 This is COMNET. Overwhelming majority of emergencies are handled by a single jurisdiction at the local level. However, there are occasions when incident management will depend on the involvement of multiple jurisdictions. Susan Kasper looks at the national incident management system, training guidance, and shows how it can provide a standard for incident management. The Fire Corps is designed to enhance the capabilities of fire departments. Stacy Phillips continues her series on the Citizen Corps program with a look at the Fire Corps and how they can provide citizens with the opportunity to support their local fire stations. The Domestic Preparedness Equipment Technical Assistance program has designed a course that provides an in-depth study on the procedures of mass casualty decontamination. David Klu attended the Mass Casualty Personnel Decontamination course and talked with officials about the training. The Department of Health and Human Services and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have established the Laboratory Response Network. John Eastman spoke with members of the LRN to find out how they're involved in public health, epidemiological investigation, and laboratory testing. COMNET is sponsored by the Department of Homeland Security, Office for Domestic Preparedness, and the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Coming to you from the facilities of the National Terrorism Preparedness Institute at St. Petersburg College, here are Al Rochelle and Jennifer Holloway. Hello and welcome to COMNET. The communications, news, equipment, and training magazine. This program presents weapons of mass destruction related awareness information for the nation's civilian and military response communities. COMNET is being distributed over government and commercial information networks and is being streamed over the worldwide web at terrorism.spcollege.edu. We invite you to visit the NTPI website for further details on the information provided during today's program. Continuing education units can be earned for viewing COMNET programs. To register for those CEUs, go to the NTPI website and click on the Continuing Education Units link under training. That link will take you through the registration process and also the login process. Now after you log in, you'll be able to view program videos, take the program exam, and fill out an evaluation form. With an exam grade of 75% or better, you will immediately receive an online CEU certificate. Now after viewing COMNET, please complete a viewer evaluation of the program. Your input and comments are very important to us. Fire departments have many responsibilities that keep them busy. But with the assistance of support personnel, helping out with non-operational tasks, career members can then focus more on the actual emergencies they face every day. Stacy Phillips looks at the Fire Corps and shows how it provides citizens with the opportunity to support their local fire stations. Every day, firefighters face the challenge of limited resources as they work to protect their communities and to save lives. Fire Corps is the newest initiative from Citizen Corps that encourages the community to offer their time and talent as an additional resource the Fire Department can utilize. Currently, partners of the Fire Corps include the International Association of Fire Chiefs, the International Association of Fire Fighters, and the National Volunteer Fire Council. Together with these partners, Fire Corps creates a connection between the Fire Department and the community. Fire Corps at its heart is a community outreach and a community relations program. It is there to help your department supplement your existing providers so that they're not getting burnt out running the calls when they're trying to run the business and keep up with the level of certifications that we now need to keep. But ultimately, no matter what level you invest in the program, you end up with a connection back to the community, and that's really what's very, very important. Fire Corps connects the community with the Fire Department through citizen advocates who provide support and supplemental services to resource constrained departments in a number of non-operational roles. Fire Corps members can be anybody that is eligible to take part in the local program. From students that are in explorers programs, from their teenage years on through to retirees and the elderly that want to come in and help and answer phones or work in their communities to do tasking. So there's really no bottom-end, top-end for program. We have a lawyer who has gone through our Fire Corps Academy and is interested in assisting us. We have an executive who works for a public utility company who's a Fire Corps member, and we've had quite a bit of interest from teachers and educators, and so really it's about finding out how do you reach out to those people and tell them that they do have a place in our department. It can be whatever you want it to be. It can be an explorer post. It can be an auxiliary to a fire company. It can be an auxiliary to an auxiliary. It can be an integral part of the auxiliary. The point is that it's non-operational personnel. There aren't people that are going out to fight fire and throw to wet stuff on the red stuff. These are people who are going to relieve those who do that of other responsibilities. The roles can include working on a canteen at a fire scene to help provide rehabilitation to firefighters. It can include doing the books and the financials for a volunteer fire department. It can be life safety education. It can include people going out and not only educating the public but helping to do fundraising or public awareness of the fire department. It creates an advocacy in the community among the community members for the fire department, informing them what the fire department can do for them. Fire Corps members also are the primary deployment of resource for our emergency services unit. That's a big Winnebago RV. It's set up as an incident command post. It also has firefighter rehab in it and they're able to take that to the scene, provide canteen services, form or cold fluids and food to firefighters in between those operational periods. They assist with our training and our education at our community education facility. They also help us when we train our volunteer firefighters. I'm trying to use all my training and what expertise I have to give back to this community. You know, if that's in the form of helping train the new cadet classes or any specialty