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2020 Clackamas Wildland Fires: Difference between revisions
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2020 Clackamas Wildland Fires (view source)
Revision as of 12:34, 26 December 2023
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Also, we had one disabled person come to the showers. It would have been good to ask, “Do you have any disabilities that might require assistance or extra time?” For those that couldn’t navigate the stairs, it would have been nice to have another option to point them towards. In our case, it was someone missing an arm, and they had a hard time working the faucet. It turned out it was having a problem, so doubled their frustration. After that, we added the question as people left, “How was everything?” | Also, we had one disabled person come to the showers. It would have been good to ask, “Do you have any disabilities that might require assistance or extra time?” For those that couldn’t navigate the stairs, it would have been nice to have another option to point them towards. In our case, it was someone missing an arm, and they had a hard time working the faucet. It turned out it was having a problem, so doubled their frustration. After that, we added the question as people left, “How was everything?” | ||
=== Tom Boeker === | |||
'''''2020.09.17 report from Tom Boeker:''''' | |||
I feel that the greatest issue we faced was documenting and managing the flow of information. I would interested in participating in a group to work on this issue. | |||
Also, our NET basic training was a great stage 1 learning - learned a lot. But I think a important message to NETs is that, stage 2 learning, the best way to learn deployment is to do a deployment. | |||
Finally, this evacuation might be the best available analogy to what we might expect in a earthquake scenario. | |||
=== Heidi McNamee === | |||
We were there for the very first shift, so it was all about site size up and mapping. Creating the physical map and knowing where things were on-site was the obvious but perhaps less important aspect of size-up. | |||
The deeper size-up was understanding who was on the site and what knowledge, needs and expectations they held. In addition to several hundred evacuees, shoppers and mall employees, there were many different people providing different services: Salvation Army, Clackamas CERT, Northwest Baptist Disaster Relief, Rotary, Clackamas County Go Teams, a group of folks wanting to deliver support items to firefighters and a constant stream of lovely random people wanting to drive up and drop off supplies. | |||
Dylan and I marked the alpha/numeric street grid for the map. We also facilitated connecting people: A Go Team volunteer with deep history of the site and no one to offload that important info to, the mall General Manager who needed to make his needs & resources known, people without a car who happened to be visiting town from Lincoln City who needed to get to the Convention Center for shelter and on and on.... | |||
Each one was a mutual size-up: what are your needs, your resources, your skills, your effectiveness. It was on-the-fly relationship building because people need a certain level of shared agreement and trust before they can work collaboratively under stress. Knowing chain of command or “who you know that I know” for the volunteers was one way to kickstart relationship with each other. | |||
In talking with the evacuees, keeping focused on their needs (expressed verbally or with body language) and being as centered as possible was key. You could make a good guess at which volunteers had been on this sort of deployment before and who, like me, had not! It was my first deployment for an evacuation and that has a level of excitement; I had a sense of “I’m doing something useful”, it was nice to see NET buddies and I held an underlying level of anxiety with the uncertainness of the experience. All that “amped up” feeling was not useful when talking to people who were somewhere on the “fear-worry-relief-what in the world is next” spectrum and I worked to mitigate it. | |||
Although there were people accepting donations, when NET arrived there was no real ownership or plan for what to do with all the stuff. Mall management was concerned that it would get out of hand and NET worked with the other on-site groups to form a plan. This is what Jeremy calls the “second disaster” because managing all the ‘stuff’ takes a lot of people-power. | |||
=== Helen Chauncey === | |||
'''Overall, an excellent experience.''' Any of the following observations might strengthen our capacity – it’s worth noting, though, that the deployment was highly realistic; any of these shortcomings could well be exactly what we will be working with in a major, regional disaster. Learning to cope and pinch hit is also a valuable skill set. | |||
'''<u>Possible Improvements</u>''' | |||
'''Shared contact information for shift team members''' | |||
