Accessible Transportation and Emergency Preparedness Planning
Webinar Transcript
September 18, 2013
Good afternoon, and welcome to the Easter Seals Project ACTION webinar, Accessible
Transportation and Emergency Preparedness Planning. All participates will be in a listen-only
mode. There will be an opportunity to ask questions during today's presentation. At that time, an
operator will give instructions on how to ask your question. If you should need assistance during
the conference, please signal an operator by pressing star, then zero on your touch-tone phone.
This conference is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Christy
McLaughlin please go ahead.
Thank you very much, Stephanie. Welcome, everyone, to today's session on accessible
transportation and emergency preparedness planning. Before we begin the session, I want to
give you guys a few -- or I want to get a few housekeeping items out of the way. The PowerPoint
presentation for today's session can be found on the event website, and that link has been
entered into the chat section. So if you'd like to download that PowerPoint, feel free to go ahead
and do that. It will remain on the website, so there's no need to do it right this second. You're
welcome to go after the event and download that for your records if you want to.
The event is being recorded and transcribed. Please visit our website, which is projectaction.org,
in about two to three weeks, and we'll have a copy of that transcript available. If you'd like to
receive the copy in Braille or audio CD, you can request that type of format by sending an e-mail
to webinar@easterseals.com. That's webinar@easterseals.com.
Closed captioning is available for this event. To access the captioning link, you would go to the
link that's on the screen, which has also been put into your chat section. Once that closed
captioning screen is up, you may want to minimize the screen so that you can see both the
captioning and the PowerPoint together, so whatever works for you there.
With that, I want to introduce our speakers for today. We have three very qualified speakers. The
first is Julie Bommelman. She's a Transit Administrator for the city of Fargo, North Dakota. We
also have Kevin Shanley, a Senior Emergency Management Coordinator for the City of Chicago,
Office of Emergency Management and Communication. And Carol Wright, who is the Senior
Director for Easter Seals Accessible Transportation Program.
We would like to follow the presentation with questions from you, so following the presentation,
we will receive additional instructions from Stephanie on how you can ask your questions to the
presenter. So with that, it gives me great pleasure to turn the session over to Carol.
Hi, everyone. This is Carol Wright from Easter Seals Project ACTION. Thank you for joining us
today. We're delighted to have you on board. Today's topic is one that I think is of concern to all
of us across the country, and depending on where we live, we have different kinds of
emergencies that we'd like to plan for.
As we talk about this, I want to start us off with a working definition. First of all, emergency
preparedness can be actions that you take to anticipate and minimize the impact of emergency
events. Notice, the emergency isn't defined here, just the act of being prepared because we want
to be able to think ahead and determine what kinds of emergencies we might be likely to
encounter, and by doing that, we can be better prepared so it can minimize what happens to us
as a result of those emergency events. And then secondly, taking the time to take some planning
measures so that we can ensure that our reactions to whatever emergency befalls us is both
efficient and effective. Lots of times, emergencies come upon us, and we react just by flying by
the seat of our pants, and if we're really truly doing emergency preparedness, what we're doing is
exercising the planning process.
One of my favorite quotes comes from Dwight D. Eisenhower. And along with being our
President, he, of course, was a famous general. And one of his quotes was, "In preparing for
battle, I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable." And that's
because we never know exactly what circumstances are going to befall us, but by sheer plan -by taking the effort to plan ahead and know exactly what our alternatives might be, we're better
prepared for whatever kind of situation might come about.
So what are some of the basics of emergency preparedness? Well, the first thing we have to do
is understand (technical difficulty), and we have to know that there are different kinds of threats
that are out there for us. An understanding of those types of emergencies that could occur and
the related hazards that go along with them are really necessary so that we can have an effective
emergency preparedness plan, and then we can also develop policies and procedures to go
along with those.
In addition, we want to make sure that we're integrating accessible transportation, people with
disabilities and other people who are transit dependent, into the planning process. Often, these
are the very people that are excluded, including transportation, and we want to make sure that all
of these people are at the table as we go through the process of getting ready to know what we
do to prepare for an emergency.
And the third thing is we want to make sure that we can identify all of our available resources.
Some of those resources are big resources, and they're real easy to identify. Others are small,
and we may not think of them right away. So it might be things like our vehicles, our staff, and not
only our personal staff, but the staff of other programs. Any shelters that are located in the area,
community agencies that we would want to be involved with, any funding that might have to come
up because there are going to be expenses in any kind of an emergency, backup facilities that we
night need to use in terms of operating out of. What kind of communications equipment we should
have available to us. It might even be things like generators or things for backup power. It could
be things like essential agency records that we want to make sure that we have access to when
we need them or that we get them out of harm's way. It can be simple little things like flashlights
or batteries or radios of different kinds.
Okay? It can be a camera and just documenting what's going on so that when the emergency is
over, if you are going to be looking for some assistance, you have some kind of documentation of
what's taken place. So resources play a big role in being prepared. (Inaudible) just because we're
going to be talking about different kinds of emergencies as well, but let's look at what some of the
things are that can happen to us. The first one that we might want to talk about are accidents and
incidents.
These can be anything from passenger falls, someone getting ill on the bus, a disruptive
passenger who actually gets to the point of going beyond being annoying but actually dangerous
to other people on the bus. It might be that your vehicle breaks down or that the driver is
incapacitated, either through a medical emergency or falling asleep at the wheel. It can be things
like a vehicle collision or a vehicle rollover. It can be things like a vehicle being immersed in
water. And whenever we have these kinds of emergencies, we have to be thinking about what
kinds of policies and procedures should we have in place? What kind of training do we need to
do? What kind of emergency equipment should we have on hand? And what kind of
documentation would we need?
The second one on the list is hazardous materials. Another common type of emergency that can
happen, we all train for what we do if there are blood-borne pathogens. Do we have a spill pit? Do
we know how to clean them up? What are the dangers that are involved? There might be a toxic
incident that happens on a vehicle or in on one of our facilities. It can be a fuel spill and how we're
going to handle it. Or it can go all way to a much larger-scale event, like a community evacuation,
and that evacuation might be due to a chemical release, radiological release, or it could be due to
any other kind of hazardous material emergency.
The third one is criminal activity. That can range anywhere from violence or a shooter on a
vehicle in a facility, a hostage situation that takes place on a vehicle or in a facility, or an assault
on a driver, a passenger, or a person at a bus stop. And so all of those are things that we would
want to be prepared for and be thinking about, okay, what would we do in any one of those kind
of situations to be prepared?
Still another one is if something would happen to or organization's infrastructure. It might be as
simple as petty vandalism, trespassing, but it might be real serious, and it might deal with theft or
burglary or workplace violence that could take place. It might be a vehicle fire, a fire at your
facility. Does everyone know what to do if there would be a bomb threat that would be called in?
Or periodically, we go through these stretches where we have [errors] through dangerous mail.
Any of those kinds of things might be things that damage our organization infrastructure. We can
also have organization infrastructure that gets destroyed because of other kinds of weather-type
emergencies, which I'll be talking about a little later and so will our other speakers.
The fifth kind is domestic or international terrorism. And I think sometimes when we think of
emergencies, people's minds go to that, and we know that that's probably not as common,
although when we look at some of the situations that have happened across the country more
recently, it's becoming more of an issue, and it doesn't necessarily have to just be in the big
cities. Domestic or international terrorism can range from improvised explosive devices that are
set off somewhere. It can also be chemical, biological, or radiological releases, and just types of
things that I think we shouldn't get too complacent and think, well, it could never happen here.
