In the June issue of FIRE CHIEF, my colleague Chief Ronny Coleman mentioned the Patrick Lencioni book, The Five Dysfunctions of a Team &mdash: A Leadership Fable. The reference reminded me of another work by Lencioni, Silos, Politics and Turf Wars. The book refers to when decisions are made in a vacuum without coordination or concern for the consequences that may be known, unknown or ignored.
Silos specifically came to mind when working on both elements of the National Response Plan and its coordination at the local response level with the emergency service functions that are outlined in it. There are several ESFs that clearly require either an exclusive response or a major response by fire service personnel. These include ESF 4–Firefighting; ESF–8 Public Health and Medical Services; ESF–9 Urban Search-and-Rescue; and ESF–10 Oil and Hazardous Materials.
If you picture the worst-case multi-location scenario in a natural disaster or coordinated terrorist event, it is easy to see elements of all of these coming to bear at once without even addressing rescue and gross-versus-technical decontamination of the public. The problem with this concept is that at the federal level, each ESF is run by a separate federal agency. Examples include the U.S. Forest Service for firefighting, the EPA for hazmat, FEMA for USAR, and Health and Human Services for public health and medical services. To some degree this creates a “silo effect” when planning for a national response that requires the simultaneous activation of many fire service resources into the federal response through several different responsible federal agencies. The unknown factor is who bedside the fire service will know that the firefighters assigned as resources in ESF–4 may be the same specialized resources in ESF –8 for a mass-casualty incident, ESF–9, or ESF–10 for decon.
The fire service has always been the go-to agency to handle any public safety issue that doesn’t directly fall to law enforcement. Granted there are regional response teams that contain members from several fire departments organized for specialized emergencies such as a regional hazmat team, but how is the plan going to be affected when those resources, even those that are three to five deep in redundancy, are committed to other more basic functions in the response?
While we all understand why there are separate federal agencies with known expertise that are planning within their own ESF, how do we avoid them planning in “silos” so they don’t exceed a combined realistic level of fire service response in these emergency service functions? The International Association of Fire Chiefs has been working diligently for the past two years to turn these silos into the spokes of a wheel where requests for assistance can be matched with the appropriate fire assets from across the country. Their untiring efforts will continue until a consensus plan is reached on how these assets will be activated and used in a disaster or national emergency.
The question for discussion becomes: Have you considered how much of your department do you need to retain when considering assistance to an EMAC or federal response knowing that backfilling positions and incurring overtime are not usually a recoverable cost? Or phrased another way, what assets can you afford to send to a long term outside response without jeopardizing the response needs of the community you serve?
