 This is COMNET. With the ever-growing need for food safety, the Western Institute for Food Safety and Security at the University of California Davis has developed DHS courses on agro-terrorism. David Clue visited Sacramento to talk about this grants and training sponsored course. Enhancing the ability to request and locate resources during a disaster is an important part of the National Incident Management System. Diane Roberts went to the FEMA headquarters and discussed the resource typing system and how it can assist in incident response. After a major storm like a flood, hurricane or tornado, there may be standing water. This water may attract mosquitoes that can carry viruses and can be dangerous. John Eastman visited the 910th Airlift Wing and looked at some ways that they can be used to combat this very real problem. Water search and rescue requires a highly skilled marine safety staff. They need to be equipped to respond to a variety of rescue incidents including terrorism. Susanna Bailon explores the specialized training and rescue services of Huntington Beach, California and uncovers how it's become an international life-saving model. COMNET is sponsored by the Department of Homeland Security, Preparedness Directorate's Office of Grants and Training and their Preparedness Network. 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 terrorism-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 World Wide 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 CEUs, go to the NTPI website and click on the Continuing Education Units link under training. This link will take you through the registration process and the login process. 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 that program. Your input and your comments are very important to us. The Western Institute for Food Safety and Security's goal is to assure that there is capacity to respond early and effectively to agro-terrorism and other major disasters which affect our food supply. David Clue looks at WIFS and how its training curriculum is designed to enhance national security by strengthening preparedness of the agricultural frontline responders. A terrorist attack against a nation's food supply is really not that uncommon. Over the centuries, they proved to be both easy and effective against an enemy. After all, it is very difficult to control the threat against a target that is so remote and unsecured. Still, that does not mean we simply sit back and let it happen. Let's talk about the potential impact of such an attack. It can have enormous impact on public health and that is the issue that I think really caught everyone's attention is how much damage to public health if we contaminated the food with particular agents. We are a just-in-time society. Our food gets to us very rapidly. You milk a cow in California. It's in every state in the United States within 24 hours. So imagine if you did tamper with the milk, you put some sort of poison in there that wasn't killed in the pasteurization process. It would be a huge disaster. The broader and perhaps more destructive is the attack on infrastructure. Using the example of foot and mouth disease, highly contagious, most contagious virus for animals doesn't affect us. You can go in, you're not going to die, you're not going to get sick. But if all the milk supply and all the beef cattle die because of this, suddenly we've got incredible loss both in terms of dollars, in terms of food supply, but the potential attack on the infrastructure is I think the one that is most latent. It might not have as dramatic a splash originally for a terrorist, but it would have very long reaching effects. What is it about agriculture that makes it more vulnerable than, say, protecting a federal building downtown? It's very open. Our whole agricultural system, both in growing and processing, has always been very open to the public. I mean, think about it. You could walk out onto a field or walk into a dairy or walk into a processing plant pretty easy in the past. Our food system is wide open. It's just the way we produce our food. We can't put up walls and fences and lights and security cameras around all of our farms. So we have to put in protection methods and part of that is just an educational process, looking at our farms or at our processing plants or at our transportation, just taking a closer look at how we can do a much better job. The state of California produces 50% of all of the nation's fruits and vegetables. It is a major agricultural producer for the nation. It produces 20% of all of the milk distributed throughout the nation. And that makes the California's food supply a particular target for a terrorist attack. The Western Institute for Food Safety and Security, West, they have developed a series of courses and curriculum to better prepare California for a potential terrorist attack or an unintentional contamination of food supply. The Western Institute for Food Safety and Security is actually an institute that was formed by partnership between the University of California Davis and two state agencies, the California Department of Food and Agriculture, the California Department of Health Services. Our idea is that we can really address food safety and security issues as a partnership because everyone has to be at the table to solve some of the challenges we have. The West got a grant from the Department of Homeland Security to look at the critical infrastructure and try to protect the farms and the communities from agro-terrorism. And certainly it may not be an imminent threat right now, but we need to be protected and look at our critical infrastructure. For so many first responders, the whole concept of agro-terrorism is something brand new to them. So to get things started, course instructors set the stage on just how vulnerable our food and water supplies are to an attack. From there, students will learn to define an agro-terror threat, identify likely targets in their own communities, respond and recover from an agro-terrorism event, and finally understand just how far reaching the impacts of agro-terror can be. So by the end of the course, every participant will have a much better idea and a greater awareness as to why their local effort is so important in protecting this vital national asset. The goal of our curriculum is to focus at the local level. There's already response teams there, but we want to add on the agriculture side of it so that, you know, they may be able to respond to a flood or a fire or an earthquake or something like that, but maybe not haven't thought about an agro-terrorism event per se. So this awareness course will bring in the various aspects of the community that would be involved if there was an event and help them raise their level of awareness. What should students