Lastly, acts of nature or severe weather, and depending on the part of the country you live in, you
might have one or more of these that you deal with on a regular basis. Certainly, we hear about
floods, and you don't have to listen to the news for very long these days and we know what's
going on in Colorado. Parts of our country every year deal with blizzards, ice storms, winter
weather. Certainly, we have our tornado belt, and lots of places that deal with tornadoes on a
regular basis, and we have tornadoes that hit in places that we don't typically see them. It can
range from severe thunder storms to, if you live in certain parts of the country, you know,
hurricanes that come along. We can have wind storms, earthquakes, fires, landslides, mud slides,
rock slides, or giant sink holes that develop. And all of these, depending on where you're at in the
country, are acts of nature that we have to be prepared for and that we should have plans in
place of knowing how we would handle those emergencies.
It's not only us that we have to be thinking of because we're not the only ones in our communities
or elsewhere preparing for emergencies. Many other organizations are also preparing for
emergency events just like you are, but not all of them are thinking from the same point of view,
and that's why it's really important that we begin to integrate transit into the local emergency
community and how can we all work together so that all points of view are considered because
when we do that, we are actually much better prepares for whatever emergency comes along.
So when we talk about local emergency management, we want to know who's involved in the
community emergency preparedness planning. You need to know is your agency currently
involved. If not, why not? And if you aren't, how can you get involved? And Kevin will talk about
that more as well. What's expected of transit? Have people with disabilities and other transit
dependent people been represented all the way back to the planning process? And then, are
emergency service agreements in place so that things are ready to go?
All of this leads us to two things that can make a real difference in the planning process, and
especially as it deals with accessibility. One is that when we have inclusive conversations and
extensive outreach, people with disabilities and other people who are transit dependent can
ensure that they know what those transportation options are going to be during an emergency.
And then the communities can make sure that they're aware of the different needs of transitdependent people in their communities and locations of the homes of people with disabilities
should evacuations be necessary.
Finally, what we want to do is look at what are some of our potentially accessible transportation
resources and build a data base out there so that we know who could be called on in case of an
emergency. It might be local school districts with equipped buses; community emergency medical
vehicles, like ambulances, vans, or buses from places of worship; local assisted living facilities;
local community and public transit vehicles; paratransit vehicles; area agencies on aging and
senior citizen center vehicles. Some areas have accessible taxis. Other areas might have adult
daycare vehicles. And depending on the size of your community, there might be airport car rental
shuttle buses or just airport shuttle buses.
Accessible transportation should be identified and described in a city's emergency preparedness
plan, and you should all know what your role is and how it can contribute to that emergency
preparedness planning. Obviously, Easter Seals Project ACTION feels really strongly that people
with disabilities need to be involved in the planning meetings, and then if an emergency occurs
and we get to the point where an evacuation is necessary for your community, then the city can
confidently tap into all of its resources because we all know that they've been identified.
That's just kind of an overview of the whole picture, and our next speakers are going to be able to
come on board and give you a lot more of the specifics from their personal experience
background. So Kevin, let me turn it over to you.
Okay. Thank you very much, Julie, and I'd like to thank Easter Seals for allowing me to participate
in this, and I'd also like to thank the folks who have joined in to learn a little bit more about the
challenges that we face. I'd like to say right at the outset that this particular topic for this webinar
is really -- reflects my passion for emergency management, but more so, it reflects the passion for
(inaudible) people with disabilities and how the emergency management community can best
recognize and find solutions for the many issues.
So on Slide 1, I talk about the need for participatory planning. I put this slide first because really,
very little could be accomplished in helping people with disabilities unless you implement
inclusive planning. And as we know, disability issues impact every aspect of emergency
management. We often talk about the phases of emergency management, and those phases are
planning, responding, recovering, and mitigating the effects of a disaster on a community. Now,
historically, I can -- my -- I guess, my experience is the best way to put it, in Florida, and I had a
very good trainer, and it was Craig Fugate, as a matter of fact, who now, of course, heads up
FEMA. But historically, we have seen that emergency managers were really not able to recognize
or understand how to best work with and assist people with disabilities. This was way back in the
90s when we had hurricane Andrew, and evacuation plans were very preliminary or sometimes
shoddy at best. And people were really scratching their heads around the table. I can remember
going to a number of planning sessions in the state EOC, and their -- they knew that there were a
number of people with disabilities in the community, but they really weren't in tune with what
those needs might be. The equipment back then was a little more simple, you might say. You
might have an oxygen tank that someone might bring with them, or perhaps they had wheelchairs
or something in that area. But now it's become very complex, and transporting someone with a lot
of the medical devices that they have has become a real issue.
I say that the emergency managers in recent years had been a little on the outside looking in in
terms of emergency management and disabilities. I note that there's a great improvement,
however, and some of this is a result of federal legislation that was passed in the 70s and then
right after Hurricane Katrina, and that's the Stafford Act, an emergency management act that
actually creates the Emergency Management Agency, but also provides the authority to enact
such funding programs as individual assistance and public assistance if a hurricane comes in and
you need assistance in the community to repair a road or infrastructure. You could get public
assistance if your family is in need of some assistance, including people with disabilities and their
needs in those families, then the individual assistance is something that you would find.
Katrina, we don't have to go into that. We all know -- well, we all remember what I consider to be
a very telling photo, and that was the photo of all the school buses that were under water in the
parking lot. And you'll remember that there were many questions about transportation evacuation.
How was it that all these people remained in town? Then you take a look at a picture like that,
and it's a little bit easier to understand. So a lot of those concerns, social vulnerability issues,
equal access, all of those have been addressed, at least preliminarily, in these two actions -federal actions, and of course, the states and cities have enacted the legislation as well,
ordnances and so on.
The one thing I do want to say, though, is, you know, we're not just planning for hurricanes on the
East Coast or the Gulf Coast or earthquakes in the New Madrid belt or rock slides and fires in the
West. As planners, we have to sit together and think about things happening that we would never
have even thought of before, like 9/11. No one ever really considered what would happen at a
case like that. The weather is very extreme. I don't know that anybody could have predicted a
storm like Sandy that's still having a terrible effect on the Jersey Shore. You look at Newtown.
Who could have thought that so many children would be killed by someone with mental illness?
And then you have Colorado, and so -- but the thing I'm trying to convey is that things are
happening that we haven't experiencing before, and it's not only weather. It's, you know, like the
criminal activities like we saw in DC on Tuesday. So we want to make sure that while we sit at the
table as emergency managers, planners, and representatives of the disability community that we
address the concerns and unique needs and make sure that these needs are fully integrated into
the phases of emergency management that I mentioned earlier, which is prepare for, respond to,
recover from, and mitigate disasters and catastrophes. Take a sip of water.
