By Barry Baker

The worst hurricane season in decades brought out the best among Florida's responders, who were guided by a battle-tested statewide plan.

The "H word" hasn't been spoken among the members of the Florida Fire Chiefs' Association's State Emergency Response Plan committee in recent weeks. That word, hurricane, only reminds those who coordinate the state's fire and search and rescue emergency response of the long hours and sleepless nights they endured this past summer.

After nearly four years of tropical storm inactivity, four significant hurricanes struck Florida, trying the nerves of even the best-prepared fire and rescue professionals. Even worse, each successive hurricane closely followed the previous storm, providing little recovery time for responders. Few Florida fire chiefs were untouched by nature's wrath, and many saw their jurisdictions struck as many as three times. Clearly, this year will be remembered for decades to come.

The birth of SERP
In August 1992, shortly after Hurricane Andrew ravaged southern Dade County, an emergency statewide response plan was developed by the FFCA. That effort, the State Emergency Response Plan, was continually refined as new disasters struck the state or as conditions warranted. Florida's SERP fast became the premier national model for statewide fire and search and rescue emergency response.

The plan is administered through a partnership between the State of Florida and the FFCA. Under Florida law, when state aid is requested, it must be first filled with state assets. Because the State of Florida has few firefighting assets and most fire resources belong to Florida's counties and municipalities, a partnership was formed with the FFCA.
The FFCA SERP mission is to enhance disaster management and emergency response at the local, county and state levels by:

1. Using the National Incident Management System as a model to manage actions during a disaster.
2. Providing central coordination for fire-rescue resource response through Regional Management Teams, via Emergency Support Functions for firefighting and search and rescue (ESF 4 and 9) at the state emergency operations center and with the Florida Regional Disaster Response Team.
3. Providing resources for prehospital EMS in coordination with ESF 8.
4. Pre-designating responsibilities for leadership and resources at the local, county and state levels.
5. Integrating fire-rescue into the planning and response phases of emergency management systEMS at the county and state levels.
6. Encouraging each agency to sign the Statewide Mutual Aid Agreement for Catastrophic Disaster Response and Recovery, which supports all fire-rescue agencies responding in support of the FFCA SERP.
7. Supporting the response to hazmat incidents in coordination with ESF 10.
8. Supporting the response needs for public information officers in coordination with ESF 14.

The Florida State Fire Marshal's Office is charged with receiving and managing aid requests through the state warning point in Tallahassee. When FFCA resources are needed, the state EOC contacts the SERP statewide coordinator, who's responsible for statewide resource deployment.
Coordinating the SERP is a responsibility of the FFCA Emergency Response Committee, which is composed of:

• The Emergency Response Committee's chair (FFCA state coordinator).
• The Emergency Response Committee's vice-chair.
• Eight regional emergency response coordinators (FFCA regional coordinators), one from each Florida Division of Emergency Management region.
  

In addition, there's one representative each from: 

• The Division of Emergency Management;
• Division of Forestry;
• Bureau of Emergency Medical Services;
• Division of State Fire Marshal;
• Association of Public-Safety Communications Officials, International;
• Florida Association of Public Information Officers;
• Florida Emergency Preparedness Association;
• Florida Association for Search and Rescue;
• Florida Association of Emergency Vehicle Technicians;
• Florida Department of Environmental Protection; and
• Florida Association of HazMat Responders.
  

Fire chiefs or high-level command officers in fire-related organizations staff the committee and serve at the discretion of the FFCA board of directors. The underlying SERP structure involves eight regional coordinators overseeing county coordinators for all 67 Florida counties. The county coordinator is responsible for maintaining an equipment and status inventory and for operational contact with each fire department in his or her county.

The training required of personnel appointed to a designated role within the FFCA SERP comprises:

• Incident Management System training through FFCA, the National Fire Academy or I-200 offered through the Division of Forestry.
• SERP training offered through FFCA or conducted at the regional level, coordinated through the State Disaster Committee.
• Positional training and certification coordinated through the Division of Forestry within each region. (i-200, basic IMS, is a prerequisite.)
• Integrated Emergency Management System training available through the Florida DEM, FEMA and the International Association of Fire Chiefs, offered on a rotating basis, nationwide.

Jurisdictions are responsible for the costs associated with receiving requested aid. Federal and/or state disaster declarations have typically paid for a large portion of the SERP responses to date. The SERP can be found at www.FFCA.org.

Pre-designation and deployment
Florida fire chiefs had been involved in SERP development, knew the specific plan for each hurricane and were confident that ample support would be on their doorsteps promptly after storm impact. When emergencies are anticipated, the SERP works to designate responders who would likely play a role and will, in catastrophic emergencies such as major hurricanes, deploy resources before the event. That was the case in all four of the hurricanes that struck Florida this summer.
Having emergency responders in safe places reasonably close to impact areas was critical to the success of the SERP system. Each hurricane presented its own difficulties, however, as the tracks of three of the four storms covered much of the state.

