CIP Update

November 16, 2007

This newsletter is for public agencies, businesses, non-governmental organizations, and other stakeholders involved or interested in public-private partnerships for joint emergency preparedness, mitigation, response, and recovery.

Michigan State University (MSU) produces the newsletter through the Critical Incident Protocol (CIP)-Community Facilitation Program under a grant awarded by the Training & Exercise Integration Division, Federal Emergency Management Agency, U.S. Department of Homeland Security. This newsletter provides ideas, suggestions, best practices, and lessons learned to establish critical incident protocols using public-private partnerships.

Through the CIP Program, Michigan State University facilitates public-private partnerships for cities, counties, and regions across the nation.  The CIP Program is free of charge to participating communities.

Please visit our website at www.cip.msu.edu for more information about the program.

Participating Communities in the CIP Program
The CIP Program has been initiated in 34 communities in 21 states with over 2,500 participants establishing public-private partnerships for joint management of critical incidents. We are looking to work with other cities, counties and regions. Is there a location in the nation that you think may be interested in developing a public-private partnership? If so, please let us know.

Currently, we are working with the following communities:
Allentown, PA / Annapolis, MD / Bethlehem, PA / Brooklyn, OH / Brown County, WI / Buncombe County, NC / Carroll County, MD / Casa Grande, AZ / Clark County, NV / Dallas, TX / Dane County, WI / Douglas County, KS / Evansville, IN / GCCC-St. Louis, MO / Greensboro, NC / Hoover, AL / Lake-Cook Corridor, IL / Layton, UT / Lewis & Clark County, MT / Libertyville, IL / Littleton, CO / Marquette County, MI / Milwaukee, WI / Monroe County, MI / Mountain View, CA / Northampton County, PA / Norwalk, CT / Oakland County, MI / Perkiomen Valley, PA / Redmond, WA / Racine, WI / Richmond, VA / Rockville, MD / Sandy City, UT

Building a Partnership

In August 2007, Dane County, Wisconsin, home to the state capitol in Madison, participated in the CIP Program. In the first workshop participants worked together on various issues, including completing a risk assessment of a business, identifying new community resources to mitigate the impact of a crisis, using the Incident Command System (ICS) through joint public-private response, and enhancing the partnership and networking. At the end of the workshop day, the participants suggested topics or issues for future meetings.

Recently, the Dane County group met to continue the partnership process. They developed a name for the group, along with a mission, value statement, strategic objectives, and created a steering committee and sub-committees. For example, “The mission of the Private-Public Partnership of Dane County is to serve as a conduit between the private sector and government to promote emergency preparedness, continuity planning and the integration of the business and non-profit communities in critical incident response and recovery.”

Their value statement indicates they are, “Committed to making Dane County safer, secure and economically robust.”

The participants identified the following strategic objectives, which are:

o The partnership will promote and support planning, training and exercise initiatives.

o The partnership will build on the strengths of existing infrastructures and find ways to promote assistance and support.

o The partnership will preserve organizational identity and support an integrative planning process.

o The partnership will make efficiency a fundamental design principle for all its activities.

o The partnership functions will focus on achieving measurable results, while maximizing time, money and resources.

o The partnership will assess available capabilities.

To ensure the success of the Private-Public Partnership of Dane County, they created sub-committees that are tasked with training, planning & best practices, development of EOC liaison, communications, and exercise design team. As you can see, communities that leverage the expertise and experience of multiple partners will provide the direction and commit to enhance the ability to plan for, respond to, and recover from man-made and natural disasters.

The CIP staff thanks the Private-Public Partnership of Dane County for sharing this information.

Disaster Recovery – The Weakest Link

When discussing emergency management or crisis management there are four phases: preparedness, mitigation, response and recovery. Agencies, businesses and non-profit organizations begin with preparedness, which includes developing plans of action for when a crisis strikes. Mitigation can reduce or prevent disasters from occurring or expanding. Response includes the activities needed to mobilize resources into the disaster area, Finally, recovery restores the affected disaster area to its previous normal state.

In public-private partnerships for joint crisis management, the weakest link is the recovery phase. Public emergency responders typically focus on planning, mitigation, and response efforts in providing services to the private sector and do an excellent job. Of course, those communities and regions that collaborate or partner with the business community draw in the expertise from multiple partners to further enhance the level of ‘joint’ crisis management. Yet, what is also needed across the nation is for partners to take their emergency management program to the next level and start dialoguing on how to speed up the ability of the affected businesses and non-profit organizations to recover from a disaster.

Public and private leadership that mutually agree to focus on creating programs to enhance recovery for the private sector will understand that it expedites this process. Ultimately, this leads to thriving communities that can direct efforts of the public emergency responders to address other needs. Additionally, this may assist the private sector in strengthening their commitment to the community and additional revenue for the business and government.

In 2005, in Sandy City, Utah, we designed and facilitated a tabletop exercise scenario that involved an explosion and fire at a shopping mall. The scenario included both public and private sector response. Normally, after the critical incident is over, most public agencies have completed the main portion of their tasks and responsibilities.  At this point, the devastated business picks up the pieces and attempts to resume normal operations.  Depending upon the impact of the disaster, it may take hours, days, or months to recover or it can also lead to eventual bankruptcy. 