One thing before I get off of this first slide, I want to mention that the emergency management
community has really, really made some progress in the last few years. I happen to be an
assessor with the Emergency Management Accreditation Program, which is EMAP, and EMAP is
tasked with reviewing plans of agencies, whether it be a city or a county or a state, and now
they're actually going into colleges to assess emergency management plans and determine
whether they should be accredited. This has been going on for about two or three years. Boston
was just accredited about a year ago. Yeah, about a year ago. And I bring this up because they're
trying to professionalize the industry, of course, but they're also ensuring that any of the topics in
emergency management are addressed. In other words, when we go in to assess a plan, we're
looking for what that city, county, or state intends to do about people with disabilities given the
number of hazards that Julie talked about. She list of all those hazards. Well, we go a step
farther. Who will be impacted by these types of events? And all that has to be spelled out in a
plan, an emergency management plan, or they'll eventually be accredited, but it's going to take
some time. We have to go back to the desk and work on it some more.
Let me see. Slide 2. (Inaudible) with my computer wizardry, which is benefits of participation
through emergency planners. Let's see. Move back one. Know your emergency planning office,
and help them get to know you. I laughed. I heard Julie mention that, and that is so important. If
you don't get anything out of my presentation today, I think the important thing is that we need to
sit at the table. You need to know the transit industry, transportation industry, non-governmental
organizations, contract carriers, buses. Need to sit at the table with the emergency management
people. You need to know who in your county or your city or your state is in charge of
transportation. Now, in a lot of areas, a lot of cities and states, they go by an ESF system, which
is essential support function -- emergency support function, and ESF#3 oftentimes is
transportation. So you want to get together with them. And also ESF#8, which happens to be
health. And then there are other support functions as well that come into play, but we certainly
have to know. The time is now. The emergency management community now recognizes its
responsibility to coordinate planning. And then to add to that, funding has been flowing in recent
years. So not only do you get to meet and know your emergency management liaison in the
community, but that person can also help you with availability down the road.
Benefits of participation to emergency planners. I think there are a number of solutions that can
enhance it. I hope you'll agree with most of them. I'd say most of them are being followed through
even today in Chicago, at the Mayor's Office of Disabilities. But the first one I'm interested in is
disability issues actually impact every aspect of emergency management, as we discussed. And
therefore, they should be incorporated and integrated into all phases, plans, response systems,
and long-term recovery efforts in the industry. Long-term recovery is becoming the latest -- I don't
want to say buzz word, but it's the latest source of focus, I think. But you look at disasters like
Sandy and some of the fires out West and realize that the recovery process isn't necessarily the
week after the disaster, but it's something that can last many months, or it can be even be many
years. And they just closed out the Hurricane Andrew funding sources just last year, and that
storm happened in '92.
I think we should have the partnership approach to preparedness efforts and joint planning with
emergency managers and disability organizations both at the planning table. I don't see any other
way. It's something that's maybe held us back in the past. We're all people, all of us on this call,
that want to help people, and it just so happens that the best way to do that, I think, is through the
face-to-face contact. You can tell us as subject matter experts what your concerns are giving the
various types of cognitive and mobility, whatever the issue is, you have the power to tell us what
should be done. I don't think we should be sitting in a room with emergency planners, as has
happened to me in the past, and you say, well, gee, now, need some transportation, there's going
to be an evacuation, and not really fully understand the types of issues that people are having. So
I think that's critical, and that's why I've repeated it several times.
Include a person with a disability or disability background in the emergency operation center. Not
only should they be involved in the planning process, but it's also helpful for them to be liaised or
a representative when the EOC is activated because we are dealing with people with disabilities
and these questions come up all the time now. We have the Red Cross there. We have the
ESF#8 to help people there. We have the transportation people. But again, a representative from
an NGO or an organization dealing with disabilities I think is critical, and it would really help the
process along.
Flip the page here. Continue on that same note. The insight (inaudible) are working side by side
with people with disabilities during the planning development process will enhance everyone's
understanding of the plan's purpose. So what can organizations and emergency management
agencies do? There are service providers in the disability community or key contacts for actions
prior to, during and after a disaster. They work directly with the disability populations and have the
best knowledge about the needs of the community and have established and maintained trusted
relationships. And I mention trusted relationships because that is a major part of the emergency
management today, the fact that you need to have some credibility and so that people can
actually trust what it is you have to say. So if you're meeting -- you're conducting meetings at a
state EOC for hurricane season, and you're not including anyone from the disability community, I
don't know how much credibility you would have. And that's not something that you want to kind
of undermine during a disaster situation.
Emergency management planners, we rely on service providers to assist with identifying
populations, conducting needs assessments as Julie mentioned, coordinating resources, and if at
all possible, enhancing everyday services. Plan to provide assistance to individuals with
disabilities and others with access and functional needs who are not institutionalized starts with
simple but crucial information. Who are they? Where are they? How can they be contacted? And
what assistance might they require? In Florida, we started a registry program years ago because
we need to know -- we need to have at least a ballpark figure of where our communities are.
There might be elderly housing. There might be nursing homes or any types of facilities -- care
facilities. We need to know where those are. And we also need to know if there are other pockets
of socially vulnerable communities.
And -- but in Florida we did the registration. I think registration has been kind of a 50/50 deal. It's
gaining more and more support I believe, but HIPAA has dominated that in many jurisdictions, the
fact that people are a little nervous to give out any information, even though we might only ask for
their name and where they live. But I think that's changing, and you know, I expect that to
become a national -- a national -- would be the world I am looking for -- be a national effort. A
program to assess and support the needs of persons with special needs can be considered
(inaudible) multiple search and self-registration, a public awareness campaign, and community
involvement. The program could potentially yield a much more complete inventory of those
individuals with disabilities and others with access and functional needs residing in the
community.
Next slide, the role of transit. I don't have that much here. The reason for that is because we
haven't had that kind of interaction that we need so far. However, going back to my last statement
about getting the numbers and basically identify within the community where there are pockets of
socially vulnerable people, emergency planners should consider the demographic composition of
the community, this loss of transportation necessary for evaluation, and the capacity to provide
shelters that satisfy the range in needs that exist for people with disabilities. Issues such as
personal assistance devices, service animals, supplies, equipment, help, and support of family
members, friends, pets, other directly employed aides, are critical to many with disabilities. And I
don't have to tell you that; preaching to the choir.
Another concept, the demands multiple
trip in long-distance travel can be particularly challenging for some, physically and mentally.
Emergency managers should look to designate and advertise staging areas for long-distance
transportation and provide additional transportation to the form -- in the form of over-the-road
buses or school buses to shelter locations.
Then, of course, there's going to be evacuation considerations. Depending upon the emergency,
disaster, or catastrophe and risk benefit decision making, individuals requiring acute care will
evacuate 24 hours before the general population now. This is something I still see in plans, and
I'm not sure if any tweaks will be made to that, but the thinking is, 24 hours before provides an
opportunity so free some of the roads up, I believe, and we'll see what happens with that.
Planning for transportation with people with disabilities may include any number of additional
needs -- the oxygen, medically fragile. Some of the group cannot travel without an attending
family member. Those are all issues that we in the emergency management community are
looking at.
Finally, communications and notification. And I'll end with this. Effective communication, along
with the Slide 1, which I said, well, this represents everything because you can't accomplish
anything unless you have those aspects addressed. You can't actually implement the plan
effectively unless you communication with the community. So people with disabilities must be
given information that is comparable in content, and details that are given to the general public
must be accessible, understandable, and timely. Standard methods of communing emergency
management information, whether through mainstream media or through notifications such as
sirens, alarms,, reverse 911, and whether operated by local jurisdictions, building owners, or
other entities fall -- are falling short in providing information in multiple accessible formats. But
again, that's being worked on, and we're bringing in people from your community to help us with
that. The unique circumstances of some people with disabilities make it likely that they will not
receive emergency communications in a timely manner, but chances of contacting these often
difficult-to-reach individuals can be involved, once again, by involving organizations working with
disability community, service providers, and community groups. The bottom line here, it is
essential to utilize multiple, redundant channels and alternate methodologies for alerting
populations to the emergency.
