John Pennington, director of the Snohomish County Department of Emergency Management, provided his experiences, which he read from the text below. His comments are provided with no edits by me. It is long, but a first-hand account from his perspective. This was provided on the first day of the Washington State Emergency Management Association's annual conference held this year in Spokane.
OSO-SR 530 Speech, John Pennington
"At 10:45 on March 22nd, fully six months ago… and even after having stared down over 25 Stafford Act Disaster declarations and emergencies… I learned (along with most of you in this room) that smaller events can be catastrophic, national level, internationally focused, and personally impactful.
It is my intent this morning to not only give a brief overview of the events that unfolded that tragic morning and the ensuing 37 days that our county remained in the response phase… almost unparalleled amount of time in modern day emergency management… but also to delve into personal and professional recommendations for how we as a state and an evolving and emerging discipline (emergency management) move forward and capture many of the lessons learned from the tragedy.
Gratitude
I begin with deep and sincere gratitude… to you, to your jurisdictions, to those of you that stayed endlessly engaged or supported from the periphery. The amount of effort and devotion to supporting this very tragic moment in time will never be able to be sufficiently repaid or conveyed to you from me, from my department, and certainly from those impacted by the events that unfolded.
Over time, Snohomish County had built an emergency management system… a system that was tested and sturdy… though not infallible. You came to that system and helped it to successfully adapt to the requirements of this complex incident and by all accounts overcome some of the most significant challenges we will ever face.
Snohomish County and Snohomish County DEM forever remain grateful for what you did and how you supported us.
To the Incident Management Teams, Task Forces, Search Dogs, and Support Staff… without you, we would have failed, very simply stated. Without your effort and the science that drove the searches, the number 43 (100% recovered victims) could never have been achieved… not even remotely.
To Director Robert Ezelle and the staff of Washington State’s Emergency Management Division… you exceeded my greatest expectations and I know I speak on behalf of the entire WSEMA membership when I share with you how impressive your leadership was and has been… and how grateful we feel to have you and your team in place. You are in the process of successfully turning a mighty ship back into the wind for the betterment of all emergency management in Washington… and it was clearly demonstrated with support, compassion, resources, strategy, and perhaps most important a respect for the nature of the tragedy and the county and local entities that sought to manage it.
To our Adjutant General (TAG) Brett Dougherty, my sincere gratitude for your leadership and your support for any and all assets you could provide for our task. More important, however, I thank you for your “cover” of me as an emergency management professional and of emergency management in general when the media sought instant gratification in blame and the finger pointing. You not only defended me and our operations, you personally moved out and drew fire for us in defense of our entire profession as it attempted to perform its primary mission.
For our dedicated federal partners at FEMA and their support agencies… much the same… you not only brought to bear the support we needed as a state and local region, but you respectfully acknowledged your role and responsibilities in support of us and… above all… you made a difference. We are blessed in Washington State and in particular in Snohomish County to have FEMA Region 10 as neighbors, partners, and colleagues.
I was privileged to have been Region X’s Director leader during a very challenging tenure, as we (FEMA) sought to find our proper place in the post-911 world. And as the national elements of the media sought to ask the inevitable question/blame game of “Where’s FEMA?”… it was with a distinct pride that I conveyed to anyone that would listen that we have strong ties with you and that if you, the media, choose to beat up FEMA… then you beat up us as well. We are all, to a large extent, FEMA and are eternally grateful for the mission, the devotion, and the service you provide.
To my staff, 14 strong and visionary beyond my wildest imagination… you demonstrated above all else those things that matter most in time of crisis… not the foundation of emergency management, not the principles, not even the execution of our most relevant plans and procedures… you exhibited leadership when leadership was required and adaptation was a necessity. You did not carry the single flag of emergency management; you parceled into visible fragments and planted it in places not often reserved for traditional emergency management. You demonstrated a battle tested readiness in leadership that defines the future of emergency management… and I am proud to be your director.