expect to walk away from once they finish this course? They didn't have when they walked in. I think all of the students that we encounter, regardless of their background, are stunned by the vulnerability. And so awareness is one of the things they take away from the very first course. As we go through the other five courses, they begin to look at how things can play out and what they can actually do and what will be required of them if they're to, in fact, response-capably. Again, it makes people aware. It makes people aware of what to look for, discovering a food, who's that stranger? Is somebody walking in my poultry plant that shouldn't be there? There's a door open. There's an unusual car parked across the field. There's somebody that's been in the water plant or has some chemicals that shouldn't have. There's just something unusual. It just gets people looking for the unusual, the out of the norm. That's what we really want to do. Who is the target audience for this kind of a course and why? Well, we have a number of groups that we suggest, and we really want to have the community step up and say, well, these are the people that we wanted to table. But we want to have public health there. We want to have police, fire, emergency responders of all sorts. We want to also have the agriculture industry from the farm to the retailer present. We need to have those any individuals that is capable for early detection. We want them to interact. We want them to see their vulnerability. We want them to see that they do need to be interacting. And through case studies at the end, which we kind of play around with, start to see how they do need to interact. So one of the things we want to do is to create a framework through these training programs where people from diverse elements of the community get together and work together so that they really can be a team at the end. It's just absolutely critical that all of the different responders, our frontline responders as we call them, are ready to go if something happens. And I think that's what we want them to leave with. Every time they leave a course is we've added another brick in the foundation. The course takes about three, three and a half hours to go through. At least that's our first awareness course. And the first two modules are more lecture types. We have some interactive parts where we show some videos of what it might look like. If there was an agro-terrorism event, we actually take a look at what went on in the UK in 2002 with a foot-mouth disease. And it's very emotional and brings kind of a gut-wrenching feeling to the participants. Among some of the other activities of the day's course included a hypothetical scenario where we looked at what might be a terrorist activity and who would be responding, how they would respond to it, how do you investigate that particular incident and rule it in or rule it out in terms of it being a terrorist activity. Now the overall goal of our curriculum is to go to the community and go with a series of courses with the idea that we will actually have an identifiable group of persons in that community that are prepared to in fact respond capably if they have any sort of food disaster, including terrorism in their community. We feel this is really, really important because that's where early detection, early response can make a huge difference in terms of mitigating harmful effects of agro-terrorism or a natural disaster. If someone is interested in what WIFS has to offer, how would they make contact with the program? Well the best way would be to go to the website and that is wifss.ucdavis.edu and they'll be able to get information about the training, the curriculum and get some contact information. And how much does the course cost the individual taking it? The course is free of charge. We provide the instructors and the course material. The, you know, it's supported by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security grants and training so that the cost is really covered. We want the curriculum to definitely be a nationwide program. We really feel strongly that we need to be able to reinforce each other in the face of a disaster. We know that we will not have sufficient manpower in California to address some of the issues that could arise following an agro-terrorism event and we know other states are in the same business. So if we have people trained throughout the nation then we can mutually support each other in the face of an event. We are outreaching nationally. We're working with 14 different states now in providing the opportunity to have their own trainers trained to conduct the class and awareness and also to take the course out so people can see it. So there is that movement and a lot of states are very interested in the course. It was a really good beginning for me to understand what this whole issue is all about and how big it is and how encompassing it is and I think that we can have a role in it. I plan to take the future courses just because I believe that one can't be too informed on this issue and clearly the more information that I have the more I have the opportunity then to share with other individuals who should also be trained in this that I can tell them what are in the different courses and encourage them to participate when the opportunity is made available to them. I guess I have a message in the first response and that's your role is incredibly important. You bring a skill set you bring an ability to deal with emergencies. What you need to be doing is interacting with the rural agricultural private enterprise group so they they can understand how what roles each of you will have. Clearly you're going to be part of this partnership and you're going to be very important. We don't have to be in cowering of this problem that it's going to eat us alive. We can do something about it and this course provides that local community with the justification and the means to do something about it. That's why we're so committed and this program and all this staff around here are in this and this is primarily something we feel a nation really needs and especially the local communities. The Western Institute for Food Safety and Security is sponsored by the Office of Grants and Training. The Institute's courses on agro-terrorism are designed with an all hazards approach. To find out more about WIFS visit the NTPI website. Now let's take a look at what's coming up on the next live response. Exactly when a suicide bombing will take place on American soil is unknown. No suicide bomber profile exists. However there is a behavioral profile that may be used to assist police and other emergency responders in recognizing them. On the next live response we'll look at the reasons for suicide bombers, some of the