{"id":4503,"date":"2020-08-07T09:02:00","date_gmt":"2020-08-07T13:02:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/news.colgate.edu\/magazine\/?p=4503"},"modified":"2020-08-07T09:39:15","modified_gmt":"2020-08-07T13:39:15","slug":"in-case-of-emergency","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.colgate.edu\/magazine\/2020\/08\/07\/in-case-of-emergency\/","title":{"rendered":"In Case of Emergency"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Photos by Mark DiOrio. (Editor’s note: Photos were taken on March 17, before the governor of New York State recommended wearing face masks.)<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Colgate\u2019s emergency response system was forged in fire, but don\u2019t let the dramatic origin story fool you. When crises arise, the University still follows a simple rule: remain calm and activate the EOC.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Andrews Hall residents report that their roommate never returned home after stepping out for a late-night slice. A tornado has ravaged campus. A student-athlete has been medevaced to Utica with symptoms of meningitis. An epidemic has become a pandemic, and the governor has just closed all state-run institutions of higher education. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

For members of Colgate\u2019s Emergency Operations Center (EOC), these might be monthly training scenarios or the real thing. Either way, it all starts with pings on cell phones. If you work on a floor with multiple EOC members, you hear the alert tones roll from office to office, first a text and then an email. Brief lines announce an EOC activation and describe the nature of the emergency. More than 50 people assigned to this response team will begin a double-time walk across campus to the designated meeting location, where DLAN \u2014 a web-based situational awareness software program \u2014 is already projecting incident details onto a large screen. Laptops come out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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There is a particular kind of silence in an initial EOC activation. A room full of people normally hums with conversation, but in these moments, everyone is trying to take in as much information as possible, as quickly as possible. They are mastering their emotions \u2014 the words and pictures must be the stuff of bad dreams or their presence wouldn\u2019t be needed. Any conversation is typically at a librarian\u2019s whisper, not by mandate, but because that\u2019s how a body wants to speak when dozens of people, packed together, are so completely wrapped up in concentration.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAttention in the EOC.\u201d The call comes from the incident commander, standing at the front of the room. Attention couldn\u2019t be higher, but the volume and authority of the statement pull staffers out of their thoughts and into the moment for a full briefing. These four words mark the beginning of what could be a long, challenging period for staff as they guide the University community through trauma and disruption.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Define the Scope<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