What We Faced (and Why it Was Important to Never Forget)
As a department full of experienced EM professionals, seven previous Stafford Act disasters in only seven years, I readily admit that our internal staff has struggled to accept their successes… because they are focused on their weaknesses during the event.
As a leader among amazing leaders, it became incumbent upon me to get staff to “step back and grasp”… if even for a brief moment… what we had all just endured. The magnitude of the event and the challenges that our nominal staff overcame. I believe that placing into context the event you have collectively faced has a way of breaking down any post-disaster silos that may exist (mitigation or recovery or reimbursement) and help individuals and teams to re-focus on organizational healing…and that was what we really needed the most.
And so, for our staff… that context occurred recently. As we reflected, we began to understand what exactly we faced… critical things I believe should be shared with all emergency management leaders:
1) Deadliest landslide (mudslide) in the history of the United States. Kelso had the second largest in terms of impacted homes, but the SR 530 slide was deadly… a mass fatality incident that encapsulated every single Emergency Support Function (FULLY) from inception.
This incident was geographically small, geologically large, catastrophic by definition, and contained an intensity that we have never experienced before.
For just a moment, swerve back to our training and visually lay on top of the slide the ESF’s and how dramatically they were each engaged:
· ESF-1 Transportation (SR 530)
· ESF-2 Communications (Frontier… in the dark, Darrington without information)
· ESF-3 Public Works and Engineering (10 million cubic yards)
· ESF-4 Firefighting (IMT’s and coordinated support of endless fire service individuals, teams, and departments)
· ESF-5 EM and Coordination (A robust and experienced EOC challenged to its limits)
· ESF-6 Mass Care and Housing (for survivors, for families arriving, for shelter, for counseling)
· ESF-7 Resources and Resource Support (what do you need?)
· ESF-8 Public Health and Medical (For those searching, those remaining, the environment impacted)… with three tribes impacted.
· ESF-9 Search and Rescue
· ESF-10 Hazardous Materials (ESA and salmon and its impact to our native culture)
· ESF-11 Agriculture and Natural Resources (Parks, farms, Tribes)
· ESF-12 Energy
· ESF-13 Law Enforcement (including reunification of property, security of site)
· ESF-14 Long Term Recovery (not just beginning to think about it, but launching it while still in response… transitioning to recovery when it is difficult to set aside the search)
· ESF-15 Public Information (including the international angles, the social media, the priorities of your locals and weeklies, the construct of your JIS and JIC)
· ESF-20 Defense Support to Civilian Authorities (DCSA).
2) We faced the physical relocation and unprecedented mission re-assignment of our core staff and its strategic leadership.
i. My directive to staff was very simple… if you see a vacuum in leadership, anywhere and within any realm, fill that vacuum until an attorney tells you to stop. And we did.
ii. We were challenged, however, with still maintaining continuity, a common operating picture, and operational stability for everyone in the EOC… with dramatically limited staff. We had to, in effect, lean heavily on the “system” we had built and hoped that it would continue with others not only filling the seats but in some cases leading the EOC.
iii. In the process, and as director, I was not present in my own EOC but rather deployed to an Incident Command Post in Arlington (IMT’s, SCSO, and FEMA), staged for a week in Darrington (EOC and Recovery Focus), or attached in multiple forms to the Joint Information process that was rapidly developing. Each hour was indeed different, and I faced conflicting responsibilities and at times was simply unable to strategically lead the organization I had helped to build.
iv. My Deputy Director of 13 years (between FEMA Region 10 and Snohomish County DEM) officially retired one week in… and justifiably so.
v. My newly appointed director, Jason Biermann, had been tasked with building a workable system for EM and the IMT in Darrington… virtually placing him out of the loop with the EOC and department for the entire first week… but for what became one of the most critical and effective decisions we made during the incident.
vi. Our newest employee, Heather Kelly, six weeks on the job (though well known to me and because of her strong leadership skills) was appointed EOC manager over and above some of our remaining staff… without the benefit of full organizational knowledge, without benefit of having had a chance to build the web of support and trust internally with our well oiled DEM machine and the relationships that drive the success of our department. And, in the following weeks, she found herself appointed to be the DEM liaison to our newly established LTRO and effectively disengage from the traditional EM world for a period of nine months… with outstanding results.