pre-incident indicators and what the response challenges will be during a suicide bombing incident. Live response airs Wednesday September 27th at 2 p.m. Eastern. For more information on viewing make sure to register online at terrorism.spcollege.edu. In a natural man-made or technological disaster getting personnel and equipment to the area in need quickly and efficiently is of utmost importance. As Diane Roberts explains getting the resources emergency managers require is a matter of everyone learning to speak the same language. When disaster strikes you think large cities like our nation's capital New York or Chicago would be the best at providing or receiving mutual aid. But whether you're in a large city or rural town knowing what teams, tools and tasks you have can make an emergency situation run more smoothly. Requesting receiving and returning emergency equipment in crisis time can be an easier task if jurisdictions use and understand resource typing. We facilitate they're going to be the end users. Kyle Blackman is the chief of the resource planning and coordination branch in the NIMS integration center charged with helping make the plan work. What is resource typing? In the very simplest terms it's describing teams and equipment in a consistent manner. Bruce Baumann who I used to work for and is now the Alabama state director used to have a phrase that stuck with me for years and years. When you ask for a heavy rescue squad you want a heavy rescue squad and not a fire truck with the jaws of life. It's becoming a way of describing equipment consistently across the nation so that in a mutual aid situation when you ask for it you know what you're going to get. You have to sit there and spend 20 minutes describing that I want a fire truck that has 45 inches of this hose that own four crew much easier to ask for that type one and know that you're going to get it all at one time. Resource typing is about making it easier to reach out and get equipment and teams that you need during mutual aid. The ordering and tracking system using standard terminology also makes it easier to inventory so those in need know what's available to them. It is a structure but it doesn't have the one element that we focus on now and that's the national consensus part. That's where you have to bring people in across the country to develop that resource type. That is by far the most important thing so we're trying to bring people together to talk about things in a common terminology a common framework to make it easier to locate those and get them during a mutual aid environment. How does having this resource typing actually help mutual aid and do most people get it? We have been doing mutual aid and fire service for a very long time and we have done it in wildland firefighting and it has worked it's a very good example for us. We move more than 5,000 members of various tribal organizations to fight wildfires across the United States. We move the tankers, slurry bombers, we move actual equipment and it's been based upon this shortcut this resource typing and so we do have a ground truth so to speak of success in wildland firefighting that this system works. Trying to really expand that to everything else to encompass law enforcement which we haven't done today. SWAT teams, bomb disposal teams which we haven't in the past tried resource type to make it easier to locate and to request. We have done mutual aid very well a huge amount of mutual aid was done for Katrina for Rita and we have a history of doing it very well for a long period of time. The four hurricanes two seasons ago in Florida you move a lot of mutual aid between the states. There are more than 40,000 fire departments in the United States 30,000 plus law enforcement agencies and more than 4,000 sheriff's departments under the system of government we have now this department and any of those agencies can call their equipment whatever they like but learning and using the shorthand of resource typing can help each and every one of them if crisis should come calling. Seminole Florida district chief Greg Smith says his city's biggest involvement with mutual aid happened during the 98 Florida wildfires resource typing didn't come about until after 9 11. We have made tremendous progress in getting the mutual aid system to work much more efficiently and I think a lot of it has to do to the fact that there's been an emphasis on focusing on the same terminology and practices so that when the requests are made you know what you're asking for and by typing the apparatus you know exactly what you're going to get. 121 resources have been typed and they fall into eight main groups representing a variety of disciplines animal health emergencies emergency medical services fire and hazardous materials incident management law enforcement medical and public health public works and search and rescue there are a lot of examples of resources that can be typed so can you go through some of those there are several in personnel there's several in training kind of go through some of those equipment of course my favorite for the equipment is the wheel loaders and public works if you go through public works yes wheel loaders that you can load things in the dump trucks basically you can put things into also the generators the heating ventilation and air conditioning units that you can bring in you know to fulfill a need especially like generators you know we use a lot of generators and disasters you lose your electrical grid you come in you want to restore power to hospital you bring in a generator so we've done many of those pieces in the medical area all the national disaster medical system is included in there the disaster mortuary teams the disaster veterinary assistance teams all included in that if you look law enforcement of course we have bomb disposal teams they don't include the special weapons and tactics teams have been included and we do have ambulances we have four types of ambulances we have a type one which is advanced life support with hazmat capability a type two is simply advanced life support type three is a basic life support with hazmat capability and type four is basic life support type describes the capacity type one has the most capacity or capability type two has less type three has less than type two kind is it's a people it's a team you know it's equipment within the resource typing how does resource typing fit into nims resource typing actually is just an element of one of nims elements and that's resource management uh resource management addresses everything from describing and typing your equipment as well as credentialing people based upon their skills and abilities through such thing as an ordering system an inventory system all the way through reimbursement and returning it so