MEMORANDUM

To: City Council

From: David J. Deutsch, City Manager

Subject: Emergency Preparedness Follow-up

Date: November 9, 2006

On November 28, 2005, staff presented an overview of emergency preparedness in the City. This overview and subsequent discussion prompted a wide variety of comments, suggestions and questions from Council and citizens. This memo will serve as an update on those issues and comments. During the November 13, 2006 Worksession, staff will review the City’s progress on emergency preparedness, expand upon the bulleted items below, and will be prepared for discussion of the issues.

Community Involvement

• Community Emergency Response Team (CERT)
  City and other government resources can be overwhelmed during emergency incidents. Trained residents who can supplement public safety personnel are an excellent support resource. City staff is working with the County’s Office of Homeland Security and local volunteers to develop and manage a Community Emergency Response Team (CERT) for Bowie. This CERT group would receive at least twenty hours of training from certified emergency personnel to enable them to support first responders and Incident Commanders.
  
• City Council’s Public Safety Committee
  The revitalized Public Safety Committee (PSC) has discussed emergency preparedness as one of its priorities. This energetic group has members with a wide variety of backgrounds, including emergency response. The Chief of the Bowie Volunteer Fire Department has been invited as the first guest speaker before the PSC. His emphasis will be on the BVFD fire/EMS response and emergency preparedness.

Communication

• Alert Bowie
  This service was offered to the public in September of this year. To date, 321 users have signed up to receive text messages from the City via email and on their cell phone or other electronic device. Alerts were sent out during Tropical Storm Ernesto in August and during the storm that hit the Kenilworth and Buckingham sections in late September.
  
• WARN
  WARN is Prince George’s County’s alert system. It can generate telephone calls to “land lines” in the entire County or to a particular geographic area within the County. Once the service is fully functional it will available for municipalities to use, for a fee.
  
• Other Means of Communication
  Staff continues to use Nextel phones and two-way radios during emergencies. When the County’s 800 MHz communications system is completed, the Bowie Police Department will be able to communicate with other public safety officials in the region during major emergencies.
  
  Message boards, the City website, and the government channel are excellent means of communicating during an emergency. Radio stations and television stations also provide timely information in times of crises. However, one of the most important aspects of emergency communication is ensuring that those who live and work in Bowie are prepared before a disaster occurs. This means knowing where to go for information, having a battery operated radio or television, being signed up for Alert Bowie, having a National Weather Service radio that turns itself on to broadcast warnings about weather emergencies, and having a personal emergency plan.

Business Community

• Outreach
  Staff has met, and will continue to meet, with representatives of local businesses, tenant associations, and other community groups to dispense information and answer questions about emergency preparedness.
  
• Information Distribution Hubs
  The issue of emergency information distribution when no electricity is available was brought up at last year’s Worksession. In addition to the methods described in the preceding Communication section, staff is evaluating a plan to identify information distribution hubs in different locations in the City. Simply put, a limited number of locations with easy accessibility to residents (probably large shopping centers) would have a dedicated location on their property where updated emergency information could be distributed in written or oral form if other forms of communication are limited or unavailable. Distributors could be CERT members, PSC members, Councilpersons, or staff. The managers of the Bowie Town Center and Free State Shopping Center have already endorsed this concept.

Exercises/Training/Incidents

• Training
  Staff members regularly attend training classes, seminars, and conferences related to the many facets of emergency preparedness. Ideas, real-world experiences and plans are in turn discussed and shared with other staff members and integrated into the City’s website, outreach material, and operational plans and actions. Staff has attended training classes conducted by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), Maryland Emergency Management Agency (MEMA), Prince George’s County Health Department, Maryland Safety Council, National Park Service, BGE, as well as other professionally sponsored exercises.
  
• D’Iberville Project
  The City of Bowie support mission to D’Iberville, Mississippi was not only a tremendous humanitarian effort, but also an extremely instructive training opportunity for multiple members of City staff. While the urgency of the immediate catastrophe had ended, the recovery effort that staff worked within was a perfect example of the Incident Command System in action. Interviews, observations, and hands-on work with the managers of the D’Iberville recovery effort provided staff members with an intensive real-life training exercise that simply could not be duplicated in a classroom, seminar or other educational setting. Management of a disaster, financial concerns, logistics, operational actions, and planning processes were all part of the lessons learned by staff during the week in D’Iberville.
  