3) We faced establishing and maintaining ownership of our own incident… on the constant vigil for mission creep or unintentional federal ownership of the incident. We monitored it daily not only for the county, the community of Oso, the city of Arlington, and the Town of Darrington… but we also monitored it for the Tulalip Tribe, the Stillaguamish Tribe, and for the Sauk-Suiattle Tribe.
4) We faced relatively new leadership team at the county and in the aftermath of high profile political turmoil… the resignation of a county leader and the transition into a new framework of leadership. John Lovick shined… he didn’t want to be Rudy Giuliani… he wanted to find his appropriate footing and did.
5) We faced a Mass Fatality Plan that existed but was nonetheless underutilized and not fully understood… the statutory roles and responsibilities needing real-time clarification (Family Assistance Centers versus Community Assistance Centers).
6) Logistics coordination with support from a host of individuals and agencies who each seemed to use a different resource ordering system.
7) We faced the attention and scrutiny of the media and the onslaught of public information demands. CNN, Al Jazeera, POTUS, Social Media needs.
i. You best understand the heightened media component of your incident when you feel your safest and most effective national interview is to Al Jazeera and not to traditional outlets including CNN and FOX News.
ii. We faced the dire need to control the tempo, tone and tenor of social media as much as was practicable… (Jim Sande example??)
8) We faced (as a staff) the coordination of 2,000 first responders and coordination support personnel. Approximately 1,700 of who were strangers in our Snohomish County house. And although the proverbial business cards had already been exchanged and the valued relationships had clearly already been established, there were strangers (welcome strangers) nonetheless.
9) I had tasked our internal EOC Call Center (staffed by an experienced MRC team) with reconciling the names and identities of the missing or unaccounted for… in essence transforming their traditional roles (Call center during floods or winter storms and on and on) into a very statutorily grey area for the purposes of getting a clearer picture and reconciling some of the pain that permeated the communities that were impacted.
10) We faced the largest and most complex post-disaster mitigation effort in state history… not in terms of dollars state-wide, but in the nature and requirements of the mitigation… the purchasing of homes and or property that in many cases did not exist and had simple no means of practical resolution within that process. In simpler terms, not many remaining clear titles or understanding of exactly how to find that “willing seller” when (in many cases) they did not survive the incident. Approximately $13 million dollars of mitigation monies that required immediate and dedicated attention… beginning from the moment that words Stafford Act declaration were announced.
11) We faced some decisions that although perfectly logical and tactically sound, occurred parallel to the operational construct we (EM) had created… not with any malice or ill will, but rather by statutory collision and good will and intent. But decisions that had to be reconciled in operation and reimbursement.
12) We face(d) the most complex reimbursement process in the history of the state… with PA interpretation stretched to its limits… encompassing the literally hundreds of agencies, organizations, and individuals that simply stepped up when asked … and even when not asked. We gladly and single handedly (as DEM), though, face the daily advocacy for reimbursement of your jurisdiction’s generous support and resources. Diana Rose in our office has been going NON-STOP since March 22nd, first as a Section Chief and then almost immediately corralling the fiscal issues that included the expenditures into the millions of dollars each day.
14)We faced executing a Long Term Recovery Office, conceptually designed over the previous two years in a LTR Framework… but because of the nature of the incident (including the rapid risk of economic damage to the isolated Town of Darrington) having to execute it almost immediately and with the full force of our County economic team.
As a department, within that LTRO, we faced the displacement of a critical member of our DEM team… someone who we knew (by design) would be gone from our department and part of a policy-centric LTRO for upwards of one year. Then… letting go of that incident for the purposes of merely letting it succeed.
15) Personal Emotional Impacts and pure physical limitations.
