THIS Is Why You ALWAYS Notify the Police of Drills...

The folks at AT&T learned an important lesson last week: if you're going to hold an emergency preparedness drill, you should "reach out and touch someone" by notifying the local emergency responders, AND your employees. AT&T didn't think of that little aspect... and caused all sorts of holy hell in the Windy City. According to AT&T officials, they were holding "video training" to familiarize key employees with the facility's active shooter response plan. One aspect of the plan involved a facility-wide text message advising staff of the attack. Since they hadn't thought to notify staff, or include the standard "THIS IS A DRILL, DO NOT RESPOND OR TAKE ANY ACTION" verbiage in their broadcast message, many employees took the notification to be legitimate, resulting in panicked calls to police, fire, EMS, news media, loved ones, and so on.


https://blockclubchicago.org/2019/07/18/active-shooter-drill-in-loop-goes-epically-wrong-after-police-workers-not-notified-in-advance/

https://chicago.cbslocal.com/2019/07/18/active-shooter-drill-gone-wrong/

https://www.nbcchicago.com/news/local/chicago-police-active-shooter-false-alarm-loop-512904561.html

https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/breaking/ct-loop-active-shooter-drill-20190718-menvndwqlnfutmfjuvztk3i5yq-story.html

Drills and exercises are an essential part of an organization's emergency preparedness posture. They allow participants to act out their responses -- hopefully appropriate responses -- to simulated emergency situations. An example we're all familiar with is fire drills in school (not that you should take the time to line up in size place and hold your partner's hand...). Those of us "of an age" will remember the old "duck and cover" drills of the Cold War era, as if a school desk would protect us from a nuclear detonation.

There are two broad categories of exercises: discussion-based and operations-based forming a continuum from the easiest to arrange and hold -- the seminar -- the the most complex -- the full-scale exercise. Ideally, an organization intent on practicing or improving its preparedness efforts would go through the steps in order, allowing them to catch and correct problems earlier in the process, when fixes aren't as complicated (or expensive) to achieve. It also allows the organization's staff to become used to the process. The idea is that by practicing these responses, should the event actually occur, staff will have "experienced" the situation often enough to not panic.

Unfortunately, America generally does not begin planning for a disaster until after the disaster has occurred. Shortly after 9-11, Bush administration officials said "no one had considered the possibility of intentionally crashing planes into buildings," despite the fact that merely 60 years earlier, the Japanese had done almost the same thing, with their kamikaze pilots intentionally flying their aircraft into Allied vessels in the Pacific. Plus, Tom Clancy's 1994 novel, Debt of Honor, ended with a Japanese pilot intentionally crashing his 747 into the Capitol Building during the State of the Union address... a full seven years before 9-11. And it was already proven that planes collided with buildings: in 1945, a B-25 bomber, enveloped in dense fog, crashed into the Empire State Building in New York City.

Rick Rescorla, whom I have mentioned before, was British-born, and had experience in both the British and United States military, plus police experience in Rhodesia and London, before becoming director of security for Morgan Stanley. After the destruction of Pan Am Flight 93 over Lockerbee, Scotland, in 1988, Rescorla became interested in terrorism, and asked a friend with extensive training in the field to examine the (then) Dean Witter offices at the World Trade Center. The friend said the most likely spot for a terrorist attack was in the basement of the building, in the parking garage. Five years later, Islamic fundamentalists parked a truck full of explosives next to a main bearing column and detonated it.

After the botched response to the 1993 WTC attack, Rescorla decided to institute a series of regular evacuation drills, feeling that lost productivity and lost income was far less important than ensuring the safety of the Morgan Stanley employees. Of the 3,700 Morgan Stanley employees at WTC on 9-11, only six perished: Rescorla and five other security staff who were helping other tenants escape.

His recurring drills were key to the Morgan Stanley staff keeping their wits about them as they evacuated, despite announcements from the Port Authority that the buildings were safe and no evacuation was necessary.

Drills work, but they have to be accomplished appropriately.

I was going through some on-line FEMA training, and ran across this little gem on disaster response:

Where State, tribal, or local governments are unable to establish or maintain an effective incident command structure due to catastrophic conditions, the Federal Government, at the direction of the Secretary of Homeland Security, may establish a unified command structure, led by the Unified Coordination Group (UCG), to save lives, protect property, maintain operation of critical infrastructure/key resources (CIKR), contain the event, and protect national security. The Federal Government shall transition to its role of coordinating and supporting the State, tribal, or local government when they are capable of reestablishing their incident command.1

This would be the same Department of Homeland Security that is currently running American concentration camps, demanding papers from citizens with dark skins, and arresting Americans for leaving water in the desert for people seeking a new life in the "land of the free [hah] and the home of the draft dod-- err, brave." The same DHS that has ALL the Federal law enforcement except the FBI. The same DHS whose CBP goons were sharing viciously racist posts on at least one FB group, and whose management investigated those posts... and did nothing.

