CHAPTER 12
EMERGENCY OPERATIONS CENTER
Take Control of the Situation

Congress can make a general,
but it takes a radio operator to
make him a commanding general.
—USMC Radio Operator School slogan

INTRODUCTION

After you have developed your disaster recovery plan the final step is the creation of your Emergency Operations Center. The terms Emergency Operations Center, war room, and Command Center all invoke images of serious-faced people feverishly scurrying around trying to address one major problem or another. These terms imply action and direction of resources toward a goal. For the Emergency Operations Center, the goal is the return to service from a business emergency. In this sense, an Emergency Operations Center is a temporary tool to coordinate your containment and recovery efforts.

The radio school quote at the top of this page, trite as it is, provides a great deal of insight into a serious problem. Unless leaders can communicate with their workers, they are unable to lead. Imagine a horde of well-meaning technical people (and a few who amuse themselves with mischief) all scurrying around trying to fix a problem regardless of what the person on their left or right is doing. Some people would be wiring equipment up, only to have someone come in behind them and disconnect everything. No coordinated action, no focused activity, just confusion. Of course, you would have no clue as to the progress being made while your boss demands an accurate update every hour. Not a pretty sight.

Now consider the alternative. A disaster occurs, and everyone knows where to report. Someone at the recovery site is documenting who is available and assigning them to teams based on the problem and each individual’s expertise. As a team is created, they are dispatched under the direction of a single person. As the teams leave, their locations and composition are noted on a status board. Relief teams are sent out so the teams assigned earlier can be rested. The status board and the disaster coordinator are up to date to answer executive questions about the recovery. Sound like a control freak’s dream? No, it is just a focused effort.

A disaster recovery Emergency Operations Center is essential when addressing serious or wide-scale disasters. An Emergency Operations Center allows a company’s management to reestablish organizational leadership, allocate resources, and focus on emergency containment and recovery. This Command Center minimizes the disruption of management and leadership caused by the chaos of the emergency. From a business perspective, it is a command and control center that is essentially a temporary project office to manage the special project of addressing the emergency. An Emergency Operations Center must be preestablished and presupplied, with its location well known to everyone before it is needed.

An Emergency Operations Center takes time and effort to start up and close down. Before a disaster strikes, you should have three Emergency Operations Centers identified. The first is the obvious place to which people go in a limited emergency. For short-term, contained disasters, you probably already have a place where “everybody knows and everybody goes.” This could be the security office with its radio network or the data processing help desk with its data network monitoring capability. Wherever your choice, it should have a telephone number that people would think to call during an emergency. Even smaller disasters have their own natural Emergency Operations Center of sorts. If your company lost its data network, then the Network Manager’s office is turned into the hub of activity as a small team works to restore service. This works because the response team is a small group and the Network Manager’s office is a natural place for them to work.

The second Emergency Operations Center addresses big problems and is the primary subject of this chapter. Imagine a winter storm that collapses the warehouse roof. Resolving this problem requires many people with a wide range of skills. Because the roof collapse was unforeseen, a plan to limit the damage and begin repairs would be created quickly and modified as the recovery progressed. This type of Emergency Operations Center will be in use for many days and is therefore worth the effort to set up. The size and composition of the Emergency Operations Center team depends on how widespread the damage was and how many people are needed to address it.

The third type of Emergency Operations Center is a backup facility for the primary Emergency Operations Center. This facility would only be used if the primary Emergency Operations Center was unusable; for example, if a fire burned that part of the building and the rest of the building was in danger of collapse. You need a place to contact customers, suppliers, employees, etc., to keep them aware of the recovery progress.

A further variation on the Command Center is a mobile Command Center that uses a camping trailer or self-propelled recreation vehicle to bring the solution to the problem. This is a good solution for a large company with many sites, such as a large chain of department stores.

WHAT IS A DISASTER RECOVERY EMERGENCY OPERATIONS CENTER?

A disaster recovery Emergency Operations Center is a physical place where all the communications of the recovery effort are focused. Sometimes called a “war room” to dramatize its importance, it provides a known place where all interested parties can report on the status of the recovery effort. The Emergency Operations Center also provides communications to all stakeholders external to the recovery process, such as company executives, the general public, suppliers, and customers. Another key function is to provide administrative support to the recovery effort, such as purchasing, public relations, safety, and site security.

The phrase “a known place” is important. When disaster strikes, there is no time to announce to everyone where the Emergency Operations Center will be. It is too late then. In your company, the Emergency Operations Center should be some logical place where people would turn for information or assistance. Two logical places are the facility’s security office and the data center’s help desk.

