 This is ComNet. The mission of the Public Health Service Commission Corps is to provide highly trained mobile health professionals that promote the health of the nation. David Klu visited with members of the Commission Corps to talk about how they're used in the recovery effort. The Office for Domestic Preparedness prepares America's emergency responders through training designed to meet the needs of state and local communities. Diane Roberts looks at the new initiatives in the Office for Domestic Preparedness training programs. ComNet continues its series on the Citizen Corps programs by highlighting the Neighborhood Watch. Stacey Phillips spoke with members of Neighborhood Watch about how private citizens can play a crucial role in the detection and prevention of terrorist acts. The Texas Engineering Extension Service's National Emergency Response and Rescue Training Center offers a course that trains emergency response supervisors and managers. John Eastman visited the TEEX course and shows how it can help develop the skills necessary to effectively manage a terrorist incident. 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 to the nation's civilian and military response communities. Now ComNet is being distributed over government and commercial information networks. It's also being streamed over the World Wide Web at terrorism.spcollege.edu. Now 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. This link will take you through the registration process and 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 that program. Your input and comments are very important to us. The Office for Domestic Preparedness is a principal component of the Department of Homeland Security. Its job is to prepare the U.S. for all types of disasters. To that end, training, funding and support are critical to satisfying the mission. Diane Roberts tells us what is available now and what's on the horizon to make responders ready. The Office for Domestic Preparedness is the primary executive agent for Homeland Security Presidential Directive 8, which focuses on national preparedness. Barbara Bean, acting director of ODP's training division, tells us the goal is to define a common approach to national preparedness in the area of incident management, national response and infrastructure protection. She says we must be able to answer questions like how well are we prepared and prepared for what? These scenes are real-life examples of how terrorism could or does affect the public and they show the need for cooperative training. Barbara Bean will help us give you a better understanding of what you need to know about co-op. Let's start with the NRP. It has seven overreaching priorities. Three are broader in scope. In order to function effectively together, we essentially all have to be working off of the same playbook and that really is what the national response plan is. It's very much predicated on the precepts of the incident command system, but the national response plan and the national incident management system help from a response aspect in terms of figuring out where which piece fits and how everybody plays together. So those are the larger pieces of it and then you come down to four that are more capability-specific. Things that are more related along the lines of intelligence in terms of interoperable communications, in terms of chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear detection and response and remediation type of issues as well as medical prophylaxis and medical surge. So basically what we do is we take a look at our programs and see how they match and align to those priorities and see again related to the target capabilities that are being developed under Homeland Security Presidential Directive 8 to see what coverage of those target capabilities and those prioritized capabilities we have. Talk about the cooperative training outreach program. What exactly is that and what do you hope to get out of that for the first responders? The co-op program for us is where we're taking our existing train-the-trainer programs and structuring those in training support packages so that state and local institutions, the state administering agencies, can designate existing institutions that are within their state and have those already qualified institutions take that curriculum in and teach it to their own folks. It's essentially a variation on the parable of having folks fish for themselves and that leaves us essentially able to use our resources to be able to support that high-dollar specialized facility training, things that really maybe can't necessarily be done at the state and local level and again provides the state and local capacity to be able to not only do that initial training but to have that sustainment training as you deal with turnover concerns and as you deal with refresher concerns. The cooperative training outreach program will be implemented in three phases. Phase one in the first quarter of the fiscal year 06. State administering agencies will designate organizations within their state, territories, or tribal entities to adopt and deliver the standardized training programs that should ensure quality and consistency. Phase two happens in the second quarter. It will enable the electronic system to catch up to the mission. By then, SAAs and training points of contact will receive an electronic toolkit and by the third quarter phase three will see the program institutionalized. Let's take a quick look at each phase. The first phase for us is again working with the state administering agencies to help them designate organizations within their state to take these programs in and to deliver them. Phase two, we're optimizing, we're making sure that those systems are in place that we're providing those materials to them and that basically will allow those master trainers, the people that have been designated as the keepers of the program within that institution to download and have all the most current material in terms of making sure that they have the most current version of items. Phase three, we're going to be expanding the number of courses that are available. We're going to be working with the states and the master trainers to look at the evaluative data that comes back from those courses. Let's talk about some of the specifics. The training grant fiscal year for food and agricultural safety and defense. Talk a little bit about what that entails. Food and agriculture safety is obviously a significant concern, not only monetarily, but