Best Practices:  Mutual Aid & Damage Assessment in Disaster Response

Public Sector Members Important Issues Call Summary - October 19, 2004

Gerry Grayce, New Jersey
Steve Ikkanda, City of Los Angeles
Frank Koutnik, Florida Division of Emergency Management
David Nussbaum, NYC Emergency Management Officer
Richard Thomson, NY State Department of State
Dan Ashkonazi, New York City
Tom Uber, New Jersey
Robert Wible, NCSBCS
Cynthia Wilk, Department of Community Affairs, NJ

Welcome: Robert Wible, NCSBCS Executive Director, welcomed everyone to the call and noted that AMCBO Chairman Claude Cooper should be joining the call in a few minutes.

Mr. Wible thanked the two guest speakers, Frank Koutnik from Florida and Richard Thomson from New York State for participating on the call. Mr. Wible requested that Mr. Koutnik open the discussion with Florida’s experience with mutual aid and damage assessment.

Mr. Koutnik traced the events of August through September and the four hurricanes that struck the state. In his account Mr. Koutnik noted that:

August 10-14 the first hurricane hit the state. Hurricane Charley was the first major hurricane in 10 years. Over that ten-year period, a growth spurt and apathy, "can’t happen here," spread across the state. Charley was an eye opener. It tested the new statewide building code, damage assessment procedures and using mutual aid throughout the response and recovery process.

Two weeks later, Hurricane Frances hit the state and what was partially destroyed by Charley was destroyed in Frances. Two weeks later, Ivan, a category 3, arrived with 145 mph sustained winds at landfall.

Through Ivan, there was major beachfront property damage, structural damage, resulting in major teardowns. Escambia and Santa Rosa County in the panhandle of Florida were most badly damaged of all storms this summer.

Two weeks later Jeanne struck Martin County and impacted the entire eastern seaboard and central parts of Florida. There was similar impact, plastic sheathing, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Roof Blues blew off. It was a major ordeal, plastic sheathing or tarp all blown off and put back on.

Throughout the state there was major demoralization - 50,000 destroyed homes that became red tagged structures.

Mr. Koutnik described how the disaster assistance and presidential disaster declaration process works. He said the federal cost for the Public Assistance program will be between $5-$6 billion. There is a 90-10 cost share in Florida; the state has 5% and local governments 5%.

FEMA and other federal agencies had 5,000 people in state plus there were 1,500 state people in the disaster center or in the field.

In the wake of the hurricanes, there are massive amounts of debris, 42 million cubic yards of debris that has to be moved under Category B debris removal program. Now over 30 million cubic yards of debris has been removed.

Concerning housing, this has been a very bumpy road. People are still living in cars and shelters. Heavy rainfall has caused extensive flooding adding to damage from the hurricanes.

The next issue has been the impact of the hurricanes on coastal infrastructure. The National Flood Insurance Program’s 50% Rule is having a major impact on coastal rebuilding. This requires homes that were damaged over 50% have to be rebuilt to current code. This could result in the need to elevate homes off of current foundations. Many homes were destroyed by wind and not by flood and therefore they are not covered under the FEMA program.

A lot of coast infrastructure is gone - older hotels on coast have to be torn down.

DAMAGE ASSESSMENT - FEMA brought in 200 people and the state had 100. Building Officials Association of Florida (BOAF) helped by pooling resources, conducting damage assessment and in helping with permitting issuance in rebuilding. Tremendous success, also used EMAC Compact – pulled in the resources from 35 states, 1,000 people from other states did tours of time. State of California has people in the Disaster Field Office now.

The insurance program is complicated – have to know what to do or applicant suffers. Make sure that the homeowner gets the maximum possible for reimbursement.

Florida created strike teams with counties to determine housing needs and reimbursements. The 1-800-621-FEMA number wasn’t working. 925,000 people have called in and people can’t get through. There is a ½ hour wait to get in. 50 to 60 percent people on hold.

PPI - Pre-Placement Interview Process – Strike Team circumvents this by going right in.  10,000 mobile homes have been ordered, and over 250 people were doing this work and can cut out 30 days of wait time.

