Preparing For The Worst––

Town Officials Try To Hone Emergency Decisionmaking Skills

By Andrew Gorosko

Fifteen town officials sat in discussion groups at circular tables in the Sandy Hook Firehouse meeting room on April 8, poring over documents, watching videotapes, and posing questions at a training exercise intended to sharpen their decisionmaking skills in the event the town faces a public emergency.

Warren Hall and Thomas Gavaghan, who are training officers with the state Military Department’s Office of Emergency Management (OEM), led the daylong session intended to refine town leaders’ ability to make decisions and solve problems under the pressure of emergency conditions, including acts of terrorism.

The session was the latest of several such meetings town officials have had to hone their decisionmaking skills.

Mr Hall told participants that the training session is designed to help town officials be logical and decisive when confronting the pressures of emergency situations.

OEM aids towns throughout the state with such emergency leadership training to help prepare municipalities deal with unexpected situations.

The agenda for the April 8 training exercise included the attributes of effective decisionmaking, creative problem solving, decisionmaking styles, and group decisionmaking, among other topics.

Mr Hall explained that having municipal officials get to know one another is an important aspect of acting in a group in an emergency. Those attending represented the selectmen, school system, police department, fire department, ambulance corps, emergency communications, health department, public works, and engineering departments, among others.

Across the state, public health departments are among the municipal agencies experiencing the most pressure from the public to address the many problems posed by potential terrorist attacks, Mr Hall said.

Public Health Director Donna McCarthy said public health agencies must now deal with many potential threats including anthrax, smallpox, various biological threats, environmental health threats, and Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS).

There is a heightened awareness and anxiety among members of the public concerning potential terrorist acts, Ms McCarthy noted. The situation requires public health officials to learn much new information quickly, she said.

Municipalities across the state are becoming more involved with the higher levels of government in seeking answers to their concerns about potential terrorism, Mr Hall explained.

Mr Hall predicted that school administrators will be experiencing more intense pressures from parents seeking answers to questions posed by potential terrorism.

Mr Gavaghan described a computer software program that OEM has purchased for free distribution to public school systems to aid them with decisionmaking.

First Selectman Herbert Rosenthal, who participated in the training session, said April 9, “It’s good to get people together in a decisionmaking mode.”

Such training in preparation for emergencies defines individuals’ specific roles, duties and responsibilities, providing them with examples of how best to arrive at decisions, he said.

The intensity of the moment when an emergency occurs does not provide the best time for decisionmaking, so planning for such situations is worthwhile, he said.

Mr Rosenthal said he expects that town officials will have another training session on making decisions within a year.

Town Emergency Management Director Bill Halstead said April 9, “I thought it was a very good session. I think everyone got something out of it…It was a very good informational training course.”

In November 2001, at a similar training exercise, about 20 town officials spent the better part of a day discussing how the town could organize a coordinated response to acts of terrorism.

That session came two months after the events of September 11, 2001, in which terrorists killed approximately 3,000 people in airliner attacks against the twin towers of the World Trade Center in Manhattan, and the Pentagon in suburban Washington, D.C., plus the downing of an airliner in western Pennsylvania.

That training session was held at a time when a 94-year-old Oxford woman had contracted respiratory anthrax, a bacterial disease that later killed her. At that time, several people in the US had died and others had taken ill as the victims of anthrax terrorism.

OEM officials have stressed the need for a town to have an “integrated response” to emergencies, in which all the various arms of local government work in a coordinated manner to provide an effective response to an emergency. Such a response may involve search and rescue operations, extended crime scene security, electronic communications, logistics, and command and control functions.

Communication is the lifeblood of emergency operations and having accurate information on emergency conditions is crucial, according to OEM.