also for just core security issues. And we work closely with our partner agency, the USDA on this and their Animal Health Inspection Service. We have cooperatively with them designed a curriculum that's delivered through our Center for Domestic Preparedness and Iniston that's called an agricultural emergency response training course. It's a three-day course, two days of which is a core instruction in terms of items such as the threat itself, proper donning and doffing of personal protective equipment, as well as decontamination. Also on the third day then these students go into a practical exercise in terms of dealing with a suspect incident, a suspect animal incident. We also have additional courses that are under development based on our competitive training grant program from last year. Agroterrorism, as you mentioned, is a complex arena because you have not only food and food from that perspective, you also have food and animal. It's plant and animal pre-production, post-production, so you have everything from security aspects of crops being grown to those crops being harvested and trucked somewhere for production. So there's many variables in the system and that's why we work very closely with our colleagues at USDA. It sounds like a real effort in prevention, focusing on prevention. Yes, very much so. As the saying goes, a prevention is really worth a pound of cure so anything that we can do with respect to prevention and early detection is really a lot of the focus of the effort. What we can do with respect to spotting anything that might be suspicious in a crop or spotting surveillance of a production facility, we really never know what piece of information you may be denying someone that could prevent a successful attack and so that prevention concept really is key, especially in the agro-terrorism area. Let's talk a little bit about transportation and what kind of training is developed in that area and why is it even important? One of the awards that we had out of our competitive program for last year was, again, training for non-sworn professionals that are providing security in the public safety arena and this is a project that's being conducted to the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transit Authority and basically what they're doing is working together with their core group to provide that training that's really needed in terms of the non-sworn professionals so it's not a sworn law enforcement official but it's somebody that's responsible within the transit system whether it's a security guard, whether it's a monitor, it's somebody that's really responsible within that system for assuring the safety of the passengers and the security and availability of the system itself. The other component there is that you're also dealing with threats from the explosive side so we also have established curriculum through our partner out at the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology with respect to incident response to terrorist bombings and prevention and response to suicide bombing incidents so detecting which suspicious characteristics are out there detecting and disrupting that planning loop recognizing the difference between a letter bomb, a package bomb, a potential vehicle bomb and being able to, again, put some of those pieces together. And in this day and age, if you don't know about the internet, don't know how to use the internet, you cannot be the best you can be so I'm interested to know about firstrespondertraining.gov. What is it? I'm excited about this project. It's a first responder training portal. What we're doing with firstrespondertraining.gov is essentially trying to prevent that problem that happens to us in so many ways in different areas of our lives where sometimes you feel like you have to know the right answer to be able to ask the right question to get the right answer. So what we're looking to do because we have evolved as an organization and we have 45 training partners and we have a myriad of programs available is looking to provide a good entrance to the shopping mall of possibilities, if you will. Right now the program is in a pilot mode. We began in mid-August in a pilot with 10 states and in a territory and basically what we're doing is where each state as you might imagine has its own structures for how it approves people to go to training and so we're working with those groups and individuals to make sure that we've captured that. When will it actually be launched for people to use on a regular basis? The state administering agents and all of the folks that we deal with at the state level will be able to have the access that they need to do their functions with us again first quarter of 06 so we're looking to roll that out in conjunction with the FY06 grant guidance. When you look at the future of ODP training what do you see? Short term for us, our big focus is to make a very tight connection between training and exercises to make sure that we really do a good job closing the loop between the lessons we learned so that we don't end up having people drive through what I call someone else's pothole that they find their very own and that we progressively patch those so that hopefully the road becomes very much smoother. In terms of going forward from there we're also very much looking at simulation application of technologies in that sense. We're very much again focused on that institutionalization concept in terms of making sure that state and locals can do as much as they can at their home jurisdiction. Being as well aware the response community is faced with many difficult situations and challenges. The Cooperative Training Outreach Program is designed to help responders juggle them all with the ultimate goal of protecting their community and themselves safely. If you'd like more information on the Cooperative Training Outreach Program and how we can help it expand first responder preparedness training all across the country just visit the NTPI website. Now let's take a look at what's coming up on the next live response. Through preparation and coordination local first response personnel can effectively respond to a public health crisis. On the next live response we'll look at the Metropolitan Medical Responsism and show how it supports existing emergency preparedness plans. Live response airs Wednesday January 25th at 2 p.m. eastern. For more information on viewing make sure to register online at terrorism.spcollege.edu. With the new challenges that law enforcement agencies