The goal was to have urban search and rescue teams supported by engine strike teams (a strike team is five like units) in impacted areas immediately after winds dropped below 50mph. It became common to have two to four US&R teams federalized (under FEMA) and another three or more activated by the SERP (state activated) before the hurricane struck ground.

Affected fire chiefs and emergency managers were contacted before the hurricane and plans were integrated to provide a coordinated and efficient response. The SERP made extensive use of FFCA SERP liaisons, who traveled to impacted sites both before and after the hurricanes. These liaisons worked directly with emergency command staff in those areas to ensure that enough resources were received and then effectively and efficiently employed. SERP liaisons were often the direct tie between impacted areas and the state eoc.

Flexibility and depth
The key to a good emergency response plan is having ample trained people and resources available to deploy, along with a great deployment plan. Although many lessons were learned, and a number of changes are being proposed in the SERP as a result of the 2004 hurricanes, the SERP functioned as planned.

Other good news included the development of significant depth in coordinator and liaison roles. In most critical positions, the SERP now has trained personnel five to a dozen deep. Those critical positions include the statewide coordinator, regional and county coordinators, and FFCA liaisons.

This depth has helped the FFCA find numerous go-to personnel who, on a minute's notice, seem to turn the world around. For example, during the mandatory evacuation of the Florida Keys during Hurricane Ivan, the FFCA sent two liaison officers to discuss existing plans and integrate FFCA resources as needed with the fire and EMS command staff in the Keys. What was initially found was the need for medical intervention as all hospitals had been evacuated, but some 30,000 people still remained. As a result, anyone requiring hospital treatment had to be transported to Homestead or Miami, a three- to five-hour round trip.

EMS officials were seeking help with what had become a significant burden for their system. The liaisons provided immediate and ongoing assistance to manage what had become unmanageable as Ivan approached. All of these attributes are signs of a well-designed and functioning emergency response plan.

Opportunities for improvement are almost always available when plans are used, and this was certainly the case with the FFCA's response to Florida's hurricanes. As one might imagine, the greatest opportunity came after the first hurricane, Charley, when SERP committee members developed plans to review and revise parts of the response system found to be in need of clarification or improvement. A date had been set to meet, but unfortunately, Hurricane Frances quickly followed and changed those plans. Then came Hurricane Ivan, closely followed by Jeanne.

Fortunately, the refinements that had been identified as needing repair during Charley were operational non-issues by Jeanne. The future task is to institutionalize those changes in the plan to continue with the highly efficient operations that ended with Jeanne. Changes that will be considered include:

• Providing essential services such as food, water and shelter for response personnel during long campaigns. Some of the deployments, particularly during Charley, were to predominantly rural counties with little population or infrastructure. In these cases, the initial 72 hours of self-sufficiency expected of responding units wasn't really adequate.
• Integration of us&r response and control procedures into the SERP.
• Partnering of edics (mobile interoperability) units and mac (mobile communications) units.
• Better responder discipline. This includes both not having local officials requesting aid from other jurisdictions outside the SERP procedures and not having responders deploy based on such informal requests. Such deployments easily create safety and accountability problems.
• Providing additional training for all response personnel regarding the SERP.

Demobilization
One of the harder tasks associated with large-scale emergency response is managing the demobilization phase. Imagine assisting a community that has suffered a devastating hurricane strike. Essential services are severely damaged, over half of the police and fire personnel have homes severely damaged or destroyed, no water pressure is available, available drinking water is contaminated, thousands are homeless, hospitals aren't habitable, gas for normal travel is not to be found, power is out, and fire stations and other public structures aren't usable.

The art of balancing long-term help in an emergency response environment is difficult at best. The fact that Florida's SERP system relies on county and/or municipal resources that are typically available for only short time frames makes that balance more difficult.

We found that working closely with emergency managers to develop a realistic demobilization plan that's implemented in increments tends to work best. Charting call volume, peak times and duration to identify trends was necessary to produce workable demobilization plans. The plan was followed by systematically reducing dependence on outside resources, consistent with the established plan and continued monitoring of all calls.

As one Florida fire chief recently said, "The SERP plan is to provide fire and search and rescue assistance to jurisdictions who require augmentation during infrequent emergency events. It is not to replace their departments."

An historic hurricane year resulted in emergency services across Florida being taxed this past summer. Although a large number of departments were likely to be impacted by these storms, Florida's fire and rescue system, using SERP, was still able to pre-designate and pre-stage strike teams, task forces and specialty team members to manage these devastating storms.

With each storm the SERP response became more precise and focused, and as a result Florida now has one of the most-used and effective response plans in the nation.

About the author
Prior to assuming the fire chief's position in Ormond Beach, Fla., in 1997, Barry Baker was the assistant chief in Fairfax, Va. He holds a bachelor's degree in fire administration and a master's in administration and is a graduate of the National Fire Academy's Executive Fire Officer Program. Within the Florida Fire Chiefs Association, Baker serves as the East Central Florida Director and the State Emergency Response Committee Chairman.