Appendix D: University Crisis Action Team Decompressed Training Model

Andrew Rendon, Jeremy Baham, and William L. Kibler

Mississippi State University

This article demonstrates how one higher education institution, Mississippi State University, has embraced the emergency management principles of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), the National Response Framework (NRF), and the Department of Education (DOE) in the creation of its campus emergency strategies.

A Culture of Preparedness

The Mississippi State University (MSU) leadership has a successful track record of responding to and managing crises. Whether due to the harsh effects of a Category 5 Tornado or the maligned behavior of a distraught student, key leaders have developed and implemented programs, procedures, and policies to respond to crises while insuring the utmost safety of the university students, faculty, and staff. A good example of the university’s culture of emergency preparedness can be illustrated in a recent shooting incident at an on-campus resident hall, resulting in what some may refer to as a textbook response. Within minutes of the incident, a police officer was on the scene and the University Police Department Dispatch had notified the on-call Crisis Action Team Leader. Notifying respective key leaders, implementing the Maroon Alert Message System, and making the decision to set up the university’s command center were all immediate actions taken by the on-call leader resulting in the quick identification and apprehension of the suspect and the restoration of stability to the campus. A handful of success stories such as the shooting incident provide key evidence that the university’s approach to emergency management is working. In this appendix, the authors attempt to define the framework that has led to the university’s reputable culture of emergency preparedness. A discussion will include the established foundation for emergency preparedness, the composition, and background of the university’s emergency management team (referred to as the Crisis Action Team) and the applied multiapproach training plan, which includes a unique training model designed to comprehensively train for most contingencies associated with a crisis. Finally, the authors identify successful techniques and procedures employed by the university’s emergency management team including effective communication systems, resource management surveys, and external relationship building with local, state, and federal agencies.

Preparedness Foundation

Focusing on a foundation of education and training, the university establishes the basis for emergency preparedness in a Presidential Policy (Emergency Operations 01.04, 2009) and ties the policy to a framework for preparedness in an Incident Preparedness Plan (both of these documents can be found in the Mississippi State University’s Operating Policies website under Presidential Matters). Policy implementation through the incident preparedness plan calls for organizations at all levels to play a role in emergency preparedness including a basic understanding of response to common emergencies. Due to this focus, expected responses to common scenarios including severe weather, active shooter, and fire are consistent outcomes during real and scenario-based situations. Similar in format to emergency management plans developed by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and defined in the National Response Framework (NRF), the university’s incident preparedness plan identifies the organizational structure for major incidences, functional area roles and responsibilities, and a framework for responding to common emergencies including weather, fire, civil disorder, and bomb threats. Finally, protocols are established to assist leaders in determining at what level the Incident Command Center will be activated and the crisis action team assembled.

Composition of the Team

With the policy and procedure foundation in place, the university weaves a web of people, resources, and relationships at the local, state, and federal levels designed to comprehensively prepare for emergencies. At the center of this success is the creation of the University’s Crisis Action Team (CAT). While the MSU Crisis Action Team formally organized its membership in 2005, the principles in which it operates were in place before then. Essential to the success of the team is its homogenous composition of leaders from across campus coupled with the importance the team places on emergency management education and training. Meeting on a monthly basis, the MSU Crisis Action Team divides their time into reviewing policies and procedures associated with campus emergency management and conducting scenario-based training exercises, including tabletop and full-scale drills.

The CAT is based upon the FEMA’s incident command system structure for Higher Education as outlined in FEMA’s Emergency Management Institute’s course IS-100.HE (http://training.fema.gov). CAT members are designated by the Divisional Vice Presidents of the university with the Incident Commanders designated by the President. CAT members provide support during an incident through five major functions directly outlined by FEMA: (1) Incident Command which has overall responsibility for resolving the incident; (2) Operations which directs the operational resources responding to the incident; (3) Planning which collects and analyzes information regarding the incident as well as maintaining the incident documentation critical for reviewing the incident response at the conclusion of incident operations; (4) Logistics that provides the resources and services necessary to meet the goals set by the Incident Commander (IC); and (5) Administration and Finance which provides procurement and monitors costs of the incident response. Depending on the particular needs during an incident, the IC is empowered to determine who, of the trained pool of CAT members, is needed to respond to a crisis. Consisting of approximately 20 individuals, typically the CAT consists of the IC, the CAT support team which monitors information coming to the Command Center and provides any other needed support within the Command Center, representatives from Campus Services and Physical Plant, a representative from the Provost Office, a representative from the University Relations Office to function as a liaison with the media, a representative from Information Technology Services, the Chief of Police for the university or her representative, and a representative from the University Housing Office. Other members of the CAT may be called in at the discretion of the Incident IC. An important aspect of the CAT is the 3 Deep Contact List. This list is maintained by the CAT Coordinator and contains the emergency contact phone numbers for every department on campus that might be involved in incident response as well as the emergency contact numbers of agencies outside the university that may be involved in incident response. This list has the names and emergency contact numbers for not only department heads but also for at least two additional people who can be contacted and have the authority to make decisions for their department in the absence of the department head. This 3 Deep list reduces significantly the chances that a department or agency becomes unreachable during an emergency.

