Association of Indiana Counties
Emergency Mass Notification Workshop
presented by
Lighthouse Readiness Group
September 24, 2008
“The Importance of Mass
Notification for Counties”
1
Emergency Mass Notification History
How it all started:
– The first successful tornado warning tested near Tinker Air
Force Base in Oklahoma City in 1948.
– “Duck and Cover” exercises started in 1949 across the U.S.
– CONELRAD (Dec. 10, 1950)
• A simple system for alerting the public and other
"downstream" stations that consisted of a sequence of
shutting the station off for five seconds, returning to the air
for five seconds, again shutting down for five seconds, and
then transmitting a tone for 15 seconds.
– “Duck and Cover” film began showing in U.S. schools in
1951
2
Emergency Mass Notification History
– Emergency Broadcast System (EBS)
• Replaced CONELRAD on Aug. 5th, 1963
• was activated more than 20,000 times between 1976
and 1996
– Emergency Alert System (EAS)
• A national system put into place in 1994, jointly
coordinated by the FCC, FEMA, and the NWS. The
official EAS is designed to enable the President of the
United States to speak to the United States within 10
minutes
7/2/2008
3
Emergency Mass Notification History
– Common Alerting Protocol (CAP)
• CAP instituted in Oct. 2005, allows a warning message
to be consistently disseminated simultaneously over
many warning systems to many applications. CAP
increases warning effectiveness and simplifies the task
of activating a warning for responsible officials.
7/2/2008
4
Emergency Mass Notification History
– Integrated Public Alert and Warning System (IPAWS)
• Authorized in June 2006 under Presidential Executive
Order 13407. Known as a multi-modal “system of
systems”, IPAWS will allow near instantaneous
transmission and receipt of alerts to the public through
digital technologies that can reach various
communications devices, such as mobile phones, land
lines, pagers, fax machines, personal digital assistants,
desktop computers, and digital road signs.
7/2/2008
5
Emergency Mass Notification
A National Perspective
Unified Facilities Criteria - UFC mandates the installation of mass
notification systems in all Department of Defense (DoD) buildings.
Unified Facilities Criteria (UFC) documents provide planning, design,
construction, sustainment, restoration, and modernization criteria, and
apply to the Military Departments, the Defense Agencies, and the DoD
Field Activities in accordance with USD(AT&L) Memorandum.
National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) 72- Mass Notification
guidelines are included in the 2007 edition of NFPA 72 under section
6.8.4.7, and will become an essential part of the 2010 edition of NFPA
72 (Appendix G). NFPA 72 covers the application, installation, location,
performance, inspection, testing, and maintenance of fire alarm
systems, fire warning equipment and emergency warning equipment,
and their components.
6
Emergency Mass Notification
A National Perspective
National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) 1600 is the Standard on
Disaster/Emergency Management and Business Continuity
Program. Sections 5.10 and 5.15 deal with notification and crisis
communication
JCAHO Standard 4.13 – The hospital organization establishes
emergency communication strategies. The organization maintains
reliable surveillance and communications capability to detect
emergencies and communicate response efforts to organization
response personnel, patients and their families, and external
agencies. The organization plans for backup communications
processes and technologies (e.g. cell phones, land lines, bulletin
boards, fax machines, satellite phones, ham radio, text messages)
7
Emergency Mass Notification
Indiana and the Midwest
As we have witnessed this year, in a one week period Indiana
incurred two tornadoes and a five hundred year flood that
affected over one third of all Hoosiers. In fact, floods,
tornadoes, ice storms, fires, earthquakes, school closings,
early school dismissal, road closings, train derailments and
hazardous chemical spills are all common incidents that
happen on a regular basis, or have occurred in Indiana and
the Midwest in the recent past.
Public safety is the right of every Hoosier across the state.
When these incidents occur, notifying the public and
affected community in a timely manner is of the utmost
importance in the battle to save lives and property.
Indiana Code 36-9-36-2 and 36-8-21 authorize counties and
municipalities to improve their emergency warning systems, as
well as an emergency telephone notification system.
8
The Need for Emergency Mass Notification
Indiana and the Midwest
Munster residents were ordered evacuated from about 700 homes Sunday
because of floodwaters going into their basements, and others in the area
were warned they might have to leave, Town Manager Tom DeGiulio said.
"The town came out a while ago and started going door-to-door," Munster
resident Mark Porte told The Times of Munster. "It's four feet deep out in
the street."
DeGiulio said natural gas service in some neighborhoods was turned off as
a precaution, and it likely would be several days before evacuees could
return.
He called the flooding the worst he's seen in 25 years in Munster.
7/2/2008
9
The Need for Emergency Mass Notification
Indiana and the Midwest
Bill Peterson Sr. knows that farming is a gamble. "But in all my 50 years
of farming I can't remember being drowned out twice in one year,"
Peterson said Thursday."It's not going to be a good Christmas." P
Peterson is one of the farmers in Lake and Porter counties, mostly
those who live in lowlands, whose pocketbooks will be a little
slimmer this year because of last weekend's deluge, the last hurrah
of Hurricane Ike.