An Emergency Operations Center has three essential functions:

1. Command and Control. This is where you will find the person in charge of the containment and recovery efforts. This person will set objectives and priorities and has overall responsibility at the incident or event.

2. Operational Control. Hour-by-hour control is exercised from here by the various functional areas, such as security, human resources, purchasing, communications, logistics coordination, etc.

3. Recovery Planning (which is separate from emergency containment) will begin here but quickly transfer to its own office.

If you would like to see what an Emergency Operations Center might look like, contact your local Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) office. See how their model office is set up to get some ideas for your own. Find out where in your state the next Emergency Operations Center exercise will be held and ask if you could observe the exercise. You may also receive some advice on the resources an Emergency Operations Center in your geographic area might require. If possible, ask for help in selecting a site for the Emergency Operations Center within your facility. Your local FEMA office will be a wealth of knowledge as you work on your disaster plan, and it is a good idea to build a working relationship with its personnel before disaster strikes your facility.

A Personal Experience

Imagine for a moment you are in a very large automotive factory with thousands of workers and lots of heavy machinery—a very busy place. Everyone is focused on keeping the production line moving, focused on doing their job right the first time. It’s a weekday afternoon about 1:45 and—you lose electrical power. The assembly line stops, the overhead lights blink off, a roar of surprise arises from the assembly line workers, and then silence falls because all the noisy machinery has also stopped.

For the data center, the excitement has just begun. Computer programmers, whose workstations are now dead, begin walking up offering to help. Some of the battery-operated emergency lights failed to come on. All the internal data processing offices were plunged into blackness only faintly lit by a small amount of light through the glass in the office door, which everyone migrated toward. The emergency lights had failed. Total chaos!

Meanwhile, in the main computer room, people are milling about wondering aloud how long the Uninterruptible Power Supply (UPS) battery backup units would hold and should they begin turning off servers and minicomputers. More volunteers came flooding in, all with their own advice, some forcefully offered.

The Data Processing Manager personally went to the UPS units to try and determine how their displays worked in an effort to learn if they could estimate how long they would last. Still more volunteers were coming in, and others were leaving, loudly telling everyone that a bunch of idiots were in there since they did not act immediately on their advice.

Eventually everyone calmed down and began switching off noncritical system monitors used primarily to observe processes. All printers, test servers, and servers to systems that could be restarted quickly were shut down. Without air conditioning, the equipment was beginning to heat the dimly lit (from emergency lights) computer room.

Eventually others joined the Data Processing Manager to help figure out how much power was left. A few more flashlights appeared. Finally, building services called to say that the cause of the problem was discovered and everyone should be back online within an hour. An estimate, not a promise!

Outside the computer room, people were beginning to grab their coats and head outside into the daylight, loudly contemplating going home since there wouldn’t be much of a workday left if the power came on in an hour. More confusion as people are reminded of their working hours—electricity or not. The group supervisors were unsure what to do and could not offer any other advice to their people but to wait and see how long it would take.

Finally, the various system administrators were rounded up from the crowds and reminded of how ugly these systems become if the UPS runs out of power before the servers are shut down gracefully (they kept hoping the power would reappear momentarily). You begin shutting down servers according to how long it would take to restart them. Your goals were to reduce the drain on the UPS batteries and extend the UPS battery support for the most critical equipment.

In the end, you worked through the issues and learned a few lessons that are included in Chapter 14, on electrical service. The points relevant to this chapter are that:

You did not have a predesignated Emergency Operations Center for a problem like this, so key people did not know where to report. In the end, the help desk proved to be the perfect place because it had plenty of telephone lines and everyone knew the number.

The prime decision maker (the Data Processing Manager) was absent from the Emergency Operations Center, trying to learn about the UPS system because no one knew the details about it. This left decision making in limbo and fueled chaos. Managers need to focus on making decisions, setting priorities, and allocating resources. A technician should have been assigned to investigate the UPS units.

Guesses were made about which systems to shut down instead of following a predetermined plan. Also, as some system passwords were not available, those machines, even if noncritical, were left drawing critical power from the UPS.

Emergency lights failed because no one bothered to check them on a regular basis.

The only people with flashlights were the ones who went through a similar facility blackout 5 years before. Basic tools were lacking when they were needed most.

Many well-intentioned and skilled people were ready and interested in helping in any way possible, but when they saw the chaos around the manager, they left in disgust.

Because the data processing people were focused on the computer room, we forgot that the telephone system was also on a UPS system but the telephone manager handled the problem on her own initiative. We just were not feeding repair progress information in that direction.