face today it's important that citizens get involved in their own preparedness for emergencies, disasters and now terrorism. Stacey Phillips continues her review of the Citizen Corps with a look at the Neighborhood Watch Program. Perhaps one of the oldest and most well known initiatives from the National Sheriff's Association in partnership with Citizen Corps and U.S. Department of Justice is the Neighborhood Watch Program. And at the forefront of Neighborhood Watch is the goal of establishing relationships between citizens and law enforcement. Crime prevention can't just be done completely by the police or by the sheriffs. It has to be engagement with the community and involvement with the citizens and Neighborhood Watch provides that program to promote that engagement of the citizens because it has to be a partnership to truly fight crime effectively. It can't just all be by the police or by the sheriffs. It has to be with the involvement of the local community and the local neighborhood. It needs to be a partnership of the local community and the local law enforcement agency. They have to work together to make it work and make it happen. Most law enforcement officers know that they get a lot more cases solved by information from the community and so it makes their job much easier. Neighborhood Watch has been a mainstay in crime prevention for many years. It had started with the National Sheriff's Association in 1972 as we saw crime rates increasing, the recognition that citizens could play a role even through the advent of community policing in the 90s. It has been very, very popular as we've seen the reduction at a 30-year low right now in crimes across the country. Neighborhood Watch has played a significant role over the years in that concept, in the idea that we've been able to reduce crime by developing a partnership with citizens. So within BJA it fits into our law enforcement section, our policy shop that looks at both crime prevention and law enforcement initiatives and community initiatives. How does the Neighborhood Watch group benefit local law enforcement, whether it's the sheriffs department or the police departments? Well, in many ways, it certainly acts as a conduit for the local law enforcement into the communities and into the local neighborhoods. And it's a great benefit in that, again, it fosters a partnership, it fosters a working relationship, it opens communications between local law enforcement and the citizens that they serve and together forming that partnership to affect crime positively and a reduction in crime and to also go into other areas such as disaster response and homeland security on a local level. When you capture that spirit and the partnership between citizens and police, we have a strong need in this country to have public safety. Citizens have a right to be crime-free, have a right not to be victimized. And so when you look at Neighborhood Watch as one strong and key element in keeping citizens safe, that's the number one program that a law enforcement agency will have to provide citizen safety. And so it's going to be around for a very, very long time. Through these relationships or partnerships, the original purpose of Neighborhood Watch was to reduce residential crime. However, with the events of 9-11, Neighborhood Watch is now being revitalized with additional prevention activities. I think there's been enough proof in this country after September 11th when we had this terrorist living amongst us and how sad that we didn't know enough or weren't involved enough to look at those suspicious activities. And I think that we will never be the same in this country. From now on, we're just going to have to be on lookout, be aware. It is our responsibility that we never have another September 11th. If someone says, can the terrorism attack take place in my neighborhood, the answer is yes. We don't know where the next one is going to be. A lot of neighbors can get together and look around in their neighborhood and find out why a terrorist would come. Do I have a chemical plant? Do I have a police station? Do I have a sheriff's department? Is there something in my neighborhood that's going to attract somebody to come in? If there is, people need to take steps of what's going to happen. What resources do we have? That can only take place if you're meeting with people face to face and you discuss these kind of ideas. Part of the president's initiative that he initiated several years ago is to revitalize the Neighborhood Watch programs and to revitalize them with additional duties or additional things to concentrate on. In other words, Neighborhood Watch can and should go beyond strictly crime prevention and again look at and deal with issues on the local level of how to prepare for a disaster. Katrina was probably the worst hurricane it's ever hit in the United States. Much, much worse than Camille. Jackson is three hours from the coast. Therefore, we got a lot of evacuees and our Neighborhood Watch groups geared up and they came, they volunteered at the centers. We needed blood donated. We got 200 people donating blood. It was totally amazing. Neighborhood Watch is very simple. You're just being the eyes and ears of your community. You're looking out for suspicious activities. Why is there a car parked in front of Mrs. Jones? Why did this car drive down the street ten times? Neighborhood Watch is knowing what is going on. Nobody's asking you to go after anybody, chase anybody. Neighborhood Watch is just knowing your neighborhood just like it was before there was air conditioning. Everybody used to hang out on their porch and know everybody that came by. We don't do that anymore. Neighborhood Watch is bringing that back to the forefront of this country. With the revitalization of the Neighborhood Watch program, the National Sheriff's Association, in partnership with the Bureau of Justice Assistance, launched USA on Watch in an effort to meet the president's goal of doubling the number of current watch groups. USA on Watch not only offers information about Neighborhood Watch, but also serves as a valuable resource for those who want to start a Neighborhood Watch group. USA on Watch program is the national initiative for Neighborhood Watch to really promote Neighborhood Watch to local communities, to really engage agencies where Neighborhood Watch has not begun to get them started. There's over 15,000 registered Neighborhood Watch programs in this country. 