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The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has provided best practices and guidance related to suspicious items or suspicious activities. Explosive devices were among the hazards present during last week’s violence at the U.S. Capitol building. And as with any potential or actual incident, all suspicious activity or threat information should be immediately sent to local law enforcement agencies. Criminals or terrorists sometimes conceal improvised explosive devices (IEDs) in backpacks, suitcases, or other common items. If an item is determined to be Hidden, Obviously Suspicious, and Not Typical (aka “HOT”), use the “RAIN” process to safely determine if an item is a serious threat or just unattended. If an item is determined to be suspicious, you should:

In addition, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) stands ready to support our partners to address any ongoing improvised explosive device security concerns. A wide range of resources are available to facilitate the sharing of threat and incident information, assist in decision-making, and enhance security capabilities. The following provides web-based entry points for seeking security assistance and access to various Counter-IED resources:

CISA Office for Bombing Prevention Resources

As always, if you “See Something, Say Something.” For life-threatening emergencies, call 911. To report suspicious activity, call 855-RPRT-2-S4 (855-777-8274).

Thought Leadership by Tom Henkey

Director of Emergency Management, Titan Security Group

Let’s face it, not many of us are going to miss 2020. It has been a brutal year in so many ways – a pandemic, economic collapse, a bitter election cycle. If it were possible to push an enormous “societal reset” button to welcome 2021, most of us would leap at the opportunity.

Make no mistake, our largest challenges will not disappear simply because the calendar changes. The same challenges will be waiting for us on January 1. And regardless of political affiliation, those in the safety and security field should accept neither excuses for failure nor lowered expectations in addressing critical challenges.

Leaders should rather be ready to address multiple high-priority challenges head on, on day one.

Effective COVID response: the COVID-19 pandemic will not magically disappear merely because one or more effective vaccines have been identified. Despite the herculean scientific effort that was required to develop multiple inoculations, significant difficulties remain ahead. Effective hygiene, social distancing, and mask-wearing will continue to be required for months. The raw logistical hurdles to safely and effectively vaccinate hundreds of millions of people are daunting. Widespread disinformation and distrust continue to swirl around any vaccine effort, particularly in such a politically charged environment. We will win the fight against this virus, but it is not over yet.

Prepare for natural hazards: A virus is not the only hazard we are facing. The range of challenges facing us in 2021 certainly includes extreme weather. An utterly unprecedented hurricane season battered Latin America, the Gulf Coast, and the Southeast. Wildfires simultaneously scorched an unprecedented amount of acreage in the Western U.S. These issues are neither regional nor temporary, and must be addressed much more coherently and competently going forward. National and international efforts will be required to effectively counter the impacts posed by climate change and the next pandemic (because there will be a next pandemic).

Prepare for human-caused hazards: Despite years of promises by politicians of all stripes, our critical infrastructure continues to be in dire need of maintenance and repair. These crucial structures, utilities, and technologies are simply too important to ignore any longer. Domestic terrorism has undergone an atmospheric rise in both frequency and death toll in recent years – a trend which will accelerate further without truly decisive action. And international terrorism has been in a period of relative calm, but must not be discounted as a future threat.

Demand qualified agency leaders: Precisely because of the challenges noted above, stellar leadership is required within the private, nonprofit, and public sectors. Organizations must provide fearless leadership in 2021, on issues ranging from the pandemic to terrorism. Emergency management and homeland security leaders must be honest, competent, and transparent. Nothing less is acceptable to the professionals who have dedicated their careers to public safety – nor should it be acceptable to the public itself. When the stakes are this high, failure must not be normalized.

Relight the economic engine: If we manage to get this daunting list right from start to finish, we have a chance to witness a truly historic economic recovery take place. Make no mistake, we are in the midst of a deep recession – it is simply impacting the economy unevenly, with some sectors bearing the brunt of the damage. If we are collectively able to break the back of the pandemic, and to display effective leadership in addressing both natural and human-caused hazards, the broader economy will come roaring back. The broader markets love predictability, and employees are particularly motivated to get back to work. Rarely have the challenges in an economic downturn been so clearly defined and identifiable.