Where to Locate Your Emergency Operations Center

An Emergency Operations Center should be located as close to the problem site as is safe. This is rarely practical. If you knew for sure where a disaster would take place and what it would involve, you would take steps to prevent it. So unless you are the cause of the problem, you don’t know where it will be. Therefore, when establishing an Emergency Operations Center, evaluate the possible sites based on a few criteria, although the actual site is usually based on what is available.

Few companies can afford to leave a fully equipped room sitting idle just in case it is needed. What most companies do is convert an existing facility to an Emergency Operations Center as needed. For example, a personal computer training room is already wired for data and equipped with computers. If extra telephone lines were run to this room in advance, then with some rearranging of tables and plugging in of telephones, it can quickly be converted to an Emergency Operations Center. If a training room is not available, perhaps a large conference room was wired long ago to support a company activity. Ask your building services manager for some suggestions.

When picking a site, consider how close it is to a building exit and how likely it is to be flooded. A typical center is between 500 and 2000 square feet. It should have a large closet (with a strong door lock) to hold supplies for setting up your Emergency Operations Center. It must be easily accessible by road, have convenient materials loading and unloading available, and have ready access to delivery services, food service, and hotels.

Now you also need to set up a backup Emergency Operations Center. The backup center should be on a different power company electrical grid and be serviced by a different telephone central office. If you have another facility across town or in a nearby city, this makes a perfect choice. In this case, your primary Emergency Operations Center becomes their backup Emergency Operations Center, and their primary Emergency Operations Center backs up your operation. This saves money for the company and keeps your company’s recovery actions “in house” rather than in the public eye. Another advantage is that your backup site is already connected into your company’s wide-area telephone and data communications network, allowing for faster Emergency Operations Center activation.

If this is not possible, consider partnering with another company for a backup facility. A close supplier or customer makes a good choice. Be sure to work through how telephone service can be rerouted to this location and complete a clear legal agreement about company confidential information. Another alternative is a hotel that is wired for PC training and has sufficient outbound telecommunications capacity to support your telephone and data traffic. However, a backup Emergency Operations Center in a hotel might be in use by someone else in a wide-area emergency, so use this plan as a last resort.

A note on using a backup Emergency Operations Center to control your recovery operations: expect to relocate it closer to the disaster site within 48 hours, as it will quickly become unwieldy to control operations from a distance. However, for the first few hours, even a remote facility will be of immense value.

Mobile Emergency Operations Center
for Large or Dispersed Companies

Depending on the number of sites you are supporting, you might consider a mobile Emergency Operations Center. Such a tool is normally a large “camping” trailer or self-propelled recreation vehicle. This vehicle is preloaded with everything necessary to establish a Command Center, including a generator and tent for expanding the work area outside of the vehicle. This reduces the number of Emergency Operations Centers required for dispersed companies. For example, if your company owned freight delivery hubs in major cities and one had a major fire, then you would immediately activate the mobile center and send it to the disaster site. The emergency staff could fly in or drive themselves over.

The mobile Command Center (lacking an immediate local telephone capability) will require multiple cellular phones for voice and data access. As you do not know in advance where you will be going, it should also include digitized floor plans and wiring drawings for every building, along with door keys to access critical places or clear instructions on how to gain access. It should also include temporary security passes for the entire staff. To save space in the mobile unit, include electronic telephone books for all areas serviced to speed the location of local support services.

EMERGENCY OPERATIONS CENTER PRIMARY FUNCTIONS

When an Emergency Operations Center is activated, there are two parallel teams working at the same time. The containment team works to stop the spread of damage. The recovery team works to restore a basic level of business service. One team has all the resources initially, while the other may start with a single person. As the disaster progresses, the personnel gradually shift to the other team.

Containment Team

A containment team is formed as soon as the disaster is called. The members begin work immediately to minimize damage from the disaster. This might involve draping large tarps over holes in the walls to keep the rain out; it might involve pumping water out of the building or even salvaging soggy equipment from a computer room fire. The containment team quickly establishes a security cordon around the site and forms the initial damage assessments.

In the beginning, the containment team is the “main effort,” as the early hours are occupied with minimizing the damage caused by the emergency. This will consume all your labor resources as you struggle to stop the damage from spreading. The Emergency Operations Center described in this chapter is primarily for damage containment.

As the spread of damage is stopped, the containment team will also take steps to safeguard assets (you don’t need anyone taking any valuables home as “souvenirs of the great fire”). Sometimes helpful employees might sincerely try to safeguard their computers by taking them home so as to ensure the data on their hard drives do not get lost. Whatever their reasoning, nothing can be removed from the site until cleared by law enforcement authorities, your insurance adjuster, and then by your security force.