Outreach. Outreach to people with disabilities must be conducted during the preparedness,
recovery, response, and mitigation phases since they are likely to receive incomplete or no
information about plans otherwise. What we do here in Chicago, and what we were doing in
Boston, we had the community emergency response teams who search from door to door to
senior centers and to other formal and informal gathering places, and these teams are composed
of staff members from emergency management agencies, first responders, service responders -service providers, rather, voluntary organizations, and others well-informed about the needs for
people with disabilities. And I think that's pretty much wraps it up for me at this point, and I'll be
happy to take questions at the end. Thank you very much.
Hey. Thank you, Kevin. This is Julie Bommelman. I am the City of Fargo Transit Administrator,
and even though Kevin probably represents the much larger urban, I'm more of a small urban.
There's no question about that. But we do have quite of bit of experience here with, unfortunately,
floods and things along those lines. So I thought that it would be good to share just some of the
practical things that we have done and some of the, as Kevin said, too, redundancies that we've
built in so that we can best reach out and communicate to transit riders, people that are transit
dependent, people with disabilities, and just the community in general to keep them apprised of
what we're doing and what best (inaudible) to help them. So with that, I'm going to move ahead.
Again, like Carol talked about initially, what is the emergency? And even though we've had of lot
of experience with flood here, it was important to address a few other emergencies that I would
assume all of us have faced at one time or another. Safety and security is always something that
we want to be cognizant of with transit situation. You always have to be aware of what's going on
around you. Your drivers have to be trained very well, and hopefully, that's the case with all the
agencies we're talking with today. Vehicle issues. Fires, we've faced those. Breakdowns, I think
everybody's had. And, of course, weather-related emergencies, including floods. And what we
want to do is identify ahead of time events that we think would be applicable to our area. I think
the events I cover will probably suit almost everyone except the snow, the blizzards, so that
doesn't apply to all of you, but it certainly applies up here and where Kevin is now in Chicago, too.
We have -- I have myself, and I'm sure many of you've participated in the NIMS training. National
Incident Management System training. If you have not had the opportunity, I would strongly
recommend it because it sends the loud and clear message about incident command and how to
follow through with those details and how the structure works, and it's very valuable training. I -when we initially went through some of our events, none of us had had that training. Had we had
it, I think things would have gone much smoother, so I definitely would recommend that. Driver
and staff training. We have monthly safety meetings. We pick subjects that are -- things that
either have happened, that we have heard of other agencies having had happen, and just general
safety. We emphasize safety constantly, and of course, for people with disabilities, that goes
even further. So we hold a separate meeting with your paratransit providers and drivers to
emphasize those issues specifically.
Bring outside seekers and trainers. Bring in the experts. That -- we do that on a lot of occasions,
and it's very, very available. We've had police departments; we've had emergency managers
come in and talk. That would be more along the line of what Kevin doze. And we've had people
from the disability community come in and give presentations, and they're fabulous, and our
drivers love it, and they learn all kinds of things from these people.
We participate in table-top exercises that the emergency management people here put on. And I
belong, actually, on that particular panel, and we have learned some valuable things with tabletop exercises. Take advantage of any vender training that you have. We've had had vendors
come in that give us lift training for our lift-equipped vehicles, which, of course, all of ours are.
Safety equipment, anything along those lines, keep up on the latest and greatest because the
industry is in touch and has definitely come full circle since I started here 16 years ago as to what
they can provide to help us with our missions.
Data collections, right up front, is very, very important. You want to identify and plan ahead any of
your staff and employ responsibilities. You don't want people running around not knowing what
they're level of involvement is going to be, where they're going to be stationed, what they're
supposed to know, so definitely plan ahead for that. And that's not just in the face of we have a
flood coming, let's get together. Do it on a regular basis. Have a telephone calling tree, which we
have in place, and we update it semiannually, so we know -- you know, people's phone numbers,
e-mail addresses, all of that, they change. We update it. We distribute it. We want to make sure
that we can get in touch with everybody at a moment's notice. And so far, it's worked pretty well
for us. Now, again, we did not have any of this in place prior to our flood experience of '09.
We want to provide backup contacts. Let's say we can't get a hold of the general manager. We
want to get a hold of a supervisor in place of that person. Have all of that information, and make
sure that you have it at home and that you have it in your wallet or whatever you carry with you
because you may not be at a location where you expect to need this information. So have it.
What we do, actually, is we -- we have it. We have it printed, and we hang it on your lanyards that
we wear.
Also, we want to keep -- I'm sorry -- make sure that we keep your vehicles maintained and fueled,
so all of our mechanics are on our list as well. And, again, with the redundancies. If your facility is
located and your transit facility is located in an area that is potential -- that there's potential for a
flood, you're not on high ground, identify alternative locations so you can keep your operations
going if necessary. Keep your drivers and operations managers well informed, and keep them in
the process, and put them in the process immediately so they can work with their employees
ahead of time, too. And all of you out there that recognize FTA know that you should have an
inventory anyway of your equipment. Now the main thing that we learned was that even though
FTA requires us to keep inventory, on my inventory list, I didn't have some of this information, like
a fuel source. That's CNG. That's biodiesel. That's diesel. That's gas. What type of a vehicle is
that? Because if you're taking people and evacuating them, and you're leaving the area, and all
you've got is CNG vehicles, you may not come upon another CNG fueling station that you're
allowed to fuel at or even that exists, so you want to make sure ahead of time that you know all of
these things. Your seating capacities. Your wheelchair capacities. Fuel source, again. Vehicle
size. What can I -- what do I have available to me to respond to this emergency? Pardon me. A
little sore throat there.
On your facility inventory, again, and this is all ahead of time and planning, identify and make
arrangements if your storage and fueling facility is in the line of where the emergency is going to
happen. It just so happens, our facility is fairly new, and we're on higher ground here, so we were
okay. However, we decided to move many of our vehicles out of this area because there was
higher ground available for us to operate out of if we needed to. We went so far as to identify
individually drivers that lived close and would reach the facility. Make sure that there's -- park -things you don't think of. These people are showing up. They're there to help. You want to make
sure you're in areas that are accessible to everyone that's coming in.
Communication, like Carol was saying, is the live-all end-all. And Kevin's slide, I think, summed it
all up. You have to be able to communicate. If you don't have that, you are really putting yourself
at risk because there are people out there, and you need to be able to be in touch with them as
often as possible. We had -- some of this information is related to the 2009 flood specifically. We
discovered that we were all handing out our personal cell phones because we discovered that we
didn't have anything that could go a long distance. So if you are in a bus, and when we were
evacuating, and some of the trips were two hours round trip -- I'm sorry, one way, we had no way
of communicating with those guys. Your radios don't reach that far. So we were handing out cell
phones for long-distance travel. We were scraping and scrumping to find that information.
