 In 1996, the Emergency Management Assistance Compact was established. Since then it's been tested many times and stands today as the cornerstone of mutual aid throughout the country. Today we'll take a look at the EMAC and show how it allows for a quick response to disasters on this edition of Live Response. The Emergency Management Assistance Compact, or EMAC, is a mutual aid agreement and partnership between states. It exists because all states share a common enemy, the threat of disaster. Whether it's hurricanes, wildfires, chemical incidents or terrorist attack, EMAC is there, the cornerstone of mutual aid. The U.S. Congress ratified EMAC in 1996. It became Public Law 104-321. But not just anybody can be a member. It literally takes an act of Congress. So far, 50 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands have all enacted legislation to become EMAC members. It's just the old concept, I think, of neighbor-helping-neighbor. This is really taking it, I think, to the nth degree. Leon Schaefer has been an emergency manager on the state and local levels for 30 years. Now he heads up EMAC as its senior advisor. Talk about the mission of EMAC. Well, the mission is very plain. The whole attempt of mutual aid is to encourage the member states to identify, first of all, all of the available assets within their state jurisdictions, local political subdivisions, volunteer organizations, other types of assets, resources that are available. Legally they can be used to benefit the public welfare when they are at risk or suffering from any type of natural disaster. EMAC is administered by NEMA, the National Emergency Management Association, which provides the day-to-day support and technical assistance. During an emergency, NEMA staff and EMAC member states work together to make sure there's a smooth relay of information during relief efforts. Even with a well-defined government structure in place, if you're a member state, you have certain responsibilities. After the governor signs the compact into law, you must make sure you have an internal procedure set up to receive an alert 24-7. You must have internal plans in place to request or deploy resources, and your job doesn't stop there. Then we ask that they train up and keep a cadre of at least two to four people on board all times who are completely capable of performing the responsibilities and duties of the advanced team or the A-team, either within their own state or to be deployed out of state if they happen to be called upon to do that. Now, the federal government can provide a lot of the hardware pieces. They can bring in the big generators. They can bring in other things to support or rebuild or reconstruct the infrastructure. They can do a lot of things for meeting people needs. What we'll find at EMAC is the biggest asset there is skilled people. Those skilled people were put to work in 2004, when EMAC showed its value in what was then the largest deployment of state-to-state mutual aid in history. In response to hurricanes Charlie, Francis, Ivan, and Jean, a relief effort that lasted 85 days. Last year, Hurricane Katrina and then Rita hit the Gulf Coast states. Louisiana and Mississippi most notably, but its effects are still far-reaching. Konstantin Michael Kaminski is in charge of hurricane preparedness exercises for the Office of Grants and Training under the Department of Homeland Security. EMAC is the lead planner for the tabletop exercises meant, among other things, to provide a form to consolidate lessons learned from the 2005 hurricane season. EMAC is a regional collaborative and mutual aid activity. And under NIMS and under the National Response Plan, mutual aid and resource management are very key components. From what the exercises do and reinforces that, we have the EMAC representatives because the EMAC representatives should be attending and will be attending our exercises within the regions from the various states that are half-compact with one another. I think the beauty of the system and the process is that it's the commitment of all the member states to provide and step up to the plate and provide whatever type of skill people they have in their employ to make EMAC work. For one, this is Live Response and I'm Al Rochelle. We're coming to you live from the facilities of the National Terrorism Preparedness Institute at St. Petersburg College in St. Petersburg, Florida. Live Response is brought to you by the National Terrorism Preparedness Institute at St. Pete College and is sponsored by the Department of Homeland Security, Preparedness Directorates, Office of Grants and Training and their Preparedness Network. Live Response is also an interactive program and, as always, our television and online viewing participants can be a part of this discussion by calling our toll-free number. We're going to give you to now and throughout the program, it's 1-888-870-3000, or if you'd rather faxes your questions shy to be on the telephone, you can call us at 727 with your fax 341-4141. Those numbers will be displayed throughout our program. That's a great opportunity to interact with today's panel of experts. We hope you take advantage of that. All right, time to get started by introducing our guests. First I'd like to introduce Jerry Ostendorf. Mr. Ostendorf is the Iowa Department of Homeland Security Bureau Chief. His primary responsibilities include implementing Homeland Security policies and procedures, Emergency Management Assistance Compact Activations, and the Federal Response Plan Coordination with federal partners. Next we have David Maxwell, Deputy Director, Arkansas Department of Emergency Management. Mr. Maxwell is currently the Deputy Director of the Arkansas Department of Emergency Management. His responsibilities have included ensuring that the State Emergency Operations Plan, along with local jurisdictional plans, were maintained and in compliance with state and federal guidelines. Next we have Lisa Saunders. Ms. Saunders is the Public Education Specialist and Public Information Officer for the City of Port Orange, Florida. She coordinated local resources through EMAC for various cities in Florida during recovery efforts from Hurricane Katrina. And finally we have Kim Ketterhagen. Mr. Ketterhagen is the State of Minnesota Emergency Management Assistance Compact Coordinator. His responsibilities include the coordination of the State's mutual aid response at a regional and national level. Yes, thank you so much for being here. And as they say, we shall start at the very beginning, which is some kind of definition of what exactly EMAC is. Lisa, I'll turn to you. EMAC is actually the acronym for Emergency Management Assistance Compact. Okay. And how long has this organization been around? Well, it dates back to the inception of it, 1992, when Hurricane Andrew struck South Florida. Basically, Governor Lawton Chiles was not satisfied with the FEMA response and thought additional resources needed to be pooled in order to respond to disasters of that magnitude. So he approached the Southern Governors Association and they got together and basically worked out