resource typing is one element within our resource management that is described in nims i'm one that constantly says nims is about making mutual aid work you know if you never had to ask for assistance from another fire department or police department it wouldn't matter how you describe your equipment how you inventory it but we've learned since 9 11 we've learned with Katrina mutual aid is a way of life nobody has everything they need to deal with all situations so to make mutual aid really effective you need to do the resource typing develop that inventory to know what's available where it is and to get exactly what you request when you want when you reach out and you make that request for mutual aid is there anything that communities or jurisdictions can do to make this process easier or run more smoothly what we're hoping people are doing right now is to begin to inventory the 121 what do they have you know so that we can begin to build that national database on available types we have posted all the things that we have resource typed on our our website any comments they have about what we have done we definitely would like to get those back that's how we added the 121st there was a note that we did not have any fire apparatus with the ability to deal with an elevated situation either a ladder or platform the nims integration center serves as a facilitator bring together subject matter experts then they can come up with definitions for resources that have been typed and develop the credentialing requirements for people it's important that this be a grassroots activity because they are the ones that are going to use a state and local the real firefighters the policemen on the beat the public works officials they are the ones that are going to ask for that equipment not us at the nims integration center when you look at resource typing six months down the road one year down the road five years down the road how do you see it growing and changing i hope we've identified in the next six months what needs to be accomplished for national level that would allow local and regional groups to do what they need based upon their peculiarities for things that they use that don't have a national use or broad use a year from now i'd like to see is having a better inventory of what is available beyond that it would be good to be able to have a national database system for doing resource management all resource typing asks is that everyone gets on the same page you know you tend to do in emergencies what you do day to day and so you really are asking everybody to do a mindset to start calling things by a different term so when emergency arises they don't have to go think what do we call it now you can write to the nims integration center at dhs.gov to send in questions and recommendations about resource typing the national incident management system also keeps a list serve when a nims alert is sent out anybody who writes to that mailbox will get a message to check the website for specific information that may be of interest now let's take a look at this month's responder news rat of terrorism continues to be a major area of focus for the federal government the department of homeland security recently completed the command post exercise for top off four the top-off series is a congressionally mandated counterterrorism exercise for top officials aimed at improving our nation's ability to prevent and respond to acts of terrorism the command post exercise culminates the first of the two-year top-off cycle that will ultimately end with a full-scale exercise based in arizona origan and guam next year this year's event incorporated femus forward challenge exercise and the fbis marvel challenge the areas of focus included implementing and validating a continuity of operations plan or coop coordinating a public communication strategy assessing the public health requirements during a wmd and testing command center's ability to maintain a common operating picture more than 4 000 federal state local and tribal senior officials from 85 organizations took part in this multifaceted attempt to improve communications planning and decision-making capabilities in a time of crisis the ports of houston and los angeles hope to improve their performance during times of crisis by using the pier system pier created by audience central is nim's compliant and is already being used by the u.s. coast guard pier remained functional during the hurricane katrina response despite the massive flooding that claimed the new orleans operations center as a victim government agencies and private industry are already taking advantage of the speed access and control pier provides the key to the pier emergency communication system for the ports is that it centralizes all functions the web-based control center can be accessed anywhere in the world via secure connections pier can be used for internal and external communication with the public their workforce the media and other stakeholders pier's streamlined scalable nature was particularly attractive to the port of los angeles because it allows them to contact the necessary parties at a moment's notice during daily operations or an incident of national significance canines have proven their worth in the areas of narcotics and explosives but responders have now begun using them to detect chemical and biological weapons this recent innovation helps address the difficulty associated with searching large areas training canines to detect chemical or biological warfare agents involves the same process used with explosives instead of actual agents the dogs are taught to detect precursors degradation products and or production materials in most cases the canine handlers are trained in threat agent identification and response the hazardous nature of the task reduces canine detection to situations where the threat agent has not yet been released first responders can get better equipment by logging on to the responder knowledge base website the program guidelines and application kits for the fiscal year 2006 buffer zone protection program and chemical sector buffer zone protection program are now available from the department of homeland security preparedness directorate's office of grants and training this marks the first time the dhs authorized equipment list is being used in conjunction with either program visit the responder knowledge base website to download these forms and get updated information on allowable equipment while not on the same scale as top off four district one of michigan's regional medical response coalition conducted a mock disaster exercise of its own the city of lansing nine mid michigan counties and 100 organizations participated in a biological disaster scenario designed to stress their public health system handling