve done so in a fairly quieter fashion for some time now, and that’s OK.

Check out the other pieces in this series.

Five Years Later, Gulf Coast Reflections – Part One

Five Years Later, Gulf Coast Reflections – Part Two

Five Years Later, Gulf Coast Reflections – Part Four

Posted in Critical Infrastructure, Emergency Preparedness & Response, Homeland Security Industry & Private Sector, Homeland State & Local, Management & Administration, Maritime & Seaport Security | Comments

Five Years Later, Gulf Coast Reflections – Part Two

Friday, August 27th, 2010

Plaquemines Parish

Other than cruising along a major piece of highway, there are few places that you can drive in America where you can go 50+ miles and not hit a traffic light. Such is the stretch of highway along Louisiana Highway 23, running straight through the center of Plaquemines Parish. Located just south of New Orleans, Plaquemines is literally a peninsula with the mighty Mississippi River going right through the center of it.

Where most of America has trains, large trucks and airplanes darting in and out of its boundaries, Plaquemines has large cargo ships, super tankers and even cruise ships sailing right down the center of it. It is not at all unusual to be cruising along in your car going 65 and look over and see one of these monstrosities sailing along or stopping alongside the levee walls to wait before they head up or out of the Mississippi.

River

Plaquemines is also a very rural community. With Mississippi River-rich soil, orange and other citrus groves, and grazing cattle dot the landscape. Further adding to the Parish’s landscape are small harbors of fishing boats that venture out into the Gulf for the day’s catch. Despite all of this Mark Twain-like tranquility, it is safe to say that Plaquemines has been through the ringer for the past five years.

When Katrina struck, surges of water in excess of 50 feet crossed over the levees, parking shrimp boats in the center of the Highway 23 and farmer’s fields while cattle and other farm animals were left dangling in the surrounding trees. It also wiped away hundreds of homes and businesses and put the lives of several thousand of the Parish’s residents in scenarios few of us could imagine. It was in many ways an almost Salvador Dali painting of oddball images to comprehend, but they were very real to the region.

For as stark as it was for a number of Plaquemines residents to live in tents with their families for just over six months (until FEMA trailers were put in place and power and water lines were installed), like the area they call home, they were rustic and stuck it out knowing that things could and would get better.

While the communities of tents may be gone, they have been replaced with larger mobile homes, larger travel trailers as well as reinforced steel structures. The few single family homes that you do see are raised up twelve to fifteen feet so as to give them a sense of protection from the water, should it ever arrive again in such an unwanted fashion.

For as bad as Katrina may have “knocked them on their ass,” as one long time resident described to me, “it is BP that has driven the knife into their hearts” and may have given them what several residents believe to be a truly fatal blow.

Not far from the rustic harbors that are home to shrimpers, oystermen and other fisherman are the shorelines and marshes that were stained by the BP oil spill. Tar balls and oil-soaked marshes and beaches became part of the Plaquemines world this year. As a result, part of the professional and personal livelihoods of many in this community – fishing – ceased to exist. To only make matters worse for many of them, the Obama Administration’s moratorium against new oil drilling projects in the Gulf put even more professional livelihoods and their personal economic recovery on hold.

It’s an open debate by many Plaquemines residents as to what is worse: the impact of Katrina, the BP oil spill or the drilling moratorium. One thing they can all agree on is their concern about their future. Boat

Despite its physical limits in land (some areas of the Parish are only a mile wide), Plaquemines is a gold mine when it comes to fishing, hunting and as every Louisiana license plate reminds you, “Sportsman’s Paradise.” It is also home to one of the country’s and world’s largest estuaries, where crab, oysters, ducks, migratory birds, shrimp and more make their homes. The water and land are truly intermingled into the way of life here, and many residents fear the oil-soaked marshes and recently cleaned beaches contain an environmental time bomb just below the surface that will go off in the coming years. Fears are genuine that the ecosystem will be radically altered in such a way that it will destroy not just the nature they dearly love but the way of life that has been with them for generations.

Compounding the fear is the belief, already echoed by new Mayor of New Orleans Mitch Landrieu that BP is “poised to cut and run.” The constant BP media advertisements about “being here to make things right” rings hollow for the vast majority of the people I have met with this week. They’ve heard all the promises before. With Ken Fienberg taking over the BP-funded $20B compensation and clean-up fund and offering the region’s affected residents and businesses six months to take a settlement or go to court, a number of the Parish’s business owners and residents feel like they’ve another potential disaster on their hands.

If they take the settlement money, they give up their rights to sue BP for future damages. The funds they take from BP may or may not help them out, especially if years from now problems with the environment negatively impact the fishing, business operations and way of life they cherish.

marsh

To date, over 28,000 tests have been done by government and independent researchers on the Gulf’s seafood, and the tests declare it safe to eat. The White House, along with the Louisiana Seafood Promotion & Marketing Board, are doing everything they can to assure the American public (and world) of the safety of the Gulf’s natural bounty. Despite those assurances, the perception problem for Gulf seafood harvests is enormous. Those fears will only be compounded if the seafood-loving public turns its back on purchasing Gulf shrimp, oysters, redfish and more. That will be just another blow to people who have had more than their fair share of pounding over the past five years.

Just when you thought it couldn’t get any worse, but then again, life in Plaquemines has never been simple or easy.

Check out the other pieces in this series.

Five Years Later, Gulf Coast Reflections – Part One

Five Years Later, Gulf Coast Reflections – Part Three

Five Years Later, Gulf Coast Reflections – Part Four

Five Years Later, Gulf Coast Reflections – Part One

Thursday, August 26th, 2010

Five years ago, my life, like the lives of millions of others, changed. I was one of the thousands of people who went to the Gulf Coast to try to help, to do anything to address what can only be called the summer of ultimate hell. Two monster hurricanes, Katrina and Rita, smashed into the coastlines of Mississippi and Louisiana killing hundreds, costing billions and forever changing our nation.

This week I’ve come back to the Gulf Coast to retrace many of the steps I took five years ago. Along the way, I’ve reconnected with people I worked with back then and have taken a good look at the lives, land and future of one of the world’s most unique places. For as much as the news media will offer their five-year retrospectives on the anniversaries of these two unprecedented and tragic storms, it can’t begin to capture how much lives have changed here.

New Orleans Katrina memorial

While the street cars still go up Poydras Street, the music and debauchery overflow on Bourbon Street and the glass and facade of the Convention Center in New Orleans are pristinely intact, the wounds left by Katrina remain raw for some.

In some parts, any mention of the word “FEMA” will give you an almost instant reaction of fury. Like flipping on a light switch, some of the people you speak with will almost instantaneously recount for you their nightmares of frustrations, paperwork and bureaucratic battles that boggle the mind. After they finish releasing their angst about FEMA, many of them will then go into a blistering listing of the faults they see with the State and local governments who weren’t ready to deal with any semblance of Katrina’s fury.

If you talk to business owners and their employees in New Orleans and ask them how business is going, many of them will smile and look at you with a brave face and say, “Everything is fine.” But in the next breath they admit that things aren’t as good as anyone would like. Doors may be open but cash registers and sales are not ringing up.

Despite the tremendous rebirth of New Orleans with its new and refurbished hotels and restaurants, the crowds of tourists and conventioneers that once made the Crescent City one of the country’s most popular destinations, people just aren’t coming here.