• Kenilworth and Buckingham Wind Damage
  The extensive damage to trees and property and the loss of electricity to a significant number of Bowie homes in September was an opportunity for the City to work within an Incident Command System. With the Bowie Volunteer Fire Department managing the incident, the City provided many forms of support during response and recovery. While a formal critique has not been held yet, the feedback from the BVFD and City support components has been positive.

Emergency Plan

• Standard Operating Procedures (SOP)
  Staff is developing a standard form for City units that are tasked with response operations. Designed to be user-friendly, it delineates the command order, contact numbers, tasks, and other information that are vital to an effective response. While City staff members often have years, in some instances decades, of institutional history and experience, the response plans are not always outlined in a form that would be easily understood if responsibility was transferred or forced onto a new supervisor or employee. The intent of the user-friendly standard form is to enable the City government to have a continuity of operations should a catastrophe or illness disable certain employees.
  
• Outreach
  Readiness by citizens and government is the single most important aspect of surviving an incident. City staff makes preparation plans and guidelines available on-line, at City facilities and other local public buildings. Materials are also distributed at community meetings, and in settings where businesses, organizations, or other government entities are meeting.
  
• Shelters
  The City has applied to the American Red Cross to have the Bowie Senior Center designated as a potential emergency shelter site. The application and the facility are currently being evaluated to determine if they meet Red Cross standards and needs. It is the City’s intention to make the Senior Center available during major emergencies affecting the Bowie area.

Evacuation Routes

• Evacuations are incident specific
  Residents should not evacuate an area until told to do so by the entity managing the incident. Federal highways and primary State roads within Prince George’s County have been designated as County evacuation routes. The designated routes passing through the City are Routes 301, 50, 214, and 450. Alternate routes might be used if an emergency warrants the closing of one or more of these designated highways. Therefore, it is very important to monitor the radio for travel instructions. Radio stations such as WTOP (103.5 FM) and WMAL (630 AM) provide 24/7 traffic information.
  
• Invacuations
  Invacuation is the term used to describe the activity that may occur in Bowie if another area is evacuated in the direction of Bowie. If this were to occur, Bowie would experience a high influx of vehicular traffic through our City by persons fleeing or being evacuated from those other areas. Potentially, evacuees from other areas would impact traffic flow, food and water resources, hospitals and medical care, other supplies, and the need for shelters within the City.

Working with Other Agencies

• Staff Outreach
  Staff has established positive working relationships within the hierarchy of emergency management in our area. City management and staff have met with the County’s management of the Office of Homeland Security, the Capital Region Administrator for the Maryland Emergency Management Agency (MEMA), Region V Administrator for the Maryland Institute for Emergency Medical Services Systems (MIEMMS), County Health Department, Bowie Volunteer and County Fire Department, Prince George’s County Municipal Police Chiefs Association, as well as other agencies that provide first responder and support services to incidents. These relationships have proved beneficial in obtaining grants, training, and other opportunities to improve the City’s service to residents.
  
• Avian/Pandemic Flu
  At our request, the County Health Department recently conducted a two-hour seminar for senior staff and supervisors regarding the issues of avian flu and pandemic flu. This was an opportunity for employees to hear factual information from experts about subjects that have been given a lot of recent media coverage, some of it rather sensational. The goal was three-fold: educate our employees (who in turn would educate their families), develop continuity of operations plans should a pandemic flu decimate our work force, and educate the public about this issue through the use of the newsletter/website/other media.

Summary

Staff will continue to enhance the state of preparedness for employees, residents, and businesses in the City through continuing education, training, and relationship building. The ideas and questions brought forward by Council and citizens at last year’s meeting have spurred actions that have benefited the City. A tremendous amount of information has been learned and an equally tremendous amount of effort to distribute information has been made. Staff will continue to seek out grants and partnerships with entities in the emergency management arena. Working with the Public Safety Committee is a priority. Staff will provide annual updates to Council and is always available for questions and comments from the Council or residents.

DJD/AC