the large number of patients and concerned citizens expected during a bird flu pandemic was a key element as they come in they're being assessed by the staff here to determine what's wrong with them and if they need to be admitted we can go ahead and do that if it's just a minor thing that's wrong with them we're sending them over to the acute care center because we want to keep the patients that are having the serious issues here at the hospital so that they can have more enhanced treatment the exercise ended with around 1200 volunteers flooding hospitals and neighborhood emergency health centers complaining of various flu like symptoms it began with a public health emergency declaration that activated emergency operation centers across district one the exercise started with injects coming in last week we had a tabletop exercise on tuesday a functional exercise on thursday and today is the full scale exercise this is mems a modular emergency medical system set up with partnering with the hospitals today we're setting up a neighborhood emergency health center in one of the schools in the area as well as an acute care center that the hospitals are staffing and monitoring right now the telephones and cell phones are out now in our eoc so we're having to rely on internet and racy's for for the time being so that's been a challenge in ingham county that challenge was met thanks in part to the more than 150 ham operators the lansing eoc has available running on 12 volt batteries allows them to remain functional without generators we utilize our ham operators our local ham operators within the county and they they when they come together during an emergency they're called the bracies which stands for the radio amateur civil emergency service michigan state university area hospitals and local schools all worked together at over 50 sites to deal with the bird flu induced chaos we'll capture all this information by all the evaluators and then we'll determine where our holes are not just here at the hospital but in our emergency management system public health etc and the nine county wide area and that will give us an opportunity to determine what it is that we need to fix and since we're all doing this together this this is already one of the safest communities in my opinion but we're even going to get better if you or someone in your jurisdiction is conducting a full-scale exercise write to us at terrorism at sp college dot edu and let us know i'm jenny dean and that is your responder news in the aftermath of a storm mosquito populations can soar by as much as 800 percent overwhelming local pest control and multiplying the misery of those involved in the recovery efforts john easman visited the 910th airlift wing in youngstown ohio he looked at the squadron's fixed-wing aerial spraying for vector control the 910th airlift wing is home to the only full-time fixed-wing aerial spray capability in the department of defense they were recognized for their efforts in protecting our military personnel and civilians in the aftermath of the hurricanes that ravaged the gulf coast in 2005 national center for infectious disease which is a division of the cdc they honored us with a with an award back in april which was their partners in public health basically acknowledging the fact that we had made a big difference down there in fighting diseases at katrina actually we're competing for the overall cdc award i haven't heard anything back on that yet but hopefully we'll make another trip to atlanta to receive that one really whenever there's a there's a hurricane uh we kind of our ears prick up and we start looking around to see where it hits what the spray management is in those areas already and we sort of proactively start getting things ready just in case we're needed the biggest problem was the uh the area you know the large amount of area and also doing a um large metropolitan area when you're dealing with in a big city like uh like new orleans you know we're flying flying in 150 feet we're flying below a lot of the buildings and just working away basically obstruction clearances that was the big point we like to have a day that we go out and do what we call a an aerial survey we go out and we plot on our charts where all the the radio towers are where all the tall buildings are we didn't have that luxury in uh in this operation your job as a navigator how does it differ in an operation like this as opposed to a tactical airlift in a combat or wartime scenario where the altitude we fly normally in training we're flying at three to 500 feet for our low level tactical routes aerial spray we're flying 150 to 100 feet things happen a lot quicker the earth moves quicker you know as you go and uh they said the the terrain is a big factor and uh just keeping track of where the airplane is and where we are because obviously we want to keep the material inside the the area the navigator is responsible for actually calling the spray on and the spray off from the spray operators in the back to turn the machine on to to to spray so it's our primary responsibility is to make sure we're putting the chemical where it needs where it's supposed to go so we're not treating outside the area treating somewhere we shouldn't what was the uh the nine tenths involvement in the aftermath of hurricane Katrina and Rita well our mission down mission there was to provide a stopgap measure to provide mosquito control and vector control until the public health machine of the New Orleans and the state of Louisiana area could get back online because these these are people who know their job quite well and they are one of the larger metropolitan areas doing this control as an entomologist how bad was it in the New Orleans area and how effective were your efforts one of the interesting things about this response is that we were actually invited to participate a little earlier in the game than normally typically we are brought in as a knee jerk reaction or finally a counter measure to the complaining in this case there was actually some forethought as to oh the situation will cause mosquitoes will cause a nuisance flies and so we were brought in ahead of schedule and so what you did was was effective and more effective than it might have been if you'd waited right well i what will end up happening if you wait too long the situation will resolve itself on its own of course then the individuals have to go through that intense biting pressure so if you wait long enough you can come in past the time when you can be most effective what we did see though is that those 200 bytes per minute were dropped for from you know 200 bytes per minute down to one or two bytes per minute major how does the control of vector-borne diseases affect the safety and the morale of disaster victims