Whether it is because of the country’s lingering economic woes, fears about the ongoing violence and crime wave that the city has encountered, or just post-Katrina and Gulf oil spill fatigue and wanting to stay away, I couldn’t help but recognize how light the crowds around the area were. Even from the moment I arrived at New Orleans International Airport, I noticed how empty the airport was. Even the plane coming here was smaller than the one I took just a year ago… and even that wasn’t full.

All of the things you think of when you say New Orleans – jazz, great food, debauchery, Mardi Gras, beads and more – are all back and in vibrant color with one exception: crowds of people.

Every community that goes through a traumatic Katrina-like disaster experiences some type of fluctuation with its population and tourism, but I couldn’t help but feel a sense of lingering fear among the friends and people I’ve met along the way, all waiting for the other shoe to drop. New Orleans

While it would be easy for anyone of us to point to this summer’s Gulf oil spill as that shoe, especially given that it is just down the road for many of the area’s residents, the fear that there is something else that is going to happen seems to hang over the heads of many of the people I’ve spoken with.

People here are genuinely frustrated and suspicious of government, and it’s hard not to blame them. They’ve heard so many promises, seen so much corruption, and been plagued by bureaucracies and incompetence for so long that they just don’t want to hear from Washington, Baton Rouge or City Hall anymore.

In contrast to those experiences, they have seen and continue to see the incredible warmth, care and generosity that comes with having so many people and different service organizations rebuilding homes and restoring properties that most of us would have abandoned long ago. That, along with the victory of their beloved Super Bowl Champions, the Saints, has given them all a bit of hope that they can overcome any remaining obstacles.

But amongst that hope and football pride there is also a sense of exhaustion and looking for a break. Not to sound like an old country song, “but if it weren’t for bad luck, I’d have no luck at all.” This could easily be the refrain of the anthem that has been playing for them over the past five years. While New Orleans and the overall region are no longer knocked to their knees as they were during Katrina, they are certainly looking for that moment that gives them the second wind they need to keep moving forward with confidence and hope.

Maybe you, your family or your friends who are paying a visit might help bring that second wind along.

In fact, I’m thinking of going out to Mothers for Po boy and Pat O’Briens for a hurricane. Why don’t you join me?

Check out the other pieces in this series.

Five Years Later, Gulf Coast Reflections – Part Two

Five Years Later, Gulf Coast Reflections – Part Three

Five Years Later, Gulf Coast Reflections – Part Four

New Orleans street

Posted in Critical Infrastructure, Emergency Preparedness & Response, Homeland State & Local, Management & Administration | Comments

Homeland Security Still MIA on EMP

Tuesday, August 24th, 2010

As Matthew Harwood’s August 5, 2010 article in Security Management reminds us, Homeland Security has not “taken seriously the threat that a high-altitude detonation of a nuclear weapon could fry the nation’s power grid[.]”

As the article notes, Dr. Michael J. Frankel “warned the Judiciary Subcommittee on Terrorism and Homeland Security that a terrorist organization or a rogue state could detonate a nuclear weapon either above the United States or close to its shores, creating an electromagnetic pulse attack that could severely damage the country’s electronic infrastructure.”

Frankel is executive director of the EMP Commission, which was created in 2001 to study the national security threat an EMP attack could pose to the United States.

While most of its work is classified, the commission has released two unclassified reports: one in 2004 and another in 2008. According to the article “Frankel believes DHS has the expertise in-house to tackle EMP preparedness but needs a Senate-confirmed leader to lead the charge. Already DHS has taken action against nuclear terrorist attack scenarios but continues to ignore the threat of an EMP attack, he said, even though the commission provided the department with 75 unclassified recommendations to mitigate vulnerabilities and promote resiliency in U.S. critical infrastructures.”

If anything, Frankel underplays the scope of the threat. The catastrophe would not stop at our borders. Most of Canada would die, too. Its infrastructure is integrated with the U.S. power grid. Indeed, without the American economic engine, the world economy would quickly collapse. Much of the world’s intellectual property (half of it is in the United States) would be lost as well. As a result of these loses, the Earth would likely recede into the “new” Dark Ages.

It is doubly strange that DHS has dedicated so little to this threat in that similar devastating effects could occur as part of a natural disaster. For example, scientists have long held that intense solar flares could produce similar effects. In addition, there are many other kinds of disasters – from cyber attacks to storms – that can incapacitate infrastructure. Furthermore, preparing for “worst case” scenarios would also improve America’s ability to cope with lesser disasters.

DHS should start to take practical steps now to mitigate the damage inflicted by the most catastrophic disasters imaginable later.

Posted in Congress, Politics & PR, Critical Infrastructure, Emergency Preparedness & Response, Management & Administration, Science & Technology, WMD, Chemical & Biological, counterterrorism | Comments

Connecticut Active Shooter Hammers Home Lessons for Companies and Law Enforcement

Wednesday, August 4th, 2010

The active shooter who killed eight people at Hartford Distributors in Manchester, Conn., Omar Thornton, revives sentiments among the employers and co-workers that come with every active shooter: how could this happen and why couldn’t we foresee it?

It concerns me just as much that such questions within the community are joined by a predictable refrain from the likes of me: Now that there has been one, expect others. An active shooter incident lowers the emotional burden for others to do the same, and both employers and law enforcement must be proactive in managing this low probability, high impact risk.

Local law enforcement agencies should be supporting efforts by their local companies by driving awareness and advising on how to manage the risks associated with workplace violence. If ever there was an instance where an “ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure,” this is it. Workplace violence is an issue often understood with the attitude of “it can never happen here,” and yet those firms that do engage the problem often find that while there aren’t active shooter incidents, there are lower level instances of bullying, harassment and other issues that should be prevented.

Employers should actively manage employees who are going through negative events; this most recent active shooter was being given the choice to resign or be fired, and at the University of Alabama shooting earlier this year the college professor was being denied tenure. These are stressful events, and it is true that everyone has a threshold for violence. Negative events in a person’s career or employment have to be proactively managed and assessed jointly by Human Resources, the Legal Department and a senior-level security person. This enables the company to be pro-actively aware of internal situations that may escalate so they can take preemptive measures to protect their employees, customers and brand reputation. These measures range from something as simple as HR or a supervisor talking with the employee to a controlled termination of the employee with an escort out of the building by security personnel.

Systems must be in place for employees to raise concerns about their co-workers, not only concerns regarding their co-workers having a propensity for violence, but something as simple as a colleague who is clearly under stress. It is a purely personal opinion that employers have a duty to care for their employees. By their very status, employers occupy a role in their employees’ lives that significantly affect the employee and are in a position to do significant harm or good. A level of knowledge about employees that enables them to either act or provide support is both a necessary risk management measure to manage workplace violence and an investment in employee satisfaction, and therefore productivity.

The immediate action for all businesses must be to increase their internal awareness and security; one active shooter breeds others. Once this has been accomplished, firms must begin assessing whether their employee relations, duty of care, and support to their employees is of the necessary standard to reflect themselves as a business, as well as to protect their workers and brand in today’s uncertain economic times.

