Recently in Emergency Services Category

Source: Jeffrey A. Schwartz, Cynthia Barry, U.S. Department of Justice, National Institute of Corrections, October 2009

This guide is intended for all jails, whether small, megasized, or somewhere in between; whether private or public; whether high security or minimum security; whether presentenced or sentenced. Whether a jail is a short- or long-term facility; a city, county, or regional facility; a holding facility or a full-service jail; emergency readiness is a crucial consideration, and the self-audit materials provided in this guide will be relevant.

Emergency preparedness is a central, even critical, issue throughout American corrections. Today, most public agencies must have emer­gency plans, and even private businesses have turned to disaster preparedness and business recovery planning. Jails, however, are not like other public agencies. They are responsible for the safety of large numbers of individuals who are usually locked up and cannot protect them­selves in many emergency situations. Further, and perhaps ironically, the very people who are locked up and whose safety must be assured are the source of the most frequent and most serious jail emergency situations. Finally, the first prior­ity for every jail is community protection, which means that even in the chaos of a major emergency, jails must ensure against escape.

Source: Denise Danna, Marirose Bernard, John Jones, Pamela Mathews, Journal of Nursing Administration, Volume 39 Issue 10, October 2009
(subscription required)

From the abstract:
Since Hurricane Katrina, there have been numerous lessons learned and improvements in disaster planning and nursing management. The subsequent Hurricane Gustav allowed nurses and disaster planners to "test the system" and identify improvements that worked and did not. The authors outline those improvements and give direction for change and further improvements.

Source: Department of Health & Human Services, Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, AHRQ Pub. No. 09-0016, September 2009

From the summary:
This guide from Department of Health & Human Services' (HHS) Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) can help community planners prepare for public health emergencies, such as pandemic flu, when demand for medical resources outweighs supply. The guide includes information on ethical and legal issues, and on the provision of services to address pre-hospital, acute hospital care, alternative care sites, and palliative care during a public health emergency.

To illustrate how to apply these basic principles, the guide includes a special section on influenza pandemic preparedness. This new guide is an abbreviated version of Mass Medical Care with Scarce Resources, published by AHRQ in 2007.

Source: Jeffrey A. Schwartz, Journal of Emergency Services, Vol. 7 no. 1, January/February 2009
(subscription required)

From the abstract:
This study uses hurricanes Katrina and Rita to illustrate the phenomenon of "planning for the last disaster," in which public agencies become so transfixed by a profound crisis or disaster that they begin to prepare for another occurrence of the same event. In doing so, they abandon or ignore their ongoing and more generic emergency planning and deny the obvious, that the next emergency or disaster has a high probability of being a very different situation. The same counterproductive results can be obtained if an organization is swept up in media hype and public concern about an "emergency du jour," such as Y2K or pandemic flu. Although this article examines these issues in correctional organizations, the same principles apply to almost all public agencies.

Source: Robert O. Schneider, Journal of Emergency Management, Vol. 7 no. 1, January/February 2009
(subscription required)

From the abstract:
The objectives of this essay are two-fold. First, it will review the very real threat an avian influenza pandemic poses to local communities. Second, it will identify several unaddressed but critical concerns that require the attention of local governments as they refine their pandemic preparedness planning. It is concluded that greater coordination with the private sector, improved public health surveillance efforts, planning for public education, and greater attention to ethical issues are essential concerns that should be on the agenda of local governments as they proceed with their preparations.
See also:
Pandemic influenza vaccination distribution: Evaluating the policies of several large municipalities across the United States
Source: Eric S. Raymond, Doctoral Student; P. Edward French, Journal of Emergency Management, Vol. 7 no. 3, May/June 2009

Source: Annemarie Mannion, American City & County, published online September 10, 2009

Two counties are trying new 911 dispatch technology that foreshadows the advances promised by Next Generation 911 systems. The new systems enable emergency personnel to precisely locate cell phone calls and operate 911 services jointly from separate locations.

Source: Joseph Adler, HR News, Vol. 75 no. 8, August 2009
(subscription required) (scroll down)

HR 413, The Public Safety Employer-Employee Cooperation Act was introduced in the United States House of Representatives in the 111th. Congress ( January 9, 2009) by Representative Dale Kildee (D. Mich.) and Representative John Duncan Jr. (R. Tenn.) and assigned to the Committee on Education and Labor. As of early July 2009, HR 413 had 117 cosponsors. In the previous 110th Congress, the Public Safety Employer-Employee Act passed the House of Representatives by a vote of 314-97 but stalled in the Senate in a procedural maneuver. If enacted in its current form, the legislation would establish federal government oversight over a major portion of state and local human resource practices, specifically the conduct of labor relations for public safety officers. HR 413 overrides current state and local government laws,
policies and practices, and instead establishes a uniform standard across the country on how governments could approach public safety collective bargaining. Additionally the legislation proposes to expand the jurisdiction of the Federal Labor Relations Authority (FLRA) by
vesting it with the power to administer the Act and to determine whether existing state and local government bargaining laws meet the threshold set by HR 413.

Source: National Council on Disability, August 12, 2009

From the press release:
The National Council on Disability (NCD) today released its report Effective Emergency Management: Making Improvements for Communities and People with Disabilities, calling on federal, state, and local authorities to make sweeping changes in emergency management practices for people with disabilities.

According to NCD Chairperson John R. Vaughn, "NCD's first evaluation of government work in this area was published in a 2005 report Saving Lives: Including People with Disabilities in Emergency Planning. That report laid out a scenario of a major hurricane striking the Gulf Coast and outlined steps that the federal government should take to include people with disabilities in emergency preparedness, disaster relief, and homeland security. Hurricane Katrina struck four months later."

As a result of NCD's work, the 2006 Homeland Security Appropriations bill's Post-Katrina Emergency Management Reform Act (H.R. 5441) required Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to employ a National Disability Coordinator and to interact, consult, and coordinate with NCD on a list of eight other activities.

Source: Anne Phelan, American City and County, August 1, 2009

When residents call 911 for non-emergency help, it's mostly a minor annoyance, but those types of calls during large disasters can jeopardize rescue efforts. To reduce the crush of calls flooding into 911 systems, some local governments are using their non-emergency 311 service to manage administrative and informational needs so 911 centers can devote their resources to life-threatening situations.

Source: Martha Derthick, Nelson A. Rockefeller Institute of Government, August 2009

Wrapping up a study on the effects of hurricanes Katrina and Rita on America's governments, political scientist Martha Derthick finds that "traditional federalism" won out over the Bush administration's attempt to centralize emergency management.