a basic framework. And I'm going to defer to Dave, who was there for that inception. We put together with attorneys from the Southern Governors Association states, Emergency Management people, National Guard Bureau representatives, worked out the articles that needed to be in the Compact. And as it was enacted by the Federal Congress giving permission for the Compact, each state then had to pass similar legislation to become members of the Compact. Now, this is kind of interesting because this was the states getting together and showing the federal government this is the way to do it, but why did it take until 1992 for us to figure out that this was a good way to work, given that we've used mutual assistance PACs with state and local government? Well, there's been a number of Compacts that have existed through the years, but I think Governor Chiles saw that there were ways to improve and by being able to have in place legal barriers taken care of such as liability, workers comp, reimbursement, all those kind of issues in advance, EMAC has really made things a lot easier to share resources across state lines. Kim, if you had to paraphrase it in one word, one sentence rather, what do you think is the main mission of EMAC? Neighbors helping neighbors. That's truly the basic mission of EMAC. It's a way to facilitate the movement of resources, but it truly boils down to neighbors helping neighbors and states helping states. Now, has everybody signed on to this right now and did it take a while to get people signed up? Well, it started in 1997, the actual signature part of it, and now as of this week, all 50 states are part of the Compact now, including three territories. Now, do I ask, were some states reluctant to get on board? I can think of some larger states that may not have wanted to be a part of it. Yeah, I think historically what we saw were California, New York, some of the larger states like that were a little reluctant thinking they were going to have to provide resources all the time, but what we saw back in 9-11 is that New York needed help, and so they joined the EMAC community, if you will, so we could send in resources. I believe they passed that emergency legislation on September 17th, and that did speed up the ability of more timely resources from other states, in addition to the federal response resources. California wanted to help for Katrina, so they passed EMAC, and so they provided a lot of good resources into Louisiana and Mississippi. Let me understand about it, because this is one thing I want to make sure that our audience, our viewers understanding, where does the federal government get involved with EMAC? Is it responsible for providing you money to buy these supplies, or do the states just buy these supplies anyway? Well, generally it's not supplies. We found through the years in using EMAC that some equipment, but a lot of people, expertise that's being moved from one state to another. Federal government, it is a state to state agreement, so to some degree the federal government isn't involved at all, but FEMA has awarded a grant some years back to help administer EMAC. EMAC is kind of unique in that the other compacts were just passed, and they lay there. There's actually a body of people that work on EMAC day in and day out, and to ensure that it's ready and able to function. And I guess as the piece that we opened up with shows is that this also includes people that are in a decision making capability 24 hours a day, and they are the ones that are capable of making that decision to say, well, let's go, right? Exactly. And I think that's where I think we've been successful is because EMAC is actually piggybacked on the existing emergency management system, where we do have people available 24-7 that are operational folks that have some decision making authority to decide whether or not we need to activate EMAC in an impacted state. And the trigger for that is the Governor's Steady Emergency Proclamation. That is what has to be in place before any EMAC resources can be deployed from a providing state into an impacted state. And yet we don't have to wait for a presidential declaration because oftentimes that not only takes days, but there are different criteria that are required. Exactly. We really try and educate the EMAC community out there that presidential disaster declarations should not have any bearing on the types and the dollar amounts of the EMAC resources being deployed into the state. If they need those resources in that state, the Governor and the State Emergency Management EMAC Authorized Rep have got the authority to deploy those resources in and then go to the Executive Council to get that emergency funding out of the state coffers. Now is this one of these programs that I'm in regular the news business and I didn't hear a lot about these things that even though they existed until we sat down and had our discussions here, is the word out that the states are really cooperating this well and they're ready to step in even before FEMA or the federal government does? I think so. I know in several the after-action reviews that Congress has done and other have done after Katrina for example, EMAC has constantly been cited as one of the really bright spots, one of the things that worked real well in Katrina. Kim, let me ask you, some benefits of EMAC and the system and how does it work? What are the benefits we can talk about? Well I think one of the basic benefits is its simplicity, it's a very simple system to use, you know there's not a lot of government bureaucracy that goes along with it. Being so simple to use, it's very effective and you can use it for most any type of emergency. It's an all hazards tool that's in the toolbox every one of us throughout all the states in the country. Now I guess the newsman in me says, now wait a minute, how do you determine that the monetary value of these resources you're going to request and how do you know that one of the states might not try to take advantage of the other state and up the price of their resource? Now there's multiple safeguards in place to make sure that there is no gouging that goes on, but you know each state knows what their resources are and what those resources are worth and that's what truly we move from state to state is the value of the resource that's being requested and nothing more, nothing less and you know and I think that is the safeguard that keeps it for there is no monetary gouging to it. And we're talking about a very quick response, Lisa for example in Florida we responded very quickly to the folks in Louisiana and Mississippi. Yes, one of the great things about EMAC is that it doesn't have to necessarily be a resource that doesn't come from the local level or from an organization it just has to be put into the system through your state EOC and work it that way so we were able to use cities that weren't impacted from our hurricanes or our storms get those people together work through the EMAC system and provide support to a neighboring state. Now what does it take to get this thing going because I can envision bureaucracy