Posted in Emergency Preparedness & Response, Homeland Security Industry & Private Sector, Homeland State & Local, Private and Physical Security | Comments

Raising Caps, Killing Industry and Holding America Hostage

Tuesday, August 3rd, 2010

First off, let me state for the record that I am not taking a page out of the Rep. Joe Barton (R-TX) book of apologies. I may have said some humdingers in the past, but I am not about to apologize to BP for events for which they are ultimately responsible.

That leads me to my second point. BP’s leadership (former and current) have publicly declared in every way imaginable that they will pay for the Gulf oil spill clean up and “make things right” for the people, businesses and environment impacted by what can only be described as a national nightmare. I take them at their word.

No company in the world has a worse brand image than BP, and the only way to restore the name and brand’s integrity is to literally do everything imaginable and unimaginable to make things right. BP’s new leadership, Robert Dudley, has made that pledge, and I also take him at his word.

With these two statements as a backdrop, every business leader in America, large or small, should be scared out of their mind at the actions of the U.S. House of Representatives this past week.

With a vote of 209 members for and 193 against, the House passed a bill to eliminate any and all liability caps for actions resulting from an oil spill or related mishap. While at first glance there may be reason to cheer our elected leaders for putting the screws to fat cat oil companies with monstrous profits and excessive salaries to make them pay for the mess they caused, these actions play right into the hands of people who are not necessarily our friends.

By eliminating the liability cap, small to mid-size oil companies (and yes there are small to mid-size oil companies) will find themselves operating in an area where they can no longer afford to do business. The costs and exposed risk is too high, and as a result, they will either have to close down or be bought up by other companies to do business. Even successful, large-scale companies may find these conditions perilous.

For as much as we may want to make sure that BP and others like them pay for their messes, imposing post-disaster reactionary measures without looking at the short and long-term consequences is almost as dangerous.

By no means am I am an apologist for oil or insurance industries, but the actions of the House this past week display a punitive, knee-jerk reaction to a very complex disaster that deserves a deeper breath of analysis by Congress and the Administration before any final decisions are made.

In a June 9 hearing before the House Transportation & Infrastructure Committee, industry experts and representatives of the insurance industry warned that with raised caps or no liability caps at all, petroleum industry members could be uninsurable. They additionally warned of the reinsurance pressures that would be required if such a scenario were to play out, as the existing insurance industry could not adequately cover the exposed liability. These experts also warned that the only oil industry operations that could possibly operate in these conditions and cover such exposed risks would be those oil companies entirely backed by nation states.

Under this scenario, it means the only companies our nation could depend on for oil would be companies owned and operated by the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and Hugo Chavez’s Venezuela.

While the Saudi Kingdom may technically be a U.S. ally, they are not one of the first nations I think we can depend on when things get dicey. Furthermore, having American interests held captive by Aramco, the Saudi-owned and largest oil company in the world and Citgo, the Venezuela-owned company, is in no one’s national security interests.

For all of the warm fuzzies that Joe Kennedy’s TV ads may put on our TV screens, I think the anti-American, megalomania rants of Venezuela’s dictator, Hugo Chavez, are testament enough that he doesn’t care one bit about our oil needs or paying for any mess Citgo might be involved with in the future.

The House’s reactions are another classic move by Congress following a disaster of imposing sweeping and far-reaching decisions without examining the strategic implications of their legislated moves. Despite the counsel of hearing witnesses and others, House members (wanting to show the good people of their Districts that they are responsive and are on top of things by tarring and feathering the boogie men of the moment) have proven again that they have earned the full rights and privileges of their dismal approval ratings.

I want BP to pay for their mess. I also want other companies, governments and organizations that are at similar fault for future incidents to be held accountable for their screw-ups. But in a society that is already over-litigious to where we sue over spilled hot coffee and the emotional distress caused by certain paint colors, the House’s measures cause potentially greater peril than the original disaster.

Putting American companies and workers out of business because the risk can’t be adequately covered while leaving our energy needs beholden to people who don’t have our interests at heart is not a strategic solution. More thought, innovation and leadership are required to address these very complex problems, but those traits have been missing in Congress for a while now. With any luck, the Senate and future Congresses will provide those for us.

Posted in Congress, Politics & PR, Emergency Preparedness & Response, Homeland Security Industry & Private Sector, Management & Administration | Comments

FEMA’s Steps in the Right Direction

Thursday, July 29th, 2010

As the country celebrates the 20th anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), it presents an opportunity to see how far we have come since the enactment of one of our country’s great civil rights laws, but it is also a measure of how much farther we have to go. When it comes to this anniversary and FEMA, Administrator Craig Fugate has let it be known that he recognizes how much there is for his agency and our country to do in making sure people with disabilities and special needs are not forgotten during times of emergencies/disasters.

In posts on the FEMA website, as well as a post contributed to CNN, Fugate shares in moving terms the consequences of forgetting those who need an extra hand.

While many will cynically see these efforts as pure “Washington spin” to coincide with a particular historical anniversary, they are actually very bold steps. Fugate has essentially put himself and his agency front and center on the public stage and declared, “the previous status quo of handling these issues does not cut it. We have to do better and we will do better.”

In a town where people of every political stripe are looking for measures to point out one another’s shortcomings and failures, Fugate has put his agency and his professional community (emergency management) on the line to address needs that have been dramatically under served and unacknowledged for far too long.

Washington is full of people who make promises and bold statements but have little courage or willingness to deliver or back them up. Fugate has shown again his ability to be the un-Washington guy by admitting the shortcomings of the past while carving a path towards a better future. He did this early in his tenure by taking on the emotional issues associated with dealing with children in emergencies and disasters, and he appears to have no reservations about taking on this equally necessary and emotional issue as well.

With the recent signature of an MOA with the National Council on Independent Living and his other public comments, including those made in his confirmation hearing (Spring 2009), Fugate has laid down the very performance metrics by which he and his colleagues will be held accountable. That’s a metric that I don’t think any other DHS leader has put upon themselves or their departmental component, and it is worthy of note.

There are no wiggle words associated with what he’s offered either. While he has not promised that everything will be perfect, (an impossibility for any organization, especially one that works in disasters), he has gone on the record that all of us will see the improvements in planning, operations and performance when it comes to the disabled/special needs communities. Such improvements are twenty-plus years overdue.

For those of us who have full mobility, we can not begin to appreciate the fear, frustration and angst of those who can not exit a building with ease during an emergency. Maybe that’s why I and others feel with the bold and personal commitments by the FEMA administrator that we’re taking the steps in the right direction. The way he has given his word on these issues is different from the promises of the past. He’s made this personal.

In taking on the leadership role that will carve the path to the necessary improvements, Fugate has also put this issue into our own individual laps as well. He’s asked us to do our part in the planning, preparedness and response for family, friends, co-workers and neighbors that could use that extra hand. Those actions alone will save countless lives and under those terms, it’s hard not to recognize how personal this issue really is.

Posted in Critical Infrastructure, Emergency Preparedness & Response, Ideology & Public Diplomacy, Management & Administration | Comments

Politics vs. Security – A Tale of Two Committees

Thursday, July 29th, 2010

Two Senate committees, three chemical security bills and one issue to rule them all – the role of so-called Inherently Safer Technologies (ISTs) in America’s approach to safeguarding communities from acts of terrorism. With DHS’ Chemical Facilities Anti-Terrorism Standards (CFATS) set to expire in October, lawmakers in the Senate are taking steps to keep it alive. What form the program ultimately takes will depend on whether legislators choose to focus on politics or national security.