Not one person is immune to human emotion. Our staff and many of you were/are validating that fact…. I was personally impacted and remain so today. Those of you that I have known for going on two decades were impacted… and that human emotion takes its inevitable toll on those of us who offer the façade of the impenetrable and consummate professional. When staff did go home and closed the doors behind them to the world that was their family, those emotions rose to the surface… quickly and undeniably… we faced a professional tragedy with deeply personal impacts.
After examining, then, only a handful of the challenges we faced… many of which we overcame… how do we address the future of emergency management in Washington State? How do we best ensure that we repeat the successes, tweak the shortcomings, and outright kill the failures?
Where do we go from here? There could be two hundred recommendations from each person involved, but here are the six that I believe are 1) achievable and 2) matter most to the emergency management field.
1) Statewide System of Emergency Management
Foremost, we must examine who we are and ask the fundamental question of “Can we build a system of emergency management”? I think the short answer is yes…. And that we have the leadership and will at EMD and the Office of the Governor to accomplish that goal. The system we have had is built on aging principles and at times archaic statutes… in need of revision and overhaul. In this area alone I see great leadership from WSEMA, from the State, and to an extent with a buy-in of sorts from the federal government.
We must clarify for ourselves and for those we serve (the expectations) the critical differences between Incident Stabilization and Disaster Stabilization. In reality, the slide itself… the tactical operations and rescues... would naturally be addressed and to an extent resolved. It was a matter of quick and as affective as possible Incident Stabilization. But we, emergency management, were faced with the first week task of Disaster Stabilization. A wholly different animal and almost impossible task… simply reach back to the fullness of the incident and the Emergency Support Functions previously referenced… the degree to which they were involved. Our jobs as Emergency Management was not Incident Stabilization… it was to somehow grasp what happened, corral it as best as possible, and stabilize the enormity of the disaster.
We must find a way to educate and inform the public, the media, the elected officials, and those survivors or relatives of survivors of the difference in order to
1) work unimpeded and
2) face lessened scrutiny as we perform those duties.
Finally, within that “system” we must include in each jurisdiction a recovery framework not dissimilar from that the NDRF offers us… one that is executable at a moment’s notice. But most important, as Emergency Management leaders, we must train ourselves to be able t “let it go”… like a child going on a bus for the first day of kindergarten or off to college for the first time. Letting go of a disaster that you personally own and have investment in is difficult… and although we preach Recovery moving away from traditional emergency management, we must prepare ourselves and implement a solid transition to recovery plan… in order to minimize the chaos and the personal and emotional attachments to the disaster for those of us that lead.
Learn to let it go… you must.
2) Clarity in Statutory Responsibility
There must be clarity in statutory responsibility… not merely clarity of the local EM jurisdictions in their respective relationships to the state or tribes, but we must have undeniable clarity in the governing authorities of complex incidents… more than routine floods or winter events. More than during an earthquake. We must reconcile any existing conflicts between roles and responsibilities within our internal jurisdictions… not necessarily who is in charge, rather how and in what lane they are in charge and how does emergency management create an effective coordination umbrella for those aforementioned.
3) Regionalization
The concepts of EM regionalization must in some way be developed… and as I understand it I believe that they now are… in the early stages through the State and FEMA Regions. Without a thorough examination of regionalization… especially given the recent experiences of SR 530… I believe we face tremendous odds in overcoming any statewide or regional catastrophic incident.
The basic precept of Span of Control teaches us that we must re-think how we administer EM within a statewide system… and if it was as intense as we have all come to understand it with SR530, then try if you will to imagine how that will look within a Cascadia event or even the rupture of a multi-county interior seismic fault line.
It is, I believe, in our best interest to build our capabilities regionally, in some form or fashion… to practice what we effectively preach… that disasters have no boundaries or borders.
Is this going to be easy? No… we are not in charge of our elected officials or the legislature. But the SR 530 events give us a window of opportunity to boldly state that part of the answers lie in teamwork… regional teamwork that is more than theoretical or within the planning element. It should be at a point operational and built upon trust… and designed and pushed from the state downward and across.
If Oso (SR530) showed us that a localized and intense catastrophic incident can stretch every resource and asset in the state, then how can we expect to succeed when we are at a point all impacted simultaneously?