Even though the spread of damage has stopped, there is still much work to do. There are equipment and materials to sift through to determine what is salvageable. There may be artificial walls to erect (usually canvas or something to protect the contents), there are rooms to inventory, etc.

Recovery Team

The leader of the recovery team may begin work even while the damage is still spreading. This team is charged with restoring the facility to a minimal level of service as quickly as possible. Usually, this begins as a team of one and gradually gains labor resources as the events come under control.

The recovery team leader contacts the insurance company immediately and is their primary point of contact. Even as containment activities continue, this person is scurrying around taking pictures and documenting damage to aid in the damage assessment and the insurance claims. This person works closely with the insurance agent to ensure they gather the critical information for filing their claim. You will need the insurance money to rebuild and need it fast!

The recovery team begins to fill out as soon as the initial damage assessments are ready. Starting with a small group, they begin the planning of how to return the damaged area to full service. This might involve shifting the operation to another location or bringing in replacements for a few pieces of damaged equipment. As the containment effort winds down, executive management will shift their attention to the recovery effort and may replace the recovery manager with a more senior executive. This is normal to monitor the large flow of cash required to restore a severely damaged facility to service.

Emergency Operations Center Specific Functions

The Emergency Operations Center performs three essential functions. They are to command, to control, and to communicate. Keep these basics in mind as you tailor a plan to support your facility. Some functions are listed here for you to think about, but what you actually need depends upon your own situation. The best way to find out what your Command Center requires is to run several exercises based on different types of disasters.

COMMAND A disaster, like any traumatic surprise, is full of chaos. A lot of chaos! The person in charge of the Emergency Operations Center must make decisions about containment activities based on very limited amounts of information. Indecisive people should never be placed in this position. If your Command Center does not pull all important decision making into it, then you will have small pockets of people making potentially hazardous and expensive decisions for you. There will be no vacuum of command, just whether the company’s representative exercises it or decisions are made by individual employees. This person will set objectives and priorities and has overall responsibility at the incident or event.

Disasters never seem to happen the way they are planned for, and this person must adapt plans as events unfold. When the problem occurs, the first action is to open the disaster recovery plan to see if that situation is specifically covered. If it is, then adapt the plan to the situation. If it is not, then develop a short-term reaction plan based on anything else in the plan that may be close to it. Emergencies vary according to their circumstances, priorities, and needs. Disasters are never as clear cut as the recovery plans seem to make them. As the problem unfolds, decisions must be made that may be different from the approved recovery plan. Keep in mind the plan is only a guideline and was never intended to be followed mindlessly.

Command activities include:

Gathering damage assessments.

Developing action plans based on current information.

Assigning scarce resources where they will do the most good at that point in time.

CONTROL Control involves obtaining and dispatching resources based on the direction of the Emergency Operations Center manager. Control handles all the administrative duties that are the tools for implementing the directions of the manager.

Control activities include a wide range of support activities:

Ordering materials from food for the crews to pumps for pumping out flood water to tarps for covering equipment.

  Tracking the recovery effort to ensure all personnel are accounted for at all times.

  Implementing the allocation and reallocation of resources as circumstances require.

Gathering raw information and summarizing it for the manager’s ongoing damage assessment.

Controlling information about the facility to ensure it is available for all to use and not letting it be borrowed and lost.

COMMUNICATIONS Communications is the primary tool for the commander to control resources. Beyond this, the Command Center will also communicate with the news media, with vendors, with customers, with the community, and with a wide range of very interested stakeholders. Communications becomes the primary tool of the leader to mobilize teams toward a specific action. As was noted at the beginning of this chapter, it takes a radio operator (a communications medium) to make someone a commanding general.

ADMINISTRATIVE FUNCTIONS A primary Emergency Operations Center function is to receive information about the status of the problem. The first action is to identify the problem. We’ll use the electrical outage example to illustrate our points. The first information you need to know is what the problem is. The problem is not that the lights went out. That is a symptom. The problem was a loss of electrical power. Proper identification of the problem allows you to focus on solving the problem rather than treating the symptoms.

Here is a list of some of the things that might be needed based on the type and severity of the problem. A key consideration of the administrative function is to ensure that records are maintained on what was done, when it was done, and how money was spent. Otherwise, at a later date, the “armchair quarterbacks,” in their comfortable, no-pressure surroundings, will begin criticizing your actions. Administrative records also allow the company to later acknowledge their gratitude to those who did so much for them during the disaster.

Keep a log of the steps taken toward problem resolution so you can later conduct an after action: lessons learned.

Keep a list of who was working on the problem and when. A thank-you is in order later.

Keep track of who is in each repair team and where they are. Use this to ensure teams are rotated and rested. Tired people make mistakes.

