Abstract
Emergency planning is a challenge for public service agencies facing budget cuts, changes in available technology, changing community needs, and the consolidations of agencies with different missions and objectives. The literature on how public safety agencies can best respond to emergencies stress the importance of not consolidating emergency management service, fire and police departments. The literature also emphasizes the importance of the planning process, and how information systems can help with the consolidation of information and analysis. Response methods and analysis primarily come from the planning process, although feedback from the front-line is necessary. The City of Pompano Beach’s Fire Department has an operations sector that handles the overall planning process, while emphasizing direct communication with the community in regards to the department’s limitations on emergency field responses. An area of opportunity for the city is to better incorporate front-line feedback into its training and operational methods. Consolidation is the likely culprit of the city’s inability to respond efficiently to major disasters.
Keywords: disaster preparation, public safety agencies, fire rescue response
Introduction
Public safety agencies have the responsibility of responding to events that impact the quality and existence of life. Various types of response methods help provide guidance and structure in stressful situations, especially when information about the situation is vague or incomplete. Fire safety agencies fall within the umbrella of public safety, but as a result of government funding shortfalls, these agencies have been subjected to consolidations with police agencies (International Association of Fire Chiefs, 2009). The International Association of Fire Chiefs (2009) believes that avoiding consolidation is in the best interests of public safety. Despite budget shortfalls, fire chiefs need to be able to collect sound data addressing a community’s need for fire safety resources, what levels of service fire safety agencies can provide, and how community decisions affect the response abilities of fire safety agencies (International Association of Fire Chiefs, 2009).
Advances in technology, including geographic information systems, can help fire safety agencies compile and analyze local environmental data, information about past fires, deployment responses, and how resources have been allocated (ESRI, 2005). The Federal Emergency Management Agency’s (FEMA) publication on preparing for emergency responses entails that training is essential for the effective development and execution of fire safety agency response methods. Training is an area that the City of Pompano Beach’s Fire Department emphasizes for its firefighters. In addition, the department stresses the importance of community disaster plan preparations, for both residents and business owners. Due to its geographic location, the City of Pompano Beach integrates ocean rescue and hurricane disaster preparation under the fire department’s responsibility. Given the importance of the effectiveness of a fire safety agency’s response methods, a review of the various ways agencies are preparing employees to evaluate response methods will be undertaken. In addition, an analysis of the City of Pompano Beach’s use of training and disaster/rescue preparation planning will be done.
Literature Review
Budget constraints are one of the environmental factors affecting fire safety agencies’ ability to respond to disasters, emergencies, and community needs. An additional problem caused by budget constraints is the very existence of fire safety agencies as separate entities. According to the International Association of Fire Chiefs (2009), local cities have responded to budget cuts by consolidating necessary public safety tasks. Consolidations between police, fire and emergency management services (EMS) departments have occurred in order to streamline operations, without completely eliminating the services provided by each separate entity (International Association of Fire Chiefs, 2009). The problems with this type of response, from the perspective of the International Association of Fire Chiefs (2009), is that the missions, goals and visions between police, fire, and EMS departments are typically distinct enough to warrant separate operations. In addition, each entity has separate training needs, necessary skill development tracks for employees, and different degrees of public perception (International Association of Fire Chiefs, 2009).
Consolidation limits the ability of public safety agencies to respond efficiently and effectively to emergencies, disasters, and community needs. This is due to a decrease in staffing, conflicting missions, conflict over actions taken on scene (i.e. lack of direction), and the inability to respond to or assist with larger-scale national disaster events (International Association of Fire Chiefs, 2009). In other words, the budget constraints city managers are facing may need to be addressed in a different manner if cities find that consolidation of public safety agencies cripples response methods, effectiveness and efficiency.
Technological advances may help fire safety agencies better manage the information needed to effectively respond to community safety needs. The development of geographical information systems software assists public safety agencies in the prevention of emergencies, as well as helping public safety agencies respond in a way that diminishes the negative consequences of those emergencies (ESRI, 2005). Furthermore, the software gives employees on the front-line the optimal amount of information needed to make the best, quick decisions under conditions that require limited response times. The ability of front-line employees to recover from disasters is also more efficient with the software (ESRI, 2005).