Three roles that have been added to the standard Incident Command Structure by the university are the CAT Coordinator, On-Call Specialists (all of which are on the CAT support team), and the Training Coordinator. The CAT Coordinator takes the lead in monitoring and maintaining the physical space and equipment used by CAT as well as providing budgetary oversight for the funds set aside by the university for CAT. This includes periodic inspections of the Command Center and the Alternate Command Center. While conducting these inspections, the coordinator is tasked with ensuring that equipment is in working order and that there are no issues that would hinder command operations from functioning. The coordinator is also tasked with maintaining the CAT manual, which contains the policies and protocols that govern CAT. This manual is updated whenever a change is made to these policies and procedures, but is reviewed annually regardless of changes made during the previous academic year. The updated CAT Manual is provided each year to the CAT members.

The On-Call Specialists are six professional staff members who rotate the on-call duty. One of these specialists is on call 24 hours/day 365 days/year. These specialists are tied in to the University Police Dispatch and are notified when an incident occurs on campus. While first responders, such as the University Police, meet the immediate needs of the incident, the on-call specialist makes the initial decisions for the university response. When warranted, the specialist notifies an IC and begins the process of assembling the CAT. These specialists also coordinate the initial communication with the university community by e-mail, text message, and website when such a response is appropriate.

The Training Coordinator is tasked with ensuring that the CAT is ready to respond at any given time to incidents that affect the university. While most incidents cannot be predicted specifically, these incidents can be trained for by identifying the most likely emergencies and training for similar types of incidents. For example, the university knows that the most likely incident to affect the entire campus is dangerous weather such as a tornado. Extremely beneficial to the CAT is the affiliation the university shares with the State of Mississippi Climatology Office. Housed here at Mississippi State University, the State Climatologist (also a professor of Meteorology and Climatology) works with the team to provide timely around-the-clock weather information including forecasts and briefings specifically tailored for CAT team decisions. Where most universities rely on national weather reports, the university is privileged to have its own built-in emergency weather service. Therefore, the Training Coordinator can build scenarios that test the university’s ability to respond in case a tornado touches down on campus or in the community where it would affect students. Utilizing these training scenarios and the review of these exercises, the Training Coordinator helps the CAT and the university to refine their ability to respond to any type of crisis. The Training Coordinator also liaises with agencies and individuals outside the university that may be involved in incident response to provide for complimentary training and outside involvement in university training exercises.

Individual Training Requirements

Every member of the CAT is responsible for individual training as well as being expected to participate in training exercises as designed by the Training Coordinator. The individual training is provided through the Emergency Management Institute provided by FEMA. Every CAT member is required to take courses 100.HE (Introduction to the Incident Command System for Higher Education), 200.b (ICS for Single Resources and Initial Action Incidents), 700.a (National Incident Management System, an Introduction, 2011), and 800.b (National Response Framework). Some CAT members then have additional courses, which are required based on their team function, for example, the staff that will function as Public Information Officers are required to take IS-704 (Communications and Information Management). Completion of these courses is monitored by the CAT Coordinator in cooperation with the Human Resources Management office of the university.

Collective Training

Focused on a high expectation for effective response to an emergency situation, the CAT incorporates a comprehensive approach to training including identifying individual and team/collective training requirements. Meeting on a monthly basis, the MSU Crisis Action Team divides their time into reviewing policies and procedures associated with campus emergency management and conducting scenario-based training exercises, including tabletop and full-scale drills. Because the composition of the CAT team includes extremely busy top-level university administrators, training and meeting times are limited to an hour. Hence, maximizing the time available for a myriad of objectives can pose significant challenges when developing a training plan. Always mindful of this fact, purposeful/effective training is at the core of the training plan. Development of the CAT meeting agenda starts with dividing the period into two 30-minute sessions. The first half hour is reserved for administrative “house cleaning” which can include a number of items. Reviewing and correcting contact rosters/policies/support documents, identifying individual training shortfalls, reviewing and discussing recent emergency responses, in-service training from external agencies (including our host county emergency management director and Mississippi Emergency Management Agency training coordinators), and general discussions are but a few of the tasks accomplished during the first session of the meeting. In the second session, the CAT team focuses on a scenario-based drill applying different methods of execution including tabletop, functional, and full-scale exercises. The training plan also includes no-notice and unscheduled drills aimed at evaluating and ultimately developing the team’s responsiveness and decision-making capabilities. While this approach has been successful for the team, the university is continuously striving to improve its emergency management capabilities—because you can never be too prepared. Finally, at the center of improving emergency management capabilities is a twofold challenge: refresher training and new team member training. This can be accomplished through the application of what the authors refer to as the Decompressed Training Model.