certainly the eliminating mosquitoes from the disaster area should significantly improve the morale of first responders just because of the extreme nuisance pressure that mosquito bites can put on individuals you know even when they're wearing the proper materials and say using repellents you still have mosquitoes coming to visit you if perhaps not biting you but we expect that to significantly improve the morale if nothing else it feels like hey someone's trying to help us out down here someone actually cares can you give us an idea what the difference is really between nuisance control and insect control the difference between nuisance spraying and vector control spraying would be in a situation where you have for example for nuisance we would have a large number of mosquitoes that may or may not be carrying any type of disease in recovery in our first responder situation where there is no electricity or people are trying to fix dykes or restore electricity in an area if you're receiving 40 or more bites a minute and in some cases during the Katrina situation they were recording 200 bites a minute you can imagine it's people trying to do those jobs would not only be difficult but downright dangerous due to the distraction levels conversely you might have a low number of mosquitoes a relatively known low number of mosquitoes or an acceptable number of mosquitoes but those mosquitoes a percentage high percentage of them might be carrying a virus or a proto zone or some sort of parasitic agent in that case we'd want to control those mosquitoes under a vector type spray at an early stage in the emergency recovery an assessment should be made of vector-born disease risks and pest nuisance disease control can be achieved by one diagnosis and treatment two vector control three environmental hygiene nuisance control is not as high a priority as disease control but can ease tensions and raise morale in the local populace both of these measures can be achieved by density and longevity reduction reducing the population density of vectors can be accomplished by insecticides or larvasides applied to breeding sites longevity reduction depends on the use of insecticides that kill adult vectors our our primary mission was to control the nuisance and the disease threat from the mosquito-borne illnesses in those affected areas we had professionals on the ground out there surveying areas doing mosquito counts checking for your your higher numbers so we would set those as our priority and then we would move on to the other areas it's such a problem not only for your your disaster victims but your infrastructure workers so you have to look where your infrastructure workers are predominantly concentrating to that eases their ability to get those powers and gas and everything return to those folks that's that's an interesting point you just brought up because you do have a lot of infrastructure repair going on how do you prioritize which areas get attention at what time again that falls back on to the professionals on the ground looking at what's going on in that particular area and again the mosquito counts if the count gets very high then obviously the medical issue comes into play because then there's a very deemed threat of medical outbreaks the c-130 because of its size and payload utilizes an application method called ultra low volume spraying low dosage applicators are attached to the airframe to facilitate the treatment of large land areas that would overwhelm normal spray operations basically that's going to be something between a half an ounce to two ounces per acre roughly and basically it's a half a shot glass is what we were trying to dispense that of chemical over an entire acre stacked from the ground up to 150 feet so you're trying to put out a really really small droplet size it's a 15 micron droplet size that you're trying to get out there so that it sticks to a mosquito and once it sticks to the mosquito then it causes it to have different problems which cause them to pass away it depends on the chemical we're spraying what the application rates are but generally our missions in Katrina ended up being pretty much the maximum because of the the time of the day we have to spray the right after sunrise right before sunset so we can spray for about two hours treating about 186,000 acres would be the would be the most we could probably do in a night you compare that to a helicopter or a small fixed wing airplane and it's a factor of 10 to 20 to 50 times more area than they can cover in a single night the recovery missions for Hurricanes Rita and Katrina were entirely voluntary for members of the 9 10th many of the reservists actually took personal leave time from their place of employment to participate in the relief effort well most of everybody here to 9 10th is is a volunteer and in one aspect or another we've got folks that have stepped up to the plate numerous times with Katrina and previous Hurricanes I'm available let me know what you need so again most of our folks are volunteers because they are civil service and reservists so it's not like we can just go out there and say you're deploying we have to get their you know their input and their push forward to you know audiences mainly first responders what would you want them to know about what you have done with Katrina and what you can do in the future what we can do is we've proved we can do over almost three million acres we have the capability what I would like them to understand is it doesn't happen overnight from the the uh the requesting process through the state through CDC and FEMA to uh the Pentagon to our higher headquarters at at air mobility command to airfract to us this takes time so the earlier they think they're going to need us start the process generally it's the states themselves that that put in request there are commercial sprayers that have priority to get these jobs to begin with but when they are overwhelmed that's when we're asked to step in and help with the problem a good example would be Katrina a lot of the assets were destroyed in the hurricane itself so the state came out of it sorely needing equipment to be able to do that and the commercial sprayers really couldn't couldn't keep up with the pace so that's what we were called in fairly early with Katrina what would you say that is a tool that you put into the incident command structure yeah I think when all else fails and and the system is overwhelmed by the requirements I think we are the we're the the ace in the hole that you can call and get there quickly and take care of the big big problems so how important would you say is interagency cooperation oh it's it's huge and it always has been huge um and that's where interagency bickering can't come in this is where uh all those issues