courses that are being given add some knowledge or some of what I've learned to help them better do their jobs then that's what I'd like to do. There are many necessary tasks that can be performed by the citizen advocates in the fire service every day from photography to vehicle maintenance to administrative help. The Fire Corps is beneficial to both the community and the fire department. I know from personal experience administrative folks support folks just by being in the environment around the firehouses are going to pick up on what it is we need on calls. They're going to be more apt to take a CPR class. They're going to be more apt to take a first aid class. So just by being around us they become better prepared for their own emergencies. Fire Corps benefits the community in a number of ways. Primarily it allows the community to be involved in the fire department besides just paying taxes and calling 911. It gives them an ability to interface with the fire service and actually support the fire department in ways that average citizens don't have the ability to do. It also gives folks a meaningful way to serve back their community. The impact of the Fire Corps members on our firefighters, our career firefighters or our volunteer firefighters is they take a lot of those duties away that we would tie up an operational firefighter doing and they perform them. So it gives us more actual bodies on the fire or on the emergency scene because they're doing the non-operational sorts of things. These guys are required to come out and do mandatory shifts so they come to the station actually and spend usually the full 24 hours with the crew and that really supplements our staffing a lot. Especially if we have a fire, a major type of motor vehicle accident or something along those lines the volunteer program really supplements us a lot. We've seen an excellent life safety education program in Clarksville, Arkansas with a community that has gone to their local university and gotten a large group of students that take part and now have a very robust life safety education program in a very, very small community. Some places like Burnarillo County, New Mexico, they use Fire Corps as their introduction to being a volunteer in their combination fire department. So as the volunteers come in, that's their introduction. They can stop at the end of the Fire Corps introduction and become support volunteers. They can go on to be volunteer firefighters and it also becomes a path towards becoming hired because a lot of their career firefighters that they hire started out as volunteer firefighters. Whether your Fire Corps program involves a group of college students teaching fire safety or whether it serves as a path to becoming a career firefighter, you can create a Fire Corps program that best fits the unique needs of your fire department and the community. We have people asking us all the time, well, you know, how does Fire Corps work? Fire Corps works however you want it to work. You can form a separate organization, form an auxiliary, form anything you want, but it's basically a recruitment tool. And beyond that, that's up to the individual department. The requirement for being a Fire Corps program is that you are a municipally based non-profit fire department or rescue squad. Again, this is for fire and EMS. And that you have in place or in the process of putting in place a support type role for citizens to come and volunteer their time in your department. If a department is interested in developing a Fire Corps program internally, one of the real key elements is that you need to evaluate how you're going to use these people before you reach out and ask for assistance. Make sure they've got a place to work, that the expectations you give them and what you're asking them to do is very clearly stated and that you provide meaningful work for them to do because nobody really wants to give time to push papers around if they don't understand how that fits into the bigger picture of things. The initial step that they need to take is to go to the Fire Corps website at www.firecore.org and register their department and it's non-operational program or programs on the website and that way they will be able to be identified as a Fire Corps program that will be eligible for funding through Citizen Corps through their state for their program and they will also get information about the benefits and some of the products and resources as they come out for them that will benefit them in helping to develop their program. The Fire Corps website not only provides valuable information to the fire departments but is a great tool for citizens as well. It's a place where they can search the database for Fire Corps programs in their area. They can search by state and by zip code to get a list of local fire departments that are looking for people to come in and help. In addition, Fire Corps provides promotional tools, technical assistance, training and an upcoming online resource guide. In the very near future in the fall of 2005 we will have a resource guide that will help to outline ideas on how to proceed in beginning a program or reevaluating any program you may have to make it more robust. Information about available grants, how to manage, recruit and retain citizens out of the community in the support type roles that make up Fire Corps. The bottom line is that this has the potential to greatly improve the service of the fire service to the people because you get, it will give you the opportunity to put people where they're most needed. Those that can fight fire, that can run ambulances and so forth, it's going to put them on the street and it's going to put them on the street because the other duties are being performed by other people. But the organization benefits as a whole, the community benefits as a whole and people benefit as a whole. It's a win-win situation as far as I'm concerned. Fire Corps has the potential to greatly improve not only the department's connection with the community but also the service it offers them. It gives the fire departments the opportunity to place citizens where they're most needed, freeing up emergency personnel to dedicate more time to training, proficiencies and most importantly, handling community emergency calls. Fire departments reaching out to their communities and citizens reaching back, offering their assistance and non-emergency support roles. Fire Corps is helping to enhance the overall safety of our nation, one community at a time. Also be sure and watch the next edition of COMNET