The WRHA Disaster Management Program
The WRHA established the full-time permanent position of Director Disaster Management sometime mid-2002 and posted a competition for it in June-July 2002. I accepted the Authority’s offer for the position and began work on August 19, 2002.
Disaster Management is the managerial function charged with creating the framework within which “communities” reduce vulnerability to hazards and cope with disasters. In the context of the WRHA, I formalized this function and further characterized it by activities that are intended to:
- Enable mitigation against and preparedness for actual and potential threats within the Winnipeg Health Region;
- Facilitate and maintain a heightened state of readiness throughout the Winnipeg Health Region to assure prompt, safe, correct, and consistent response to and recovery from a disaster using an all-hazards approach; and
- Promote the safeguarding of patients, residents, clients, and staff while continuing to provide essential health services through disaster events.
Five months later, in January 2003, WRHA Senior Management approved my request to establish a Program dedicated to Disaster Management. Based on NFPA 1600 Standard on Disaster/Emergency Management and Business Continuity Programs, my Program would be a coordinated function encompassing the areas of safety and health, fire protection, environmental control, security, training, public affairs, communication, quality control maintenance, and operations within the Region. It would be in place to provide an effective state of readiness to respond to, prepare for, mitigate, and recover from a range of credible or potential disasters threatening the Winnipeg Health Region or threatening to affect (directly or indirectly) the provision of essential health services within the Winnipeg Health Region, and it was to be the first of its kind in Canada.
Also in January 2003, based on my presentations to WRHA Senior Management, it adopted the Incident Command System (ICS) as the only management structure to be used in responding to and recovering from a disaster event.
Developing Strategies
Working in close collaboration with my municipal emergency management counterpart, municipal first response elements (Law Enforcement, Fire, Ambulance), and municipal emergency social services (and NGOs), I developed integrated and comprehensive all-hazards response strategies. These required coordinated planning between municipal emergency first response and social services divisions and all sectors of the WRHA (which included acute care, public health, primary care, home care, and mental health). Once response planning was underway, aspects of mitigation, preparedness (training and exercises), and recovery inevitably surfaced and required at least as much attention, in the same coordinated fashion.
I kept the next higher jurisdictional health organization (Manitoba Health) informed and close. This helped ensure compliance to applicable statues, regulations, and standards (NFPA, OSHA, Joint Commission, etc.) and facilitated an effective method of sharing the work with other Regional Health Authorities throughout the province (and beyond). Likewise, my municipal counterpart involved, wherever required, the next-higher jurisdictional emergency management organization (Manitoba EMO) for the same reasons.
I found important aspects of developing and coordinating the WRHA Disaster Management Program included the requirements to communicate intent and progress to all stakeholders frequently, to keep the community at large informed, to establish cross-jurisdictional, multi-agency liaison early and to maintain strong relationship links between events, to identify requisite training, to encourage the conduct of individual and collective training as reqularly as is needed, and to begin (as quickly as practicable) the process of implementing a robust and regular exercise program moving from table-top to functional through to full-scale.
Developing Exercises
Between 2003 and 2007, I can account for the develoopment of three independent functional exercises (Severe Weather – Community Health Services; HAM Radio – across all 7 Emergency Departments in the Region; and Viral Outbreak – Mass Vaccination Clinic). However, I also developed Corporate, Hospital, Personal Care Home, and Community level table-top exercises to confirm Incident Command System training. I estimate that the number of involved personnel on each of those exercises ranged from 20 to 60.
All exercises I developed included the involvement, as much as practicable, of senior management, the appropritate Incident Command staff, other stakeholders internal as well as external (as required), and in the case of the functional exercises – actors (from time to time).
Only towards the end of my service as founding Director Disaster Management was it possible to consider the development of a full-scale exercise (mass casualty event based on a series of tornados touching down within the city boundaries). However, the lack of approved resource commitments (time, staffing, finances, facilities, etc.) proved to be an obstacle that could not be overcome in my tenure.
Developing and Implementing Strategic Plans and Guidelines
My work developing and coordinating the WRHA Disaster Management Program included the conduct of regional hazard assessment / vulnerability analysis, capability assessment, the establishment of a common event management approach / structure (Incident Command), the prepartion of alert / notification guidelines, rapid resonse team guidelines and standard operating procedures, plan annexes dealing with severe weather (extreme heat and cold, tornado, snow, hail, sleet, etc.), hazmat (bio, chem, radiological, nuclear), suspicious powder / bomb threat, mass casualty, evacuation, fire, flood, etc., over a period of six years.
In the development, updating, and implementation of emergency plans, I involved and enlisted the support of decision makers and stakeholders ensuring that ownership of plans rested with those who would ultimately use them.
I confirmed that successful planning development and implementation follows along the lines of good project management, such that decision makers, stakeholders, and the planning development team must be committed to the work; such that the measures determining successful completion must be determined up front; and such that there is clear and frequent communications between the planner and the served community / users of the plan.
Plan successes in the WRHA were measured against how generally understood they were, how quickly those identified in the plan could assume their assigned roles and responsibilities, and how easily they could be (realistically) exercised / executed. Plan validation would fall out from formal exercise / incident evaluation and after-action reporting, as would the requirement for continued and maintained periodic revision / update.
Training Development
Curriculum was always developed based on a performance / needs assessment, on the determination that training was the appropriate way of addressing a requirement, and (when applicable) on existing training courses available. Plans of Instruction were guided by course goals and learning objectives.
The frequency of the training I developed and conducted over the years has varied but none of the trianing I developed and conducted has ever been of the “fire and forget / launch and leave / shoot and scoot” variety. On the contrary, most of the training I have been involved with has required confirmatory exercise(s) or refresher training at a regular interval (not usually less than one year) and has often been designed as a module in a progressive training scheme, i.e., enabling the learner to move from one module to the next.
The training I was involved in developing for the WRHA was organizationally critical. i.e., lessons conducted improperly and / or badly learned could result in dire consdquences (unnecessary death and / or injury, destruction of property, harm to the environment, loss of vital records, tarnished organizational / corporate reputation and credibility).
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