Track expenses: Sometimes we cannot wait for purchasing to issue POs. In the heat of the moment, money may flow for supplies, but all of that will be forgotten next month when the bills become due. Keep track of all expenses!

Maintain communications logs for telephone traffic, radio traffic, electronic mail, and faxes; any message traffic into or out of the Emergency Operations Center. This enables you to later refer back to who said what, and when.

Ensure the essential human functions of food, water, and rest are addressed. Cater in food, order plenty of bottled water, and make arrangements with nearby hotels for the crews to rest. In the cases of being “locked in” your facility by flood, hurricane, blizzard, etc., this support must be provided from in-house services.

Carefully track the location of the company’s vital records that are governed by legal or regulatory agencies. If they must be relocated away from their usual storage area, a guard may be required.

Maintain a list of injuries and any follow-up actions taken.

Assist in documenting the damage for the insurance adjusters.

Provide material safety data sheets to damage control teams and emergency service providers.

PREPARING AN EMERGENCY OPERATIONS CENTER

A disaster is not the time to figure out what you need in your Emergency Operations Center. Careful planning before a disaster will help ensure you have what you need to get the business back up and running.

Basic Emergency Operations Center Materials

There are many things that will be required to operate your Emergency Operations Center facility. Here are some items to consider. The more time and resources you have, the more you can improve on this basic list.

Electricity. The Emergency Operations Center will need a steady, reliable supply of electricity. This may mean a portable generator and a UPS battery system. The size of these units is based on the amount of electricity they will be called on to provide. Be sure to consult closely with your equipment suppliers about this.

Before you can size your electrical support units, you must know what they will need to support in the Emergency Operations Center. Hopefully you won’t need them, but be prepared for the worst. If in doubt, go for larger units. Once you start adding copiers, personal computers, cellular telephone chargers, etc., to the load, you will appreciate the extra capacity.

If you are located in an area that is prone to wide-area disasters, such as flooding, hurricanes, or earthquakes, then your own emergency power generation capability is essential and might be required to run for up to a week.

Emergency Lighting. You will need to provide emergency lighting for the Emergency Operations Center in the event that power is lost and the generator is not ready yet. Emergency lights are battery operated and come on automatically when normal lighting is lost. These lights must be installed well in advance and checked regularly to ensure they will be ready when you need them.

Other forms of emergency lighting are flashlights (keep plenty of batteries on hand) and light sticks. Both batteries and light sticks lose their potency over time, and your emergency stock must be replaced at least every other year. Pack plenty of these away in your Emergency Operations Center supplies storage closet. Remember that recovery efforts are an “all-out” affair and will consume supplies around the clock. In a wide-area disaster, it may be some time before you can obtain additional supplies such as flashlight batteries.

Readily Available Sanitary Facilities. If your Emergency Operations Center is open for any length of time, then sanitary facilities are essential. If water pressure is lost, then some sort of external facility must be obtained for the duration of the emergency.

Medical Kits. It is always useful to keep several medical kits on hand for medical issues. These kits should be used by trained personnel to apply first aid until proper medical help arrives. Include blankets to keep patients warm. In addition to the kits, encourage employee first aid training and make a list of any trained Emergency Medical Technicians (EMTs) on your payroll. Many rural communities make extensive use of volunteer emergency services, and you should know if any of these trained people are on your staff.

Office Supplies. Every office lives on a steady diet of paperwork and a disaster is no exception. Ensure there are sufficient materials packaged and stored in your materials closet so you don’t lose time chasing them down in a crisis. As you detail what you might need to recover and who might need to help, it becomes obvious what sort of supplies might be needed. Some common materials required include:

PC workstations and printers, connected to a data network. If necessary, connect via cellular modems. Notebook PCs make it easy to take the PC to the work site. Be sure all PCs are preloaded with your standard software. If your key disaster recovery staff members are issued notebook PCs for use in their normal work assignment instead of desktop PCs, they can bring them to the Emergency Operations Center.

Chairs, tables, secure filing cabinets, folding tables, bookcases, and wastebaskets.

Portable radios and battery chargers.

Telephones, telephone books, fax machines, copiers, paper shredder.

Video cameras and still cameras.

Copies of the business continuity plan.

Local maps, building floor plans.

Basic office supplies, such as pens, paper, staplers, paper clips, tape, notebooks, and special company forms, checks, postage, etc.

Communications

Communications are critical to focus the maximum effort where it is needed. In an Emergency Operations Center, this will consume most of your effort. Ideally, your communications network will allow for rapid discussions with all members on your team. Emergency Operations Center communications also include company executives, news services, the public, suppliers, customers, and other groups.