as we look at another important citizen corps program. It's the Neighborhood Watch USA On Watch program. Alright, here's what's coming up on our next live response program. State and local governments have responsibility for training and exercising their emergency response providers. On the next live response, we'll look at the post-incident reporting process and how lessons learned may help homeland security officials prevent, prepare for, respond to and recover from acts of terrorism. Live response airs Wednesday, November 16th at 2 p.m. Eastern. For more information on viewing, make sure to register online at terrorism.spcollege.edu. The Domestic Preparedness Equipment Technical Assistance Program has designed a course that provides an in-depth study on the procedures of mass casualty decontamination. David Klu attended the Mass Casualty Personnel Decontamination Course and talked with officials about the technical assistance they offer. EMS in itself is an ever-changing field. Medicine doesn't stand still, so we've got to try to change with it. Everything that happens in the world changes our job, especially incidents like 9-11 and Oklahoma City bombings, Tokyo subway attacks. We have to be prepared for anything nowadays. Natural disasters like our recent hurricanes, industrial accidents, or, worse yet, another major terrorist attack, nothing puts a greater strain on the medical community. So, is yours prepared? The Department of Homeland Security's Office for Domestic Preparedness has now developed a course that is already proving in community after community to be an excellent resource for emergency responders. DPE TAP actually stands for Domestic Preparedness Equipment Technical Assistance Program. So that's a mouthful. But that's why we say DPE TAP. And it is just a group of instructors that will go around the nation providing technical assistance to first responder community with chemical detection equipment, biological detection equipment, radiological detection equipment. The course is presented over three days. Principally it would be an eight-hour day each day and the WMD detection technology is really a separate course offered and it's primarily four hours. Go through some what if you would a step-by-step on what this course looks like. Well, we would start with a module covered within terrorism. Terrorism is going to provide a historical perspective on what's happened in the past. It kind of puts them in the mindset of a terrorist. What do you need to be a terrorist? Well, you need knowledge, you need motive, you need ability. We have them design and create a scenario, plan it, and just as if they were going to carry it out. A mass casualty is an incident which generates more patience than available resources can manage using routine procedures. The medical surge that results from these types of mass casualty events can easily overwhelm an unprepared response community. First and foremost, the ability to properly decontaminate a scene and its victims is critical. Well, we use a couple of things. First off, in the principal's module, we have a video that we use from ODP called Weapons of Mass Destruction and the First Responder. And that video shows guys responding to everyday situations and how to recognize that, hey, what we've got now might be a whole lot more serious than an everyday event. Mass casualties, presenting with the same signs and symptoms. Casualties are victims that all are appearing this way, but without any reason. So apparently they come into contact with something and usually that's the first recognition. As victims and bystanders are there, we can be asking them questions as well. Do you know what happened? Were you near what happened? First responders arriving on the scene are taught in this course to stop, look, and listen. Students are instructed to be aware of indicators of a WMD attack, such as an explosion with little or no structural damage, reports of a device dispersing mist or vapor, multiple casualties exhibiting similar symptoms with no apparent reason for trauma. As they roll up on the scene and they see multiple victims laying out on the ground in the grass or wherever and they're presenting with the twitching of the muscles, the watery eyes, tightness in the chest, vomiting. There's a couple of things they can do. The first one is, can we separate these people by just asking them a simple question? If you can hear my voice, walk to the trees. We've already done triage. We've identified those that can walk against those who can't. How can the responder identify and implement the appropriate decontamination method? I know that's a big part of this course as well. We'll just use nerve agent as an example. They will be presenting with the signs and symptoms of a nerve agent with the watery eyes, stiffness, tightness in the chest, twitching muscles and things like that. Once that is identified, they can pretty much assume that, hey, something bad has happened here. Now, when we start moving into the decon, what we're asking them to do now is taking one line off the fire engine and within a minute, they can start providing a gentle shower to start decon in the victims. The course details the procedures and equipment necessary for effective on-scene decontamination. Was the event chemical, biological or radiological? It is the contaminant that determines the treatment. Accurate and speedy diagnosis is crucial to any triage procedure, and this course details one of the most effective plans for triaging patients. And finally, the course gives responders hands-on experience with the setup of a decon shelter with both live and mannequin victims. People exposed to a known life-threatening level of a chemical, biological agent or radiation should. Decontaminate as soon as possible. Water flushing is usually the best for decontamination. This limits exposure, preserves the lives of casualties, and reduces cross-contamination. Decontaminate only what is necessary. Decontaminating only what is necessary ensures that equipment and personnel do not become contaminated unnecessarily. Also, it ensures that time is properly spent on decontaminating by priority. Decontaminate as far forward as possible. As far forward implies, as close to the hot zone as possible, limiting cross-contamination. Decontaminate by priority. Expect a 5 to 1 ratio of unaffected to affected. Priority is given to casualties according to the wounds or level of incapacitation. These casualties are then decontaminated in order of precedence. Disrobing is decontamination. Up to 80% of contamination