Yes, 2020 has been a year to forget in many ways. Yet 2021 can be made memorable – historic, really – for all the right reasons. We just have to be ready to put in the work, and set our expectations high.

As always, if you “See Something, Say Something.” For life-threatening emergencies, call 911. To report suspicious activity, call 855-RPRT-2-S4 (855-777-8274).

Thought Leadership by Tom Henkey
Director of Emergency Management, Titan Security Group

As the American public continues to digest the news of a widespread coronavirus outbreak within the White House, it provides a stark moment of reflection for those of us who have some responsibility for a place of business or similar location.

After all, if this threat made its way into one of the most secure facilities on the planet, how can we possibly keep it outside of our walls? The answer, frankly, is that we may not always be able to meet that goal. But having the right mentality and a realistic timeframe makes our odds of success far better.

From the outset of this novel or new virus emerging in Asia, it has been clear that this will be an extended or long-term crisis. This makes complacency one of our biggest threats. We know the effective mitigation measures – frequent handwashing, not touching our faces, maintaining social distancing, wearing face coverings or masks, not gathering in large groups. But if we are to be honest with ourselves, we’d admit just how difficult it is to maintain such vigilance month after month after month.

This will truly be a marathon and not a sprint. Modern human beings simply aren’t wired for this mindset. We expect to see immediate results, instant satisfaction.

Unfortunately, pandemics don’t work that way. They are slow-rolling crises – ebbing and flowing over time as infection rates rise and fall. And the only two developments that can truly bring about a positive conclusion are an effective treatment regimen or a reliable vaccine.

A few recommendations for areas worthy of ongoing action would include:

Take the long view. Due to the nature of this hazard, we need to maintain the right mentality and the right time horizon. This will truly go a long way towards setting each of us, and our operations, up for success. Complacency is the enemy, and refreshing and updating internal messaging is vital to keeping organizations focused. Ignoring best practices for even the briefest of windows can let the virus into the most protected of facilities.

Build on what is working. When possible, avoid reinventing the wheel. If there is an existing emergency process or protocol in place which can be adapted to the resurgent threat of coronavirus, such “edits” are preferable to starting from scratch. Organizations of any size should be furiously reviewing existing emergency and continuity-of-business plans for any and all relevant processes.

Stay on top of logistics. Don’t be lulled into complacency on needed supplies. Highly sought-after products include effective cleaning supplies, disinfectants, virus tests, masks, and face shields. All organizations must review their supply chains to assure they are given priority by primary suppliers, while setting up alternative channels as backups. We have not seen the end of hoarding and widespread shortages for critical materials.

Fully leverage relationships with other sectors. Subject matter experts – including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and state and local health departments – should continue to be relied upon for their continued subject-matter expertise. Strengthening existing relationships with partners from the public and nonprofit sectors can be vital to weathering extended crises.

Be prepared to deal with positive cases. If the beast does get inside the walls, we have to have a plan. Any team member experiencing COVID symptoms should stay home, self-isolate, and contact their doctor via phone or email. (Testing locations in Chicago: https://www.chicago.gov/city/en/sites/covid-19/home/managing-your-health.html?#tab-shouldtest ) It is vital that employers then perform internal contact tracing to identify any other stakeholders that have come in contact with any confirmed case.

Be honest and direct with stakeholders. This battle will ultimately be won or lost at the local level, and addressing internal and external stakeholders with a trusted, consistent, and competent voice is absolutely invaluable during a period of crisis, including notification of positive test results (by location not name). Employees, vendors, customers, and clients need to know what is being done on their behalf, and what is coming next.

Individual lives and businesses, as well as the overall economy, still hang in the balance. This is not the time to let up, or to be lulled into thinking the challenge has passed. Instead it is the time for each of us to demonstrate decisive and innovative leadership – to hope for the best and be prepared for the worst.

As always, if you “See Something, Say Something.” For life-threatening emergencies, call 911. To report suspicious activity, call 855-RPRT-2-S4 (855-777-8274).