as some people see it as well they're going to give you a contract that's 50 pages long and you won't get it until three or four days into the process how simple is it? It can be as simple as eight and a half by ten piece of paper that's a requisition A and we abbreviated it for a recase when we reference a recay that is actually the binding contract between the providing state and the impacted state once the authorized representative as designated by the governor as stated in the law there are 13 articles in the laws that we have passed in these 50 states so that it's that simple and the trigger with the governor's proclamation and that's in our state good for 30 days. What's key about I believe the EMAC article a couple of them is that there's a legal foundation that allows us to be able to address workers comp death benefits sure things like that and then we also have a reimbursement article in there so that after the response is done we can pay everybody back that provided assistance in that state. David if you would walk me through the process of how this actually works in practicality. Well it all starts as Jerry said with that governor declaring a disaster then a couple things can happen either the impacted state themselves puts out a message over the system are they asked for an A team to come in to assist them and brokering the resources they request an A team and advanced team they would come into the the assist or the requesting state's EOC and kind of broker all of the states other states resources to handle take that burden off of the requesting state. Now when we say brokering this is apparently all done before you get in the heat of the battle correct. A lot of times I think the emergency management family around the nation understands what Arkansas may have as far as specialized teams search and rescue for example or disaster medical assistance teams so we we do communicate we do have kind of a database of things that have been provided in the past we do know where those came from we can look at calling upon those in the future. And are you likely to get more resources from the state immediately adjacent to you or because I heard a story about how in Indiana for example they were offering assistance to Biloxi Mississippi very specifically and apparently chose that that area because they've been getting a lot of requests so is it usually the closest neighboring state that offers assistance. Usually we look at the closest neighboring state because time and distance we need the resource now you know so to take resources that are from a long distance of course we run into a time problem there so if we move resources that are closest to the impacted state as we can and then fan out across the state the rest of the United States as we need it bringing those resources and one complimenting the other and it's truly a tier response. What if you don't have something that the neighboring state needs and or you have a large population you're afraid if you give away too many of your resources right now you couldn't get burned down the season I'm thinking of how long hurricane season is in Florida which is forever it seems like Lisa. You don't have to supply the resources to a requesting state if you need them for yourself it's basically what you can provide you provide. All right our discussion is going to continue but we just like to remind you that St. Petersburg College also issues what are called continuing education units or CEUs for live response for those programs if you'd like to register for those CEUs we make it very simple go to the NTPI website and you click on the continuing education units link under training and that link will take you through the registration process and the login process now after your login you'll be able to view program videos take the program exam and fill out an evaluation form and with an exam grade of 75% or better you will immediately receive an online CEU certificate also after viewing live response please complete a viewer evaluation of the program because your input and comments are very important to us. Now let's take a look at what's coming up in our next ComNet program. The next ComNet program the School of Criminal Justice at Michigan State University offers a course designed to help law enforcement agencies sustain their intelligence ability. Susanna Balon traveled to Spokane Washington to find out about this unique grants and training sponsored course. The Advanced Chemical Biological Integrated Response course is focused on chemical and biological detection, signature and sampling. David Clue visited Dugway Proving Ground and talked to instructors and participants about this comprehensive course. In the event of a bioterrorism incident public health workers will need to know how to effectively manage and distribute much needed medical supplies. Stacey Phillips attended the BioShield 2006 exercise in Florida to find out more about how the strategic national stockpile and its points of distribution can prepare communities for pharmaceutical distribution. The Nebraska Medical Center is leading the way in bioterrorism preparedness with its biocontainment unit. Diane Roberts traveled to Omaha Nebraska and toured this one-of-a-kind 10-bed unit set up to handle highly contagious and deadly infectious conditions. Comnet airs Wednesday, June 28th at 2 p.m. Eastern. For more information, make sure to register online at terrorism.spcollege.edu. This is an interactive program and we welcome you back and encourage you to participate. Again, you at home can be a part of this discussion by calling our number. It should be on the screen right below me right now, 1-888-870-3000, or you can ask your questions to us at 727-341-4141. Just giving you a reminder, if you've got questions, do it early on in the program because if you wait to the end, you may not be able to get through. Well, generally speaking, the emergency management assistance compact works because the members are passionate about the advances that it has made in mutual aid. EMC can be used for any capability one member state has that can be shared with another member state. So long as there is a governor declared state of emergency, EMAC can be called to action and used. Well, each state, of course, as you said, they have to legislate it in the law and the governor's have to sign it in the law. And once that's done, each state has to make sure that they have internal procedures in place to be able to receive alerts from the National Coordination Group on a 24-7 basis. Anytime there's a request that goes out indicating that there may be a need to activate the system and enable the process, then we want to be certain that those authorized representatives in each of the member states are being given that information immediately to take under advisement. The second thing, of course, is that we have internal plans to be able to either request or be able to deploy resources under EMAC on a very fast basis. So there's a lot of preparedness requirements before the fact to be able to put that in place. And then we ask that they train up