Decompressed Training

Understanding and applying sound, effective emergency management techniques is a proven perishable skill. In addition, team members are often replaced or substituted, which requires new training. These factors can hamper the overall capability of a team attempting to respond to crisis. A new, yet untrained, team member with substantial institutional authority can prove to be hazardous. In an effort to mitigate some of the challenges to maintaining a high degree of team emergency management capability is by the application of what the authors refer to as Decompressed Training.

At the center of this concept is the application of a scenario-based drill/exercise spread over a year time frame. Conceptually, the training would consist of a weeklong scenario, for instance, a weather incident that results in shutting down the campus, spread out over the duration of a training year. Meeting once a month, the team can extensively discuss the first day of the event, including possible scenarios, contingencies, outcomes, branches, and sequels. As the training year progresses, team members can continue to develop the scenario, hopefully giving it some thought even while not in session. Slowing down the clock and allowing the exercise to be drawn out accommodates several training objectives. First, setting up a quality, effective scenario takes work and practice and often can confuse more than train. Human nature tends to shy away from “notional ideas” so emplacing a base scenario in which teammates can continue to draw from can be helpful. Finally, decompressing or slowing the timeline also provides for comprehensive discussion and thought on certain events allowing for vetting of planned responses for future real events.

Under a compressed, stressful real-world scenario, drawing from a wealth of comprehensive and planned responses can be helpful when formulating a decision or plan of action. Conversely, executing real-time scenario-based training may result in rushed and inadequate learned responses that are then mirrored in a real scenario. Finally, because of its unique design of building upon previous sessions, the decompression concept accommodates new team members and those needing refresher training. Using MSU’s system of recording and tracking an incident (discussed later in this appendix), a team member would simply go into the MSU E-CATS module and quickly “get up to speed” with the situation. He or she is then ready to participate in the scenario.

While this training concept does not focus on the ability to develop decision-making skills in a compressed, stressful, and hazardous environment, those skills are addressed by including smaller unscheduled drills throughout the year. The importance of this training concept is it exceeds expectations for other critical training objectives, such as contingency planning, collective team building, and comprehensive resourcing.

Tools for Success

Identifying the tools for success is critically important both in the development of training objectives and plans and during an actual emergency response. The old adage of having and not needing versus needing and not having comes sharply into focus when building a comprehensive list of tools and resources needed in support of crisis management. For the MSU Crisis Action Team, these tools are divided into several different categories including communication, resources, and relationships. Most likely at the top of the list of essential tools needed in an emergency response scenario is the ability to communicate and for MSU, the leadership has developed a broad and comprehensive communication plan designed to provide immediate information to the university’s population. Referred to as the Maroon Alert System, the concept simply employs all available modes of communication to relay information to the university’s population. Vetted by an appointed university Public Information Officer (PIO), information is then delivered through e-mail, web posting, text, radio and TV broadcasting, and instant messaging. Additionally, the university can also make use of a campus-wide siren and loudspeaker system that can be employed to communicate with students, faculty, and staff that may not have access to other means of communication. Finally, the university has started to employ the use of social media sites on Facebook and Twitter to relay emergency messages. Analysis and discussion between the PIO and the Crisis Action Team members will determine the specific usage of the Maroon Alert System including the language and message used and the delivery method. The level or urgency of the message is also considered. For example, Advisories (nonemergencies) are posted to the MSU website using a blue banner. Emergencies requiring immediate action are highlighted with a yellow banner and ultimately should the university declare a campus emergency, the yellow banner will appear on the top of the MSU website. Describing the significance of the banner colors to our students, faculty, and staff is done through educational programs including in-service faculty sessions, student orientations, flyers, and e-mail. Text messaging plays a significant role in emergency response as it is typically only used if there is imminent danger to campus requiring immediate action. Finally, as a means to organize information that can be made readily available to decision makers, the crisis action team has developed a web-based information tracking system referred to as the Emergency Crisis Action Team System (E-CATS). Developed by the university’s Information Technology and University Relations Office, the E-CATS allows team members the ability to open an event, categorize the event, and start posting information regarding the event including times, location, reports, and status. Key leaders needing a quick update on the event can simply go to the E-CATS and review the postings by functional area. A more basic understanding of the event can be determined by looking at the summary page. Restricted to CAT members, E-CATS provides the team the ability to electronically store records of all activities for actual events and exercises while also providing a site for CAT members to communicate. Critically important for noise levels to remain low in the command center, the E-CATS provides for exchange of information with a minimal amount of “cross-talk.”