Maybe I'm overly-paranoid when it comes to der trumpenfuhrer, but I can see him and his playmates declaring a "national emergency" that would "require" suspension of the Constitution.



1. IS-830, Introduction to NRF Incident Annexes, https://training.fema.gov/is/courseoverview.aspx?code=IS-830, retrieved 07-07-19

God, I WISH This Had been True.....

Saw this on the Internet yesterday, and -- as we all know -- "you can't put it on the Internet if it isn't true."

"Rand Paul is a f*****g idiot," says Delaware Gov. Jack Markell, whose tiny state sits astride a hurricane zone. "The federal government, by pooling resources and exploiting economies of scale, can do disaster relief more efficiently the individual states alone.

"If this arrogant douchebag got his head out of Ayn Rand's ass long enough to see two feet in front of him, maybe he'd understand how important this work is."

This was the tail end of a story about ole Rand going off on one of his favorite hobby horses, the evil FEMA.

"I suppose people need help in times like these. And if individual states want to set up disaster relief agencies, that's fine. But why should taxpayers in other states be forced to pay? Kentucky doesn't have earthquakes. Kentucky doesn't have hurricanes. Kentucky doesn't have tornadoes, I don't think. So why are we footing the bill for this stuff?"

Of course, Rand isn't the only one bemoaning the fact the FEMA helps the poor as well as the rich:

Republicans have long had an interest in disbanding FEMA, an agency that most Americans believe fulfills a necessary role of government. Presidential nominee Mitt Romney famously said he wanted to "eliminate" the agency before reversing himself following a public furor.

But, alas, it's from the Daily Currant.*

Now, why would I wish something like this were true? Because think of the good times we could have jumping on poor dumb ol' Rand (and who names his kid Rand, for that matter?)

Not to mention the fact that SOMEONE needs to use "Markell's" words... only for real.





*Note to WND, Limpdick, and company: The Daily Currant is a satire site.**

** That means it's not real, it's made up.***

*** Like your "mandates."

Well, Duh....

The AP is reporting that New York-area Congresscritters -- from both sides of the aisle -- are furious that Boehner let the House skip out without voting on a bill to provide relief to victims of Hurricane Sandy:

In remarks on the House floor, [Republican Representative Peter] King called the decision ‘‘absolutely inexcusable, absolutely indefensible. We cannot just walk away from our responsibilities.’’

Well, duh.

Given the rethuglican's proclivity to shaft everyone else on earth in pursuit of their own agenda of no taxes for the rich, and their insistence on eliminating any semblance of Federal aid for anything or anyone, it should come as no surprise that the "Party of No" said "no" to relief for the devastated areas.



Another Republican had this to say:

‘‘I'm here tonight saying to myself for the first time that I'm not proud of the decision my team has made,’’ said Rep. Michael Grimm, R-N.Y. ‘‘It is the wrong decision, and I’ m going to be respectful and ask that the speaker reconsider his decision. Because it’s not about politics, it’s about human lives.’’

Well, Mikey, in your party, it is about politics. It's always about politics.

PTS Sandy

Now that PTS (Post-Tropical Storm) Sandy has come and gone, let's see what's going on. Here in Mid Coast Maine, we came through it fairly well. Lot of power outages due to trees taking down wires, some coastal and low-lying flooding, but we were quite lucky.

Further south, both Jurassic Pork and Michael Morse seem to have come through it okay. Heading down into NYC, things aren't so good.

NBC Nightly news had a story from Staten Island, where the Borough President James Molinaro lit into the American Red Cross. Molinaro is incensed at the fact that three days after Sandy, there still has been no Red Cross presence on the Island (I am assuming there are some local volunteers there who have been trying, but I'm sure they're totally overwhelmed and shell-shocked).

Flooded subway tunnels, PATH tunnels, road tunnels, underground electrical networks, all sorts of problems in southern Manhattan (which is all built on 400 years of landfill activity).

New Jersey got hit even worse. But Governor Christie seems to have realized that we DO need a Federal government to handle disaster relief. When it was states like Florida and Texas and Montana, Christie seemed to agree with Romney about abolishing -- or at least gutting -- FEMA and leaving it to the states:



But now Christie appears to be moving toward the reality-based community:



After seeing his response to the storm, and to Romney's attempts to politicize the disaster, and Obama's attempts to mitigate the disaster, I might almost have to start respecting they guy.

Then, of course, there was Romney's campaign rally relief supply collection drive, which collected the $5000 worth of stuff his staff bought at Wally World, and the three cans of Spam donated by his followers, which the Red Cross now has to deal with, instead of sending folks to Staten Island...



And Mitt feels our pain, from when he had to clean the football field after the big game.