That is where Florida is now. (A web link to the Florida Statewide Mutual Aid Agreement and related documents is http://www.floridadisaster.org/bpr/Response/Operations/EMAC/EMACindex.htm.)

Questions:

Question: Talk about damage assessment, what happens afterwards? How does code enforcement work there?
Answer: Code enforcement initially wanted to treat this as business as usual. Governor issued executive order, however, to cut red tape. Not normal hook-up fees for mobile homes. Who can set up homes in the state? Contractor licensing problem there. A delay in getting inspectors out to determine if homes are habitable. Relied on mutual aid agreements heavily here.

Question: As far as building assessment by building department, who was in charge – state, county or city?
Answer: All at local level, county-by-county supplemented by mutual aid.

Question: Mutual aid from where?
Answer: A statewide mutual aid compact within Florida has 4,000 members. Also EMAC pre-approved by FEMA brought in from other states.

Question: New York City asked if new building codes helped on damage prevention & what system did you use for assessments?
Answer: New Florida Building Code in place 2 years ago and it proved to be different. A home built to the new code on Sanibel – new home survived while the older pre-code home did not. The new Florida code was a tremendous success.

The system of assessment - Standard FEMA assessment. Looked at Palm Pilots last year and didn’t use. Used FEMA forms so no delays/arguments. So everything went easier. All counties used the same system. All counties must develop comprehensive emergency management plan. Always relay on cell phones – Nextel seemed to work best.

Second Guest Speaker - Richard Thomson, Chief Code Compliance Specialist, New York Department of State - CEDAR - Code Enforcement Disaster Assistance Response System

New York State has run scenario training on hurricanes as well.

Background in NY State: Prior to 1998, had no program whatsoever in the area of disaster assistance response by building officials.

In 1998, however, the state had two events. In the Wyoming County area, we had major flooding in NY State impacting 200 homes. Then code enforcement was involved with the SEMO (State Emergency Management Office) and when they came in and we recognized the problem.

NY State made a number of calls to other jurisdictions’ code enforcement personnel, and they provided people to do damage assessments and safety inspections and got results to FEMA quickly. In aftermath, we asked ourselves, "why didn’t we organize this before?" Later we asked ourselves "why not create a statewide emergency mutual aid program?" That question became the origins of CEDAR, the Code Enforcement Disaster Assistance Response System.

CEDAR was conceived to provide rapid safety inspections/damage assessment and to transmit the results to FEMA to get the declarations in place quickly.

As a result of that effort, we ran through scenarios to pull in volunteer staff. As a home rule state, New York has city, town, and village governments in addition to state. All need to have a local declaration to provide state support or outside assistance.

In 2003, the CEDAR Program, Code Enforcement Disaster Assistance Response, was created. The program works similar to fire department mutual aid. Local government identifies a disaster. SEMO would come in along with state’s Office of Fire Prevention and Control people and would then CEDAR. Department of State representatives would arrive early on and assess the needs of the local community and how many code officials they need to handle the event.

DOS staff then contacts NYSBOC’s (New York State Building Officials Association) CEDAR coordinator. NYSBOC makes initial contact to their teams and dispatches them to the event. The local government code official is in charge and DOS and CEDAR provide assistance.

Thus far, CEDAR has been involved in disasters caused by wind, flood, ice and by a small earthquake. These events have been fairly small in scope so we have had no major test of CEDAR’s overall structure yet.

Code officials have to get approval of their local governments for them to participate in CEDAR. In addition, the local government must pass a resolution to that effect. (See sample resolution attached.) There are liability issues and the local government who employs the individuals carry the liability.

We have had some coordinating and understanding issues with some of the agencies involved with emergency response that we are working out and the program continues to development.

For more information on CEDAR, visit http://www.dos.state.ny.us/code/cedar.htm.

Question: Understand that the statewide mutual aid agreement in Florida works well. Do all jurisdictions in Florida sign on to that compact?
Answer: Fire, police, EMS are all wrapped under one statewide compact and the water & fire districts are covered as well. 90% of the local jurisdictions have signed on to the Florida statewide mutual aid agreement. Those that aren’t in and are pre-approved, when they subsequently do request assistance, then those jurisdictions may be stuck with bearing all the costs. To avoid that problem, jurisdictions must be in a pre-existing mutual aid compact.