Here’s where members agree:
1. CFATS, at least in its general form, needs to be maintained
2. The exclusion of drinking water and wastewater systems from CFATS (or a CFATS-like regime) presents a “security gap” due to their use of hazardous chemicals, such as gaseous chlorine

Here’s where members disagree:
1. Whether the existing CFATS program should be made permanent
2. Whether CFATS should be expanded to include other provisions, such as a requirement that certain facilities assess and/or implement IST

Due to jurisdictional issues in the Senate, the Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee (HSGAC) can only address provisions relating to chemical facilities. The Environment and Public Works (EPW) Committee can only address provisions relating to drinking water and wastewater systems.

Both committees held proceedings on chemical security this week. Here’s how things panned out:

HSGAC’s Ranking Member, Susan Collins (R-ME), chose to scrap her own bill (S. 2996, the Continuing Chemical Facilities Antiterrorism Security Act of 2010) in order to report out an amended version of H.R. 2868, the Chemical and Water Security Act of 2009 – which would now extend CFATS for three-years and excludes IST provisions. It passed 13-0 with bipartisan support.

EPW used Senator Frank Lautenberg’s (D-NJ) bill (S. 3598, the Secure Water Facilities Act) as a backdrop for its hearing. S. 3598, which includes a strong IST component, does not have bipartisan support. The hearing was used to extol the virtues of providing the government with IST mandate authority.

HSGAC, which spent most of its time addressing how factors such as risk, vulnerabilities, and consequence impact chemical security, passed a Republican-drafted amendment with unanimous support and moved us closer to establishing a permanent CFATS program. EPW used a hearing as a platform to play politics.

You tell me who got it right.

Posted in Congress, Politics & PR, Critical Infrastructure, Emergency Preparedness & Response, Management & Administration, WMD, Chemical & Biological, counterterrorism | Comments

The Earth-Moving Message Not Heard

Friday, July 16th, 2010

Like much of the National Capital Region, I am shocked we had an earthquake this morning. For people in Washington, DC, an earthquake is usually a shocking news story – like when a President has an intern do more than sharpen pencils; someone changes political parties and changes the balance of power; or when there is a major budget announcement and you find your life’s work is no longer funded.

But we had an honest to goodness 3.6-on-the-Richter-Scale-earth-moving experience. In typical DC fashion, this has generated the usual Beltway news hysteria. On the ride in this morning, radio stations of every genre were taking callers describing how the baseball caps fell off their TV; how their dog started barking uncontrollably; and their fears that construction workers had hit a gas-line in their neighborhood.

I thought the reactions I heard were hilarious, but they reminded me a lot of the reactions that most people in this area have when there is a forecast for snow. At the drop of a hat, people seem to run straight to the grocery and hardware stores to stock up on bread, milk, eggs and toilet paper while fighting with someone over the last available snow shovel in a 50 mile radius.

Now, our Nation’s Capital is built on a swamp; a fact proven by some of our wretched summers and watching some of the behavior captured on C-Span. But just because we live in an area were awful humidity, murky ground and mosquitoes find favor does not mean we are immune from all of Mother Nature’s furies. From the record snowfalls of earlier this year; oppressive humidity; destructive thunderstorms; flash flooding and more, our area is full of hazards. [And notice I didn’t even mention the threats associated with terrorism, our horrible traffic or riding Metro!]

This area has plenty of reasons to be on edge, and this morning’s earthquake gives us another. That’s where I thought this morning’s media failed us. While they all accurately described the events of 5 AM and what impacts the earthquake did or did not cause, I did not hear one of them talk about PREPAREDNESS.

Today’s earthquake is another one of those teachable moments when our media sources, public officials and more can be talking about having a plan, making a kit and being prepared. As fun as it is to hear the anecdotal stories of who did what when the Earth moved, none of those stories will save a live or make a positive difference if we don’t take the individual positive steps for our families and our businesses – if we don’t do the basics of being ready. That’s a message that needs to be reinforced at every available moment, and I hope people wake up to that fact and start talking about it.

Posted in Critical Infrastructure, Emergency Preparedness & Response, Homeland Security Industry & Private Sector, Homeland State & Local, Management & Administration | Comments

Unnecessary “Jurisdictional Turf Battles” Threaten to Derail WMD Bill

Friday, June 25th, 2010

Earlier this week, the House Homeland Security Committee marked up the WMD Prevention and Preparedness Act of 2010 in an effort to implement recommendations from the Commission on the Prevention of Weapons of Mass Destruction Proliferation and Terrorism (the so-called Graham-Talent WMD Commission). There were a number of good stories about the Committee action, but the one that caught my eye was from Martin Matishak at Global Security Newswire.

Despite the clearly recognized threat of another terrorist attack on U.S. soil, congressional leadership still had not recognized that its failure to defragment congressional oversight of homeland security matters is contributing to our lack of preparedness for when this attack occurs. Shame on them if they don’t pay attention to the warnings from Representatives Bill Pascrell (D-NJ) and Peter King (R-NY) at the time of the WMD bill markup. According to Matishak’s article:

Both Pascrell and King argued for quick passage of the bill.

“My concern is that … this legislation could be stuck in the same jurisdictional turf battles we have been fighting” since Congress created the Homeland Security Department and the legislative panels to oversee that agency in the wake of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, Pascrell said before the vote.

“If we simply shelve this legislation because of jurisdictional turf battles then we prove the idea that we are no safer today than we were on Sept. 10, 2001,” he said.

The measure has already been referred to five other House panels, according to King. They include: Energy and Commerce, Agriculture, Transportation and Infrastructure, Foreign Affairs and the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence.

“It’s just a glaring example of how the issue of homeland security is being bogged down in congressional bureaucracy,” the New York lawmaker said.

What I am afraid of, however, is that Speaker Nancy Pelosi and her leadership team in the House cannot be “shamed” into doing the right thing. One of the first public actions she took as Speaker was to push the implementation of the recommendations of the 9/11 Commission – all but ONE, that is; the one that consolidated congressional oversight of homeland security issues. The House leadership has ignored the issue for far too long. Now we have another congressionally created Commission that has pointed out serious risks – and there is a probability that Congress will still do nothing about it.

If the United States suffers a WMD terrorist attack while Congress fiddles with “jurisdictional turf battles,” as Representative Pascrell warned, one would hope there is the same level of scrutiny over congressional malfeasance, as is the case with the BP Deepwater Horizon debacle. In that case, the message will no longer be, “Congress, Heal Thyself.” It will be “Congress, Blame Thyself.”

Posted in Congress, Politics & PR, Critical Infrastructure, Emergency Preparedness & Response, Law Enforcement, Management & Administration, WMD, Chemical & Biological, counterterrorism | Comments

“Flooded with Help – But Still Flailing”

Friday, June 25th, 2010

In what I can only call a solid piece of researched commentary, Dan Kaniewski of GWU’s Homeland Security Policy Institute and Jim Carafano of the Heritage Foundation have put together a great article, “Flooded with Help – But Still Flailing” on the forgotten and unlearned lessons of Hurricane Katrina and how they are impacting the on-going Gulf Oil Spill. As anyone who works in emergency management space knows, time and time again you end up planning for the same disaster that just occurred without applying the lessons and remedies that need to be in place for the next time something occurs.

