Subject: [NEXTEL-1] First responders see scarcity of experts

From: NEXTEL-1
Date: Mon, 12 Jul 2004 16:57:37 -0400

Monday, July 12, 2004
First responders see scarcity of experts
BY Diane Frank
July 9, 2004

Local and national homeland security exercises have shown that people
will be one of the most critical and scarcest resources for first
responders, particularly in the technical and command areas, during an
actual incident, officials told Congress this week.
Almost a year after the TopOff 2 exercise in Washington state and
Illinois, and less than a year before the next national-level exercise
kicks off in New Jersey and Connecticut, state, local and federal
officials are still working on implementing new systems and policies
that were lacking in the multihazard exercise.

TopOff is short for Top Officials, and although nearly 400 smaller, more
focused exercises have been conducted nationwide, the TopOff exercises
are designed to address a far larger scale, said Corey Gruber, associate
director of the Homeland Security Department's newly-renamed Office of
State and Local Coordination and Preparedness, who oversees the TopOff
exercises.

One of the most obvious problems that TopOff 2 highlighted was the
stress on personnel resources at the first responder level, local
officials told the House Select Committee on Homeland Security.

Seattle used money from an Urban Area Security Initiative (UASI) grant
to equip and train personnel to a level where they could respond to an
incident such as a radiological bomb, said Clark Kimerer, deputy chief
of operations at the Seattle Police Department.

However, the grant money cannot be used for hiring the additional
experts who are needed to help local officials, Kimerer said. They
include people who can focus on planning, intelligence, computer and
communications technology, "and, quite simply ... help us manage the
equipment and systems we are receiving from the UASI process," he said.

Officials in Illinois, which was ground zero for a simulated biological
attack that spread nation- and worldwide in the exercise, found that
personnel were regularly taken away from their daily missions to help
plan and train for TopOff 2, said Thomas Mefferd, director of the DuPage
County, Ill., Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Management.

As the exercise kickoff approached, planning for it became almost a
full-time job, and if an exercise generates that kind of stress on the
local system, officials would "need the availability of putting addition
personnel into our command and control systems" in an actual emergency
he said.

One system that will help with the command and management issues is the
National Incident Management System (NIMS) that DHS developed following
the second national exercise, some said.

A fundamental discovery during the exercise was the need to clarify and
coordinate the priorities and needs of the many jurisdictions involved
in an incident, and "NIMS is right on point to address the gaps and
needs illuminated by TopOff 2," Kimerer said.

The system is critical because "we must be able to understand, we must
be able to know how our counterparts across government are thinking,"
Mefferd said. But it will only help if officials actually use it in
everyday incidents as well as large-scale, he said. Experiences and
lessons learned such as these are critical to preparation by officials
across the country, said Suzanne Mencer, executive director of DHS'
office, formerly the Office of Domestic Preparedness.
Washington and Illinois are already serving as mentors for New Jersey
and Connecticut. Also, department officials are preparing to announce
the host venues for TopOff 4. Those states will be invited to monitor
and learn from the design and development of the third exercise, she
said.

http://www.fcw.com/fcw/articles/2004/0705/web-topoff-07-09-04.asp

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