Identifying resources and capabilities throughout the campus and in the surrounding communities is also an extremely important tool that should be considered when planning for contingencies. Having a good grasp as to the number, location, and operational status of all the generators on campus becomes critical during a severe weather scenario. The middle of an electrical campus-wide outage is probably not the best time to attempt to understand the complexities of a power generator. Resource identification, status, and location can be determined during exercises and drills. More importantly though, it is critical to keep a running estimate of this information and assign someone with the additional duty of maintaining an accurate and accessible record. MSU’s crisis action team has assigned this responsibility to the Vice President of Campus Services and ultimately the Director of Facilities Management as they typically manage a large bulk of the rolling stock equipment and machinery typically needed during an emergency scenario (both of these individuals are members of the CAT). Collaboration between Facility Management and the VP of Student Affairs Office has allowed the CAT to identify specific equipment to be used in times of emergency. Efforts are currently underway to map current locations of emergency equipment for use during an emergency response. Finally, the establishment and development of formal and informal external relationships provides strong bonds that will be needed during a real-world emergency. For most university employees, a background in emergency preparedness training does not exist and while a comprehensive training plan can strengthen crisis management skills for CAT members and key leaders on campus, strong relationships with external agencies can fill the expertise gap associated with emergency management. For the university, reliance on several different agencies and programs can provide realistic training guidance associated with emergency and crisis management in a university setting. At the tip of the spear is the critically important relationship the university has with its host county Emergency Management Agency (EMA) Director. Initiated by the catastrophic events of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks and coupled with the 2005 Katrina natural disaster response, the Department of Homeland Security and ultimately FEMA’s National Response Framework is the guiding principle that enables all response partners to prepare for and provide a unified national response to disasters and emergencies—from the smallest incident to the largest disaster (NRF Publication, January 2008). Conceptually, the university plugs into the National Response Framework through its relationship with the County EMA (which then has a direct link to the state’s emergency management agency, then FEMA, etc.). The MSU/Host County EMA relationship is formalized through the university’s endorsement of the County’s Comprehensive Emergency Management Plan, but the strength of the relationship is its ongoing collaboration during real-world emergencies and monthly training sessions. In a real emergency requiring state and federal funding/support, the university will work through and with the host county emergency management agency to ensure real needs are met. Another source of support and assistance comes from the Institution of Higher Learning and their Risk Management section. And while the university sits within the boundaries of a county and therefore will work closely with the host county during an emergency response, there is also the requirement to work with the university’s governing body—The State of Mississippi Institution of Higher Learning. Developing emergency management relationships with the university’s governing agency and its associated risk management office provides yet another source of resources and expertise in support of training and real-world emergency response scenarios. Finally, tapping into academic scholarship in support of developing incident preparedness training plans, policies, and procedures provides a wealth of current and cutting-edge information. Fortunately, the university has developed an emergency management training program backed by academic scholarship and real-world experience. Housed within the Mississippi State University Extension Service, the Center for Government and Community Development provides development and implementation of technical assistance and education programs, including emergency management training, for local government officials. As one of several key relationships, the university CAT relies on this center to provide guidance on emergency management training and execution.

Assessment and Conclusion

As with any program, the need to develop comprehensive assessment tools to determine the effectiveness of the program is important to its overall success. The CAT conducts after action reviews after real-world and training exercises and maintains a record of the reviews within the ECATS. To prevent the reviews from turning into “blame” or “finger-pointing” sessions, the format of the review is not rigid or formalized and allows team members to speak openly about things that need improvement or refinement. An idea not yet put in place within the framework of the incident preparedness plan and the Crisis Action Team is working with outside agencies to provide assessment and evaluation of training exercises.

Never a perfect world, the university’s respected reputation for its comprehensive approach to emergency management is constantly challenged by the fact if something can go wrong, it most likely will. Because of our uncertain world, the university will continue to scrutinize and improve its policies, procedures, and systems associated with emergency management always realizing that the most important asset is trained, knowledgeable leaders.

References

FEMA. (2008). National response framework. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Homeland Security. Retrieved from http://www.fema.gov/nr

Mississippi State University Policies, Presidential Matters. (2009). Emergency Operations Policy 01.04.

U.S. Department of Homeland Security. (2011). National incident management system: Training program.