With facts in their hands, both of these esteemed homeland security scholars detail how the failures of before remain firmly anchored in place today. Give it read and I guarantee you that you’ll shake your head in frustration but it’s truth that must be faced if we are ever going to improve how we deal with disasters when international assistance is offered to us.

Posted in Critical Infrastructure, Emergency Preparedness & Response, Homeland Security Industry & Private Sector, Homeland State & Local, Management & Administration | Comments

Preparing for PS-Prep – Voluntary Private Sector Preparedness Certification

Friday, June 18th, 2010

By Bob Connors

The 9/11 Commission found that the Private Sector wasn’t adequately prepared to respond to or recover from a catastrophic disaster. The commission Vice Chair Lee Hamilton stated “Now is the time for serious consideration of a national [private sector] preparedness standard” and the Commission accepted a recommendation by the ANSI Homeland Security Standards Panel to endorse NFPA 1600 as the National Preparedness Standard. The recommendation was included in the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004 – Title VII, Subtitle C, Sect 7305:

“It is the sense of Congress that the Secretary of Homeland Security should promote, where appropriate, the adoption of voluntary national preparedness standards such as the private sector preparedness standard developed by the American National Standards Institute and based on the National Fire Protection Association 1600 Standard on Disaster/Emergency Management and Business Continuity Programs.”

A few years later, Congress felt many of the recommendations from the 9/11 Commission weren’t (fully) implemented; thus, in 2007, they passed the Implementing Recommendations of the 9/11 Commission Act of 2007. In Title IX of this act, the DHS is required to “establish and implement the voluntary private sector preparedness accreditation and certification program.” It states no later than 210 days after enactment of this law (~Feb, 2008), the DHS would start rolling this program out.

DHS officially launched the Private Sector Preparedness Program (PS-Prep) in December, 2008 as outlined in the federal register. One of the first priorities for the program was to establish the accreditation and certification process, so DHS selected the ANSI-ASQ National Accreditation Board (ANAB) to develop and manage this part of the program.

The next priority was to select the standard or standards that would be approved for PS-Prep. In October, 2009 DHS announced three standards would be proposed for the program; NFPA 1600 – Standard on Disaster/Emergency Management and Business Continuity Programs, BS25999 – Business Continuity Management and ASIS SPC.1.2009 (see the Institute for Business & Home Safety for a helpful crosswalk of the three standards). Once these standards were announced, the DHS had a request for comments period and received scores of comments, which were reviewed and adjudicated by DHS.

As the first half of 2010 comes to a close, Sen. Joe Lieberman and Rep. Benny Thompson, chairmen of the Senate Homeland Security & Governmental Affairs Committee and House Committee on Homeland Security respectively, issued a joint memo citing their concern with the state of PS-Prep and calling on DHS/FEMA to “act promptly to implement this program and vigorously promote it within the private sector.” This is a warning shot that PS-Prep is coming, and coming soon.

Unfortunately, this was a reaction to the BP Deepwater Horizon disaster and PS-Prep will not and is not intended to prevent a disaster like that. There’s a risk management element to PS-Prep that will address risk assessment and mitigation strategies, but don’t be fooled into thinking it could/would have prevented what’s happening in the Gulf. PS-Prep will enable businesses to be prepared to respond to and recover from a disaster and resume normal business operations effectively and efficiently.

There are many opinions about whether a voluntary private sector preparedness certification (i.e., PS-Prep) is necessary. The thought of business continuity/crisis management (private sector preparedness) being “regulated” through standards makes practitioners shudder…standard is a dirty word to many people and the thought of applying standards to preparedness is like applying standards to safety…oh wait, we do that (via OSHA). I mean, like applying standards to security…oh, guess we do that too (via ASIS, DSS, NIPP and others). Opponents argue that the private sector already has preparedness programs in place and manages the process effectively. Others argue many industries (i.e., the financial sector) already have regulations and those requirements meet or exceed anything PS-Prep would prescribe. Finally, there are those who hold that certification won’t lead to the ultimate goal – resiliency – it’ll just be another unfunded mandate a la Sarbanes/Oxley.

These are valid concerns and I share them as well as a few more; however, it’s been my experience that many companies believe they have adequate preparedness programs in place, but truly aren’t ready for a significant incident (and may not even know it). One issue is the lack of standards for planning, and another is that exercises to identify gaps in the planning aren’t very effective. Businesses exercise their plans for likely scenarios and identify gaps/lessons learned, but the exercises are often scripted to an extent the outcome is predictable complete with a check in the box and a slap on the back. The result is a false sense of security that the business is prepared for a disaster.

It’s no secret that I’ve been a proponent for private sector preparedness certification since the start and I’ve discussed and debated my position in many different public forums. In fact, my presentation theme this year is “the 3 P’s of 21st Century Resiliency – People, Partnerships and PS-Prep” (more on that in another blog). If businesses (or public agencies for that matter) aren’t measured against a standard, how can we be sure if they are adequately prepared to respond to and/or recover from (catastrophic) incidents? If we are to become more resilient as a nation, how can we achieve that if we don’t have a way to evaluate or measure preparedness?

“Private organizations across the country—from businesses to universities to non-profit organizations—have a vital role to play in bolstering our disaster preparedness and response capabilities. These new standards will provide our private sector partners with the tools they need to enhance the readiness and resiliency of our nation.” – Secretary Janet Napolitano

If we’re going to be serious about resiliency, we need to embrace standards to some extent. If we do it right, it will be less painful and frustrating than trying to figure out whether a company you are dealing with is as resilient as they say they are.

There are a few requirements that I believe will be key to PS-Prep’s success that include, but aren’t limited to:

1. Allow for the professionals (i.e., those of us who do this for a living not lawyers or policy people) to review and comment on the proposed standards. * Sincere thanks to Jim Caverly and his team at the DHS Office of Infrastructure Protection. They’ve gone above and beyond to engage all the stakeholders and listen to our feedback. This has been a very open and collaborative process and much appreciated!

2. Allow for a maturity model certification process. This will allow businesses to build a business case for a higher level of maturity (if necessary) and small-medium sized businesses don’t have to be held to the same levels as larger companies (e.g., CMMI for services might be a starting point).

3. Allow for self-assessments so small-medium sized businesses can benefit. The Institute for Business and Home Safety “Open for Business” and American Red Cross “Ready Rating” programs provide an existing framework that may be leveraged to handle small-medium sized businesses.

4. Allow businesses/industries who have regulatory requirements that meet/exceed the proposed standards to use that evidence to achieve certification instead of going through a different process.

5. Provide incentives and info to help build a business case for certification

6. * SAFETY Act type protections if a company gets certified
* A Malcolm Baldrige type award
* Insurance companies should provide incentives for certification

The International Center for Emergency Preparedness (INTERCEP) at New York University has been engaged in this effort since the 9/11 Commission was established and they’re facilitating discussions around some of these “requirements”. Bill Raisch et. al. have done an exceptional job pulling subject matter experts together to frame the requirements and allow our collective voices to be heard. Through the INTERCEP website, you can review some of the research that ranges from the business incentives to legal issues that are being analyzed.