and keep a cadre of at least two to four people on board all times who are completely capable of performing the responsibilities and duties of the advanced team or the A team, either within their own state or to be deployed out of state if they happen to be called upon to do that particular function. One thing that we have seen stressed in these first two segments that we're talking about in our program has been this need for the governor to declare a state of emergency. And I just like to ask why is that so important? And why is that the triggering mechanism? Because as you remember, when Katrina went through, there were people saying, well, governors of these particular states didn't ask for help, but they did. Why is that so important, the governor to declare? Well, what it's done is actually been tied into the emergency management law in each of the states. And there are certain rules and regulations that can be waived that the governor has the authority to do if it does hinder public safety response. So in that same code for each of those states that have passed the EMAC articles is where that resides. So you can declare and deploy EMAC resources. And then that will allow you then to cover the workers comp, the liability, the death benefits. If you didn't do that, there would be some high risk there. If something did happen, it would not be covered by law. Because there was actually a lot of discussion that the storms were so bad in Mississippi and Louisiana that there really wasn't anybody there to make the call, because there was so much devastation and taking place. Yeah. And I think that one of the good lessons learned out of that piece of it is we could have probably brought in a lot more EMAC resources, but they were struggling with the incident command structure. And so I think in the future, what we're going to encourage states that get impacted that heavily is to bring in incident management teams to support the local and the state incident command system so that you can bring in more resources. And you got the people that are experienced to manage those resources. So EMAC doesn't manage the resources. We get them at the request of the governor through that designated rep. And once they get into that state, they are managed by the local and state officials that need them for that mission. And the local folks are the ones that know better than anybody else what needs to be done. David, walk me through this now. If you're a member of EMAC, which now we know that all 50 states are, what are the roles and responsibilities that that state has to cover? Well, I boil it down to a couple real simple things. One, you have to supply the requested resources if you at all can. As a member state, you have that responsibility. The other is that you maintain that authorized contact and the designated contact so that you can operate within your state and and provide the assistance or request the assistance is needed. Also having trained people on staff ready to go to either go out as an 18 person or are to do EMAC work in your state. Now, does that mean states that are adjacent to, let's say the southeastern Gulf Coast region? Again, I'm relating most of this to hurricane damage. Does that mean like like an Arkansas has to have more people on staff ready just in case something like that happens to the south of them and they need to send people? No, not really. You know, we all of us have the staff that we have and so we we deal with that as we can. You know, it's one of the benefits of EMAC is that for states that aren't impacted by their own disasters very often, it's a great way to keep your staff sharp, well trained, send them into another state's disaster really. Now relating back to again what happened with Katrina again, I'm relating a story that I heard that I'll mention it again. Indianapolis sent a number of their people down to Biloxi. They picked a state. Would Minnesota do that same kind of thing and thinking about what regions would we be more likely to need help and to try to identify what you could do for obviously would be something like Wisconsin or Iowa or the Dakotas with severe thunderstorms, tornadoes, ice storms? Well, the EMAC system is set up in a regional system somewhat for organizational purposes. We have that mirror also the FEMA regions. So as well, we, you know, we look within our own region or the interregional response capability, but not necessarily we're able to reach out anywhere in the country. All the EMAC states are able to do that. You know, unfortunately, some areas are more prone to catastrophic events. And you know, and I think Al, that's truly the point is that we have to keep remembering that EMAC is a tool to be used at large incidences. And that goes back to the question you had asked earlier is what, you know, why have this governor's declaration? And an answer really is that that is that we're not using EMAC as a local tool. It's an interstate response tool. And I think because of that, we have the capability of responding and being prepared nationally. So if the average person sitting around at home watching TV sees a disaster recur, I guess the natural inflation is to think, well, it's local, and then the feds come in like the Calvary coming in at the end. But in reality, it is the states that are pouring in their resources to begin with. Lisa, again, I'm thinking about what Florida did for Mississippi and Alabama. That's true. But one of the great things about EMAC is it works in conjunction with the federal response, not against it. So it doesn't replace federal aid, but they kind of move parallel to each other in the sense that the state EOC manages the incidents. They know that they're going to need resources and they know what resources they can get through EMAC, through those contacts that they've made ahead of time. But they also have the opportunity, if they wish, to go through the federal through FEMA as well. So it happens simultaneously and seamlessly, which makes it work well. Is there kind of like a wish list someplace? Maybe not a wish list is not what I should say, but but a list that all of you states can look at and say, you know, here's the commonality between us. Here are the kind of supplies and kind of services that we're going to need in a big mass casualty incident that you work off of. I think training and getting those contacts in position prior to the disaster is the key with that. Basically, emergency management is a small community, even though it spans a great geographic region. And because we know each other from training repetitively, we also know what they have in their arsenal to offer us if we should need help. Disasters, though, can be different. If I'm thinking of in Minnesota, you probably in the middle of December wouldn't need 700 truckloads of ice to be shipped up in your direction. Nor would you guys want 700 truckloads of parkers coming down to Florida. But you're right. You know, you have to look at each disaster and its own makeup and what it consists of. And that brings the requirements to start mitigating that disaster's effects, depending on