When reporting the recovery project’s status, be sure that your information is correct and complete. Make a note documenting who is reporting each information element that flows into your official management updates. If you pass on someone else’s bad information, then the integrity of the entire containment and recovery project will be questioned.

Basic infrastructure needs include:

Telephone. There must be multiple telephone lines into the Emergency Operations Center. At a minimum, you need one line for incoming calls, one for outgoing calls, and one for the disaster containment manager. The more telephone lines in service beyond this minimum, the better the information will flow. In case the loss of telephone service is the problem, make a list of who on your staff carries a cellular telephone so the traditional telephone equipment can be bypassed. If necessary, add external cellular antennas to the roof of the building to ensure a clear signal. Note that in a wide-area disaster, the cellular telephone network may quickly become overloaded.

Radio Communications. It is essential to maintain contact with work crews in the field. If the problem is with a data hub in a closet on the 22nd floor, there is probably not a telephone connected in the closet. However, if the repair technicians carry a radio, then this problem is solved. Your security force normally already has a radio network in place for communications within the facility. If your location is remote and prone to wide-area disasters, such as flooding, you might also want a shortwave radio to maintain contact with emergency services in your area. Be aware that radio communications can be intercepted and interrupted by third parties. As such, it is not a good medium for passing sensitive information.

Data Communications. Data communications are essential for communicating with other sites and systems. In addition, it provides an e-mail pipeline for publishing press releases on recovery progress.

Web Site. A Web site can be a valuable tool to communicate with employees and the public. Be sure to use lightweight pages that are quick to load and easy to update. Keep the information current and the tone compassionate.

Messengers. Messengers are sometimes a vital communications link when the amount of information is large and it is already written down. It is also a more private way to communicate information that should not be sent over the public radio waves.

Television and AM/FM Radios. It sometimes helps to hear what the rest of the world is hearing about your problem. In addition, if this is a wide-area disaster, such as a blizzard or hurricane, then there may be important public announcements broadcast over the television and radio.

Information flow is critical every step of the way. Ensure you are using the appropriate communication channel when communicating with stakeholders.

To contact management and request people, equipment, tools, material and money, use regular voice communications such as direct or conference telephone calls. To provide management updates, use periodic updates via e-mail or voice mail box. This should be a different voice mail box than the one for all employees.

To employees not present at the recovery site and their families, use a voice mail box or Web site with regularly updated announcements. Be sure the telephone number or Web site address is widely published before an emergency occurs.

To apprise customers of the status of their orders, try to call each one individually to assure them about the shipment or to advise them of the estimated delay. If there isn’t sufficient time or telephone lines available to call them individually, consider a “fax or e-mail blast” to broadcast the same message to everyone.

To let the public and news media know what is happening with the recovery effort, get your message out via e-mail, fax, and onsite interviews. If things are going well, this is a chance to showcase the management expertise of your company. Public messaging Web sites such as Twitter can also be useful for getting basic status information out to a large number of people efficiently.

To the people working on the recovery, use a large whiteboard with the status of the various efforts. Choose your words carefully.

To notify suppliers, materials managers must have telephone access. Let suppliers know to hold shipments if appropriate or to assure other suppliers that you still need their goods on time.

To insurance companies, use telephones. They will want to know immediately of disasters, as they may want to send in their own damage assessors before any cleanup effort begins.

Ignorance flourishes in the absence of truth. Time must be spent ensuring that factual information concerning the scope of any disaster is properly communicated. Your corporate communications staff must handle all communications external to the facility (especially to public news services). An ambiguously worded announcement can do more damage than no news at all.

To maintain a flow of information to employees who are not on the site, establish a password-protected Web site and post updates on the progress of the recovery. It should include information on the type of emergency, locations, time of occurrence, injuries, extent of damage, possible cause, and what action is being taken. These people are worried about their coworkers and their ongoing employment. Keep them on your side by updating this message often. The best way to make this work is to use this Web site for routine company announcements on a regular basis. Then when a disaster strikes, everyone knows where to turn for information.

If you set the standard of publishing regular updates, then the calls from executives will be fewer. If you force management to call for updates, then the staff will waste a lot of time responding to the same questions repeatedly. Try to stick to a containment and recovery progress announcement schedule even if there is nothing new to report.

An Emergency Operations Center needs a few basic items to efficiently channel information in and out. Things to think about include:

Status Board. Rather than field many of the same questions repeatedly, set up at least one large marker board. Marker boards make great temporary posters for sharing information of interest with a wide range of people. A marker board reduces calls to people doing the work asking, “Are we there yet?” If your small children have ever repeatedly nagged you during a car trip with “Are we there yet?” then you can imagine what it is like for workers laboring through a problem to be interrupted and inundated with progress report requests from a wide range of people. Post the progress on this board and refer all inquires to it.