Anyone can start a youth preparedness program, or join an existing one. The Youth Preparedness Catalog is a great place to start if you are looking to implement a youth preparedness program or activity.

Building a youth preparedness program takes a lot of work. However, many resources are available to help you with the process. The resources below will walk you through seven steps to implementing a youth preparedness program, while checklists and workbooks will help you out along the way. Many of these resources are available in both Spanish and English.

Why Youth Preparedness?

Children make up about 25 percent of the population of the United States, and are the future of our communities. While they face unique vulnerabilities, they can also play an important role during emergencies. However, many programs do not consider children in their planning, whether at home, at work, or in transit. It is important that children know what to do in an emergency and that all disaster planning, preparedness, response, and recovery efforts include children’s unique needs and abilities.

Getting Started

Youth preparedness is important to the resilience of any community. As the leader of a youth preparedness program, you are supporting the preparedness effort within your community. The resources below will help ensure that you are on the right track as you launch your program.

Resources

This article was repurposed from the Department of Homeland Security and FEMA website “https://www.ready.gov.” To view the original article, visit https://www.ready.gov/kids/resources-for-emergency-planners/start-a-program

When emergencies strike, public safety officials use timely and reliable systems to alert you. This page describes different warning alerts you can get and how to get them.

Wireless Emergency Alerts

Wireless Emergency Alerts (WEAs) are just one of the ways public safety officials can quickly and effectively alert the public to serious emergencies. They are sent through the Integrated Public Alert and Warning System (IPAWS), which integrates the nation’s alert and warning systems, technologies and infrastructure.

What you need to know about WEAs:

If you are not are not receiving Wireless Emergency Alerts here are some tips to troubleshoot your mobile device:

  1. Check the settings on your mobile phones and review your user manual (you may be able to find this online too)
    • Older phones may not be WEA capable, and some cell phone models require you to enable WEAs.
    • Most mobile service providers call these messages WEAs, but some manufacturers refer to them as “Government Alerts,” or “Emergency Alert Messages.”
  2. Check with your wireless providers to see if they can resolve the issue

Emergency Alert System

NOAA Weather Radio

NOAA Weather Radio All Hazards (NWR) is a nationwide network of radio stations that broadcast continuous weather information from the nearest National Weather Service office.

Resource Links

This article was repurposed from the Department of Homeland Security and FEMA website “https://www.ready.gov.” To view the original article, visit https://www.ready.gov/alerts

For the National Preparedness Month of September, Titan is proud to have the locally-based subject matter expertise to partner in a wide range of safety, security, training, technology, and emergency planning efforts.

As you assess your preparedness measures, we stand ready to assist. Titan offers fire and life safety training, including fire safety seminars and fire drills that will help prepare and inform building employees and tenants of guidance and best practices for critical emergencies. Titan is also pleased to offer best-in-class, all-hazard emergency planning services.

Benefits of Titan’s fire life safety training and education include:

Benefits of Titan’s emergency planning services include:

If you would like to learn more, contact Titan’s Director of Emergency Management, Tom Henkey at [email protected] or 312.902.3400. 

After an emergency, you may need to survive on your own for several days. Being prepared means having your own food, water and other supplies to last for several days. A disaster supplies kit is a collection of basic items your household may need in the event of an emergency.

Make sure your emergency kit is stocked with the items on the checklist below. Most of the items are inexpensive and easy to find and any one of them could save your life. Headed to the store? Download a printable version to take with you. Once you take a look at the basic items consider what unique needs your family might have, such as supplies for pets or seniors.

Basic Disaster Supplies Kit

To assemble your kit store items in airtight plastic bags and put your entire disaster supplies kit in one or two easy-to-carry containers such as plastic bins or a duffel bag.

A basic emergency supply kit could include the following recommended items:

Additional Emergency Supplies

Since Spring of 2020, the CDC has recommended people include additional items in their kits to help prevent the spread of coronavirus or other viruses and the flu.