the disaster. We have to keep thinking, though, on this all hazards environment. You know, that EMAC is not just a hurricane catastrophic event, you know, response. It is an all hazards response. So I think, you know, and the thing with EMAC is it has proven itself in an all hazards environment over the years, from the space shuttle disaster to 9-11, to the multiple hurricanes, you know, to wildland fires through the whole thing. We have to keep remembering that. But why haven't we heard about EMAC before? And maybe I would just out of the loop completely, because again, thinking of the wildfire situation, all you thought about was wildfires, evacuations, rebuild it. I think that maybe because EMAC is mutual aid in its rawest form, I think that when you hear mutual aid, it should be synonymous with EMAC. You just have to understand that EMAC takes it a step further and just defines it, makes it neater. Now the reimbursement process is the second thing that kind of crosses my mind. How does that take place? I know you can say you negotiate a price before things get going, but let's say you're in the state of Louisiana, only using the minute example, they request help, but they don't realize we have such a horrid situation here, we may not be able to pay for the things that we've requested. Well, I think that the governor and the EMAC authorized a rep in those states need to understand that anytime they bring in EMAC resources, they are state-to-state responsible for those fair and reasonable costs. And that is identified actually on the REC-A, that 8 and a half by 10 cheetah paper, where the REC-A defines the cost, deployment duration, signed off by the EMAC authorized reps on the providing end and receiving state. Again, I think if they don't have sufficient funding, they're going to have to petition their state government to get that emergency funding in place, because bottom line is the EMAC resources are going to be needed to respond to the needs of the people, and we worry about the dollar amount after the response occurs. Now have you seen that in practicality though now when some people, has there been a situation where a state said we just don't know if we can pay for it? Has that ever happened yet? We've had that dialogue as before that resources deployed, and a lot of times then we'll say okay we will not charge you for labor for example, but we still want to do the REC-A and we'll probably put a zero amount for a dollar cost, but the REC-A has to be signed off on to have that liability coverage. Okay, now how do you not duplicate services, because I have this picture again in my mind of those 700 ice trucks that are sitting outside of the state of Louisiana and they can't get in because the roadways are closed, and I'm saying were there other trucks that were available, and how do you not duplicate services? Well I believe it's important to really adhere to the incident command structure and know who the players are at the federal, state, and local level. There are decision makers within that structure that can decide where the resources are coming from, whether it be from the private sector or through EMAC or through the national response plan. You've got a federal coordinating officer and the state coordinating officer that should manage those resources so you don't duplicate that effort or that product. Has it ever happened though you've had multiple duplications? Of course I use the word ever. Is there a worse word than that? Not that I know of. I mean there is that control mechanism of the REC-A, so you know exactly what you've signed off on to get, and I think the other real benefit to all of that is that it helps to prevent people from self-deploying. You get overloaded with people, good people that want to help, but with the REC-A's you know exactly what you're getting and what you've asked for. And probably brought out more dramatically than in New York when the 9-11 incident occurred. You had all these New Jersey firefighters showing up and they were ready to hook up their hoses to the hydrants and they couldn't because New York and New Jersey didn't have the same connectors, something that you would think would be so basic. Yeah, and I think that's very important because I think we've got a lot of resources in the private sector and in local government and they wanted to get engaged for Katrina and the pre-planning that needs to occur now so they can do it in the future is to make sure they work back through their professional association and that association should be in contact with the State Emergency Management Office. For example, we have disaster medical assistance teams. We bring in private doctors and nurses, local public health, state public health, other folks that are in the healthcare business to form this disaster medical assistance team. So you've got a county worker, a state worker, and then a private person. The law that we have on the books in a lot of states allows you to bring those people on temporarily as that state sponsored team and they become temporary state workers. So you can work the issues of workers comp, repayment in that whole thing. So that's a very important thing I think that people need to understand because there are kinds of resources out there that do need to be organized. Yeah, I think that's important too. It's almost any resources that you can think of whether it be private state government, local government, under the auspices of EMAC we can send them. And it's important for those folks that want to be involved and have resources to talk to their state's emergency management to find out where they fit into the whole system. I think each state really needs to take the time to look at what mechanism they have in place because it's truly different from state to state. Some states such in Minnesota we use intergovernmental agreements where we actually reach out to local, you know it's a government and make them deployable state resources. The other point I'd like to make I'll just on this topic right here is when we talk about brokering resources I don't want the impression to be out there that we're sitting down and haggling over 10 bucks here and 10 bucks there because we need resources and we need them now. We really when we brokered those resources through EMAC we're looking at the most appropriate resource that we can get that needs to be dispatched in its quickest time frame and that's really the brokering process. It's really not the money and I've heard that come back why are you guys so worried about the money? We're not, we're worried about applying the right resource to the right job. You know I don't think we've really described how the system works. There's an email system that we can reach out to all of those designated contacts all 50 states now and the territories with one email and request any resource. So you know we there's a mechanism in place to really coordinate that. All right we're going to continue on with our discussions but we'd also like to remind you that you can register for those online CEUs at our NTPI website. Also you can help ensure that