people have with other agencies you gotta throw them out and you gotta work the process and get us down there because we don't really care about any of that all we care about is killing the bugs when a natural disaster becomes so large that it overwhelms state and local resources when it comes to vector control the air force reserves nine tenth airlift wing is ready to respond from youngstown ohio for comnet i'm john eastman the u.s. air force reserve command ariel spray squadron has worked with many federal agencies such as the federal emergency management agency the department of homeland security the environmental protection agency and the centers for disease control and prevention their commitment and unique abilities make them a valuable resource during an incidence recovery process all right now let's take a look at this month's calendar of events the eighth annual technologies for critical incident preparedness conference and exposition will be held september 6 through 8 at the Hyde Regency in atlanta georgia on september 14 through 16 the 2006 fire rescue international will be held at the dallas convention center in dallas texas and on september 17 through 20th the disaster recovery journal will hold its fall world conference in san diego california at the chariot in san diego hotel and marina then on september 19th and 20th the u.s. maritime security expo will be held at the jacob javits convention center in new york city new york the national emergency management association will hold its annual conference on september 18 through 22nd at the prodido beach resort in orange beach alabama on september 19 through 21st the biometric consortium conference 2006 will be held at the baltimore convention center in baltimore maryland then on september 27 through 29th the homeland security summit 2006 will be held in arlington virginia at holiday in roslin at key bridge and on september 27 through 29th the ems expo will be held in las vegas nevada at the las vegas convention center the 2006 homeland defense symposium will be held october 2 through 5th at the broadmore hotel in colorado springs colorado huntington beach is consistently right as one of the safest cities in the united states behind that distinction are marine safety officers and a staff who get to call the beach their office but as correspondents susanna bailon found out despite the sun and surf the job is a tough one that involves rigorous training and a variety of specialized skills welcome to huntington beach also known as surf city usa but it's more than just surfers who enjoy this three and a half miles of beach along california's coast huntington beach used to be a sleepy beach town well now it's a vibrant resort destination with a beach that brings in 10 million visitors annually and on the front lines of keeping it safe the marine safety division is a leading agency it's recognized internationally for its lifesaving model in a nutshell we provide protection of life limit property in that order on the beach there's a lot that goes into the renowned efficiency and excellence that's why lifeguards from all over the country as well as from australia new zealand and south africa come to huntington beach to watch and learn the huntington beach marine safety division operates under a system put in place in 1957 by chief lifeguard and former navy seal vince moore house we use what we call perimeter defense system that it's kind of a series of checks and balances and overlapping coverage of water so that when we have a person that vacates an area or a tower that we have people that are watching his water at all times during a normal summer day rescue when a tower guard goes out a minimum of eight different people are watching the water in which that person is vacated so therefore it's a redundant system to back up the area because if somebody leaves an area and goes on a rescue now we've left some open water and if there's another incident in that same area we've got it covered it's a defense system that works well for this coastline which is a centrally located pier on the pier is tower zero the eyes in the skies from this vantage point lifeguard personnel with the help of high powered binoculars can see everything on the coastline as it happens the 10 permanent marine safety officers responsible for huntington beach consider themselves jacks of all trade and their jobs require many facets of certification and training used within and outside their primary jurisdiction the average day he may not use any of that it may be just patrolling but that's the thing about the job you never know what's going to happen every day can be different you have an incident go down and you got to call upon those skills and those certifications and you got to perform the task at hand how's your nose among other things their emergency medical technicians providing first response for medical aid on the beach they patrol the beach and are deputized peace officers able to enforce ordinances the marine safety officers use their skills as certified first responders in the water they also have incident command and management training most aspects of the operation have grown from debriefing and assessment of the marine safety division's ability to meet its mission the debriefing really provides us a lot of information on how things unfold the whole incident command system came about based on a debriefing of big incident that they had where they went hey we had a lot of resources we had a lot of people coming in i think it was for the fires that we had that one year we didn't know how to use our resources in an efficient manner and how to coordinate it they developed a plan called the incident command system what that enabled them to do was it provided an incident commander provided an organized system structure for handling incoming resources and also it provided a scope authority one person in charge of seven people no more than seven people so they could adequately supervise the the amount of resources that were coming in the marine safety division officers are trained in swift water flood and underwater rescue their arsenal of personal equipment to meet those needs includes basic scuba gear swift water gear as well as suits specifically designed for use in contaminated water in this suit we're fully contained so i can dive in contaminated water example of a jet crash with jet fuel in the water this is something i'd want to be wearing instead of the normal wetsuit and there's the most recent addition personal protection equipment for chemical and biological exposures all of the permanents have been sent through the sheriff's academy at for orange county sheriffs and fitted and issued chemical weapons suits so that we can assist we by no means are going to go into something that's dangerous