A status board is invaluable for seeing the “big picture” of what is happening and how the recovery is unfolding. Some of the things you may want to post on your recovery progress board are:

An updated status of the recovery.

The name of the current recovery manager on watch.

Any important upcoming activities.

Key telephone numbers.

Decisions are made and actions are taken based on information provided by everyone on the recovery team. It is important that this information be complete and accurate. When using a status board, only the clerk assigned to update the board should write on it. Inaccurate information may lead to major delays or costly mistakes. The clerk controlling the status board should log the origin of every piece of information used to update the board.

If practical, use two status boards. The one in the Emergency Operations Center is for keeping track of fast-moving details. The one posted outside of the Emergency Operations Center is to inform whoever walks up of the progress of the recovery effort and is a tool to reduce casual demands for information.

Inbound Communications. The purpose of the Emergency Operations Center is to command, and the key to commanding is communications. Using telephones, radios, e-mail, fax machines, and any other communication tools at hand, information will pour into the center. It is important that every inbound communication be logged and identified with a number (usually based on a date/time stamp). This will make it easier to later track back to see who said what, and when.

Inbound communications might include such things as:

Work crews reporting the status of their recovery efforts.

Requests for tools, specific people, or skills from work crews.

Current locations of crews.

Status of inbound materials to aid in the recovery.

Inquiries from the local news services.

Offers of help.

Questions by the police and fire department.

Injury reports.

Outbound Communications. A large recovery effort will generate a steady stream of outbound messages to a wide range of stakeholders:

Status updates to executives. Keep them informed or they will show up asking questions.

Public Relations spokespersons. They need the facts in case the disaster is considered a public event.

Suppliers. They need to know if they should hold shipments, or even turn around loads on the road.

Customers. They need to know if their goods will still arrive on time, especially if this facility provides just-in-time service to another company. If you are a just-in-time supplier, then it is crucial that you must maintain a steady flow of recovery progress reports to your customers.

Emergency Operations Center Security

It is nice to have a lot of help, but too many curious people will just get in the way. If someone is not assigned to the Emergency Operations Center staff, they should not be there except by invitation. This isn’t intended to cover up anything or to keep the truth from anyone. It will cut down on the casual questions and well-intended actions that interfere with work.

Assign someone to oversee (and keep under control) visitors to your site. Visitors should have a comfortable place nearby to congregate and to be briefed on progress. These people might be a valuable labor resource to draw from as the recovery progresses. As employees show up to volunteer their services, log them in and note their departments and the areas in which they normally work.

The primary source of identification during a disaster is your company ID card. If possible, hand the responsibility for the Emergency Operations Center and recovery work site security over to your facility security force. If you do not already have a company security force, then you should arrange an on-call support agreement with a local firm. With a standing agreement, this reduces their response time to your site and frees your staff to concentrate on the recovery.

Beware of people walking through your area looking for some loot to take home. It is prudent to limit the number of access points at a recovery site. Nothing should leave without a materials pass. Remember that a flash drive or CD full of customer information is easily picked up and fits neatly in a thief’s pocket.

EMERGENCY OPERATIONS CENTER STAFFING

It is important to identify the Emergency Operations Center staff well in advance of a disaster. They need to know to automatically head for the Emergency Operations Center when a disaster occurs. There is no time to go looking for them. To facilitate this process, periodic recovery Emergency Operations Center staff exercises should be held. If you practice it, you’ll better understand what to do at a time when your thoughts are distracted by the emergency and concern for others.

Who should be in the Emergency Operations Center? The number one person is the Disaster Containment Manager. This person is like an orchestra conductor who keeps everyone focused on the task at hand. There can only be one boss, and that boss should have a direct communications pipeline to the top executives. If some well-meaning vice president comes onsite, he or she deserves a briefing on containment and recovery efforts but should not be allowed to begin issuing orders. The caveat to this is if they are advising on their own area of responsibility; then, their advice is valuable and should be seriously considered.

The company must decide in advance who the Disaster Containment Manager will be and what authority that manager will have. Because a disaster can happen to any part of the business, this should be a senior executive who has broad experience in the company. In a crisis, it must be someone who can be spared from his or her regular job for up to several weeks to focus exclusively on disaster containment and recovery. This person must be authorized to spend money on the spur of the moment to bring in emergency assistance and materials without lengthy consultations with top management. Given this description, a company is wise to identify this person in advance and ensure the person is intimately involved with the facility’s disaster recovery and mitigation planning. The greater this manager’s prestige in the company, the greater the support will be for your mitigation, training, and testing programs.