Have current maps available. And we always publish on our website, especially coming up this
time of year, storm tips and procedures so that people know ahead of time what to expect from
our agency, and we are the local transit provider here in Fargo. We have rider alerts. We have
the website, Twitter, Facebook. I have the fortunate -- I am fortunate to have a young man on my
staff who's very tech savvy with that stuff. And even if you don't have someone that's tech savvy,
there's very simple ways of doing these very similar things, websites. You can hire companies.
Just very simple basics. But think about reaching people with disabilities and what that takes on a
website. Make sure that everything -- all the information you put out there is accessible for people
with disabilities. We have several folks that live here in the area that we communicate with
through e-mail and such because they are nonverbal, so it's easier to them to do it that way. So
they sign up for our rider alerts, and they get all the information and -- firsthand, and it's very, very
helpful for them.
We here on our fixed route have predetermined and prepublished snow routes because we have
areas that are impassable in the winter, and so we warn people ahead of time what to expect,
where we'll be going, and what we'll be doing. People with disabilities on our paratransit service,
we communicate probably even more frequently with them, I would say. We -- I have a mobility
manager, and she's very good about reaching out to that community and really educating them
on expectations during these events.
We do registration through self-identification, and we started that, thank heavens, prior to the
2009 flood, and we had everyone, at least the facility with our service, on our list of
preregistration, and granted, that, of course, was not everyone out there because not everyone
needs our service. But it was certainly a very good starting point, and we had a lot of good
information.
One of the things we discovered, too, was our phone messages. Something that simple. You -- if
you don't keep your phone messages updated, especially in the event of an emergency, people
don't know what to expect. They call in. Your staff is busy. They are running hither tither, and you
don't have your phone message up to date. Something that simple, it just -- you know, keep that
in mind. That could eliminate a lot of calls and interruptions. You could put out -- we put out
messages every -- we put a new message on every day so we can tell people about what's going
on and if there is any -- anything that we're going to be diverting or anything, service we're not
going to be providing.
As far as safety goes, we have drivers that are certified by the Red Cross, first aid, CPR. We do
have, like Carol mentioned, first aid biohazard kits on the vehicle. Unfortunately, we've had
frequent experience with that stuff. It's just the nature of the business. And our drivers are very
good about it. They're well trained. We do treat our bodily fluids as infected. So we have a local
company that does strictly biohazard cleanup. We have utilized him frequently and brought him in
to do that type of stuff. As far as I know, he's the only one in the area that does that for us. But
he's on board with us.
In a collision, this particular collision that you see here happened where -- and you'll notice it's on
the passenger side. This individual was intoxicated, came up, rear ended the bus, and went
around the side that is the passenger side. Unfortunately, they did hit a person getting off of the
bus at the time. But our driver was well prepared. She checked and secured the vehicle, notified
dispatch of the injuries that had occurred, gather all the witness information. And we always tell
our drivers, you assist authorities, no matter what. And your -- you know, if there's certain
protocols that they have to follow as well. We follow their lead, certainly, and we do not talk to the
media unless we have a spokesperson there from our organization.
On-board equipment. Carol touched on that a little bit. Again, we keep all of the stuff on every one
of our vehicles, and of course, on paratransit as well. In fact, unfortunately, at times we use it
more in those situations that are unexpected with people with disabilities that require extra
attention from us.
Security, I -- Kevin can probably speak much more to this than I can, but we are very cognizant of
security in our facilities, which include our shelters, our -- we have two major transit facilities here,
and, of course, all of our vehicles. We train and identify suspicious packages and devices. And
the -- we are very -- in fact, I just installed several new card readers in our facilities. They -- we
were having some issues with people getting into the facility that should not be in here. But
there's a lot of good information out there for training on security. Which, you know, I think some
of the larger agencies is extremely important. But even in our smaller urbans and rurals, we
experience that type of stuff, too. We've had several incidents that have been security related.
With snow, again, like I was saying, we have a shorter fixed route. Mostly, we just want to get as
many people where they're going as safely as possible. So we want to make people aware ahead
of time that we will not be running in certain areas, and we focus very, very heavily here, again,
like I said, on safety, and we do preprint all of this and make it available to everyone so that
they're aware well ahead of time what we'll be doing.
Tornadoes. Unfortunately, we have dealt with tornadoes in this area, not nearly as frequently as
some in other areas, but we do have protocols in place. We have designated shelter locations.
But we are very realistic that we likely will not make it to the designated shelter locations, and so
we train the drivers on what to do if they experience a situation like this. Again, it's about safety.
We have had, unfortunately, two fire situations. The main thing that we always focus on is
evacuate the vehicle immediately. And when you have people with disabilities and their immobility
devices and they're tied down and they're secured, it's very important you have that web cutter
that -- the belt cutters right where they're very accessible and you can immediately get people out
as quickly as possible. I'm sure you've all seen the videos of how fast a vehicle can go up. And
what we learned during one of our fires -- and it was the strangest thing, but it was an education
for us. We learned that the radio became disabled immediately when the fire kicked in. We have
since put in measures that have assisted with that, where the radio will continue to work for an
additional 15 minutes if we're lucky, if we're in a situation where the fire is contained to the rear
area like it was in that particular case. But that was a surprise, so we learned -- we learned on
that. And we do train, again, our drivers. And even with the new fire suppression systems in our
vehicles, what we have discovered we have several hybrid buses. They're bio -- sorry, their
diesel/electric. What we have learned with the fire suppression systems is that even though
they're in the vehicles, they do not apply to the part on top where the batteries are. It's only for the
internal part of the vehicle like they would be on a normal vehicle. So that was something that we
were not aware of until we got our last (inaudible).
A for-real life experience on our flood, I don't know how many of you watched us on the news, but
we -- in 2009, we did experience a major catastrophe in the form of a flood. And since then, we've
done more what I would consider event preparation, thank heavens, because if we go through
another 2009, I don't know how we're going to do that. When 2009, the forecast came up that it
was possibly going to be a flood, but it very quickly turned to it's definitely going to be a flood.
What magnitude is it going to be? We're not sure. So we had to start planning, and we didn't have
real long to plan for it. But we included all of the management staff and our engineering
department because we're part of the city structure here. Engineering department identified areas
that needed to be shored up, and city maps were distributed, and then we here in transit
developed the plans to limit fixed route and paratransit service both. We weren't sure at that point
what was going to happen. We had no idea of the magnitude of the event coming towards us.
Now, with paratransit we had lists of names and phone numbers of our riders. And again, we
have to be very cognizant of HIPAA, and I know that that's being worked on as we speak. So we
didn't provide any of this information to anyone outside our agency. We had our local MPO map
where all these paratransit riders were located. So all you saw was a map with dots on it, and if
we needed further information, then that had to come through us.
So we asked our residential providers to transport their clients whenever possible, and of course,
their clients are all people with disabilities, be it cognitive or physical. They're taking care of a
whole variety of people. And we asked our riders to voluntarily limit their rides. Now, normally with
paratransit, of course, you can't do anything like that, but in the event of an emergency like this -and by then the Governor had declared -- or I'm sorry, the Governor and the President both has
declared an emergency. So you get to the point where kind of all bets are off, and you really have
to look at what you can safely do and what really needs to be done, and so we had great
cooperation for your riders. They were wonderful to work with. They understood the situation.