The city indicated it would provide the following services during the recovery phase of the exercise:

o Using the Redevelopment Agency Program, the city can provide any needed gap financing to the shopping mall to help in restoration.

o Utilizing city volunteers, they will distribute accurate information about the event to reduce fear or panic in the community, in addition to providing details of the city’s response and improvements prior to a future incident.

o The Joint Information Center (JIC) will coordinate with the marketing efforts of the mall to resume normal operations.

o The Salt Lake County Valley Mental Health Department will be used to support mall employees with counseling.

o The city will expedite the process of obtaining permits for rebuilding and repairing damaged portions of the mall.

o The city will continue their investigate efforts.

o A post-incident assessment (these are done routinely) will be completed with city personnel to analyze the strengths and weaknesses of the response and recovery efforts.  The city will subsequently communicate the findings to the general public.

o The city’s Economic Development Department will continue to coordinate marketing efforts with the mall.

o The mall will receive additional security support from the police department for a period of time to assure customers and tourists that it is safe.

The above actions could assist the shopping mall to recover quicker. What is your community doing to assist businesses and non-profit organizations to enhance their disaster recovery procedures?

Illinois Public-Private Partnerships

The State of Illinois through various state agencies partnered with the private sector to create the Illinois Private Sector Alliance Project. This initiative promotes a culture of information sharing and partnership through two interdependent programs.

The Infrastructure Security Awareness (ISA) project looks to the private sector as the primary keystone for detection and prevention of terrorism and other criminal activities. ISA members exchange information, including using an internet based Homeland Security Information Network for alerts, organized retail theft, situational awareness, resource database, training, and a calendar of events. Security professionals with responsibilities for critical infrastructure or other commercial businesses are encouraged to participate, and there is no fee for participation.

The Mutual Aid Response Network Program (MARN) provides assistance to agencies, businesses, non-profits and communities by leveraging resources within the private sector to mitigate the impact of critical incidents. The MARN project is a clearinghouse for providing critical resources for disaster management. Resources can include facilities, equipment, transportation, medical supplies, power, and other assistance. The MARN project includes agreements and reimbursement processes.

For more information on the Illinois ISA and MARN projects, please go to http://www.ready.illinois.gov/ittf/private_sector.

Food-Agriculture InfraGard

The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) created InfraGard, which is an association of businesses, academic institutions, state and local law enforcement agencies, and other participants dedicated to sharing information and intelligence. The goals of InfraGard are to promote collaboration relating to cyber-crime, protecting critical infrastructures, sharing alerts and warnings, along with other services. Across the nation, many FBI offices have created chapters.

Within the association are various special interest groups, such as the Food-Agriculture InfraGard, which is dedicated to safeguarding of this industry. The Food-Agriculture InfraGard focuses on information sharing, assessing risks and threats to critical infrastructure, updating protection issues, providing current and relevant industry specific preparedness resources, and enhancing networking among the participants. There are other InfraGard special interest groups, as well. For more information, please go to www.infragard.net.

Shopping Malls Partnering – Southern California Wildfires

Recently, Southern California experienced devastating wildfires and many individuals and organizations provided assistance to those in need. Although there are several examples of assistance, the shopping mall industry partnered with communities for responding to and recovering from this disaster, as well. For example, the Westfield Group, a property management shopping mall organization offered mall facilities around San Diego as staging areas for FEMA, police, fire, livestock, and others. Additionally, they donated money to the American Red Cross for the victims of fires.

When communities develop partnerships for joint crisis management, they want to ensure their locality has the best preparedness plans and resources in place (International Council of Shopping Centers).

Recent Postings to the CIP Information Exchange Website
The CIP Information Exchange website is a vast database for public and private sector professionals interested in homeland security, emergency preparedness, business continuity, disaster recovery, and emergency management.  It also contains research publications, government documents, news items, and more.

To enter the CIP Information Exchange website, please go to https://angel.msu.edu and enter “msu.msu@angel” in the User/NetID and “partnership” (both without quotation marks) as the password to log in. On the next page, please click on CIP, which launches the main menu.

Located in the folder "Bulletin Board - Information for all Communities" are a variety of postings, including the following:

o Homeland Security Presidential Directive #21 – Public Health and Medical Preparedness

o 7000+ Chemical Plants to Spend Millions on Regulatory Compliance

o U.S. Coast Guard’s Deployable Operations Group (EMR-ISAC)

There are numerous other resources located on the website. To locate a specific topic, utilize the "search" function. 

Past Newsletters
If you are interested in viewing past CIP Update newsletters, please go to www.cip.msu.edu and select "Newsletters" from the main menu.

Closing
If you have any topics and/or ideas for a future CIP Update newsletter, please contact Brit Weber at weberbr@msu.edu or (517) 355-2227 or other MSU staff members. About every three weeks you will receive this newsletter via email. If you no longer wish to be on this list, please reply to this email.

Disclaimer
The views expressed here are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security or Michigan State University.

Sources

International Council of Shopping Centers. Mall Landlords Respond to California Wildfires. SCT Week, October 29^th, 2007, Vol. 12, No. 43.