Consider adding the following items to your emergency supply kit based on your individual needs:

Maintaining Your Kit

After assembling your kit remember to maintain it so it’s ready when needed:

Kit Storage Locations

Since you do not know where you will be when an emergency occurs, prepare supplies for home, work and cars.

This article was repurposed from the Department of Homeland Security and FEMA website “https://www.ready.gov.” To view the original article, visit https://www.ready.gov/kit

It’s important to talk to your friends and family about how you will communicate before, during, and after a disaster because they may not be together if and when a disaster strikes. It’s important to know how you’ll contact one another and reconnect if separated. Establishing a family meeting place that’s familiar is essential for making it easy to find one another. Below are four steps for you to create a plan today.

Make sure to update your plan based on the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) recommendations due to the coronavirus.

Step 1: Put a plan together by discussing the questions below with your family, friends, or household to start your emergency plan.

  1. How will I receive emergency alerts and warnings?
  2. What is my shelter plan?
  3. What is my evacuation route?
  4. What is my family/household communication plan?
  5. Do I need to update my emergency preparedness kit?
  6. Check with the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and update my emergency plans due to coronavirus.
  7. Do you have cloth face coverings (for everyone over 2 years old), and disinfectants?

Step 2: Consider specific needs in your household.

As you prepare your plan, tailor your plans and supplies to your specific daily living needs and responsibilities. Discuss your needs and responsibilities and how people in the network can assist each other with communication, care of children, business, pets, or specific needs like operating medical equipment. Create your network for specific areas where you need assistance. Keep in mind some of these factors when developing your plan:

Step 3: Fill out a Family Emergency Plan

Download and fill out a family emergency plan or use it as a guide to creating your own.

Step 4: Practice your plan with your family/household

This article was repurposed from the Department of Homeland Security and FEMA website “https://www.ready.gov.” To view the original article, visit https://www.ready.gov/plan

Thoughts and Analysis by Tom Henkey
Director of Emergency Management, Titan Security Group

The ongoing coronavirus outbreak has had an enormous impact on American businesses. The overall economy, and the private sector in particular, is resuming operations in fits and starts. This uncertainty has sent the stock market into an unprecedented state of whipsaw ups and downs.

Much has been written about the disease itself, about mitigation and containment efforts, and about where to find the most current information on the outbreak. There can be no question that we are still in midst of an extended coronavirus outbreak that is likely to include one or more additional waves of widespread illness.

And yet it is not too early in this crisis to begin considering what the recovery phase will entail. Like all disease outbreaks before it – even worldwide pandemics – this coronavirus will reach a peak before its impact begins to decline. That decline could be due to the virus going dormant, to new and more effective treatment of symptoms, or ultimately due to an effective vaccine. Or our society could simply learn to live with it, adapting to a new seasonal risk to public health with social distancing and other mitigation measures.

This much is clear: at some point, we’ll need to get back to some semblance of normal. Kids will return to schools and employees will return to work. Store shelves will be fully restocked and supply chains will realign.

But what will that “normalcy” look like? And how do we get there?

The recovery process begins long before such steps actually occur. It is born during preparedness and prevention phases, and during continuity planning efforts prior to any emergency, such as a disease outbreak. It continues through the mitigation and response phases of emergency management, gaining steam as stakeholders express a need and desire to resume full operations.

The recovery process truly begins with taking an honest assessment of current status and needs. This has already begun even while the response phase is ongoing, still very much in the midst of the crisis event. Yet it might be best thought of as an “exit strategy” for transitioning towards normalized business operations in a controlled manner. Even if an organization has lagged behind in making such preparations prior to an incident or disruption, much progress can be made even late in the game. A few considerations:

Finally, when it is time to go full-speed once again, you’ll likely require further assistance. Helpful federal resources include:

Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) continuity planning
https://www.ready.gov/business-continuity-plan

https://www.ready.gov/business-continuity-planning-suite

Helpful professional organizations include:

Business Resumption Planners Association of Chicago
https://brpa.wildapricot.org/

Business Continuity Planners Association
https://www.bcpa.org/

Disaster Recovery Institute
https://drii.org/

As always, if you “See Something, Say Something”. For life-threatening emergencies, call 911. To report suspicious activity, call 855-RPRT-2-S4 (855-777-8274).