And then the other piece was we had to start contacting private transportation providers because
I ended up at a meeting where -- during the initial planning phase where I discovered that we
were going to be the solution for every one of the nursing homes here in town. They all planned
on just calling us. Well, I don't have that many vehicles, and there was no way I could have met
that need. So that -- at that point, we were in kind of a pickle because we didn't have access to
vehicles that we needed in quantity. So the private transportation providers were contacted, and
we did up agreements with them very quickly, and we have since kept up with those agreements.
And you learn a lot of this on the fly.
This picture here on the next slide where it says flood experience, weather affecting mobility, we
had -- it was rain, lots of rain, torrential rain. And then there was a blizzard. And then it rained
again, and then there was another blizzard. It was horrible. I -- I just -- I can't really even describe
it, and can't unless you experience it. But this is just one of the volunteer lines that was out on the
front line, and we snapped a shot of these people working very hard. It was all volunteers -- keep
that in mind -- that did this. And you always want to encourage travel restrictions if possible. We
did do that. That was in conjunction with the Mayor's announcements every day. We'd have a
press conference. And we sit right on the border with Minnesota up here. And normally, there's a
couple of ways to get over to Minnesota, but by this point, the river had raised so high that there
was only one bridge they could keep open. We did as much as we could with our fixed routes,
detouring around flooded areas, and we cancelled only one time for one day during this whole
event. Of course, we modified several of our routes, but we kept as much service out there as we
could because from our thinking, it was those are fewer vehicles on the road. If we can keep
people out of their vehicles and put them on a bus, then that's the way to do it.
The highway patrol did end up closing all the interstates coming in and out of our area. I was
included in the emergency operation center, which is -- for us, it's located at our public safety
building. And that really made all the difference in the world up front. And like Kevin was saying,
people with disabilities have to be represented at the table, and they weren't in this particular
situation. I was the only one that would be the person that was representing them. And all along
we have had good relationships with our providers here in all of our agencies, and that -- clearly,
that relationship building paid off in the long run because I was able -- I felt I was able to
represent the community of people with disabilities at least as best I could at the table up there.
And we had -- I just wanted to point out this picture up here. We have a place -- local place called
the Fargo Dome. It holds about 19,000 people. And this picture is of one of the sandbag making
location operations we had going in 2009. Keep in mind, back then, we had -- these are all being
filled by hand, so it was quite the deal.
One of the main things you're going to learn if you take the NIMS and the ICS training is you want
to file all of your public information through one source. And we had several different people that
thought they were one source. Long-term lesson, have your press releases issued by one public
information officer. It will definitely help you in the long run.
In 2009, again, we had to bring in additional staff, drivers. We're about two hours from
Indianapolis, two and a half hours. And they sent us a bunch of extra drivers and relief help, thank
heaven. So however, during the 2009 flood, we did evacuate the nursing homes here in Fargo
and one of the hospitals. We have two hospitals here. And so it was first time we had that
experience. I would never want to go through that again, and I would never want to put the people
in the nursing homes through that experience again. Moorhead is our sister city right next to us in
Minnesota. They did evacuate over there, and again, the Fargo nursing homes, we evacuated
over 5,000 residents from there. Ambulances, we used buses. They flew in some special planes
to help these people when we evacuated the hospital. It was quite a thing. We were working in
conjunction with our local -- it's our public health organization here. And once we partnered up
with them, and they knew that we had all the information -- we had more information, it turns out,
than they had about people with disabilities in the community. So we worked very, very closely
with them to help arrange all of this.
A couple of pointers I would have if you're going to participate in the evacuation, make sure that
people understand ahead of time what you actually have available, and be realistic about it. Be
honest about what buses you have. How many can they have to take out of town? How many
drivers do you have, and how long are the trips? And are there fueling sites off site, and all of
those things. Make sure that you take all of that into consideration because we were standing
there looking at each other at -- it was about 2:00 in the morning -- saying how can we send these
guys out of town? It was a blizzard, and we had no fuel cards to send with them, so we were
sending our personal credit cards with them because they were going to be having to fuel the
vehicles.
One of the things that came up during the nursing home evacuations was the residents, of
course, most of them require medication, or they may have special needs with oxygen tanks and
things like that, assistive devices. Well, what they did was, they grabbed pillow cases and put the
resident's name on the pillow case with their information on it and then their medications inside
that. I would make one suggestion to that. If you're ever involved in an evacuation, make sure it's
a plastic bag of some sort, if possible, because the pillow cases, though they worked very well,
they get pretty wet on the vehicle because we had so many people tracking in and out of there.
But keep in mind, too, that these people are very vulnerable, and they're scared, and you want to
do everything you can to make sure that you give them as much reassurance as possible that
everything is going to be okay and that you are there to help them. And that made a lot of
difference. We had some great drivers doing that.
Again, on the flood experience, metro transit garage, that's just what we call my facility here that
I'm located at. It's about 55,000 square feet. We became one of the main points where we had
stored sandbags, and if you could have had experience with sandbags, you can't set them out on
a dike if they're already frozen, so you have to keep them thawed out until you use them. So we
were bringing in by the semi loads into my facility, which has a heated floor, which is what a
picture there is. And then we took buses that we weren't going to be using and moved them to,
like a said, higher ground, earlier in the presentation. So it was quite a sight to look there and see
all these sandbags there.
And this is -- we had paratransit buses, again, for people with disabilities staged and ready to go
for emergency evacuation. My -- the one issue I ran into during this that you might want to take
into consideration is that we had -- we here have our fueling station inside or facility, which, in
some cases, I know that I had a person that did not want to leave the people on the paratransit
vehicle while it was being fueled. And I had to get special dispensation to do that from the
Governor's office. So we did do that, though, and we brought people through, and we had to fuel.
And what ended up happening was there was a six-hour delay, and people were sitting on the
bus that long, and so we ran out of -- or we were ready to run out of fuel.
My facility also has showers and locker rooms, which was very helpful. We had truck drivers,
National Guard, police department here, and this one little picture here with the little escort, little
Jack Russell terrier. The drivers didn't really have much to do in between what was going on.
Again, up at the EOC, emergency operation center, this is just some of the local staff here. These
are the -- this is a list of people that were involved at the EOC. And transit was at the table. We
were treated well. We -- we were good partners with everybody. We tried to do everything we
could to help. Granted, we couldn't give them everything they wanted because, again, they all
expected that it would be just us doing the evacuation. So there was a lot of calling going on to
get assistance with -- from network providers. Again, we had a great partnership with the health
department, and that made all the difference in the world to get assistance to people with
disabilities.
We had -- we had just some real simple lessons learned. We did manage to distribute a lot of
volunteers to neighborhood sites. We took up residence in a couple of off-site locations because
they were closer to the neighborhoods. So we had designated parking areas, and we called it
sandbag central here. That's where the main function was when people are making sandbags.
And -- but what happened in '09 was the (inaudible) were coming and arriving so fast we had to
set up remote locations right in the neighborhood, and they were making sandbags while they
were standing out in the middle of the storms that were going on.
Another thing is to keep in mind volunteers. People with disabilities, there's a lot of them that I
know here in my community that love to help, and they're not able to go out and lay dawn a
sandbag, but they're sure able to help on the phone, and they're able to help with a lot of things.
So -- I mean they love being included. They're just like everybody else. They want to help to the
best of their ability. Include them up front. It's well worth it. It pays off in the long run.