While the state’s Good Samaritan Law provides some liability protection for jurisdictions in disaster response, there is a potential problem with negating that liability protection under these statutes if a jurisdiction is not just responding to an immediate disaster but is involved in planning and drilling for a potential disaster. (A planned event is not covered by the Good Samaritan Law.)

Question: In Florida’s mutual aid agreements under your compact, is the county the incident commander? Or is the locality?
Answer: Florida forces it to be the county and not the municipality. Florida has 66 counties, and we handle disasters structured around the incident command process.

In New York State we have 1,600 local governments and 62 counties. At present we don’t know which way to go on this issue of incident command.

Question: Who initiates training for incident command process?
Answer: In New York this is a voluntary program. We have developed a program that the Department of State delivers. Code officials decide if they want the training, and we will provide it. Once code officials complete the training, then they have a sample resolution for local government to adopt and return to NYSBOC and the Department of State, saying that they can be on the active list for CEDAR. The active list is maintained by NYSBOC.

In Florida this is voluntary as well. We do a lot of train-the-trainer activity.

The new federal National Response Plan will require all communities to go through the National Incident Management System (NIMS) process and have to do this.

Question: Hazardous materials clean up in Florida, how did you handle this?
Answer: We followed ESF 10 - Our Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) service handles this, covered oil slicks, etc. DEP takes lead and they bring in resources, send out field inspectors on a county-by-county basis.

We have a process called TRACKER, that the state handles and all counties have access to this mission list that includes information to address Hazmat situations.

Question: Regarding training, do you have manuals? What do you train to?
Answer: New York State has a manual, and we have a PowerPoint presentation. We have 6 hours of in-class training. The training takes into account state legislation, how mutual aid program works, hazard mitigation, inspection. We have not yet had any drills, but we are putting together some scenarios. We are trying to get code officials away for drills and training but, given the pressure of other work, this is difficult.

In Florida, we work this into a number of different training scenarios. We weave it into a lot of training around state for other departments.

Question: We have noted that there are problems with the varying definitions of damage being used by different agencies and organizations that respond to a disaster. These groups do not use the same definitions that FEMA uses when looking at a building’s degree of damage, and there even are differences between FEMA’s definitions and those in a state or local building code. Did you find this to be a problem in Florida?
Answer: Yes this is a problem in Florida. The Red Cross and FEMA inspector differed from each other in damage definitions and both differed from the state and we ended up with red tag problems trying to determine what was major, minor or destroyed.

Everyone is using different standards. The Red Cross, State of Florida and FEMA.  We ran into this especially in mobile homes. People are afraid of leaving their home for fear of looters. When FEMA sees someone living in a home, they say it’s not destroyed. We said the home was uninhabitable and therefore was destroyed.

In New York State we see the same problem.

Question: If that is the case, then is there a need for common definitions of damage that are uniform between all of these groups?
Answer: Yes there is a great need for naming everything consistently and applying recovery consistently. That would be a major help.

Question: From your experiences with the hurricanes in Florida, what were the major issues that emerged?
Answer: In Florida "Hurricanes Are Us" but here are our major reactions to this year’s events: #1 – Being overwhelmed - Training and drills are very helpful. Much also depends on leadership of EMS - are they stepchildren or not? We need to have coordination and training and drilling beforehand, otherwise our response is not as effective or efficient.

#2 – Communications - Cell towers are blown over. They have 16-hour battery life to cell towers so they fail after time.

The next major issue was getting the resources in: FOOD, WATER, ICE, and GENERATORS. People aren’t pre-thinking through these resource issues. Even hospitals. State ends up trying to get those pre-planned items in. Years ago we required health care facilities to have disaster plan. Still too many have not done so.

Question: How did you define "damage"? Do you have to rebuild to new code?
Answer: In Florida, "damaged" buildings have to be torn down. If a structure is more than 50% destroyed, then it has to be taken down.