Strategically focused Emergency Management Assistance Teams (EMAT): Likewise, for EOC’s… I have a strengthening belief that similar to Incident Management Teams that deploy in a more tactical manner to the field… we should develop full blown Emergency Management Assistance Teams (Strategic) at the intra-state regional level that can deploy to other EOCs around the state as a team… trained and exercised in a statewide system and trusted by the receiving entity or jurisdiction. In short, helping any jurisdiction to have a readily available and mobile EM department at their disposal for a critical period of time.
Within that EMAT should exist one liaison whose sole function is the development of an internal EOC “Think Tank”… not a Policy, which focuses more on decisions rising above the domain of an EOC… rather a strategically focused, single Think Tank. A small group of individuals dedicated to the critical thinking required to address the overarching strategic needs of a large scale response and recovery incident. Emergency management leaders and elected officials, as well intended as they may be, will in those early stages be focused on reactionary decisions, media intensity, and the immediate needs of the community. Finding time to critically and strategically think must be ingrained into the process in a different manner than it currently is… we must embrace that we will need critical thinkers to assist us in our mission and that it will make a difference as the proverbial dominoes begin to fall.
4) Re-examination of Funding and Funding Strategy
This is age old but our approach must change to funding. We simply cannot ask with hand-out within the usual spheres and become reconciled to being pushed to the back of the public safety line in Olympia.
I contend that in as much as emergency management exists within the realm of public safety, so too is it a social science… perhaps even more so.
Emergency management is relevant to our diverse cultures and our societal fabric… and it often times can help prevent cultural collapse following disasters… our profession is becoming central to that discussion. So as we evolve in discipline, we must also evolve in our funding streams.
SR 530 was more to us more than just a coordinated approach to response and recovery… it showed to us the microcosm of cultures that exist in a 50 mile stretch of one highway and include 3 tribes, and salmon, and timber, and farming, and theatre and arts, and aviation, and history that no one ever imagined… but must be preserved and protected (before and after disaster strikes).
5) IMT-EOC interface
By all accounts, that interface is supposed to be simple… but the training is designed based on the assumptions that delegations of authorities are straightforward and from three county commissioners to an IMT of any size. Lost for the most part in that equation is how an incoming IMT will work or interface with an experienced or robust EOC… one with an established system for coordinating response and recovery.
This is more an issue I believe for EMI and the overarching curriculum coming out of the federal government and states… but it is a real issues that I believe we will face again and you will likely face outside of the wildfire arena.
More important, the integration of IMTs with our EOCs and emergency management (in general) is a fact that we must embrace for large scale events… if we are ill-prepared on either side (IMT or EOC), then we will face delayed response coordination and risk failure when the time calls.
6) Uniformity in Resource Ordering
In the end, SR530 response (in the EOC) became about Planning and Logistics… it was about resources. And therein was one of our greatest challenges… the aforementioned utilization of so many different systems for ordering and tracking resources.
I readily admit that I believe there are places where home rule matters and we can and should do whatever we choose at the local level… HOWEVER… I believe that we as a state would benefit from a single system of resource management that is in effect provided and mandated from the state… I am not too proud and neither is our county to follow the lead and direction of the state when it makes sense. This one makes sense.
Conclusion:
I hope that we never again as professionals, peers, friends, have to face the type of incident we faced in March. I hope our careers are filled with forward thinking planning and routine responses to floods and small fires. I hope that we never have to stand up another long term recovery office. And I pray that people will never again die because of a landslide…
But we know that our reality is much different… and we will face those disasters again. It may be similar to the 530 Slide… but the chances are that it will not.
SR 530, at least to me, gives us a glance into what localized catastrophe really looks like… but only that… a glance. It tempts us with our limited successes and yet somehow focuses us on what we believe we can do better. I stand here 6 months later with what I believe is an achievable and reasonable list of 6 items that can help us to transform emergency management as we move forward.
It is with deep gratitude and humility that I thank you for your assistance, your patience, and your leadership."