It’s time to get knowledgeable about PS-Prep and position your business to achieve certification of compliance for one of the approved standards. The 21st Century incidents are increasing in frequency, scale, and consequence and the private sector needs to be prepared to bounce back and help our nation recover.

If that’s not compelling enough, consider that we may be one crisis away from this voluntary program becoming mandatory.

Bob Connors is the Director for Preparedness at Raytheon Corporation.

This piece was originally posted on America First.

Posted in Critical Infrastructure, Emergency Preparedness & Response, Homeland Security Industry & Private Sector, Management & Administration | Comments

Watch Your Mouth – Words can be the Real WMDs

Friday, June 18th, 2010

As every person knows, words have consequences. They can raise someone up or tear them down. Depending on how they are used, words can change the meaning and significance of events. They can also ruin someone’s career, and the past days and weeks have given us example after example of just that.

Last week in a Congressional hearing, Rep. Joe Barton (R-TX) apologized to BP executive Tony Hayward, only to apologize a few hours later for his earlier apology when his words ignited a bipartisan firestorm of controversy.
Amidst the tidal wash of oil that has ruined marshes and ways of life along the Gulf Coast, BP CEO Tony Hayward emoted in an interview how he’d “like to have his life back.”
Only complicating the on-going BP public relations nightmare, the Chairman of the company’s Board, Carl-Henric Svanberg used the term “small people” to describe the oil-spill affected residents of the Gulf Coast.
Now we have Gen. Stanley McChrystal and members of his immediate staff offering some more than candid assessments of the Obama Administration’s leadership.

In each of these instances, prominent people have essentially opened their respective mouths and inserted their feet with such speed that everyone around them is in a collective gasp of shock, saying, “What did you say?”

Important points can be instantly invalidated when the wrong words are used at the wrong moment, regardless of what the speaker intended with their comment. Each of the above mentioned cases proves that without a doubt, but it’s not just prominent people who say the wrong thing at the wrong time. For all the countless (and recent) examples of famous people saying something improper in front of live microphone (e.g., Vice President Biden’s F-bomb); a television camera (e.g., CA GOP candidate Carly Fiona opining on Sen. Boxer’s haircut) or some other public venue (e.g., NV GOP Senate candidate Sharron Angle), everyone one of us has some episode in our lives that we would love to take back, when we opened our own mouths and promptly inserted both feet.

All of those examples and events certainly provide moments of public (or private) laughter and fodder for late-night comedians, but when the wrong words are used in moments of stress and crisis (e.g., Gulf oil spill, Afghanistan conflict), their consequences are graver.

Accomplished careers can be vaporized in an instant. With a perpetual 24-7 news cycle and social media replaying the gaffe forever more, the wrong words become in effect an epitaph that will forever haunt an individual (e.g. “Brownie, you’re doing a heckuva job,” “As of now, I am in control here in the White House,” and “Let them eat cake“).

None of this is fair but neither is life. It is a fact of life that in times of crisis, words can cause more harm to a situation than the event that originated the crisis. Making it worse is almost never the intent of the person who opens their mouth, but when operating in any highly toxic environment where crisis and stress are the unfortunate operative norm, what you say does matter in ways like never before.

That’s a fact that no one can be or should be cavalier about either. Everyone can fall victim to this situation, but words have consequences. They always have, and that’s why they can be the ultimate weapons of mass (and self) destruction.

Posted in Congress, Politics & PR, Emergency Preparedness & Response, Ideology & Public Diplomacy, Management & Administration, WMD, Chemical & Biological | Comments

Water Systems – A Rising Rate to Lift Our Nation?

Wednesday, June 16th, 2010

Leaders at every level of government continue to ignore the obvious, and dare I say, “inconvenient” truth about water: We need to raise rates. Either that or get used to being thirsty, stock up on Pepto-Bismol, and get ready for a mean tutorial on what Cholera feels like.

Peter H. Gleick got it right in his Washington Post editorial. U.S. water systems are the best in the world, but the fight to maintain water quality may be lost if utilities remain hamstrung by requirements to under charge for services. Apparently, paying more than $0.01 per gallon is a mortal sin. Consider that the next time you plug $2.00 into a vending machine for a 20oz bottle of Aquafina.

According to the Clean Watersheds Needs Survey 2008 Report to Congress and the American Society of Civil Engineers, there is a respective spending shortfall of $298.1 billion for clean water systems and $220 billion for drinking water systems to replace their aging infrastructure over the next 20 years. That’s a lot of money for a resource we cannot live without, but no one seems to be listening.

While much of this issue should be handled locally, Congress needs to help too. Asking the public to accept paying higher water rates in return for Congress contributing additional dollars for investment in water systems is reasonable. Dear Congress: Stop talking and toying with the idea of creating a water bank utilities could access to get the funds they need to save our water systems. Instead, try actually establishing one.

At a time when government has become more reactionary than proactive, we need our elected representatives at all levels to rise above the fray and act for the greater good. If water is life, and life is short, then we have a responsibility to act now – before the tap runs dry.

Posted in Congress, Politics & PR, Critical Infrastructure, Emergency Preparedness & Response, Homeland Security Industry & Private Sector, Homeland State & Local, Management & Administration | Comments

Three Years Later – PS-Prep Standards Announced

Tuesday, June 15th, 2010

If patience is a virtue, those waiting for the Private Sector Preparedness (PS-Prep) Program have to have the patience of Job.

After what can only be described as months (if not years) of delays, bureaucratic inertia, internal turf battles and outright bewilderment if the program would ever finally come to be, DHS formally released its selected standards for the voluntary private sector program. Whether because of bureaucratic exhaustion or because they couldn’t find another reason to delay it, the formal announcement about the standards has finally been made. It is long past due.

While there is no surprise as to the selected standards, given they were identified more than a year ago, the fact that it has taken this long to formally issue them is a powerful message by itself.

Enacted in 2007 as part of the Implementing Recommendations of the 9/11 Commission Act of 2007, every legislative and regulatory timetable prescribed as part of this effort has been ignored or been completely disregarded. Furthermore, to say this unfunded mandate was a priority to DHS leaders would be a tremendous stretch of the imagination.

While there were certainly those people inside the Department who have faithfully and honestly busted their behinds to make this program a tangible and workable reality, its lack of any type of public embrace or outreach by the Department’s most senior leaders is more than obvious. We certainly have the appropriate (albeit manufactured) words of previous press releases (as well as today’s), but in this town, it is easy to tell where priorities rank and it’s obvious PS-Prep is not among the top tier of issues.

That’s not hard to believe when you’ve got a never ending nightmare of an oil spill in the Gulf; the threat of an active hurricane season underway; and people committed to their own destruction and others via exploding cars and underpants. The inbox is certainly overflowing, and it always will be at DHS; there is no argument there. But taking as ridiculously long as it has to get to today’s announcement gives little hope to DHS’ ability to be nimble enough to respond to the dynamic circumstances in which the private sector operates daily.