The Increased Cost of Compliance program funding from FEMA has some funds in where a person can get up to $30,000 if their building was flood damaged. However, they can’t get funds if it was wind damaged.

In terms of rebuilding, one county had to do an emergency re-mapping process for base flood levels so that rebuilds were above base flood elevations. The existing maps at the time were 2-4 feet off (too low) what the real condition was.

Question: How long after the hurricanes did you begin damage assessment? What’s largest building department in Florida?
Answer: Orlando is our largest. Miami-Dade is also large. To do damage assessments, we still had to bring in other state agencies and anyone who has any engineer on staff so we train anyone. The size of the building department doesn’t count; it’s how well are they trained? Trained so they fit FEMA Categories ABCDEFG.

A suggestion is that you follow the FEMA assessment model or be aware of it. Don’t throw out what you’ve got but just be really aware of FEMA model and relate to it so you know how you will be reimbursed by FEMA to repair it.

Question: New Jersey in its recent floods sent building department people with FEMA to make the assessments. Is that good?
Answer: Yes that is the way to go, but our problem was magnitude of events in Florida that forced us to take anyone. Joint PDA (Preliminary Damage Assessment) is ideal if you can do it.

Question: During the recovery phase, when do locals take over to issue building permit process etc.?
Answer: In Florida that is up to the local governments. Our state won’t step in and do this. We help them find a jurisdiction with code officials who can do the work. State coordinator gives you the resources under the statewide mutual aid agreement.

New York State does this the same. NY State does not work in place of local government. Some municipalities have inter-municipal agreements to draw on as assistance.

There being no further questions for the two guest speakers, Mr. Wible thanked Mr. Koutnik and Mr. Thomson for their presentations and those on the call for their participation. The call was concluded at 1:07 p.m.

Mr. Wible noted that summary notes from the call would be made available for comment by everyone on the call prior to their being posted to the NCSBCS members’ portion of the Conference’s website.

Date, Time & Topic of Next Important Issues Call:

The next joint NCSBCS/AMCBO Public Sector Members Important Issues Call will be held on:  Tuesday, November 16, 2004, Noon Eastern – Topic: The U. S. Department of Homeland Security’s National Incident Management System (NIMS).

Attachment

Sample of Resolution for Adoption by Municipality
(To allow code enforcement employees to participate in CEDAR program)

City of    , County of    , State of New York   .

I,      , City Clerk of the City of    , County of    , State of New York   , do hereby certify that at a regular meeting of the City Council of the aforesaid City, on the day    of 2004 at the    City Hall, (address), New York, the following resolution was adopted, every member present voting therefore, to wit:

Motion by Councilman    , seconded by Councilman    To adopt the following resolution:

WHEREAS, in the event of a disaster, many communities do not have enough sufficiently trained Code Enforcement Officials to inspect buildings affected by such disaster; and

WHEREAS, Codes Division, in partnership with the New York State Building Official Conference, has a program to render volunteer assistance to disaster stricken communities known as CEDAR (Code Enforcement Disaster Assistance Response); and

WHEREAS, the City of supports the CEDAR program and supports the participation in the program by code enforcement officials employed by the City who meet the qualifications of CEDAR; and

NOW THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED, that Code Enforcement Officer    , and Assistant Code Enforcement Officer    are authorized to submit application for membership to the Code Enforcement Disaster Assistance Response program and to complete the necessary training; and

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED, that the City of agrees to provide indemnification and insurance coverage for said Code Enforcement personnel while acting as part of the CEDAR Team for mutual aid purposes.

I do further certify that I have compared the foregoing with the original minutes of the adjourned, regular meeting of the City Council of said City    held on the Day    of 2004 and that the foregoing is a true and correct transcript from said original minutes and the whole thereof, and that the resolutions duly adopted by the City Council are on file in my office.

I do further certify that the following members of the City Council were present at such meeting, namely, being all the persons constituting said City Council of the City of    , County of    , State of New York.

IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereunto set my hand and the seal of the said City Council of the City of    , County of    , State of New York, this   Day of 2004.