2,000 law enforcement agencies have signed up and said, yes, we're running a Neighborhood Watch, and that's just those that have signed up. We're constantly trying to get them registered so that we can provide better service, better training, exchange information more readily to them on a regular basis. At a national level, the USA on Watch program can furnish not only information, but also can direct you as far as where you can get materials, who you can call. And that's what's so great about having the USA on Watch is because they're like the national clearing. They can be the source, no matter where you live in the country. There is no excuse. If you really want to develop a Neighborhood Watch and you really don't know, just contact the USA on Watch and they can help you with that. They can pull up information on how to start a new Neighborhood Watch program, how to go about revitalizing it. They can do such things as you can plug in your zip code and find out by putting in a zip code, what's your local law enforcement agency? Who to contact to find out if there is a Neighborhood Watch program there or if a new one needs to be started. Through the website of USA on Watch, it provides a link to Neighborhood Watch programs, a link to what's going on in your community as it relates to Neighborhood Watch and also gives those people the ability to link in to other partners under the Citizen Corps program. It allows people who have registered to get a monthly issue of things that happened throughout the United States. In essence, the President's speech is on the website. When someone mentions Neighborhood Watch and we have a success story, it's on the website. These are points that can be taken and applied back to where you live. It also gives us an advantage to let us know that you're out there. It also gives you the ability to tell us that you've got a problem in a particular area. So again, it's a help to everybody, big or small. And by registering, you let us know you're out there. By telling us what you need, it gives us an opportunity to help. If you want to register for Neighborhood Watch, you can register through your Neighborhood Watch at USAonWatch.org. Another helpful resource to both citizens and law enforcement agencies is currently under development by USA on Watch, the Neighborhood Watch toolkit. The Neighborhood Watch toolkit is a development piece that we have right now that we'll be putting out in the next year to law enforcement. It contains the starting elements of a Neighborhood Watch. In essence, how do you run a meeting? It has a phone tree. It has an agenda, a sample agenda. It has a composition board that shows where you start and where you want to finish. It has various flip charts and flip books that are only this big. So in essence, it's a cheat sheet that you can look at. In that kit are observation skills. What am I looking for? I see something go by. What am I looking at? What do I need to make note of when I'm out on Neighborhood Watch? So again, we start from the beginning and we give them those basic skills. Also included in the kit are as a participant guide that takes you through all the CDs, et cetera, et cetera. Now, these kits will be handed out as we go across the country with the 15 training sites that we'll be picking up regionally now over the next year. Those people that attend those trainings will be given a Neighborhood Watch kit. What we have found is it's typically it's easy to get a Neighborhood Watch group started when there's been a problem in the community. The key is keeping it sustained. And that's one of the reasons we're coming out the new toolkit with the community presentations on a CD. So it gives the office or something to keep going with. What we're doing is trying to encourage the Neighborhood Watch groups to kind of pick something and work on that and not just let the meetings drop. A Neighborhood Watch could be ten houses, one block. A Neighborhood Watch can be a whole community. A gated community of 300 people can become a Neighborhood Watch. Anybody that wants to resolve the either proactive or reactive can start a Neighborhood Watch. You just need to do it. What is the future of Neighborhood Watch? The future is unlimited. As long as we market correctly, as long as we train correctly, and as long as we keep it in the public eye, we can take Neighborhood Watch as high as it can go. If you will feel safe in your community, you have to be part of the solution. So if you see crime, you need to report it. You need to participate in Neighborhood Watch. If there isn't one in your neighborhood, call the local law enforcement agency. Get on the website and go to USAOnWatch. Get involved, participate, show that volunteer spirit by helping to keep these communities crime-free. When citizens in law enforcement working together, the Neighborhood Watch program is helping to create a safe and secure nation, one neighborhood at a time. And now let's take a look at this month's Responder News. The destruction caused by natural disasters requires recovery efforts that are sometimes as dangerous as the initial event. The Department of Labor's Occupational Safety and Health Administration, or OSHA, hopes accessible education will help keep workers from becoming post-incident victims. OSHA has developed eight quick cards and more than 30 fact sheets, aimed at helping employers and their employees address the health and safety hazards associated with hurricane recovery. Work zone traffic safety, mold, and general decontamination are among the topics covered. The four-by-nine-inch cards are being distributed to golf-coast relief workers. The laminated two-sided card currently features concise directions and tips in English and Spanish. With Vietnamese cards already in production, OSHA plans to add other languages and additional topics, depending on demand. Vehicle crashes are the leading cause of on-duty volunteer firefighter deaths. The National Volunteer Fire Council, under the direction of the United States Fire Administration, has created a new internet-based program for emergency vehicle safe operations. The web-based educational program features ten key practices designed to help manage risk. The program is part of the Emergency Vehicle Safety Best Practices self-assessment that also includes downloadable charts that enable first responders to easily monitor their agency's progress. In addition, site visitors can learn about behavior management and motivation, critical safety issues of volunteer firefighter safety, and standard operating procedures for more than 20 different vehicle-related tasks. The program also supports the National Fallen Firefighters Foundation Firefighter Life Safety Initiative to reduce on-duty firefighter fatalities. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency recently established the Center for Advancing Microbial Risk Assessment, or CAMRA, to support homeland security objectives. By filling critical gaps in microbial risk assessment, CAMRA, located at Michigan State University, will arm first responders and policymakers with the information they need for protection against biological threats. The Center's two main objectives are to develop models and information that can reduce the health impacts from biological threats and to build a national network for information transfer about microbial risk assessment. Most of New Orleans is still struggling to recover from Hurricane Katrina and the floods that came in its wake. Some residents, however, have returned to work, thanks to some nontraditional housing. John McQuiston has the story. Work at St. Bernard Port near New Orleans has resumed because workers displaced by Hurricane Katrina have found temporary housing close by. Deliving on travel trailers parked aboard the motor vessel Cape Vincent. And we're broken out for any kind of emergency. Some of it is relief-type efforts like back in Somalia and Haiti and whatnot, or Katrina now. Other times it's for various logistical wartime efforts such as in Iraq, et cetera. We've been over there half a dozen times. Captain David Scott has steered the 632-foot-long merchant marine ship at ports all over the world. But this mission is much different. So is it used for things like housing extra people? Not normally. This is a special one-time modification. Usually we're carrying various roll-on-roll-off vehicles, you know, Humvees and tanker trucks and military-type vehicles primarily. Those vehicles don't usually have people living in them. So the Cape Vincent had to be modified to accommodate the 18 trailers and the roughly 60 workers who are living inside them. Well, it was really fairly major because we don't have the sanitation device capacity so we had to add a rather large sanitation device in order to allow for that and had to add piping for portable water and electrical connections, et cetera, in order to enable all this to work. And also washers and dryers and figure out how we're going to feed that many people within our fairly limited galley space. But the work on this ship was necessary so that work at the port could resume. Work here had stopped after the hurricane. Even when its equipment was ready, the port still could not open because its workers had evacuated the area. A lot of the workers had found temporary housing, but it was as far as four hours away from here and that made it impossible to get here to work. Now they live right here. It's going real well so far. The stevedores here have been really good to work with and their people are kind of used to being on ships a bit so it's worked out pretty well. But Captain Scott understands if his guests don't want to stay here any longer than they have to. Most of St. Bernard Parish still does not have essential services. For now it is the Cape Vincent that allows the ports to service other ships. So they have like 60 guys doing 12-hour shifts now being able to get back in business and get things started. Meanwhile you're gradually starting to see electricity and whatnot pop up so whenever they can move back, I know they'll be happy to move back probably up between a month or two. This is John McQuiston. A biohazard detection system is scheduled to be fully installed this month at 282 mail processing facilities. The completed system utilizes existing technologies to allow the United States Postal Service to test for anthrax. More than 27 billion pieces of mail have been screened without a single false positive at the sites where installation has been completed. Northrop Grumman is responsible for maintaining the 1,373 systems it developed along with Postal Service Engineers and the U.S. Army. Postal workers will have no interaction with this system other than replacing the cartridges that collect samples. Each biohazard detection system costs $250,000 and is the result of planning that began immediately after the terrorist attacks of September 11th, 2001. I'm Jenny Dean and that's a look at this month's Responder News. When public health safety is put on the line the United States Public Health Service is responsible for furnishing health expertise in these times of crisis. David Clue looks at how the Commissioned Corps can help. When the medical community is simply overwhelmed by a natural or man-made disaster what is needed is a single group that can combine the resources of the federal government the organization of the U.S. military and the critical skills of the medical community. What is needed is the Commissioned Corps. The Commissioned Corps is a branch of the uniform services that is committed to protecting the health of the nation. It is commanded by the Surgeon General and the soldiers of the United States Commissioned Corps are assigned to a variety of operating divisions or agencies within the Department of Health and Human Services. What is it the Commissioned Corps are first to protect and advance the health of the nation and we do that through prevention programs where everything from preventing the catastrophes that could occur from hurricanes and tornadoes spread of disease, pandemic flu, all of those things. So prevention is first but when we can't prevent or there are unanticipated challenges we are prepared to respond to mitigate and then help people recover from whatever the event is. The Commissioned Corps is composed of a wide range of health professionals certainly physicians, nurses, ones you might think of right up front but certainly involves a whole range of other skill sets from optometry to physical therapy to veterinary skills and in general in order to become a member of the Commissioned Corps you have to have a professional or advanced degree in a health arena. When there is a natural disaster or a urgent public health need or a national special security event then emergency support function 8 is normally activated under the National Response Plan and the first asset that generally is utilized by ESF-8 is the Commissioned Corps of the Public Health Service. The Office of Force Readiness and Deployment has such a critical role in our ability to do our job out here they don't get