can be removed by simply removing the outer layer of clothing. This is a very quick and easy way to remove possible sources of contamination. Decontaminate only what is necessary. What are some of the ways that you're teaching these students to track the patients at these scenes? Well, in this case, we do provide, just as an example, some of the triage tags. We have ribbon that is red, yellow, green, and black. And that would be a primary way to triage somebody. We do have medical tags, and a lot of the jurisdictions have them as well, where you can start getting the name, their respiratory situation, what is their pulse rate, their alert status, and things like that. The course addresses the need to separate or segregate your patients by nature of injury and or exposures. Also, it focuses on being able to identify those that have been affected. And I'll give you a classic example. In the Tokyo Subway Attack incident, one out of every five victims is actually affected by that actual attack. Four of them, however, were not. So you can see that when you are dealing with a WMD event where you have many casualties, not all will be directly impacted by the event. When it's a casualty or a victim, how are they not impacted? Well, they may think they are. They may, psychologically, they may, I was here, so it must be bad. Now let's talk about transporting from one facility to another. Obviously, another very important aspect of making sure that these scenes are diagnosed and treated properly. How do you teach these students the best way to transport patients from facility to facility? Well, one of the first things we like to tell them is before these patients even leave the warm zone, they've got to make sure that they're clean. And what we mean by that is, they've got to have some type of a chemical detection device, a biological detection device, or even radiological detection device to make sure that these victims have been thoroughly deconed. Once that takes place, we can move these victims into the cold zone. Now, as far as the transporting goes, we're going to almost have to look at what the EMS policies and procedures are as well. The hospital staff really needs to know that who they're getting is a clean patient or one that has been decontaminated. The hands-on exercise for this course takes students out of the classroom and places them into the field with their own equipment in the middle of a mock disaster. This is where course instructors make sure that these men and women can effectively apply what they've learned in the classroom to the real world. You never know. It may not be a terrorist attack. It may be a simple accident involving some type of chemical that we've never dealt with. You're probably not VX or a biological weapon, but any class, your average chemicals, your chlorine toxic chemicals that travel down your interstates every day. This class takes all that in, too. It's not just about weapons of mass destruction. It's about chemicals that people work and deal with every day. Does it seem odd to you that every jurisdiction in the country isn't taking advantage of a free course teaching this kind of information in this day and age? By all means. It's a free course. I got to donate eight hours, three days in a row of my time and no cost to me to be prepared for something that essentially is just mass chaos. We know it can happen, so why not try to educate ourselves? As emergency responders, you are, of course, the very first to recognize the importance of speed and accuracy in assessing any mass casualty scene. This course is designed to give you the tools you need to continue to effectively treat the victims and avoid becoming a casualty yourself. And whether it's understanding the terrorist motivation, methods, the ability to diagnose and decontaminate those affected or triage and treat the victims, this course will bring you much closer to readiness no matter what tragedy comes your way. The ability to quickly respond to any event involving contamination is vital. The mass casualty personnel decontamination course is designed to expose first responders to a variety of scenarios requiring decontamination procedures. For information on the domestic preparedness equipment technical assistance program and the courses they offer, go to the NDPI website. Now it's time for the latest responder news. The Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration recently held the National Conference for Hospital-Based First Receivers in Washington, D.C. The conference, held at the Renaissance Hotel, featured an overview of OSHA's Best Practices Guide. The document published in January 2005 by OSHA, which is the basis for a lot of this conference is available through OSHA. It's called OSHA Best Practices for Hospital-Based First Receivers of Victims for Mass Casualty Incidents involving the release of hazardous substances. The event also focused on various methods first receivers should employ when admitting victims of mass casualty incidents. We are hoping that the attendees bring back practical solutions to the kinds of problems they're facing and the reason they should be able to bring back those solutions is, in fact, a lot of the presentations are dealing with the real-life experiences that both the staff of OSHA and the staff of the Joint Commission have investigated and debriefed. We've already heard some very positive feedback about not only the conference but the idea that we are attempting to streamline the requirements of OSHA and the Joint Commission. We'll be doing the planning for another conference next year which will specifically look at the issues of response to employee safety and health and safety of patients related to natural disasters. The National Counterterrorism Center is now fully operational just a year after President Bush called for its establishment. Under the direction of Vice Admiral John Redd, the NCTC will now serve as the primary organization in the United States government for analyzing and integrating all international terrorism-related intelligence, conducting strategic operational planning for counterterrorism and housing the shared searchable Bank of Knowledge unknown and suspected terrorists and terror groups. The center, located in McLean, Virginia, was given the authority to carry out these tasks via an executive order back in August of 2004. The National Counterterrorism Center will help monitor terror incidents worldwide to manage our nation's response to potential terror attacks here at home. The U.S. Department of Justice held