# On site, we used phones for this; putting together the group text was done on the fly, which increases the potential for errors. | |||
# If the system – whatever that is – could send out something like a contact list with emails, we might have better coordinated in advance (radios, for example) and after-action would have been easier. | |||
'''Information transfer from shift to shift''' | |||
This is distinct from a general briefing (as in “Here are the supplies. This is what our Salvation Army colleagues are doing.” Etc.) | |||
An example: Tuesday afternoon, we had a canine medical issue. We phoned PAWS, which had a flyer on the table. The person we talked with wanted to help but didn’t know how. We phoned Oregon Humane, with the same result. Later it developed that both PAWS and Oregon Humane had had people on site | |||
on Monday. (So they themselves didn’t have water tight information transfer.) Apparently by chance, Clackamas Dog Services then showed up – with a specific list of dogs on site needing services. They perhaps got this information from the Tuesday morning crew. We didn’t know how they got that information. | |||
'''1) White board or cumulative, 3-ring binder:''' | |||
One solution – a large white board or a large three-ring binder, as distinct from the various pads of paper, could have helped here. (Note – there is really no ICS form for this. And maintaining it would require some discipline.) | |||
'''2) Longer overlap between shifts for team-to-team debrief:''' | |||
More time for overlap with each shift would help, with a particular emphasis on “open cases” – dogs needing a vet; people needing housing vouchers; etc. | |||
'''3) Written information sheet – contacts and protocols''' | |||
Also helpful – a written sheet with information on basic services (How does the phone charging station work? Who opens and closes the showers? Who handles housing vouchers? Etc.) | |||
The information sheet, to the extent possible, could include relevant contact information (Site security. County EOC. Addresses and phone numbers for sites to which evacuees were being sent from CTC, such as Gladstone. Other.) | |||
'''Intra-team communications''' | |||
Team members should ALL bring FRS radios. (Basically, there weren’t any for the Tuesday afternoon shift.) We had several instances where we needed to communicate with team members at considerable distance from the command center. Because cell phones worked, we could handle this but radios would have been less fiddly and good practice for when cell service is down. | |||
'''Chief Pooh-Ba''' | |||
This is a big one. Jeremy did a spectacular job of filling this role. If he had not been on site, our ability to provide meaningful services to those most in need would have dissolved. | |||
So, how to address this, assuming JVK can’t be everywhere, always? JVK did give us the phone number for Allegra (I gather this is her/their first name) at Clackamas EOC and emailed our TL (me) a list of other contact numbers. | |||
What we didn’t have, though, was a briefing as to what we could call whom about. (As an example, when JVK was not at the command center, would it have been appropriate for us to call Allegra if someone needed a housing voucher? JVK was sending information to her, I gather, by email. Could we text her? Send email from our phones? Other?) This same set of questions held for the additional contact phone numbers. | |||
A briefing as to how, and to what extent, we could step into this role, in JVK’s absence, would have been very helpful. | |||
'''<u>Other Observations</u>''' | |||
'''Cell phones and the Internet''' | |||
Both were working. This allowed us to look up information on the fly, in the absence of a more detailed briefing. (What’s the number for Oregon Humane? What’s the address for the Gladstone RV park? What’s the name/address of the church down the street, taking evacuees in cars. Etc.) In the absence of the Internet, our capacity to provide these services would have been severely weakened. | |||
'''Resources guide''' | |||
Would it be possible to develop a resources guide, drawing on this experience, which the NET teams have hard-copy in case they deploy under conditions where there is no Internet. Definitely, there could be no guarantee that the same partner organizations (for food, housing, animal care, medical assistance, etc.) would necessarily be available. But a contact list, periodically updated, would be a valuable start. | |||
'''Spontaneous volunteers who knew more than we did''' | |||
The glowing example here is Wynter (her first name.) She came out of nowhere, took to her service role with a passion, and basically kept us focused on people in need of services – filling a role we could not have filled easily – possible not at all – ourselves. Wynter was basically our “written” inventory of actual people – names, family circumstances, particular needs – as we moved through our shift. | |||
'''Gear''' | |||