Fire departments can best employ geographical information systems software to analyze how the department is responding to emergencies, what information was critical to responding efficiently, safely, and effectively, how to best distribute resources, enforce fire regulations, and prevent fire disasters (ESRI, 2005). The software can also be used by fire departments in rural areas or those departments that are charged with responding to large-scale wildfires. Part of the software’s capacities includes the ability to track the boundaries and progression of a fire. The information the software keeps track of helps employees determine fire protection priorities, areas that have experienced more intense burn levels, how to better respond to areas with historically intense burn levels, analyze current fire protection resources and how to best distribute those resources, communicate with the public regarding area safety hazards, and determine the level of damage to burned areas (ESRI, 2005).
FEMA outlines the framework of responsibilities for public safety agencies as consisting of four tasks. Those tasks include emergency assessment, protecting the community, managing incidents, and hazard operations. Effective responses to emergencies entail emergency planning, overcoming resistance to planning, accounting for all possible hazards, engaging participation from multiple organizations, relying on factual assumptions, determining the most appropriate ways to respond that encourage improvisation, drawing connections between the control of hazards and responding to disaster recovery, holding complete training and the evaluation of that training, and embracing a continuous planning process (FEMA, n.d.). Essentially, effective analysis of response methods at the employee level requires participation in the emergency planning process and receiving the training necessary to recognize how individual response methods fit into an overall response plan.
Field Research and Investigation
The City of Pompano Beach’s Fire Rescue Department has limited information on how the department conducts its emergency planning process. The city’s website does dedicate a section to disaster preparation, which is geared towards communicating with the public. This section of the website does warn the public that emergency workers may not be able to respond efficiently within the event of a major disaster. The tools provided by the website allow residents to formulate and cement their own emergency plans based on individual resources and needs (City of Pompano Beach, 2016). Identical tools exist for businesses in the community. In addition, the site has a section dedicated to the city’s “Code Red” service, which provides the community with voluntary communications regarding emergencies, how to care for pets, how to find the best hurricane evacuation routes, how to report property damage, and how to prepare for hurricanes (City of Pompano Beach, 2016).
Based on the information provided on the website, the fire, EMS, and ocean rescue departments are combined. The department has an operations sector that is in charge of overseeing fire and damage prevention, equipment maintenance, performance standards, training and testing. Training for firefighters is a crucial focus for the department, that focuses on technology, driving, communication, and spreadable diseases (City of Pompano Beach, 2016).
Analysis of Field Research and Investigative Findings
With the limited information on the city’s website regarding response methods, it is difficult to determine the specifics of how the city equips its employees with response method analysis. Yet, one can easily discern from the information provided that planning and community engagement are employed by the fire department. In addition, budget constraints have obviously had an impact on the city, with the consolidation of fire rescue, ocean rescue, and EMS services. Training of firefighters on the front-line has obviously become the manner in which the city is attempting to respond to community emergencies. The problem is that the consolidation has affected the department’s ability to respond. Since the website communicates to the community that citizens need to make their own disaster plans in the event that emergency responders are unable to reach them for multiple days, one can ascertain that the department does not have the human capital to be efficient. Operational oversight on how to gather information, come up with effective response methods, train employees, and stay up to date on technology that can improve response methods, is obviously part of the city’s overall planning process.
Reflection
Responding effectively and efficiently to disasters, emergencies, and community needs is a challenging and complex process. Based on the information in the literature review, the challenges of budget constraints, the need for ongoing training and evaluation, and advances in technology necessitate constant modifications in existing response methods. The City of Pompano Beach’s Fire Rescue Department is an example of how all of these factors can impair an agency’s ability to continue to meet community needs effectively. Although the city has a department dedicated to the analysis of its emergency planning and response methods, it is unclear whether the department has been effective at communicating a centralized response method mission to front-line employees.
References
http://pompanobeachfl.gov/index.php/pages/fire/fire_rescue
ERSI (2005). Mapping the Future of Public Safety. Retrieved from
https://www.esri.com/~/media/Files/Pdfs/library/brochures/pdfs/public-safety.pdf
FEMA (n.d.). Chapter 9: Preparedness for Emergency Response. Retrieved from
https://training.fema.gov
International Association of Fire Chiefs (2009). IAFC Position: Consolidation of
Fire/Emergency and Law Enforcement Departments and the Creation of Public Safety Officers. Retrieved from http://www.iafc.org/IAFC-position-Consolidation-of-Fire-Emergency-and-Law-Enforcement-Departments