the first missing person regional training conference last month in Clearwater Beach, Florida. The event was attended by members of the forensic community that reside in states east of the Mississippi River. It featured more than a dozen speakers from the local, state and federal levels. They've talked about things such as scientific techniques to help you identify remains. There are several resources that are available for aiding you in the investigation. When I say you, I mean the law enforcement, medical examiner, forensic science community in all the states. Conference materials included a model state missing person statute designed to aid states that either do not have an existing policy or need to update their current legislation. The attendees were purposefully diverse in order to encourage information sharing. Not everyone here is an anthropologist or an odontologist or not everyone here works a lot with NCIC. In the presentations and the collaborative learning environments that we've created here are going to force these people to learn more about the techniques and databases that they're not currently familiar with. So we believe that everyone will walk away with at least one more piece of knowledge they can use to help bring closure to victims and their family. The training will be duplicated for the western half of the nation next month in Denver, Colorado. Even before the recent warnings about an immediate threat to New York City's subways, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority or MTA had plans to drastically improve security in its subways and commuter rail facilities. During the next three years Lockheed Martin Corporation will be tasked with completing a $212 million effort aimed at making the MTA's sprawling network safer. The plan, which has taken more than a year to complete is the MTA's largest financial commitment to its counter-terrorism program. Over the next three years, 1,000 surveillance cameras and 3,000 motion sensors will be added. The system will integrate these new additions and existing technology like close circuit cameras with sophisticated software that will be linked to police mobile command centers. Eventually the system will include sensors capable of setting off alarms and command centers if an unattended package is left on the platform. The Port Security Training Exercise program called Port Step got its initial test recently. The program is designed to test the planning, response and recovery capabilities of the ports of Oakland and San Francisco. The California Maritime Academy served as the host facility for the first regional test of the exercise program. The event, which will be duplicated more than 50 times over the next two years was attended by the Transportation Security Administration and the United States Coast Guard, the program's co-sponsors, as well as regional and local emergency planners. Port Step will help lay the foundation for critical exercise training programs for USC ports and national standards for port security exercises and training. According to Coast Guard Captain Bruce Clark, the exercise exposed some communication and connectivity issues within the statewide command system, but it allowed us to engage in the type of dialogue that we need to have. Anytime you are able to bring that many players to the table, I would consider it a success. It's always better to expose these during an exercise than in a real-life scenario. The 24th annual National Fallen Firefighters Memorial Weekend was held earlier this month in Emmitsburg, Maryland. The three-day event included a chapel vigil, a candlelight service, and a memorial service. The weekend is important to both the families of the fallen and the communities they served. The National Memorial Tribute Weekend put on by the National Fallen Firefighters Foundation is truly the event where America tells the American Fire Service families that we remember the sacrifices their lost loved ones make because firefighters have died in the line of duty and they were committed to help them, the families, rebuild their lives through experiencing their tragic loss. Saturday's Family Day events ended with the candlelight service held at the Basilica of the National Shrine of St. Elizabeth Ann Seton. During the memorial service, families of the men and women being honored received flags blown over the nation's capital and the National Fallen Firefighters Memorial. I'm Jenny Dean and that's a look at this month's Responder News. Since the release of the National Incident Management System or NIMS, there have been questions regarding the training requirements. Susan Kasper explains some of the guidance from the NIMS Integration Center including courses that are part of the national standard curriculum. The NIMS Integration Center was established in 2004 by the Secretary of Homeland Security to provide strategic direction and oversight of the National Incident Management System, supporting both routine maintenance and the continuous refinement of the system and its components over the long term. The NIMS Integration Center was put into the NIMS as the ongoing management and maintenance of the NIMS, the place that sets the standards, that sets the requirements for implementation, that is the repository of current information on NIMS and the related standards and guidance that goes along with it. And what we're trying to do is develop the guidance and support tools and resources to help jurisdictions implement the NIMS. So we're developing some training programs and guidance about training, how to guides, how to implement the NIMS or incorporate the NIMS compliance is set for September 30th, 2006, the end of the fiscal year. However, full NIMS implementation is a dynamic process and changes should be expected as technical and policy issues are further refined at the national level. The deadline for the first set of NIMS implementation requirements was set for September 30th, the end of the 2005 fiscal year. What we're trying to do is find and execute a more effective way to prepare for and respond to any event. So as opposed to emphasizing the enforcement and compliance piece of this, the posture that we've put ourselves in is that we have laid some markers out there in terms of key elements that we think state and local governments need to accomplish and what we're going to do is have the state self-certify that they have indeed met those requirements. And similarly, when full compliance is required by the beginning of 2007, there will be a self-certification process. This year, as