10
The Need for Emergency Mass Notification
Indiana and the Midwest
People throughout Kentuckiana, from an area as wide as Evansville,
Indiana to Central Kentucky, were awakened at 5:36:57 a.m. this
morning by strong earthquake tremors lasting 30 seconds or longer.
Chicago skyscrapers shook and tall buildings in Indianapolis swayed,
with the quake felt as far away as Grand Rapids and Detroit,
Michigan, Milwaukee, Wisconsin (350 miles from the southeastern
Illinois epicenter), and Atlanta, Georgia. According to the United
States Geological Survey (USGS), the magnitude 5.4 earthquake was
centered seven miles east of New Salem, IL, 66 miles from
Evansville, IN. The earthquake, which was 10 miles below the
Earth’s surface, rivalled the strongest on record in the area. Later in
the morning, the quake was downgraded to a 5.2, still in the
intermediate range for damage.
7/2/2008
11
The Need for Emergency Mass Notification
Indiana and the Midwest
It took only about 45 minutes for rising waters to flood the basement and first
floor of Columbus Regional Hospital, but it will take weeks or even months
for the hospital to reopen.
As pumps whirred Monday, spitting out the water that filled the basement
over the weekend, hospital officials scrambled to come up with a longterm plan.
"On Saturday, when the flood hit us, it was about patient safety first," said
Lynne Maguire, the hospital's vice president and chief strategy officer.
"Now that's done, it's all about assessing damage. . . . We're trying to
figure out what our next steps are going to be. That's what this week is
about."
Other hospitals in the area are stepping up to help, taking patients and
offering temporary positions to staff at the hospital, which is the secondlargest employer in Columbus. (Indy Star)
12
Emergency Mass Notification
Indiana and the Midwest
13
Emergency Mass Notification
Indiana and the Midwest
14
Emergency Mass Notification
Indiana and the Midwest
15
Emergency Mass Notification
Indiana and the Midwest
16
Emergency Mass Notification
Indiana and the Midwest
17
Emergency Mass Notification
Indiana and the Midwest
18
Emergency Mass Notification
Indiana and the Midwest
19
Emergency Mass Notification
Indiana and the Midwest
20
Emergency Mass Notification
Indiana and the Midwest
21
Emergency Mass Notification Solutions
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
7/2/2008
Sirens
Emergency Phone Banks with Call Trees
Centralized Calling with Call Trees
In-House (local or premise based)
Hosted (vendor operated)
Application Service Provider (ASP - vendor operated)
Software as a Service (SaaS – vendor operated)
22
Interactive Multi Modal Mass Notification
(IPAWS)
– Key features include:
· Flexibility – Software as a Service (SaaS) provides you a web-based
hosted solution that works with any browser.
· Robustness and redundancy – Telephone carrier class connection
with redundant data centers across the U.S.
· Cost-effectiveness – SaaS with no hardware or maintenance fees.
· Low overhead and minimal stress on resources – hosted solution
with minimal training needed.
· Workflow – can interface with scheduling and provide automated
second and third tier callouts if needed.
· Interactive “real time “ response graphics with drill-down capability
to know who has been notified or has not responded.
· “On the Fly” capability to generate thousands of notifications in
minutes.
· Adaptive intelligence that looks at telephone central offices (CO’s)
to see how calls are flowing and automatically redirects to another
CO if there is a problem.
7/2/2008
23
Emergency Mass Notification
Considerations
– Who operates the system, the purchaser or the vendor?
– Is the system designed to contact the people you need to reach?
– Is the system designed to provide you “real time” feedback on
responses with drill down capability for additional details?
– Does the system have workflow included and can the system
work with your scheduling software
– Is the system scaled to your current needs and scalable to your
future needs?
– What training is required?
– Is the system reliable?
– Is the system redundant?
– How flexible is the system?
– What is the pricing structure?
– Is the technology patented?
7/2/2008
24
Emergency Mass Notification
Considerations
Who makes up your
community?
7/2/2008
Caucasian
Deaf
African American
Blind
Hispanic
Aged
Oriental
Schools
Middle East
Business
European
Government
25
Emergency Mass Notification
Considerations
An Economic Development Case in Point:
A Fortune 500 company is considering two towns in Indiana to
build a new plant. The company is very visionary and employs
cutting edge technology. The employees will be engineers and
highly skilled technicians who will be transferred as well as
hired.
Town “A” has no Mass Notification system in place and Town “B”
uses an advanced mass notification system throughout the
county and surrounding area. All other aspects being equal,
which town do you think will land the new company ?
7/2/2008
26
Emergency Mass Notification
Considerations
What are the funding sources?
–
–
–
–
E911 funds
Lilly grants
IEDC Industrial Development Grant Fund
The Homeland Security Grant Program (HSGP) is a
primary funding mechanism for building and
sustaining national preparedness capabilities. These
grants fund a range of preparedness activities,
including planning, organization, equipment purchase,
training, exercises, and management and
administration costs.
27
Emergency Mass Notification
• Panel Discussion and Observations
• Group Q & A
• Closing thought for the day: If you always do
what you’ve always done, then you’ll always
get what you got! (Tony Robbins)
7/2/2008
28