In autumn 1970, Southern California was burning. Between Sept. 22 and Oct. 4 of that year, while Colgate students debated women\u2019s rights and administrators fretted over dwindling financial aid resources, fires scorched 500,000 acres \u2014 nearly 800 square miles \u2014 on the other coast. Seven hundred buildings were destroyed and 16 people died. Fire districts shared personnel and equipment in the attempt to prevent flames from leaping canyon to canyon, forest to forest. State and federal agencies poured resources into fighting the blazes, too, and when the smoke cleared that winter, the after-action reports noted no problems with the firefighters, their gear, or their tactics. But experts agreed that, if multiple districts and counties, the state, and the federal government were going to win the battle against California\u2019s large-scale natural disasters in the future, they needed to make significant operational changes. In particular, they had to speak a common language on the same radio frequencies, share their resources, and make decisions based on the same information.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Dan Gough, associate vice president for campus safety, emergency management, and environmental health and safety<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Five years later, an interagency partnership introduced Firefighting Resources of Southern California Organized for Potential Emergencies (FIRESCOPE). It included an Incident Command System (ICS) that promoted collaboration and clarity of purpose on the ground and a Multi-Agency Coordination System to handle cross-jurisdictional interactions as necessary. At the heart of the ICS sat the EOC, headed by a single incident commander, typically the senior officer on the scene, overseeing four sections: planning, suppression and rescue, logistics, and finance. FIRESCOPE, in spite of its title, was adaptable to non-fire emergencies, scalable for use by single districts, and resilient, given the constant upgrades to technology, forecasting software, and other tools of the trade. Developers and adherents were proud of their system and honed it for decades, but among first responders, it was always known as a firefighter\u2019s protocol.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then came 9\/11. A lot of communication took place that morning. In the lobby of New York City\u2019s 1 World Trade Center, firefighters at their command post were on their radios, calling out locations of victims trapped in the burning high-rise. Dispatchers received offers of help and routed engines from other locations to the scene of horror. There were ambulances, police, federal law enforcement, volunteers, and self-activated retirees all converging on the same location for the same purpose. The problems foreseen by California fire officials decades earlier became reality:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Throughout the response on September 11, the FDNY and NYPD rarely coordinated command and control functions and rarely exchanged information related to command and control \u2026 We believe there were very limited communications, either directly or through a liaison, between senior FDNY chief officers and the senior officers in charge of the NYPD response. In addition, some potentially important information on the structural integrity of the buildings never reached the Incident Commander or the senior FDNY chiefs in the lobbies. <\/strong><\/em>\u2014 New York City\u2019s report, \u201cFDNY Fire Operations Response on September 11\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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In the aftermath of 9\/11, the newly formed Department of Homeland Security (DHS) sought a single system that would, again, allow everyone to speak a single language and draw on shared sources of information. Thanks to the work that had been done more than three decades earlier, they didn\u2019t have far to look. DHS and its partner departments took the proven FIRESCOPE system, modified it slightly, and called it the National Incident Management System (NIMS)\/Incident Command Structure (ICS). No longer just a firefighter\u2019s system, it became the mandatory emergency operations approach for any federal, state, or local agency receiving funding and material support from the U.S. government.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The heart of the structure, still known as the EOC, remained almost unchanged. The NIMS EOC comprises five sections: operations, logistics, planning, finance and administration, and the executive group. Section chiefs guide the work of logistics, planning, and finance, reporting to the incident commander, who oversees the operations section and sets mission objectives. A liaison on the incident commander\u2019s staff communicates between the EOC and the executive group, which typically includes elected officials and policy makers. A communications officer also serves on the command staff. Because NIMS is now a national standard, this structure can be found responding to a house fire in Peoria, an earthquake in San Bernardino, or a bombing in Boston. It is designed to be efficient and scalable; sections can be reduced or disbanded depending on the nature of the situation. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Scale to Fit<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The NIMS\/ICS EOC arrived at Colgate in the backpack of Dan Gough, the new director of environmental health and safety (EHS), in 2010. A Brown University graduate, Gough learned the system during his 11 years in the Navy, putting to sea on a fast attack submarine, supply ship, and guided missile destroyer. His billets included navigator, weapons officer, combat systems officer, and force protection\/anti-terrorism officer. He practiced deploying ICS in the higher education context at Rhode Island\u2019s Roger Williams University, where he was EHS director for half a decade. The endurance required to see it through \u2014 that came from the years in between, when he was a professional marathon runner, sponsored by Nike.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Until Gough\u2019s arrival, Colgate, like most universities, had a stack of plans for incidents ranging from toxic chemical releases to public safety threats. Gough characterizes it as \u201can ad hoc approach, addressing each incident as its own little universe.\u201d But the EOC structure offered a solution that would apply to any and all emergencies in a uniform fashion. It could be practiced in periods between deployment. It could even be used to counter unforeseen contingencies, because, no matter what, the structure and the associated duties would remain the same.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Gough set out to preach the EOC gospel, but implementing the system wasn\u2019t easy. \u201cWe\u2019ve blended it to fit the University and catered it to higher ed, because it gets weedy with resource assets and additional command staff acronyms and names, and that just wasn\u2019t going to work,\u201d Gough says. \u201cThat would have really pushed people further away. It took a good three years for people to understand it and appreciate its efficiency.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then there was the expense. Even back in the mid-\u201970s, FIRESCOPE called for communications equipment and situational awareness software to track activities, weather forecasts, and more. The University dedicated resources to purchase DLAN, a software package that allows EOC staff and the executive group to share all of this information in real time. The EOC would need places to meet, both on and off campus. (In the case of an active shooter, it would be unwise for the University\u2019s response team to meet and move between buildings on the Hill, so Gough and colleagues identified an alternate site in the Village of Hamilton.) Both of these locations needed to be outfitted with communications equipment, screens, radios, chargers, and other necessities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If, after navigating Colgate through a series of emergencies both large and lesser, the EOC needed a proof of concept, the COVID-19 pandemic has provided it.<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Effective EOCs also demand people power. Gough envisioned a robust EOC, following as closely as possible to the letter of the NIMS\/ICS program, so he needed each division within the University to dedicate significant staffing to the effort, train them, and allow them time for monthly drills. In the event of a true emergency, these individuals would be expected to leave their normal work behind and head to the EOC gathering point. Their traditional lines of supervision, and, in some cases, the kinds of jobs they were originally hired to do, would be left at the door. EOC members serve their section and report to the section chief.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cPeople will say that they operate in this ICS structure, and they will show you six or eight people, including the president, around a table in a small conference room,\u201d Gough says. \u201cThat\u2019s not the ICS structure.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Get Comfortable Being Uncomfortable<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

By the time Gough left Colgate in 2016 to become environmental health and safety director at the University of California\u2013San Diego, the EOC was well established at Colgate. He returned to Hamilton, N.Y., as the University\u2019s associate vice president for campus safety, emergency management, and environmental health and safety a year later, resuming his position as the go-to incident commander. Today, the EOC is activated not only for emergencies but also to manage large-scale events, from homecoming to commencement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n