For all of its rhetorical promise in urging the private sector to do the right thing in being truly prepared for all hazards, the Department’s operational performance in executing this program is tremendously disappointing. While the standards they have formally chosen have promise to make a difference in preparedness, the actions of the Department’s leadership in the “go-slow” approach in forging this program gives an indication of how much this issue truly matters to them.

That’s what I probably find so disappointing about today’s announcement. As events in the Gulf and elsewhere have shown us, we have no luxury in taking our time to be ready for incidents and accidents in all of their forms. There is and always should be an urgency for preparedness, particularly for the private sector. Boilerplate speech rhetoric, canned press release words, and going-through-the-motion exercises can never replace the force, drive, and action of leaders who want to make something happen. I have not seen that yet with this program and maybe I never will.

I can only hope that in going forward, the Department’s leaders will embrace this program for its true potential and the difference it could make to the bottom line of this country’s overall preparedness. Maybe then Congress will properly fund it. Until then, we will just go through the motions and that by itself is a waste of everyone’s time.

And preparedness is never a waste of anyone’s time.

Posted in Critical Infrastructure, Emergency Preparedness & Response, Homeland Security Industry & Private Sector, Management & Administration | Comments

Painfully Unprepared for Space Weather

Tuesday, June 15th, 2010

If you can’t see a threat, or describe it in terms that the average person can understand or appreciate, is it really a threat? That was the challenge put before 200+ scientists, physicists, meteorologists and other very technical specialists at the Space Weather Enterprise Forum on June 8 at the National Press Club. This highly unique assembly gathered to discuss the emerging concerns regarding increasingly dramatic changes in our universe’s space weather.

Space weather you ask? First off, this is not about meteor showers, alien invasions or Texas-sized asteroids colliding with the Earth. Rather, it is about how our sun and planet interact with one another and impact upon our atmosphere and life here on Earth.

With terms such as ionosphere, magnetosphere, cosmic radiation and geomagnetic storms, the eyes of the general public and most of the population are likely to glaze over in a coma when a subject matter expert tries to talk about the topic in a public forum. As technical and high-brow as each of the just-mentioned terms might be, none of them conjures frightening images or public reaction the way words like hurricanes, earthquakes, floods and tornadoes might.

That is the challenge the forum’s attendees had. There are some deadly serious events occurring off of our sun and while it may be billions of miles away, its happenings have tremendous consequences here on Earth. Solar winds, flares and other increased radiological releases from the sun have long impacted our planet and the other entities in our solar system. As a result, the atmosphere surrounding Earth, as well as the climate and inhabitants on this planet, are directly impacted.

For generations, these events went unrealized, but with newfound curiosity, education and capabilities, scientists and astronomers began to piece together an understanding that what happens way out there has a direct impact upon our life here. For the most part, Earth’s atmosphere protected us from harm from these radiological outbursts. But truth be told, we have had more than our share of instances in the past 50 or so years where solar flares and radiation have disrupted the operations of our orbiting satellites; impaired communications and GPS abilities; disrupted power distribution; and caused other problems.

Because of these events and a better understanding of what’s happening in space, space weather forecasts have started allowing satellite operators, human space flight operations and other interests to prepare accordingly. While there are some actions that can be taken to safeguard these assets from being fried by solar flares, etc., they are still serious threats that need to be considered and prepared for when it comes to space weather.

That was the message that FEMA’s Administrator, Craig Fugate, delivered. Recognizing that he was a fish out of water in a room full of technically minded scientists and astronomers, the notable emergency manager addressed the crowd as one of the believers in the space weather threat.

He explained that as the person who leads America’s largest emergency management network, the country is looking to him and FEMA colleagues to take action on a range of threats, such as floods, hurricanes, earthquakes, etc. When he mentioned the threat of geo-magnetic storm or other space weather disturbance, he explained that nearly no one – from the general public to other emergency managers to the people he interacts with at the White House – has a clue on what he is talking about. He called upon the Space Weather Forum attendees to get him better data, better forecasts, and increased warnings so that he, along with others in the room, could better educate policy makers and the general public. Without it, he could not adequately prepare the public.

Fugate also drove home the point through anecdotal examples that when a geomagnetic or solar storm event occurs, it will not just impact one small geographic area like a flood, fire, or tornado. Impacts with such a storm would be hemispheric in size and would have tremendous disruptions to infrastructures (e.g. communications, power/energy, etc.).

In chronicling the history of these events and their previous occurrences, Fugate stated bluntly that we as a nation are not ready to deal with these storms. He further explained that while the country had endured previous large geomagnetic storms, our country and world today are so absolutely dependent upon a range of vulnerable technologies (e.g., satellite transmissions, GPS, cell phones, etc.) to run everything that when “the big one” hits us, we are going to be in really bad shape. In that situation, the idea of who is in charge of what becomes very important and no one had a good idea of those responsibilities at the present time.

Fugate shared that he was starting to exercise his senior leadership team and other FEMA personnel to begin thinking through these scenarios. He also explained that he had exercises on the horizon to expose more federal, state, local, and tribal personnel to these prospective situations as well. While he spoke in generalities about his concerns, Fugate specifically mentioned the survivability of GPS and existing communications architectures.

His remarks and his attendance at this niche issue gathering spoke volumes. Despite all of the PhDs and space weather geniuses that filled the National Press Club ballroom and have worked these issues for years, nothing gave their warnings more credibility than having Fugate walk into the room and state that he believed in the threat they were warning him about. It’s not as if Fugate doesn’t already have enough to worry about. It’s already Hurricane Season 2010 and Arkansas, Tennessee, Oklahoma and others have already endured their own catastrophic weather events this week.

Now we’ve now got something else to worry about and prepare for.

Posted in Critical Infrastructure, Emergency Preparedness & Response, Homeland Security Industry & Private Sector, International, Management & Administration, Science & Technology | Comments

Learning the Hard Way from British Petroleum’s Costly Mistakes

Friday, June 11th, 2010

It has been over a month since the tragic Deepwater Horizon explosion, and at this writing, oil continues to pour into the waters of the Gulf of Mexico and onto adjacent land and marsh areas. Although a number of investigations have begun to identify the cause of this accident, in the end, they will find that prospectors, driven by an oil rush mentality, took their quest for oil to new depths where they did not have the technology to operate safely.

Several years ago, while on active duty in the Coast Guard, I visited a large offshore oil rig to examine their operation. This rig cost over $1 billion dollars to build and was connected to multiple wells over one mile below by a complex piping system. The rig had a sophisticated dynamic positioning system that would keep it in place even in hurricane conditions, a flexible piping system to allow the rig to move within an operating circle, and an automatic shutoff system called a blowout preventer that would automatically stop the flow of oil should all of these other systems fail.

Despite the large capital investment in this rig and wells, no oil was flowing during my visit. The oil company had found that the piping system it had installed between the rig and wells in these new untried depths was inadequate to withstand the temperatures and pressures on the seafloor. Over the following year they were going to replace all of the piping to make certain it could safely operate in this new and challenging environment. The oil company was willing to have this rig sit idle and take large losses as they learned how to take oil from such great depths.

Most of the easy oil from existing lease areas in the Gulf has been exploited. The large oil reserves in the Gulf now reside in deep water areas. Plans are to have a few handfuls of large, deep water rigs collect oil from multiple deep wells on the seafloor and eventually produce nearly 80 percent of all oil taken from the Gulf. Because the Coast Guard has responsibility for the safety and security (not the drilling operation) of these rigs, our concern at that time was how we would protect these attractive terrorist targets from attack. Unfortunately, it was a tragic accident that produced the same net effect as a terrorist attack.