we're meeting your learning needs by filling out one of those evaluation forms. To submit an evaluation of our program you go to our website the NTPI website and just click on the word evaluation. Pretty simple process. Now as we continue on while states are capable of managing most emergencies there are times when disasters exceed available resources and will require federal assistance. The strength of EMAC lies in its relationship with federal organizations states and counties along with its ability to move just about any resource from one location to another. Well EMAC is a state to state agreement to start with where federal support of course is is that asset that's being provided to the states at the request of the governors who've been affected. But EMAC is a state to state agreement and we operate very closely with FEMA always have been in a very seamless way to be able to try to provide resources to the affected state as quickly as we possibly can. With the experiences that we've had in the past we know that the federal government is going to be actively planning and actively engaged in a response activities but once again it's a local responsibility it's an individual responsibility a local responsibility the states have a responsibility to backfill and to support the locals if they're overwhelmed and then the federal government in that construct this also has a responsibility to be proactive in identifying and supporting both the states and locals as as things progress in the response scenario. All right as you know this is a live program that's why it's called live response we're interactive and we'd like to hear from you right now this is the time when you can get on your telephones to ask us any questions you'd like our number here is 1-888-703000 one more time 1-888-703000 or you can fax your questions to us at 727-341-4141 again the time to ask questions is now if we don't want to run out of time. All right gentlemen let's continue to talk now what I call the big picture and one of the things that I was thinking of that actually you mentioned Jerry just a couple of seconds ago if you live in one state and you're licensed to practice in that state what happens with your license if you're requested to go to another state and you're part of this EMAC agreement? Well I think that's a big issue that a lot of the health community folks have really been concerned about but I believe that EMAC and the laws that the 50 states have passed those articles one of the articles in that EMAC law does require for the reciprocity of professional licenses to go across state lines during that governor's state of emergency proclamation duration so there should not be any issues as it relates to professional licensures across state lines because we have deployed disaster medical assistance teams a couple of them to Florida in 2004 we did in 2005 as well so that system works the teams do work and their licenses do transfer and it's a valuable resource and I just don't want to see that EMAC resource get delayed just because people are questioning the licensure issue when in fact it's not We have a phone call right now Elizabeth where are you calling us from Elizabeth? I'm calling from Brooksville My question is last year my car didn't start I was evacuated by bus and they didn't allow me to take everything I needed I was set up allowed to set up my big bed and after the situation is over they just dropped me off my home without any utilities all being that I'm supposed to spend a nebulizer and no phone facilities what can this people help me out as far as this year is concerned is to be in a shelter Okay let's let the minister ask a suggestion in general local resources this is a woman who has a concern about who's responsible in the local resources and if this is part of the EMAC response as well well with respect to sheltering and what happens locally in terms of evacuation and stuff is really very local often counties are responsible for issuing those evacuation orders based on the information that they're getting from their state EUCs in terms of where EMAC would play and would be if where this woman was living if her area would couldn't handle the whatever the problem was and it expanded to the state and the state couldn't handle the problem then it would go through EMAC to receive resources that could help her and that certainly was a case in Louisiana because people ended up being transported to Texas a lot of people people went up to Atlanta and moved around and I guess that would probably could have also been kind of an EMAC responsibility let's let's talk about give me some more concrete examples now of how EMAC has been able to work and let's go back to the the hurricanes Rita and Katrina how specifically did EMAC work in those situations well I think Jerry probably has most experience with that since he was there yeah I was fortunate enough to be in the state emergent separation center pre-landfall I was there for what six seven days and as you can imagine the this event was catastrophic and there were a lot of resources needed a lot of states were offering them up search and rescue was a big one but one of the ones that I wanted to mention and a lot of times we think of these resources actually deploying from that state into the impacted state kind of in the impacted area but we did a EMAC rec A for what we call newborn screening all of the new babies that were being born in Louisiana still needed to have their blood tested for 10 diseases and the hygienic lab in New Orleans was actually destroyed because of the hurricane we did an EMAC actually with the hygienic lab folks in Iowa and they did it remotely 1200 miles away and provided that critical service so that those babies in the results of the blood tests could get back to the health care provider and treat that baby when they're 21 years of age they're standing up they're getting a diploma not in a diaper being mentally retarded so I think there's a quality of life thing that really was beneficial there providing that critical service that many miles away any other examples yeah in Florida we have a plethora of disasters and so we have many examples where we've used EMAC successfully and I think one of the benefits of EMAC is that you can be creative with it we used it during the 1998 wildfires to get an additional aircraft things too and during the hurricane Katrina we actually used private resources made those state assets and worked through the EMAC system so it's just limited by your own creativity in terms of what you can use for resources as long as you use the system properly and go through your state emergency management office I think that really any resource can be deployable through EMAC and again you go ahead I think one of the great successes was that partnership building between the public and private entities you know government reaching out working hand in hand with their private partners and I really saw that come to a great fruition with the last round of hurricanes you know building that partnership thus making us stronger now for this season that's starting