the first year for NIMS implementation, we're asking the states and local jurisdictions to formally adopt the NIMS and we've developed tools like an executive order template to help mayors and governors issue some formal adoption of the NIMS through legislation or like an executive order. We're asking them to incorporate the NIMS into their training and exercise programs and use their funding that they're getting from security or other preparedness grants and direct those funds towards initiatives to help them implement the NIMS, so updating their emergency operations plans to include the concepts of NIMS, updating their training programs, supporting local jurisdictions in their implementation of NIMS and developing a state strategy for how they're going to achieve full NIMS implementation. Since one of the first steps for becoming compliant with NIMS is institutionalizing the use of the incident command system or ICS across the response system, ICS training must be consistent with the concepts, principles and characteristics of the NIMS ICS. Currently ICS training taught by DHS standard is provided by the Emergency Management Institute, the National Fire Academy, the National Wildfire Coordinating Group, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Coast Guard. What it means in a very practical sense is that health and medical needs to be integrated in with fire service law enforcement to a greater degree than it has been. In maybe more of a practical sense it means that any of the federal funding that's going down, HRSA grants through Health and Human Services that hospitals are and state health organizations are receiving, they're going to need to get people trained up in terms of basic NIMS awareness training, what are we trying to accomplish and they're going to have to organize their staff so if they're coming into an incident command how are they going to be organized within an incident command structure in order to function to do what they do. Certainly in these early days NIMS awareness training is a key activity for the health and medical. The NIMS National Standard Curriculum Training Development Guidance outlines the system's ICS concepts and principles, management characteristics, organizations and operations, organizations, organizational element titles and recommendations for a model curriculum. When you think about just the vast numbers of people that need to be trained we need to find a better way to leverage that training capability. The notion of the National Standard Curriculum has got to not only take the training that's available from FEMA from ODP from the Coast Guard but from any of the federal training providers and it's going to put it in a context where individuals can take this training and they can take it in places that are most convenient to them and what the National Standard Curriculum is going to do is begin to deal with the equivalency issues. A lot of questions are arising out there now if I take the training here or if I take it from this particular vendor is it going to count towards my compliance? We recognize that the one standard that appears currently in the NIMS doctrine is the notion that we're going to train to ICS as taught by the Department of Homeland Security. There are various versions of that that are out there. Initially the curriculum consists of the NIMS awareness training and training to support the ICS. Emergency management or response personnel that have already been trained in ICS do not need retraining if their previous training is consistent with DHS standards. However, they must take the ICS 700 course. In fact, the NIMS integration center encourages all emergency personnel with a direct role in emergency preparedness, incident command or response to take the ICS 700 NIMS awareness course. This course explains the purpose, principles, key components and benefits of NIMS for all emergency personnel with a direct role in emergency preparedness, incident management or response. There are a lot of NIMS training resources already available. NIMS itself was built upon existing best practices. The Federal Emergency Management Agency's Emergency Management Institute and the National Fire Academy are just some of the training providers that already have a lot of NIMS-related training available. They've also developed through the Emergency Management Institute NIMS Awareness Training that's an independent study course available online to help all responders get a better understanding of what needs to be done online. It's free. It's available through the FEMA and the NIMS website. And then we're also working in the NIMS integration center with the other Department of Homeland Security training providers and the other Federal training providers to see which training programs they already offer that relate to the NIMS that we can also make available to responders and then what training needs are out there that we need to develop training courses for that then can be shared among all the training providers. Four levels of training. The first level is ICS 100 Introduction to ICS. The second level is ICS 200 Basic ICS. The third level ICS 300 Intermediate ICS. And the fourth level consists of ICS 400 Advanced ICS and ICS 402 Summary for Executives. Entry level first responders should take ICS 100 Introduction to ICS. Personnel at a supervisory level within the incident command system should take ICS 200 Basic ICS. Middle management such as strike team leaders or task force leaders should take ICS 300 Intermediate ICS. Command and general staff should take ICS 400 Advanced ICS. And elected officials should take ICS 402 ICS summary for Executives. Making sure that folks are trained to incident command system and other components that people are trained to do the job that they're going to do when they go into the field that they understand how the organizational structure works that they understand the resource typing issues how you type the resources communication systems need to work with other communication systems and that they they're able to say that the community, either the mayor or the state legislature adopts either an executive order or a legislative order that says this community will support the national incident management system. ICS 700 is basically an introduction to the NIMS. It's true the course also focuses on ICS 26. However the course places ICS within the context of NIMS. Personnel who already had ICS training should also take the NIMS awareness course to help them understand the NIMS its principles and underlying