sort of the feeling that we do of gratification of working with folks here on the ground they don't get the good vibes of seeing a patient and watching them walk out feeling better and so on but they are so critically important because those folks are the people who provide us with our staff they do that by having a listing of who the officers are what their skill sets are what their readiness is they have that full roster they make the connections and buy down the officers from their usual workplaces and then provide them to us when we call them down. When a natural or man-made disaster destroys a community it's the Commissioned Corps working with many other agencies that helps bring the medical community back to its feet. The Department of Defense, the Veterans Administration, NDMS and the U.S. Public Health Service are partners and then we have other support from the American Red Cross and Department of Transportation and other federal departments as needed. The Corps, while making wonderful contributions for instance does not have the logistical capacity of the Department of Defense we don't have the hospital bed capacity of the VA and the DOD and their partner hospitals we don't have the EMT capacity the emergency medical technician capacity of the National Disaster Medical System so we all build on each other's strengths and fill in the gaps where we have weaknesses. How should states and first responders view the Commissioned Corps when they begin to show up after being called up? The Commissioned Corps officers know that when they show up they are simply the technical assistants they're the advisors, the augmentees for the existing local and state resources. We pride ourselves on being able to fill the gaps that are necessary when the resources of a community are exceeded but we also recognize that local and state control is paramount and that we serve at the pleasure of the leaders there. Here in Cameron Parish, Louisiana Hurricane Katrina not only paralyzed the medical community it destroyed it and when you lose an entire hospital like this one it means you have to recreate a medical infrastructure in a hurry it is one of the Commissioned Corps's first priorities. This was such an overwhelming event that you didn't know where to begin quite honestly the hospitals were gone the primary care infrastructures were gone the public health systems were gone and working with the state to basically say where do we begin to eat this elephant was a big challenge. We're still here because in this particular parish we are the only game in town still a lot of this parish, the local medical infrastructure was destroyed and so the only thing we have available to us here in this area is a field setup for us to operate out of so that's why we're still here because there is no local medical infrastructure that is prepared yet to come back in and transition us out. Talk to me a little bit about the work that's going on in an incident like Katrina what is the Commissioned Corps charged with doing and how do we see whether or not they're completing that mission? Most of what we're doing within the Katrina reader response is defined in ESF-8 in the National Response Plan which is the medical and public health needs of a community we have our public health people embedded within the public health departments to make sure that public health is practiced that water is safe, that sanitation, that food is safe and we also provide clinical care across a wide range of specialties where it's needed. What we're doing now I think normally the health department would do but are the health unit for the parish but they have a certain amount of people and actually for this parish there's only one or two people and so they're swamped with work so we're here to aid this parish and the parish just north of here in Calcutta Street as well. Here today we're evaluating the school for the damage that has been done and making sure that it's ready to be inhabited by the students I think they're going to try to open on Monday and we're also doing a full inspection of the cafeteria and the food service areas to make sure that's safe to get restocked their foods and to get going again. Coming here to Katrina it was about the mission of helping the people of Louisiana to stand back up. Tremendous amount of chaos, loss of control, infrastructure 50% of the tax base gone 9 out of 10 hospitals in New Orleans drowned the mission was how do we help those people stand back up after that kind of event so that they can achieve a measure of self-control and the opportunity to provide the services that their people really need and they needed to help. I've been in the service for 26 years I've worked with a lot of officers and many in disasters but never in a situation that's quite as challenging I think and demanding of people to stay focused stay mission driven and step up to the plate to get the job done I've been very very proud of my colleagues here. The role of the commission corps doesn't stop at basic medical services and reorganization in fact tens of thousands of school children were displaced by hurricanes Katrina and Rita all of them in potential need of mental health services and are the commission corps. Well when you think about the impact on that population many of them losing everything they've got in the world many of them not having much to begin with having to leave everything they've known their homes, their families, their jobs, their communities and all there is perhaps a concrete slab to go back to the mental health problems are huge and so with the support of the Louisiana Department of Education we put together a plan so that those school teachers and other professionals that came in contact with these kids every day could identify problems and hopefully save the mental health of these kids. Commission corps doesn't just respond to major disasters there are things out there that you respond to that we might not think would be something that you would. We not only deploy to all sorts of disasters but also deploy to urgent public health needs and to national special security events. A NSSE is an event that is of high profile there's going to be a lot of public attention there many times there are lots of political leaders at the event for instance the presidential inauguration the State of the Union address meetings of the World Bank IMF some meetings of the United Nations the political conventions the Olympics those kinds of venues where there's much attention we're there to