very soon here but again I keep going back on this whole thing is we got to keep thinking of all hazards you know that this is just not a hurricane tool it's a tool for all seasons let's talk us a little bit about that because with a hurricane with a tornado with a flood these are defined events that occur that generally have a beginning and an end even though people in Louisiana would argue there's ever an end to it because you're always building what if we get a WMD event what if we're talking about radiation what if we're talking about chemical or bio and what do we do about bird flu well actually it's interesting that you mentioned the radiation just while we're talking today there's an exercise going on in the state of Washington that utilizes a dirty bomb as the part of the scenario emack is playing very heavily in that there's actually I think four different exercises going on one in as we speak one in Florida one in Louisiana and two in the state of Washington so getting a lot of good play right so the same format or template that you would call it for emack can be used in most circumstances but let me go on to the the one with bird flu and I'm not trying to get off on that but that's the one that people are talking about what about those kind of incidents or will emack still work the same because I know there's going to be a problem with medical providers wanting to go in there because if they go down then who's going to help the people yeah that that type of scenario we were I think around the nation all planning forward getting prepared for it as best we can there are a lot of unknowns there because we've really never experienced it in in in current society if you will but more than likely a lot of the emack resources that you think you could use may not be released by that state because they may need them for their own state and in their own protection one of the things that I I've thought about would be maybe the hygienic labs if if Florida for example was was hit the hardest with pandemic influenza and there were a lot of testing needed again we could probably do that off site in another state and another hygienic lab right because we have lab technician technicians available 24 seven relieve the burden from for them and also get the results back quicker so I think there are some applications as you really think about pandemic influenza for emack but we have to really all work through them and and brainstorm a little bit because we've not experienced it yeah and one thing I'm I'm curious about this feedback loop as well because everybody knows you can go through an exercise but if you don't have a good after action plan then maybe the effectiveness of your exercise is always in question what kind of mechanism do we have in place that we can learn from from what we did right and what we did wrong because believe it or not folks were human and sometimes we'll make mistakes Dave you want to well after every deployment emack has a after action review and Jerry you had mentioned the operations manual this might be a good time to talk about that that's basically the Bible for the emergency management assistance compact that is reviewed constantly updated as changes are needed to be made to it and you know after each each disaster we learn more we refine more it's a continual process of improvement yeah this Bible here I think is really important all of the states have got a standard operating procedure on how we deploy and manage and demobilize emack resources you've got your command and control structure here you've got 24-7 contact information in essence though this this document right here for Katrina and Rita deployed 65,000 personnel during that time frame at a cost of 829 million so it does work and this is our savior right here I believe well thought out plan and I think the success truly what that manual is that gives us uniformity you know to use the old cliche all 50 states are saying enough that same sheet of music here and because of that we are more effective with what we're trying to do we have a phone call Roger you're joining us from Spring Hill today what's your question for us yes thank you I am a member of my CERT team here in Wellington and I want to know is there a difference between CERT and emack yes okay and Lisa you got the answer right there what do you say yes CERT as you know stands for community emergency response team often your CERT is run through your local fire department local police department your local city that you live in CERT actually is a resource that perhaps could be used through emack maybe but emack is really a state mechanism by which resources that your state has can provide to another state all right we have another phone call that's coming to us and by the way thank you for your phone calls hope we can get as many answers as possible Russ where are you joining us from the day Effingham, Illinois Effingham, Illinois beautiful day after this afternoon I'm sure Russ what's your question well I'd like to know if emack has provisions or anything like that to require states to standardize the various forms you know like have standard use standard ICS forms my concern is going to another state would I be able to sit down and be familiar with the forms you're using I think a standardized forms would be great and I was just wondering if they were going to try to standardize those Jerry yeah I appreciate the question what we have to be concerned about or aware of is that emack again is a state-to-state agreement but each state maintains its own sovereignty and we can highly suggest that all states utilize the same ICS forms as they manage their resources so that there is continuity bringing people from out of state into the other state but I think is as you look at NIMS the National Incident Management System being facilitated by the Department of Homeland Security you may get to that point I know we're not there today but I think it's important to standardize those forms and we highly encourage everybody that's got teams and train them up in that arena so that we can be effective when we get there let me give you a plug to our phone numbers because we have a little more time in our program today 1-888-703,000 again that's 1-888-703,000 or if you'd like to faxes a question you can do that and we can get it on the air we still have a few minutes left in our program here at 727-341-4141 I'm not trying to step back but I just started thinking in my mind when we talk about EMAC what kind of specific resources are we talking about because now we've been talking in some generalities but what are we talking about we're talking about water are we talking about generators what are we talking about yeah I think everybody can help chime in on this because we all have a little bit different experience but you got search and rescue teams you got hazardous material teams you've got a lot of equipment in generators you may have some C-130s so you've got ground transportation our department of transportation for example has got a lot of semis we can haul a lot of stuff on and so a lot of search and