components. In addition to IS 700 emergency response personnel who are not familiar with the ICS should also take the ICS training courses that are appropriate for their occupational level. Volunteers such as certain members are also encouraged to take the introduction to NIMS as well as ICS training. The NIMS integration center is available to answer any questions you may have about the NIMS training and compliance. If you have a question you can email them at nimsintegrationscenter at dhs.gov or simply visit the NTPI website. Now let's take a look at several events happening all around the country. On October 31st through November 2nd the 7th annual technologies for critical incident preparedness will be held at the San Diego Marriott in Marina in San Diego, California. The 2005 emergency preparedness and prevention and hazmat spills conference will be held on December 4th through 7th at the Hyatt Regency on the Inner Harbor and the Sheraton Inner Harbor Hotel in Baltimore, Maryland. Then on November 4th through 6th the Symposium Kentucky will be held at the Holiday Inn Cincinnati Airport in Erlanger, Kentucky. And on November 9th through 12th the Fire Rescue Conference and Exposition will be held at the Las Vegas Convention Center in Las Vegas, Nevada. On November 10th through 13th the Symposium and the Sun, mapping the future of the volunteer combination fire service will be held in Clearwater Beach, Florida at the Sheraton San Quay. Then on November 12th through 16th there will be a conference in Phoenix, Arizona at the Phoenix Civic Center. This year's theme is emergency management, local, regional, and global successes. Also on November 14th through 17th the hazmat X-Blow 9 will be at the Orleans Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas, Nevada. The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Oceanic Engineering Society will be holding their 2005 Homeland Security Technology Workshop on December 6th through 8th at the Newport Marriott Hotel Then on December 8th through 9th the Homeland Defense Journal Training Workshop will hold a two-day basic workshop on emergency preparedness for government facilities at the Sheraton World in Orlando, Florida. The Laboratory Response Network or the LRN is a national network of testing laboratories that provide the capacity to respond to public health incidents including biological and chemical terrorism. John Eastman talked with health officials about the role of the LRN during a health emergency. If you picture our nation's military defenses you might expect a well-coordinated system of operational basis and secure facilities. You might also expect a clear chain of command governed by rigid operating procedures. Now, ask yourself this why would our nation's health defenses be any different? To answer that question imagine this scenario a medical lab like this one receives a specimen from a patient showing unusual symptoms left on its own. The lab performs a number of tests with inconclusive results. They don't discover the fact that the patient has been exposed to anthrax an opportunity to reduce exposure and save lives is missed and this lab becomes nothing more than a hole in our nation's safety net. Fortunately, a worst-case scenario like the one we just described doesn't have to happen. To understand why, we'll first pay a visit to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta. Dr. Richard Kellogg is the coordinator of the CDC's Laboratory Response Network. What is the Laboratory Response Network? John, the short answer to that is that it's a network of about 150 laboratories nationally and internationally that have come together in a partnership to be able to have the infrastructure to test for biological and chemical threat agents. Launched in 1999, the LRN exists as a vast multi-tiered network which divides its focus along two major lines, biological and chemical concerns. The LRN is really just one network but where there are applications that require different requirements between those two applications, whether it's a chemical application or a biological application, the LRN allows there to be different procedures in those two different applications where the policies and procedures do agree the LRN acts together. First, let's look at the biological side. To make their integrated response plan work, the CDC envisions a pyramid with a large foundation of Sentinel labs. These are the laboratories that are viewed as being on the front line. These are the laboratories that receive specimens from patients all over the country or within the state at the local level. And so they probably are going to be the first to see a patient that has an unusual infectious disease that could be a result of a terrorism event. The job of the Sentinel labs is limited to recognizing, identifying and analyzing threats. Then they immediately call the reference laboratory and the jurisdiction. It has this additional level of capability and the protocols from the CDC and the standardized reagents and such to do the confirmatory tests to see if it really is a bioterrorism agent. The reference labs include all the state public health labs and the labs of larger metropolitan areas such as Los Angeles and Mississippi. Then it becomes very important or if we cannot figure it out at the reference laboratory level those then are quickly referred to the national laboratories at the CDC or some of the other federal laboratories. There are four biosafety levels for laboratory activities involving infectious microorganisms and laboratory animals. The national labs are trained and equipped to perform definitive tests that are beyond the lower labs. But in addition they have the ability to also test for recombinant engineering. They have the ability to work at biosafety level 4 which are agents like Ebola and Marburg. In order to work with some of these biological agents you really need to have what's called biosafety level 3 capability. And this is an area of the laboratory that has very restricted access. It has its own air handling system so that if anything is spilled nothing can get out of the laboratory and the folks that work in those laboratories also wear protective gear. On the chemical side of the LRN it's a different picture entirely. Here the CDC envisions three separate levels. The level 3 laboratories have been given money to hire a chemical terrorism response coordinator and an assistant coordinator. They work directly with the hospitals to inform them of how the LRN works and to make sure that there are mechanisms in place that if an