We were basically well-prepared, apart from the absence of radios. The one item I am going to add is a NET t-shirt. I did not have anything “neutral” to wear – that did not have a tag-line from some other volunteer activity. The safety vests covered this up, but there were instances where approaching people without the vests might have been the way to go. I had previously considered the NET tees a kind of swag (a perfectly OK thing, but not essential.) I’m now thinking of them as a deployment item. | |||
Hard hats were unnecessary. Apart from that, the prep list was spot on. | |||
'''The NET call debrief – increasing participation''' | |||
A few people tended to hog the show on this, possibly including myself. This may have quieted others, which is too bad. Would it be possible to send out an email to those who deployed, specifically encouraging them to send in after-action feed back? It would be great to get more voices in this discussion. | |||
For future debrief calls, the approach taken recently – a list of names put in the chat; then people called on in order – might help here. This removes back-and-forth, but addresses the verbal dominance issue and encourages quieter voices to speak. | |||
'''<u>2020.10.12 Further comments by Helen after reviewing the draft AAR</u>''' | |||
'''Comment One – Authority and Responsibility''' | |||
The emphasis on getting ICS correct in the AAR is valuable but doesn’t capture a concern several of the TLs expressed on the Wednesday NET call, including myself. Essentially, we need a clear articulation of authority and responsibility – both of these. These two over-arch the specific ICS designations (planning, ops, etc.) | |||
Both at CTC and on the call, you mentioned that we (NET) were “in charge” of the evacuation site. What does “in charge” mean? What authority comes with this? | |||
There are many examples. We were not in charge of assigning hotel vouchers, for example. I assume we could not have ordered the Salvation Army people around. And so on. What exactly were we in charge of? | |||
Importantly – this is the big one for me – what responsibilities come with that authority? | |||
The AAR mentions the need to conduct a more orderly check in of the evacuees. That’s a good example. But what else? | |||
Here are two “opposing” possibilities: | |||
Mark and Marcel’s group assumed they had the responsibility to check on the SUVs’ credentials – whether or not those SUVs checked in at the NET tent. (One example was an evacuee offering basic first aid, although her actual skill set was as a phlebotomist. My understanding is they felt they had to rein her in.) | |||
During my shift a water truck showed up. It did come by the NET tent. I told the driver we were happy to see him. Plausibly, though, the water truck guy could have been peddling contaminated water. | |||
Should I have confirmed that he was actually contracted by Clackamas EOC? If so, how? If the driver didn’t have proper paper work, should I have ordered him off the site? And if so, how? What was my responsibility here? | |||
Apart from a more orderly check in system for the evacuees, what were our responsibilities to the people and animals sheltered at the site? | |||
We may encounter this same question at neighborhood deployment areas after a natural disaster. Is our authority at those sites – before more professional first responders show up – spelled out anywhere? And with that authority, what are our responsibilities? What are we obligated to do, if we accept the authority on offer? | |||
'''Comment Two – Drones''' | |||
This is in your AAR draft. I don’t remember it coming up in the NET call discussion, but it might have. | |||
I have serious reservations here, unless responsibility and cultural sensitivity are spelled out far more clearly than they currently are in the AAR and any future NET guidelines. | |||
If you are lost and you see a SAR drone in the sky, you can reasonably assume the drone is looking for you and you can rejoice. | |||
Otherwise, especially if you are a frazzled, anxious evacuee – particularly in America’s current, highly polarized political climate - you can reasonably assume the drone is Big Brother. It’s up there, noisy and intrusive, reminding you that you don’t have an iota of privacy. | |||
At the very least, drones spy. For some immigrant members of our community, drones will have been the source of much worse than spy eyes. They are stealth military tools, with no human mercy, which have been widely used in conflict zones. | |||
I understand the value of drones, responsibly used. But if I am unhappily huddled in an evacuation site, anxious and angry at my fate, and some clown starts peering down at me from a bloodless drone, I’m going to pray to whatever god I can find that someone shoots that thing down, legal penalties notwithstanding. | |||
Also - I know you know this, but as a reminder - for anything other than a hobby, no matter what the need, your operators must be FAA licensed or operating under what’s commonly called a sheriff’s waiver. There are no exceptions to this, as far as I know. And if you go with the waiver option, you – not the operators – are responsible for what the operators do. This business of the two-faced nature of drone technology is serious. | |||
==References and Notes== | ==References and Notes== | ||