rescue medical stuff was used to go into the New Orleans area to make sure that that environment was safe and they they recovered bodies and things like that too a lot of national guard troops national guard just provided untold number of people untold number of hours both to Mississippi and Louisiana I know we sent Arkansas state troopers state police ambulances you know really just about anything that that type that you can think of that we're only really limited by our imaginations one of the things that my city did through our state EMAC was we actually sent IT professionals over to Long Beach, Mississippi to help bring up their infrastructure so that they could financially get some things together and move forward we even sent people over there to help them fill out paperwork FEMA paperwork to show them what what they needed to do after a disaster so it could be something as simple as just a consultant to something as complex as a DMAT team you know added that diversity we sent down folks that were air traffic controllers air ramp controllers those types of things that help augment the response into the airport so we could bring in these resources and such you know it's really you name it it's available for anything from all the way down to sanitarians to air traffic controllers law enforcement you know fire across the whole board it's just not things it's people and things yeah I think a couple of other ones I was just thinking of too then now were building inspectors it was important to make sure that structure was safe before they went back into it environmental health folks because as you can imagine that water that got pulled there needed to be really assessed to make sure it was a safe environment so those are a couple of other ones too that we just thought of so and now we have another phone call is coming to us from the state of Minnesota Terry are you there I am and what's your question for us today my question is how do healthcare professionals get in contact with the DMAT people so that we can become an available resource okay Minnesota one I'll take that one okay I can answer we'll do a two-parter then real quickly you can contact your local DMAT each state well not each state but most states have DMATs that are already organized in Minnesota you would want to contact Dr. Hillman out of the Alina group he is the DMAT chair for that area or you can go to FEMA as well and FEMA can help you contact the proper DMAT people for your state and I think what we've done in Iowa anyway is we have encouraged all these healthcare providers doctors and nurses etc to actually contact our state department of public health because they're the lead agency for forming this DMAT team and that's how they get into the system now if for some reason they are not getting any progress or any benefits there then we have them call direct into our state emergency management office and they probably could go to your Minnesota emergency management website I would imagine absolutely you know we'll register your contact you know get you in the connection that you need to go with on that now we've heard a lot a lot of great success stories but but there was something that was brought up here that maybe we didn't strike on just enough is that there was some concern even when people were criticizing what happened in Louisiana Mississippi they said people were jokingly or non-jokingly said well you know what Walmart could have gotten all this stuff there because they have a a better transportation system how do you employ or use the resources of the private sector to help the public sector do a better job and since Walmart's right up your alley here yeah no I think it's a matter of talking yeah you've got to have those plans in place of how you're going to use the available resources and and if Walmart is there and has a store open we shouldn't be in the business government shouldn't be in the business of providing stuff from the government that people can go and get Lisa I guess Florida has something like that too yeah Florida uses public private ventures all the time with response to disasters or emergencies it's just very important that the details the details are worked out in a MOUs ahead of time so that both the public sector and the private sector are very well aware of what their role is going to be and what their responsibility is and to make sure that they work through the state EOC so there's not self-dispatching of any kind because it tends to create more problems than if they weren't dispatched at all and maybe just another reminder as we move into the hurricane season that the government your local people expect you and me to live on our own for at least 72 hours so we need to have those kinds of supplies available to us and there were some pretty horrific examples of people whose houses hadn't even been touched all of a sudden the first day showed up in the food line and the ice line when they probably had all the resources they need the future of EMAC where do we go from here Lisa start with you I think that we continue down that public private venture avenue and we also start working through our associations have those professional associations contact the state EOC and work through EMAC so that the EMAC representative in your state knows that you're there as a resource and to work through your association because individuals should not be calling the state EMAC officer trying to get on board as a resource it has to be through your professional organization okay Jerry well I think it's important for the people to understand that when we have a change of elected officials at the federal state or local level the concept of how we manage resources and how we respond to disasters to include emergency management assistance compact doesn't change that that system if you will and those people are always there so when we have a new official come in it's important to train them up so they understand our concept of operations to keep this thing intact absolutely David I think you've mentioned it you didn't know about EMAC we've got to get the word out there that what EMAC is what it does get into the the health care groups the the other groups that are are potential resources out there and make sure they understand how it works and what we need to do all right Kim I think we need to take it even to a more local level than what Dave says I think each state needs to be able to go out there and identify what they have and how they can apply it to EMAC and make sure that they're educated within their own states of what this is all about and how it works and we're going to be more effective that way all right great panel panel did a fabulous job audited a great job with your phone calls our next live response program will be coming your way on July the 19th at 2 p.m. Eastern the topic of discussion will be on the psychological impact of terrorism and of course ComNet will be coming to you June the 28th at 2 p.m. Eastern and be sure to register at terrorism.spcollege.edu we'd love to hear your feedback until next time I'm Al Rochelle take care everybody