provide health care to provide epidemiology support to be there in case of a weapons of mass destruction event. One of the things I'm trying to do is get the word out on the hill and to the American public about this vital resource which is the backbone of federal public health throughout the United States and now globally because we deploy around the world in 800 locations assisting other nations as well. Tell me what the future holds for the Corps where do you see this organization? I think the future for the Corps is very bright never before have the demands been placed on the Corps as they are today everything from dealing with terrorism weapons of mass destruction the tools of the terrorists natural and man-made disasters pandemic flues emerging infections just about any and every public health challenge and safety and security challenge within the United States the public health has some role in either preventing, responding to, mitigating or recovering from. If you're interested in the Commission Corps there are plenty of places for you to work whatever your expertise is if you qualify and get a commission as a Commission Corps officer there's a place for you in an agency in a field that you'd like to work in. Both at home and abroad it may be one of the most effective medical emergency response operations ever assembled by the federal government the Commission Corps protecting, promoting and advancing the health and safety of the nation. If you'd like more information on the Commission Corps and how it supports the medical community and emergency be sure and visit the NTPI website. Now let's take a look at our calendar of events. The National Sheriffs Association is sponsoring the 2006 Mid-Winter Conference on January 4th through 7th at the Desert Springs Marriott Resort & Spa in Palm Springs, California. On January 8th through 12th the American Association of Airport Executives will conduct the 2006 Aviation Issues Conference at the Hapuna Beach Prince Hotel in Kona, Hawaii. And on January 16th through 21st the American Society of Law Enforcement Trainers will conduct the 19th Annual Training Seminar and Law Enforcement Exposition in Albuquerque, New Mexico at the Albuquerque Convention Center. Then on February 7th through 9th the 7th Annual Aviation Security Summit and Expo will be held in Washington DC at the Four Point Sheridan. The National Emergency Management Association will conduct its 2006 Mid-Year Conference on February 11th through 15th at the Alexandria Marks Center in Alexandria, Virginia. On February 13th and 14th Ohio University and Robinson Aviation will sponsor the Airport Security Planning Course at the Midwest Hotel and Conference Center in Columbus, Ohio. Then on February 15th through 17th the 5th Annual Critical Infrastructure Resilience and Infrastructure Security for the Built Environment Congress and Expo will be conducted at the Washington Convention Center in Washington DC. And on February 16th and 17th the Infrastructure Security Partnership will conduct the 5th Global Homeland Security Conference and Expo protecting the nation's critical infrastructure and key assets in Washington DC at the Washington Convention Center. The Texas Engineering Extension Service National Emergency Response and Rescue Training Center has a course available that trains emergency response supervisors in managing a WMD terrorism incident. In this next story John Eastman reports on the Incident Management and Unified Command for WMD Terrorist Incidents Course and looks at how it applies the all hazards command system found in the National Incident Management System. Good morning everybody. Good morning. How y'all doing? On the surface, the students in this class don't seem to have a lot in common. They all come from diverse fields such as transportation, fire, police, public works, public health, government personnel and even non-profit agencies. What unites them is the course topic Incident Management and Unified Command for Terrorism Incidents. We wanted to have a better understanding of what is involved in that and we wanted to be more prepared to work with the partners that we need to in a disaster. And I thought we're I consider to be a prime spot for an incident that a potential incident could happen and I just felt that it would be important for myself and maybe some of our other people to be trained in this type of field. Public works has always traditionally been a first responder to incidents such as emergencies that deal with water utilities, infrastructure and so forth and it's really important that the managers and supervisors know how to manage those incidents and use their resources. Officers do police work, public works build and maintain infrastructure but the dependency on each other and from agency to agency is extremely important and this is something that we're all learning and it's kind of a new thing to a lot of us. The overall goal and objective of the course is to take a group of individuals and give them the tools to plan for, respond to and manage a multi-agency multi-disciplinary incident according to national standards. The Texas Engineering Extension Service or TEACS created the course under direction from the office for domestic preparedness. The TEACS training course is a planning and management level course MGT-313 from the ODP Weapons of Mass Destruction and the course catalog. We at the Tampa Bay Regional Planning Council work to contact the Texas Engineering Extension Service from Texas A&M University through FEMA's Emergency Management Institute using their course catalog to determine which classes might benefit the first responders in the Tampa Bay region. We coordinated with TEACS and also the state training office in Tallahassee at the Department of Community Affairs to coordinate the training and bring it down to the first responders here in this region. The management system drives our course. The Office of Domestic Preparedness or ODP provides us with the funding to go out and put this course on. And we have recently rewritten the course within the last few months to make it NIMS compliant. ODP pays for the course. However, applicants do have to meet some basic criteria. Participants need to work at a management level within their organization. They should have also completed a Weapons of Mass Destruction or Terrorism Awareness Course. Well, the class is delivered at the management level. We don't consider ourselves instructors. We consider ourselves facilitators. And much of the class's success