This is just a statistic -- or some statistics I should say -- of the miles we drove just during 2009
and passengers that we transported. And that's a picture -- I don't know if any of you know of
Hesco dike, but that's -- but they open that up and fill it with sand and -- instead of laying down
sandbags. And on the next slide, it shows -- we made 3.5 million sandbags for Fargo, and you
see how they're protecting them with the tarp there. Again, you don't want those things to freeze
on you before they are all laid down. And we had 48 miles of protection that particular year. And
keep in mind, most of those -- the minimum height that we had to put up was 40 feet to keep that
river back. It was something to see, and frankly, I never want to see it again.
Again, lessons learned. We learned that you have not only people out in the feed, so to speak,
that are helping out, but make sure that at the EOC you have radios to be in contact with your
people. We preprogrammed all the buses, so we were ready when it happened. Make sure you
take your rechargers and you've got spares. Telephone communications. Be aware that your
cellular stuff may not be working during an emergency. So you want to make sure that if you have
any redundancy of any kind for communications, you put that in there.
What we ran into a lot of was people that wanted to return. We gave out posters and handouts
with our information on them.
Site management at remote locations was very, very helpful. We wanted to make sure that if you
keep cars and stuff out at your area, that's what you want to do. So we had engineering. We put
up no parking signs, and we had different bus routes to take. Again, volunteers, and I know we're
coming to the end of the presentation, so I apologize if I'm going a little fast. But you want to be
aware of -- one of the main things I want to touch on, too, is some of the waiting areas and some
of the things that you have to be aware of. We only had one site here that was for people with
disabilities that would be a staging area, and all the other locations, it was for people that had -you know, that did not have disabilities. So plan ahead of time that you can get people to where
they're going, but make sure you're going to the right location.
Again, I -- what I learned was with the size and height of vehicles is that school buses can go into
a lot higher ground than our main transit vehicles could. So we had school buses. At that time, we
did not have the conversion kits, but they're out there, and we've done training since then. And
those conversion kits are really something to see. We had mechanics on site.
I don't mean to rush through this, but truly, be involved in the emergency operation center. Get in
there. Insert yourself in the process because you are a valuable part of what's going on. And
respect the boundaries. That's something that we learned the hard way in 2009. We had qualified
personnel at the EOC after we got kind of through the first initial round. And do as many
advanced written agreements as you possibly can with providers that can help you out with your
task that you have. Take advanced training. Do mock drills, and again, with the shelters and
respite locations, make sure that you identify the ones for people with disabilities because not all
locations can take people with disabilities.
So for that, I appreciate you listening, and I'm going turn it back over to Christy, I think. Right,
Christy?
Yes, thank. Thank you so much, Julie. Thank you also to Carol and Kevin. It is now time for us to
take questions. I want to invite Stephanie to come back and give instructions on how you can ask
your question via the phone.
At this time, if you would like to ask a question, please press star, then the number one on your
telephone keypad. Again, that is star, then the number one to ask your question.
As we wait on the queue to build up there and people to alert that they want to ask a question, we
did have a couple of questions in the chat section. Actually, there've been a few, and some of
them have been answered by other participants, and I really appreciate you guys doing that. But
the ones that haven't been addressed, we'll go ahead and take one of those at this time.
Eileen had a question about getting the list of people with disabilities from agencies like the DMV
or the electric company. And I guess the DMV would not provide that, stating that there were
some privacy issues. And so she's wondering about getting the list from the electric company. Is
that something that's possible? I just want to see what your guys' thoughts or on attaining those
lists from other agencies.
Julie, do you want to talk a little bit about your self-identification process that you guys used? This
is Carol.
Yeah, yeah. Yeah, we certainly can. I honestly don't know if the electric company would provide
that information. We relied on our own database, and we put that together with our local health
department, and they had a lot of people that were not in our data base and vice versa. So that
we -- we have encouraged people since that time to self-identify with the health department
because they have the handle on all the HIPAA information. And that's how we have it set up
here. I have not, honestly, myself, tried anything through any other agencies like the elect trick
company. I don't know, Kevin, did you?
Yeah, I was going to chime in on that. You know, we have -- at least in the areas I was working,
we didn't go right to the utility and ask them for names. But we kind of reversed our process
where -- they'll do mailings. They'll insert a very basic document or questionnaire in with the utility
bill every month, and that got a lot of support down in Florida. I could tell you that. And then, of
course, working with the health department because they really understand the HIPAA issues,
and that's still on ongoing legal matter.
Thank you so much. Stephanie, do we have any phone questions?
Not at this time. If you would like to ask a question, please press star, then the number one on
your telephone keypad. Again, that is star, then the number one to ask your question.
We did have another question also from Eileen that I'll bring up since we're still waiting on come
questions to come in. Julie, I believe she's asking about something that you'd mentioned. She
wanted to know the process that you use for creating your phone tree on the lanyard. And then
also, you had mentioned using an agreement that you had with private providers, and she wants
to know if there's a sample that she might be able to use or some template that you have. And if
you do, you can share that with us, but I thought you might want to let her know at least.
Oh, sure, yes, absolutely. Well, the way we developed our calling tree was we -- we have -basically we have a long list of people that are employees in our organization. We identified the
management-level staff that would be first-line, front responders. And I have our administrative
assistant type it up. She laminated it, gave it to all of us that are in management so that we had it.
It was -- and then we also -- at the EOC, our emergency management staff up there, they
produced a lanyard that has everybody in the city that would be needing to respond to an
emergency. So we're also provided with that information. So it's a little bit of a redundancy, but it
certainly paid off for me in that situation.
And then, as far as the agreement, our attorney did up a -- just a simple MOU, a memorandum of
understanding. And I'd be happy to share that with anybody. I could send it to Christy, and
Christy, you could just distribute it if you want. It basically outlines a fee for the bus service that
we would be requesting from others and that we would have first dibs, so to speak, on when there
is an emergency, we would be the first ones in line to get any support from that agency. And we
have a couple of local school bus providers that we have agreements with specifically. So that
worked out very well.
Great. (Multiple speakers)
This is Carol. And another suggestion for you for agreements is to go to FTA's website, the
Federal Transit Administration. Type in bus safety, and it will take you to another website. You do
have to register for that website, but there's no cost. And on there, there are a number of different
types of agreements for different types of organizations, and there are lots of templates, and
those templates are free, and so that would be another good resource for you as well.
Great, thank you so such. All right. Any other -- or excuse me. Stephanie, any questions in the -on the phone?
Not at this time.
Okay. Well, we did have another question I'd like to present to the group. We'll give you guys
another second if you do want to ask those questions on the phone. I had a question here to ask
that we had received if we had time to address it, and I just wanted to see if you guys want to
comment a little bit. If there's a community out there that hasn't yet developed an emergency
transportation plan, what are some first steps that you might suggest to get them started?
Kevin, do you want to address that?
Well, I could start by -- I guess harking back to my original comments that you have to identify the
proper people who are going to work with you to develop a plan. Other than that, I think -- I will
actually defer to the transit subject matter experts in something like that, and I would hope that
folks like yourselves would be sitting next to me so that we could develop a plan that like. I'm
don't -- not aware of at this time where I am. I should tell the audience, still, I just got to Chicago
six weeks ago, so I'm kind of learning the ropes here. I had previously been in Boston and in
Florida, of course, but -- so my experience really, in Boston we didn't quite have that yet.
