North Georgia Conference

There is a wave of Federal changes that started several years ago and are gradually impacting Methodist Disaster Response in the way that coordination and response is and will be done with governmental agencies and with other faith-based organizations.

After the 9/11 attack on New York City, a review was conducted of the response of the various agencies to identify what worked and what did not work. A number of communications and management problems were identified: different radio frequencies, different 10-xx police codes, different job titles and job duties, and a number of other interagency coordination and management problems.

As for incident management of an event, the Forest Service had very effectively used a system for several decades to fight wildfires. It had, also, been used for the Oklahoma City and the Atlanta Olympics bombings, Hurricane Floyd, and the Columbia space shuttle accident but less effectively due a lack of training and improper implementation of the system called Incident Command System (ICS) so further work was needed.

On February 28, 2003, President Bush issued Homeland Security Presidential Directive-5 that directed the Secretary of Homeland Security to develop and administer a National Incident Management System (NIMS). NIMS provides a consistent nationwide template to enable all government, private-sector, and volunteer organizations to work together during domestic disaster events. NIMS also has teeth in that adoption of NIMS by State and local government organizations is a condition of receiving federal grants, contracts, and participating in disaster events. .

NIMS begins with a host of preparedness activities that are completed in advance of any potential disaster. Preparedness involves:

· Planning and training, and exercises

· Personnel qualification and certification

· Equipment acquisition and certification

· Publication management processes

· Mutual aid agreements between agencies

For the personnel qualification and certification, NIMS requires that all government, private sector, and volunteer personnel, supervision, and management be required to take classroom or self-study courses for those who participate in the Emergency Stage of disasters. These courses provide a introduction to NIMS and ICS plus the National Response Plan (NRP) for team leaders and management. The current required courses for volunteers are:

· IS-100 & 700 Team members

· IS-100, 200, 700, 800 Team Leaders

· IS-100, 200, 700, 800 Conf. Mgt.

This federal training requirement definitely impacts Church Early Response Teams, Shelter Teams, and Assessment Teams and may impact other teams and individuals. There is also a deadline for completion of these courses and exchange of certifications in order to participate in disasters. This date is 9/30/07 which is only days away. The recommended method to quickly take a course is to find the course, download the course and test from http://training.fema.gov/IS/crslist.asp, and then to go back and fill in the answer sheet online. Completion results and certificate are sent by email.

It is anticipated that enforcement will be gradual and individual certifications should to be on file with both the local Emergency Management Agency and the Conference Disaster individual file folder for disaster activity.

For church disaster team leadership or the church disaster coordinator, this is a great time to begin a relationship with the local Emergency Management Director. This individual will have lots of preparatory information including further training requirements and will need information from the team for the local Emergency Operations Plan (EOP) as the local EMA is to utilize all local resources before requesting state and federal resources. Thus, responses to disaster will begin to be more structured and will require better communications between the Conference disaster committee and church disaster coordinator and local governmental agencies.