comes from the fact that the students come with a high level of expertise and they teach each other. Sometimes we leave the class to the participants than the participants learn from us. That diversity of backgrounds and real-world experience is crucial when it comes time to discuss NIMS. We give them tools to plan for an incident. We give them the tools to respond to an incident. And most importantly, we give them a management tool, the Internet Command System, under NIMS in which to mitigate an incident in the safest possible manner. NIMS is to identify the most commonly encountered WMD components and apply appropriate emergency response strategies. Here's how the lesson is demonstrated. Just moments ago, a videotape was delivered by an unknown source in the KRKD studio. Now, the footage you're about to see is disturbing because of the explosion that occurred earlier this morning. In a simulated newscast, students are informed that there's been explosion at City Hall. The Emergency Operations Center, or EOC, is located in City Hall. Think about your structure. What are you going to do now? The hands-on exercises are a hallmark of this course. At this point, students have the knowledge, but now they're being asked to work together in realistic scenarios that will put that knowledge to the test. And what is the FBI going to do? They're going to come in and they're going to take the lead. It's an application process. We provide them with information. We showed them how to use that information. And then they apply it in simulated scenarios that we have pre-designed for the class. Another objective is to ensure that the local emergency management organizations are able to work with both state and federal agencies. Judging from the response, students are getting the message. Now, when they first get there, what type of structure are they going to set up? A JOC. A JOC, which is a what? Operation Center. Once the class is over, these students should be able to describe their organization's role in the Incident Command System, ICS, and operate within a unified command structure during a WMD terrorism incident. It was very important to me to learn how to do the Incident Command, set up the unified command and learn to work with so many different entities and people from the outside your community who could be called in to give you help. They should be able to develop effective response strategies that integrate the full spectrum of capabilities with their community's response organizations. It's very important because as a lieutenant I respond to incidents that require organization and control of the personnel that show up. And this course gives me a better knowledge of how to organize an event and the resources that I need to call upon. Students will also be able to examine and analyze the actions taken by various emergency response organizations during actual WMD terrorism incidents to assess the effectiveness of those actions and apply those lessons learned in their own communities. I have an expectation that they'll walk away with a different way to look at how they do their jobs. Judging from student feedback, that expectation is being met. I think the big thing for us is to learn the vocabulary so that we're all talking about the same thing and that we have some understanding of what the availability and the timeframe of other resources that come into the county in the area of the two counties to help us. I think that it's important for other agencies to understand what we have to offer as a public works entity and how we can help with what it is that they need to do their job. Many key points I'm going to take with me, but the main one is that a new insight of what these other resources are bringing to the table. If you're interested in taking the TEICS course you can contact your state administrative agency which is typically within the state's homeland security or emergency management agency. The state administrative agency will then make the request to ODP. If the state doesn't require that you do that then a point of contact can contact TEICS or one of the other consortium members directly for a course and schedule it within a six month period. The hosting agencies can also do their part to help create awareness and get more students involved. We've created flyers with the announcement of the prerequisites for the class the dates of the class and distributed those through the local emergency management offices through points of contact that the planning council has through the regional domestic security task force to try to get the word out there the best we can. Students who have already taken MGT-313 recommended and encouraged others to participate in the course. It's a must. We cannot continue to do our jobs without this training, without these courses. You don't take these courses and you don't get on board with what's going on. You're just on the edges and you really can't contribute. MGT-313 may be enough for some students but others will want to go the next step. At TEICS we now offer an advanced incident management course called Management 314 which is done in-house at college station and it takes what we do in this course and it expands it into four very intensive exercises using unified command and we bring folks in to college station at no cost to them. We put them up, we feed them and they go through four days very intense training and it has received pretty much rave reviews. In the next edition of ComNet we look into the TEICS Training Center at College Station, Texas for a more detailed look at the enhanced course. I intend to take as many of these future courses as I can possibly take because this definitely is a tool that's going to save lives. Now since this course is sponsored by the Office for Domestic Preparedness all training and course materials are free to eligible jurisdictions. If you'd like some more information about the training course or any of the agencies featured in this program visit our website or write to us. The address is ComNet, PO Box 13489 St. Petersburg, Florida 33733 and while you're on the NTPI website be sure and sign up to take the online test for CEUs. Also you can help ensure that we're meeting with you. And just a reminder, our next ComNet will air Wednesday, February the 22nd at 2 p.m. Eastern Time. And be sure to join us for live response on January the 25th at 2 p.m. Eastern. We will discuss the Metropolitan Medical Response System. Thanks again for viewing and we'll see you next time on ComNet.