It is clear that the oil companies worked diligently to produce technologies that could bring oil from deep wells to the surface. It is also clear that they did not develop, on a parallel track, the multi-layered technologies needed to stop and respond to an emergency on the deep ocean sea floor. That is why we see them trying new technologies to stop the flow of oil and gas as millions of gallons of oil gush into the water column. They are learning as they go and at great expense to the environment and people of the Gulf. It is like trying to repack your parachute while in a freefall.

It is now up to the federal government to ensure this doesn’t happen again. Before deep water drilling recommences, the oil companies should demonstrate that they have reliable technologies in place to prevent well blowouts at great depths and layered fail safe systems in place that can respond should the prevention systems fail. We are learning this lesson the hard way.

Posted in Critical Infrastructure, Emergency Preparedness & Response, Homeland Security Industry & Private Sector, Law Enforcement, Management & Administration, Maritime & Seaport Security, Science & Technology | Comments

An Exercise in Idiocy

Wednesday, June 2nd, 2010

As all of us know, exercise is good for one’s health. It gets you in shape. It improves your game. It gets you ready for whatever play may come your way. Whether it is sports, emergency drills or military maneuvers, the adage of “how you train is how you fight” describes the benefit of being ready for anything.

It’s a shame that a group of exercise organizers in Nevada did not think of that adage and apply an ounce of common sense to their recent exercise at a hospital in Henderson, just outside of Las Vegas.

As detailed in an article from the Las Vegas Sun, “an off-duty cop pretending to be a terrorist stormed into a hospital intensive care unit brandishing a handgun, which he pointed at nurses while herding them down a corridor and into a room. There, after harrowing moments, he explained that the whole caper was a training exercise.”

An active shooter in a hospital is not an outlandish scenario, and there is significant value in educating hospital personnel in what to do should such an incident like that occur.

An exercise like the one described though is an exercise in idiocy. Violating any premise of common sense and risking greater harm and stress to patients and hospital personnel, the exercise organizers and participants allowed their own “gung-ho preparedness” to cross a line and go too far.

If, God forbid, there had been an armed security guard or someone with a concealed weapons permit sitting in the waiting room that had unknowingly reacted to the exercise by trying to defend themselves and others in the hospital, this story would have a very different and potentially tragic ending.

There is any number of scenarios that could have played out here, but the fortunate one we have is that we can shake our heads in collective disbelief that anyone would play out a scenario such as this in real time in a critical care unit. Besides embarrassing themselves and making themselves the easy target for late night comedians, these exercisers have shaken the confidence of the public they serve.

Instead of sitting down to educate hospital personnel (and others) about these often tragic situations, they chose to scare the hell out of them. I’m sure the citizens of Henderson, Nev. are wondering what good that type of exercise did for them. I don’t have an answer for that one, and I bet the organizers don’t have a good one either.

Posted in Emergency Preparedness & Response, Law Enforcement, Private and Physical Security, counterterrorism | Comments

Unprecedented Service – Thad Allen’s Almost Retirement

Tuesday, May 25th, 2010

On Tuesday, a man much of America recognizes for his leadership following the occurrence of a “bad day” will relinquish his command of one of our country’s oldest branches of federal service, the U.S. Coast Guard. Having served the past four years as Commandant, Thad Allen has become one of those unique, iconic American figures that when you see him or mention his name, you almost immediately think of words, “trust,” “competent” and “leader.”

He is, for lack of a better description, a Walter Cronkite type – one of the most trusted people in America – a man that citizens could turn to and hear straight facts, be they good or bad, with no BS or political showmanship. It gave you comfort to see and hear him because you knew that he was on the job to make the situation right.

In a country gripped by bi-partisan, anti-incumbency fever, where career seniority is seen as a liability and not an asset, his departure as Commandant couldn’t happen at a more challenging moment. For those who are privileged to know him and have worked for him (as I did in 2005 during Hurricanes Katrina and Rita), his retirement is certainly the culmination of a distinguished 30-year career. He has truly earned whatever break he and his family want to have from constant moves, late night briefings, long deployments, Congressional hearings and rubber chicken dinners. As difficult as all of those things may have been for him and his family, Allen’s career has been about two things: leadership and service to others.

Because of recent events, we know just a few of the public metrics of those two attributes, most notably his service as lead for the Federal response following Hurricane Katrina. With hundreds dead, thousands displaced, an American city in ruin, and a flop of a Federal response dropped in his lap, if there was ever a no-win situation for a person to step into, it was Katrina. There truly was no place to go but up, but it took leadership to point the correct direction and take the first step. It was Allen who began the trek out of the muck.

As someone who was there in Louisiana at the time, I can say without hesitation that when he took over, there was a literal sea change in how the response unfolded. In respecting the various jurisdictions of all of the federal, state, local and private sector players, Allen empowered his people to take action to make change happen and happen quickly. It was for those reasons that then-President Bush and DHS Secretary Chertoff tapped him to respond to one of our nation’s darkest days. It is for those exact same reasons that President Obama and DHS Secretary Napolitano have asked him to serve as the National Incident Commander in dealing with the on-going oil spill in the Gulf – an unprecedented service that he will continue to fulfill even after his tenure as Commandant ends on Tuesday.

Allen’s career in the Coast Guard is almost unparalleled given the increased public recognition that it brought for him personally and to his service branch. Most Americans can recognize the country’s senior military leadership from news photos and television coverage, but for generations of Americans, the U.S. Coast Guard was a service not in prominent public view. To many Americans, the Coast Guard was synonymous with the guys who patrolled the rivers and lakes and made sure everyone behaved themselves with their boats. As unfortunate as the circumstances were, the Coast Guard’s unrecognized leadership and service to others caught the full attention of the country as the responses to Hurricanes Katrina and Rita unfolded.

Helicopter airlifts, boat patrols and other rescues were the bright spots in bleak days. Fate happened to put Thad Allen in the center of it all. From that point forward, Allen’s unsought celebrity brought recognition to him and to the men and women with whom he served; something that was long overdue for a service that has been in operation from this country’s beginning. The unique “gift” of public recognition also provided Allen the political capital to say things that needed to be said (especially during budget hearings) and to put in place things that needed to be there to deal with twenty-first century threats (e.g. Deployable Operations Group, etc.).

Allen is not without his critics, but few can deny his elevation as Commandant and recognition of his service branch are due to a unique military culture that insists that public, private and military sectors work together to achieve mission success. While DHS is made of many distinguished and accomplished parts, few of them have anything like the culture of the Coast Guard that trains its personnel from Day One to adapt and respond to events and processes, rather then be subject to processes and bureaucratic programming.

Such are the hallmarks of a career founded in leadership and service to others. They just don’t end when a final salute is given and a command change is complete. Instead, they show up on Wednesday to deal with on-going bad days and to make miserable situations right. Thad Allen’s career could not end any other way.

Posted in Critical Infrastructure, Emergency Preparedness & Response, Homeland State & Local, Management & Administration, Maritime & Seaport Security, counterterrorism | Comments