incident occurs they can get samples to that state laboratory that those samples can then be sent out to an LRN laboratory for measurement. Level 2 laboratories have all the same capability of level 3 but they've also developed methods. We've trained them in methods for running certain toxic industrial chemicals and specific chemical warfare agents in their laboratories themselves. And so level 2 laboratories have the capability and the protocols and the instrumentation to test for a wide variety of industrial chemicals that could be used as terrorism agents. Things like lewisites, cyanide heavy metals like arsenic things of that nature. Level 1 laboratories have the same capabilities of level 2 and level 3 but they've also trained them in more complex instrumental techniques so that they can do more than the other laboratories. They also act as surge capacity laboratories in case of a very large incident. Membership in all designations and levels of the LRN is based on a lab qualification checklist. That involves approximately 8 different requirements and needs that get to the issues of properly trained staff facilities that can deal with containment issues around these types of biological agents and what's often called the biosecurity measures. That's the LRN at the government level but remember this network also reaches into the private sector. The role of private and commercial laboratories is primarily what we call a sentinel role that is given the course of what they do day in and day out in the testing that especially in the clinical sector they have been trained in a way to give them greater situational awareness of those types of organisms and what may become a suspect specimen in the course of their testing. To develop reliable protocols the CDC enlisted a number of partners including founding partners the Association of Public Health Laboratories and the Federal Bureau of Investigation. We have been working over the past six and a half years with these partners in identifying specifics what we call signatures for the biothread agents. They may be either molecular based or antibody based so that we can utilize those signatures in a very robust high confidence level assay that goes through a very stringent process of development, evaluation and validation. But development doesn't end there. The CDC will send the new protocols down to places like the Public Health Laboratory in Minnesota. It's at this level that people like Maureen Sullivan get to take the new test for a test drive. I personally have had an opportunity in the past to sit in on some working groups that look at the protocols and how they work for us in the state hands. It's called a multi-center validation study. And the states are all given the opportunity to sign up and participate in that validation. And in Minnesota we have done that very frequently. And that gives us the opportunity to see the protocols prior to their release and we then can comment on the various different aspects of a protocol. We also put on training courses for the members of the laboratory as well as conduct a proficiency testing program where for the five times a year we will send out samples to these laboratories both positive and negative samples for the agents that they have been trained to test for with the assays that we have deployed to them. In addition to updating skills and training, the labs also have a heavy burden to meet when it comes to maintaining state-of-the-art technology and facilities. Why is it important to maintain a consistent level of training for the LR and particularly when it comes to technology transfer? Well technology is something that's static. It's continually improving. It's continually changing and it becomes more sensitive more specific and you continually have to upgrade the protocols so that you can adapt that new technology to do a better job. The CDC through a cooperative agreement program that we have primarily with the state and local health laboratories provides funding in the biological component of that funding. We have an aggregate for a number of activities to this point, provided over $500 million to those laboratories. The main objective of all of this is to be ready in times of crisis. That's the role of the LRN's Rapid Response Team. The Rapid Response Team is a group of very dedicated individuals who work with state laboratories during an event. If there's a request that's made by a state health department or when the president invokes the national LRN, those individuals go to the site of the incident. They work with the staff of the state laboratories to collect, to aliquot, to package samples for transport to the laboratories so that the analyses can be done. What kind of training do they get? We work very regularly. They go through very rigorous training in our laboratory. We also go through regular exercises. Most of the members of that team go through regular exercises where they practice going through these procedures. There's many things we learn every time we respond to an outbreak or we get another sample in. We have to really try to adapt those plans. And regardless of how the plan adapts or how protocols may change, everyone agrees that the LRN concept needs to reach out beyond the laboratory and into the field where first responders live. What we have on the scene is they don't know what they ought to collect and we can really by having a collaboration going on, knowing who each other is, they can call us and we can give them advice on what they should collect and how they should collect it, how they should get it to the laboratory. The laboratory response network and its partners maintain an integrated national and international network of laboratories that respond to all kinds of chemical or biological terrorism emerging in fact as diseases and other public health threats and emergencies. If you would like more information on the laboratory response network or any of the agencies featured in this program visit our website or you can write to us at ComNet the address is P.O. Box 13489 St. Petersburg, Florida and the zip code 33733 Be sure and sign up and take the online test for CEUs also you can help ensure that we're meeting your learning needs by completing the evaluation form. Just a reminder our next ComNet will air Wednesday December the 14th at 2 p.m. Eastern Time and be sure to join us for live response on November the 16th at 2 p.m. Eastern Time where we will discuss post incident reporting and lessons learned. We thank you for viewing and we'll see you next time on ComNet.