Chicago, it looks to be working on that. The Mayor has a -- has an active office for persons with
disability, MLPD, and so I'll be learning more as time goes on, and I can share that with folks in
the future.
And here, locally for Fargo, we are -- actually, it's our police department that spearheads that
effort, at least for emergency plan -- the overall emergency plan for the area. And then the
partners at the table are transit, the health department, highway patrol. You go down the list. So I
agree with Kevin, it's getting that group together initially because the police have a particular role.
Everybody has their own role, and it's stuff that you may not think of. Engineering is very, very
important to have at the table. So you want to make sure that all the players are identified and
brought together first because the trend is changing a little bit now about do we evacuate or do
we shelter in place? And a lot of that, we didn't have time to talk about, but (inaudible) will be very
up to date on stuff like that, and you can sign up for a lot of website information that I do so I can
stay up on what's happening in the transit industry specifically. But there's -- it's identifying the
players and getting them together is the main thing, and if there's already a group, insert yourself
into it.
Yeah, this is Kevin again. I would add a couple of things. One, in terms of trending, what's going
on in emergency management. One is the fact that FEMA has really initiated a program to
regionalize plans. So, for example, when I left in Boston, FEMA region one was putting together a
regional plan that envisions a catastrophe striking Boston or any other area in New England, and
having the regional response, but that's becoming a big deal no matter where we go. And
transportation is a tremendous part of that, obviously, so I just wanted to mention that.
And this will Carol, and to let you know again that bus safety resource sight on FPA would have
some of that information for you. And the other thing that is real helpful is the Transit Cooperative
Research Program, called TCRP. It's part of the Transportation Research Board, and if you
Google either of those things, TRB.org or Transit Cooperative Research Program, I believe the
number is 87, but I might be wrong about that, but if you do emergency management or
emergency preparedness, there is a recent publication that has just come out last spring that
does a real good job of telling you how to organize your community.
Great, thank you guys so much. Stephanie, we'll check one more time. Is there any phone
questions?
Again, if you would like to ask a question, please press star, then the number one.
Okay. We're going to take one more question by the chat, and if there are no more phone
questions by that time, then we're probably going to be (background noise) anyway. So the last
question in the chat section is what happens when there's a wide-spread emergency and you
have emergency services agreements with multiple housing agencies. And that question is from
Kristin.
Can you read it one more time, Christy. I'm sorry, I missed the last -Sure. What happens when there is a wide-spread emergency and you have emergency service
agreements with multiple housing agencies? If you need clarification, we can ask Kristin for that.
Multiple housing agencies.
Julie, I think it goes back to what you were talking about where all the nursing homes -- in this
case it was nursing homes, and she's talking about housing agencies -- but where you had all the
nursing homes, each of them thought they had exclusive use of you. So what do you do if you
have emergency agreements where as if it was just an emergency with that one nursing home,
you could handle it, but when it's an emergency that requires you being available to everyone in
the area, how do you handle it?
The -- well, the way we handled it was I made sure, first of all, that I was part of the group that did
all this planning ahead of time and after during all the follow up, and what we did was we made it
very clear as to what our actual assets were that we had access to. And so consequently, what
the nursing homes ended up doing was changing their train of thought to should we shelter in
place? They've done a lot of upgrades to their facilities to try and (background noise) in place
because that has worked out better for them. So we -- the agreements we had were only with
transportation providers, and we have no -- we had and have no agreements with housing, the
units of any kind. So it -- it's -- I would -- honestly, if it were me, I'd stay away from any
agreements to be the only provider for transportation for, say, a particular nursing home or
something because you're going to get into a situation where if it is city, state-wide, whatever the
situation is, you won't be able to honor that agreement. So we don't, frankly, have any. We just
have them with other transportation providers.
This is Carol. And one of the things that we ran into -- I'm a former transit provider as well in a
rural area. And one of the things that we ran into that we learned actually from Fargo's situation
because I had multiple agreements with multiple nursing homes and senior housing facilities, is
we actually wrote into the agreement that said, if you have an incident at your nursing home, this
is our capacity to help you. However, if there is a community-wide declared emergency, we are
not available for your exclusive use, and instead, our assets will be controlled by the emergency
operation center. And that way you can be available to them. A lot of the nursing homes are
under a lot of pressure to have that evacuation plan or some kind of plan in place, and so they
have pressure put on them to have these kind of agreements. And so it's making sure that you
have a caveat in your agreement that tells them that under certain circumstances, you can be
available. Under other circumstances, your vehicles are under the control of others or will be used
for the greater good.
That's good. Thank you, Carol.
You know, that's another great facet of planning, too, and that's the fact that you know what you
have and what you don't have during an emergency. I would refer everyone when they're doing
their plan, refer to ESF#7, which is happens to be logistics. And logistics, those folks, like in New
England, had talked about a regional plan. I know that they have everything identified, from dump
trucks to buses to minivans. You name it; they have it. And that's the trend.
Yes, that's a good one, Kevin, and we have (background noise) here as well that's in charge of all
assets.
Great. Thank you guys so much. Stephanie, I'm just going to see one more time before we end.
Are there any questions in the queue?
We have a question from Cindy in Iowa.
Great. Go ahead, Cindy.
Thank you. I've enjoyed the whole thing. I've been active with emergency management through
the Red Cross and am now in a position of director of operations for regional transit. So this has
been great to re-listen to and hear from new eyes for me in this aspect. The question I have is
unrelated to that. I didn't realize I'd go into this. I apologize. I was unable to log on. Can you get
the slides from this at another -Yes. They're available on the event website. If you want to e-mail me, I'll make sure you get them.
Okay. Perfect.
Great.
All right. Well, thank you so much. We have come up to the end of the event here. So what we're
going to do, I'm going to ask you, please, to take a few moments to fill out our session evaluation.
We do use this information to improve future webinars. It's a very short evaluation, so please take
a moment. The link is on your screen right now. I've also entered it into the chat section, and it
was e-mailed to those that registered as well.
I know everyone wants to thank Carol, Kevin, and Julie for the really great information. I just want
to check with them briefly. Do you guys have any closing remarks?
This is Carol. Just an behalf of Easter Seals Project ACTION, I wanted to make sure and thank
Kevin and Julie for participating with us in this program. You know, your on-the-ground
experience is what really makes a difference because you speak from practical experience and
can explain to people exactly what it takes to make this work. So thank you very much on behalf
of Easter Seals Project ACTION, and thanks to the participants out there for participating in the
webinar. We'd sure love to hear from you if you have suggestions for other topics that you would
to have covered or if you want to know more about this particular topic at a later date.
All right. Thank you again, and I also want to thank (background noise) for joining us today.
Please visit our website, which is projectaction.org and your e-mail for future Easter Seals Project
ACTION events. But most importantly, thank you for your commitment to increasing and
improving accessible transportation in your community. Have a great day. Thank you.
Thank you. This concludes today's conference. You may now disconnect. Speakers, please hold
the line.
Established in 1988, Easter Seals Project ACTION is funded through a cooperative
agreement with the U.S. Department of Transportation, Federal Transit Administration,
and is administered by Easter Seals Inc. 1425 K Street NW, Suite 200, Washington, D.C.
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