Thoughts and Analysis by Tom Henkey
Director of Emergency Management, Titan Security Group

Long-term and systemic disruptions of any kind are quite rare. Hurricanes, terrorist attacks, and wildfires can be devastating to surrounding communities, yet almost never negatively impact the entirety of the American economy. They are, instead, largely regional events with some national implications.

A communicable-disease pandemic has proven to be an exception. COVID-19 has made immediate and extensive impacts on our economy and on our social behaviors. Perhaps the only analogs we may envision are a large-scale bioterrorism attack, or a widespread and extended failure of the electrical grid.

Such massive disruptions must be addressed by prevention, preparedness, and mitigation. If they are allowed to take place, and we find ourselves in a largely reactive respond and recover mode, then we are acknowledging that such massive social and economic impacts are inevitable.

Author Michele Wucker coined the phrase “Gray Rhino” to refer to events such as pandemic disease. At its core, the concept is the opposite of the widely referenced “Black Swan” event – a disruption so unexpected and unpredictable that it remains essentially unforeseeable. A gray rhino is a different type of animal entirely. In her 2016 book of the same title, Wucker defined the term as “the big, obvious thing that’s coming at you.” It is the risk that is entirely predictable, but fails to be acted upon.

Such as a pandemic.

Public health experts have been warning society for literally decades that a widespread outbreak of communicable disease was a “when” and not an “if.” It was a gray rhino bearing down on us, yet getting very little attention in terms of planning or preparation. We got gored because we failed to be proactive.

And yet this collective mistake offers us all an opportunity to absorb several critical lessons learned, and to improve our prevention, preparedness, and mitigation efforts for the next time. Because there will be a next time. Some obvious takeaways:

Put a subject matter expert in charge. The RAE concept works. The person with the responsibility, authority, and expertise to make educated and actionable decisions is the person who should be in charge of the overall effort. For a pandemic, this points to a senior Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) official, a highly regarded former Surgeon General, etc.

Establish a clear chain of command. The pandemic response in the U.S. showed us what a confused and ineffective mess our society becomes if no formal system is established to address a crisis. Aligning federal, military, state, local, and private-sector resources into a formal, efficient structure is vital to success.

Structured logistics and distribution. Perhaps the most important lesson from the coronavirus outbreak is that logistics are everything. The systemic lack of planning and structure that led to a chaotic and counterproductive bidding war among state and local governments and medical providers for critical supplies serves as a perfect example of how not to manage a supply chain.

Cross-sector collaboration is mandatory. Another obvious shortcoming in the preparedness for and initial response to this pandemic was a lack of collaboration. Involving unique and varied resources and skillsets including the private sector and military is absolutely mandatory for future crises. It is vital to have such agreements in place before a crisis emerges.

Fixed and reliable communications channels. During this pandemic, confusing and contradictory messaging from the federal government caused unnecessary inefficiencies and cost lives. The designated subject-matter expert placed in charge of the nation’s response must be the key conduit of concise, reliable, and truthful information during a period of crisis.

Identify the other rhinos. Just because you’ve tamed one beast doesn’t mean there are not others roaming around. We cannot afford tunnel vision. For example, hurricane season begins in the U.S. in less than two months, and climate change has created sea levels and weather patterns we simply have not seen before. We need to be proactive in our assessment and planning for predictable large-scale hazards in the future.

In essence, now is the time and place for unified, decisive, and innovative leadership across all sectors. A vital portion of that responsibility lies in performing an honest after-action review of our preparation for and response to the coronavirus pandemic, and rapidly applying the lessons learned to the next crisis. And there is always a next crisis.

As always, if you “See Something, Say Something”. For life-threatening emergencies, call 911. To report suspicious activity, call 855-RPRT-2-S4 (855-777-8274).