Performance measurement in emergency management is difficult to achieve. The event can always be worst than the capability you were seeking to accomplish and operational readiness is difficult to obtain and even harder to maintain.
The story, Emergency response to Metrorail crash shows post-9/11 gains got me thinking about this. Was this a good test of post 9/11 systems that were put into place? To answer that I'd have to know how the money was spent in the jurisdictions involved in the disaster response and assess if the funds applied to the jurisdictions made a difference.
The reporter turned to a former Bush White House staffer for his assessment. I'm not sure that even with an EMT background Daniel Kaniewski , who was quoted in the article, could accurately make an assessment by listening to a radio scanner.
My "guess" is that this was declared a mass casualty event early on and that kicked in the inter- jurisdictional response plan that has been in place for some time. Mutual aid resources flowing per SOP.
I did note that there was some conflict between the Metro and the Mayor of D.C. Another guess is that they both established a public information response team, maybe even calling it a Joint Information Center ( JIC ), but as noted, there wasn't much " jointness " about the public information response.
Another lesson learned is about speculating on deaths. Let the medical examiner be the one to pronounce the number of deaths. He has the bodies, or body parts. Everyone always seems to get it wrong when they are not the ones putting the toe tag on the body.
Tom Antush shared the Christian Science Monitor story with us.
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The story, Emergency response to Metrorail crash shows post-9/11 gains got me thinking about this. Was this a good test of post 9/11 systems that were put into place? To answer that I'd have to know how the money was spent in the jurisdictions involved in the disaster response and assess if the funds applied to the jurisdictions made a difference.
The reporter turned to a former Bush White House staffer for his assessment. I'm not sure that even with an EMT background Daniel Kaniewski , who was quoted in the article, could accurately make an assessment by listening to a radio scanner.
My "guess" is that this was declared a mass casualty event early on and that kicked in the inter- jurisdictional response plan that has been in place for some time. Mutual aid resources flowing per SOP.
I did note that there was some conflict between the Metro and the Mayor of D.C. Another guess is that they both established a public information response team, maybe even calling it a Joint Information Center ( JIC ), but as noted, there wasn't much " jointness " about the public information response.
Another lesson learned is about speculating on deaths. Let the medical examiner be the one to pronounce the number of deaths. He has the bodies, or body parts. Everyone always seems to get it wrong when they are not the ones putting the toe tag on the body.
Tom Antush shared the Christian Science Monitor story with us.
