Organizational Couch Potatoes – A False Sense of Preparedness
I was rummaging through some old files the other day and I came across my copy of the After Action Report (AAR) for Quakex97. This was a joint local, state [...]
How many people will learn to Scuba dive after a Cascadia?
I participated in the Cascadia Rising 2016 exercise to help add realism and stress. Not everyone appreciated the challenges and annoyances I caused but there was a method to the [...]
HICS – Incident Action Planning (IAP) Made Easy
I can’t tell you how many events and exercises I’ve been involved in and when I inquire about their planning efforts I am told “we’re too busy to plan”. The [...]
What’s Preparedness Worth? Is $3.5 Million Enough?
My experience has always been that preparedness is a tough sell. The value seems to go up after there has been an event and a bad outcome was a result. [...]
Medical Rapid Response Team – Ideal for Catastrophic Events
I've been involved in planning for a Cascadia earthquake/tsunami event and a New Madrid earthquake event so I know what a catastrophe will look like. I have not been involved [...]
Hospital Decontamination Operations – Documentation
My recommendation is to take the time to put together an operations manual that covers your entire Hospital Emergency Response Team (HERT) program. This will keep all the important [...]
Hospital Decontamination Operations- Training
If your staff attend a training session such as the one provided by the Center for Domestic Preparedness (CDP) they learn the process of establishing and operating a decontamination corridor. I [...]
Hospital Decontamination Operations – Staffing
In my experience staffing is one of the biggest challenges hospitals face when trying to sustain a Hospital Emergency Response Team (HERT) program. Staff members get selected based upon their [...]
Road to Rio Leads to Zika – How do we prevent illness and spread of disease?
I think it's hard to argue that prevention of disease in the case of the Zika virus does beat a pound of cure. We are unlikely to have a vaccine [...]
Recommendations to enhance your organization’s emergency preparedness in 2016.
It's a challenge to know where to devote planning, training and exercise time with so many competing demands, agendas and requirements. Consider this - people will fall back on two [...]