but we need to be able to help and so all of the equipment is based upon that protecting yourself first and then your teammates and then hopefully being able to help the citizens the marine safety division has three rescue boats like this that assist in near shore and offshore search and rescue it also utilizes the huntington beach police helicopter marine safety officers are trained to get on and off the helicopter in rescue situations officers also have four rescue personal watercraft and four atvs the fleet of vehicles and water vessels are used to back the marine safety division's philosophy put a stop to or prevent problems before it's necessary to make a rescue and it's working consider this on average yearly there are some 15 000 preventative actions here that's compared to the 3 000 rescues that take place that philosophy and a key piece of equipment we're in use during our time spent with the marine safety division as we witnessed one of the most common scenarios here a life guard helping a swimmer caught in a rip current and he's yelling at the guy further out there who's not touched yet in fact it looks like he's decided he needs to go on this guy so he's swimming out maintaining a visual contact with him probably yelling at him trying to talk to him it's like he just put his fin on and uh guys facing towards shore not really stroking to any lifeguard that probably means trouble and he's asking the guy hey all right now he's kind of being pulled out in a rip current you notice the guard has his buoy in hand you look around the boats we have you look around our personal watercraft we have fancy trucks we have these atvs and everything we've got the tower on the pier but when it comes down to bare bones lifeguarding our rescue buoy is the most important piece of equipment that we have on the beach here without it we really wouldn't be able to make rescues it could float four people five people depending on the weight our guards in the towers are trained grab the buoy grab at least one fin run out swim out get the people floating get them on the buoy and then from there they determine a path to shore and they swim into shore without that buoy you're you're almost useless because if you approach a guy who's drowning the first thing he's going to do is grab on to you take you down and now you may be you may also drown so that one piece of equipment our rescue buoy i couldn't do my job without it nobody here could do a job without it a top notch dispatch system enables the marine safety division to work with other agencies in the area we're part of the 911 system and us being first responders that worked attached to that system a couple years ago the city upgraded their radio system we're now on an 800 megahertz system and what that means is that we have six different bands of radios with 16 different channels so we have 16 zones and 16 channels 256 channels that we can operate off now with that our towers each have a phone and it's a direct dial phone they pick up the phone it rings headquarters that is the beginning of the 911 system every time a lifeguard goes out on a rescue we now have to activate that system what that means he's going to get some kind of a backup so when that happens our dispatcher will put the call out to a rescue vessel and then a backup truck so when that happens he gets back up now when the supervisors come on scene if there's additional resources that we need we can go ahead and notify the dispatcher the dispatcher then can utilize either the phone or the radio system to call additional resources what would be the fire department the police department maybe the coast guard if necessary orange county harbor patrol so all these different people that we share this radio system we can get a hold of them within seconds i mean it's it's really nice for the honeyton beach marine safety division keeping the public safe isn't just about what's happening in the water behind me they're setting up grandstands for just one of many annual events that bring tens of thousands to a small area on this beach and while the fire and police departments will have a role in keeping the masses safe so will marine safety officers who can bring areas of expertise to the mix that the other agencies simply can't whether there be an act of terrorism or a tsunami mutual aid is key when it comes to protecting people along the coast we all work together police fire and then lifeguards we coordinate an incident may happen we talked about training for a weapons of mass destruction we did training once where they simulated a bomb going off on the beach you had to have the police down here for security you had to have the fire department down here for hazardous materials and also the medical aids and then you had to have lifeguards down here a lot of what our role is is securing the beach clearing the beach off and making sure that people don't get out on the beach it's really a mindset that that although you are all separate entities you do need to work together to make everybody safe it's here in honeyton is one big you know safety coordinated effort between all law enforcement medical and rescue teams you know we we view ourselves as being one big but separate parts of one equal task which is making sure that whoever comes down the beach for the day who was ever in our city that we give them the best service possible for the marine safety division that means the training never ends every week have one day specifically dedicated for us to go out and train for 10 hours that way with anything new that comes up that we're adequately certified all the new stuff that we actually take part in new equipment new certifications that we are up to speed on everything the marine safety officers we talked with agree what makes their operation a model is self-evaluation training keeping current with technology and changing times and staying connected with other agencies and not being afraid to learn from what they do for the millions who enjoy huntington beach it all adds up to one of the safest stretches of coastline you'll find if you'd like more information on the honeyton beach marine safety division or any of the agencies featured this program just visit our website or you can write to comnet p.o. box 13 489 st. petersburg florida our zip code is 33733 and while you're on the ntpi website be sure to sign up and take the online test for ceo's also you can help ensure that we're meeting your learning needs by completing the evaluation form and just a reminder our next comnet will be airing wednesday october the 25th at 2 p.m eastern time also be sure and join us for live response september 27th at 2 p.m eastern time we will discuss the topic of suicide homicide bombers thanks again for viewing and we'll see you next time on comnet