By Catherine Hartwell
As part of its ongoing monthly seminar series, The Christian Regenhard Center for Emergency Response Studies (RaCERS) at John Jay College in New York City brought together Dina Maniotis, assistant commissioner, New York City Office of Emergency Management (NYCOEM) and Andrew Boyarsky, City University of New York (CUNY) School of Professional Studies.
The speakers discussed the city’s planning process for sheltering residents in the event of a disaster and the training requirements for city employees who are called on to staff these shelters in an emergency.
Because parts of New York City are susceptible to hurricane-caused flooding, following Hurricane Katrina the NYCOEM, in partnership with CUNY, developed an innovative training program to prepare city personnel to fulfill roles as shelter managers and staff. These efforts require working directly with Emergency Support Function #6 – Mass Care, Emergency Assistance, Housing, and Human Services.
These city staff are not emergency responders, however, but “regular” city employees such as teachers, who are mobilized to perform these functions, aided by medical professionals. (Upon an emergency declaration by the Mayor, city staff may be asked to perform functions outside their usual job titles and are compensated for their work.)
Training in a virtual world
Training is a vital element to ensure that shelters are well managed. Training programs have been developed for evacuation and shelter managers that can be completed by the necessary personnel in either a classroom or online form. The variety of training platforms, such as classroom, online or simulation, maximizes the various types of audience participants who can become involved, from professionals to civilian volunteers.
Shelter management training is a daunting challenge for the city. The shelters, mostly in schools, can’t be disrupted to configure them as shelters for training purposes. Additionally, the number of staff needing training required a flexible system capable of being delivered both routinely and “just in time” prior to an event.
The solution was to use online computer simulation. Virtual world simulation software known as “Second Life” was used to simulate the physical layout of actual shelters.
In an immersive virtual environment, participants could walk through the shelter buildings, see rooms intended for various shelter purposes, and interact with other participants to set up and operate the shelter and solve problems. The training can be adapted for various roles played by participants, up to five of whom can participate simultaneously.
This highly effective simulation training engages the learner in what researchers call the Proteus effect. This occurs when someone is placed in a digital role or persona and assumes behavior appropriate to that role or persona, responding as if they were actually in the virtual environment. Simulations can involve team dynamics where the learner sees another avatar and interacts with them as a team to accomplish an objective.
This is an effective practicum that has trained 35,000 employees every year since the program’s inception in 2007.
NYCOEM and CUNY also worked together to create three planning guides to go along with employee sheltering training. These include detailed evacuation information for hurricane shelters, evacuation shelters and special medical needs shelters.
The training gets tested
One week before Hurricane Irene was projected to strike the area, NYCOEM activated their situation room and began the operational checklist. Five days prior to landfall, the agency opened its EOC.
Hospitals, nursing homes and health care facilities had their own evacuation plans and knew where they were going to transfer their patients. In all, 350,000 people and 43 healthcare facilities were ordered to evacuate, and 10,000 residents were sheltered in 65 evacuation shelters, 82 emergency shelters and seven special-needs shelters, with 1,000 residents volunteering to help 5,000 city shelter staff.
With hospital and nursing home patients successfully relocated before landfall, the evacuation was the largest undertaken by the city. The planning efforts and training contributed to a highly successful evacuation, with no loss of life among those sheltered or relocated.
Hurricane Irene was one of the costliest hurricanes on record in the Northeastern United States. The ninth named storm, first hurricane and first major hurricane of the annual hurricane season, Irene originated east of the Lesser Antilles and was designated as Tropical Storm Irene on Aug. 20, 2011.
After making landfall in St. Croix as a strong tropical storm later that day, early on Aug. 21, Irene made a second landfall in Puerto Rico, where it strengthened into a Category 1 hurricane. Shortly before making four landfalls in the Bahamas, Irene peaked as a 120 mph (195 km/h) Category 3 hurricane.
Thereafter, the storm slowly lost intensity as curved northward, being downgraded to a Category 1 hurricane before making landfall on the Outer Banks of North Carolina on Aug. 27. Early on the following day, the storm re-emerged into the Atlantic from southeastern Virginia. Although Irene remained a hurricane over land, it weakened to a tropical storm while making yet another landfall in southeastern New Jersey on Aug. 28. A few hours later, Irene made its ninth and final landfall, in Brooklyn, New York City.
On Coney Island, Irene produced a storm surge of more than 4 feet and a storm tide of 9.5 feet at Battery Park. The Hudson River flooded starting around 9 a.m., overrunning its banks into the city’s meatpacking district.
Lessons learned
The mayor’s office convened an after action report to assess sheltering during Hurricane Irene. The majority of areas for improvement were related to administration and decommissioning of shelters. Refinements to policy and training programs are already being designed to address the findings.
Specific recommendations included:
- Improving timekeeping for city employees deployed to shelters;
- Improving labeling of supplies, particularly at shelters that were not filled to capacity;
- Ensuring adequate support for medical waste disposal; and
- Ensuring that private care facilities provide staff to support their residents or patients that were moved to shelters.
The speakers described an innovative process for meeting the needs for human services during an event requiring sheltering of populations. Training using virtual worlds was regarded as a cost-effective solution for training the large numbers of people required in New York’s plan.
The field guides developed for shelter operations were also effective, so much so that agencies from other states are requesting them to use as templates to design their own field guides.
The city’s after action reporting process enabled the numerous agencies involved in the preparation and response to identify areas for strengthening the city’s capability. The use of virtual worlds for training was demonstrated to be an asset, and offers lessons for emergency management training nationally.
Catherine Hartwell is a graduate research assistant with The Christian Regenhard Center for Emergency Response Studies (RaCERS) and is pursuing her master’s degree in emergency management at John Jay College.