Declaring a disaster invokes a prewritten directive identifying the Disaster Containment Manager and placing the manager under the direct control of the top company executive until relieved. Such a directive must be prepared in advance and distributed to all company officers. It is issued by the Disaster Containment Manager when activating the Emergency Operations Center. This action eliminates confusion among the employees. Typically, this prewritten declaration is intended to authorize prompt action for the first 24 hours or until the top executive decides to appoint someone else or to reaffirm it as ongoing through the recovery period.

An important staffing consideration is for every person to have a predesignated and trained backup. Every effort must be made to cross-train the staff on the other functions of the recovery effort. Remember that your Emergency Operations Center will quite likely be tasked to run around the clock to speed the recovery. If you are only “one deep” in job skills, that person will quickly burn out. Everyone in the Emergency Operations Center must be prepared to wear several hats at once.

A recovery staff “rest plan” should be in effect for around-the-clock efforts. A rest plan ensures that recovery teams are rotated regularly to allow for rest. Team members on their rest break should sleep or otherwise rest their minds and bodies. They should not assist in other recovery activity. Tired people make mistakes and get hurt.

Disaster Containment Manager Responsibilities

The Disaster Containment Manager is responsible for protecting and preserving the company’s assets and resources. The manager has the dual role to ensure the impact of a disaster is minimized and to begin recovery operations. This position is most crucial during the first few hours of the recovery. As the containment phase passes into a recovery phase, this person may be replaced by one of the company executives to oversee rebuilding the damage areas.

The Disaster Containment Manager makes the tough decisions, sets the recovery effort objectives, directs staff toward priorities, and keeps the recovery team focused. The manager is also your primary contact with public emergency services on the disaster site. These organizations (fire, police, and government agencies) are legally mandated to control the site, safeguard lives, contain the incident, and preserve any criminal evidence. By working closely with these organizations, the manager can determine which parts of the site can be entered and addressed at that point in time. They can also pull together a damage assessment and begin recovery planning.

Disaster Containment Manager responsibilities include:

Declaring that a disaster exists and identifying which outside assistance is required. This includes the need to activate an off-site data center. Note that this declaration to an off-site data center service provider incurs a major cost as soon as this call is made.

Coordinating with any emergency services onsite to gain access to the site as soon as possible.

Making an initial damage assessment and beginning planning for emergency containment. As the event unfolds, the manager updates the damage assessment and uses that as the basis for all future recovery actions.

Selecting a site for the Emergency Operations Center by determining if the primary site is suitable, if the backup site must be activated, or if there is an opportunity to set up an Operations Center very close to the disaster.

Activating the disaster recovery teams, assigning people to either business continuity or business recovery efforts.

Personally ensuring that adequate personnel safeguards are in place.

Assigning staff to maintain a 24-hour schedule for containment and recovery. Drafting and enforcing a rest plan.

Maintaining the official status of the recovery for executive management.

Coordinating incoming material with the materials receiving staff.

Coordinating use of skilled trades with the facility engineering management such as for contract labor, electricians, welders, and millwrights.

Assessing personnel strengths and weaknesses in terms of knowledge, skill, and performance to balance labor expertise and staffing.

Watching for signs of excessive stress and fatigue. Even exceptionally good performers grow tired and reach a point where they no longer can think clearly and are prone to serious error.

Identifying “at-risk” employees, that is, those deeply affected by traumatic stress. Moving them to a safe environment under the care of counselors or friends, and assessing the need for professional intervention.

Designating a backup person to assume the Disaster Containment Manager’s role while they are resting or not on the disaster site.

Facility Engineering Manager Responsibilities

The Facility Engineering Manager’s responsibilities include:

Ensuring floor plans are current as to electrical, data network, fire, and environmental considerations, and that copies are maintained both in the Emergency Operations Center and in the off-site vital records storage facility.

Prearranging for on-call contract skilled labor to supplement the facilities repair staff and to fill in any gaps in expertise.

Ensuring the facility’s safety alarms and emergency lights are in good working order through periodic testing.

Restoring utilities—electrical, water, sewage, telecommunications, and HVAC—as soon as possible.

Other Essential Emergency Operations Center Staff Members

Everyone in the company can play an important role in helping the firm recover from a disaster. This includes:

Purchasing Agent. The purchasing agent must have the authority to spend whatever funds are necessary to assist in the immediate containment and recovery effort. The purchasing buyer will need a checkbook for situations where a purchase order is not appropriate. Some companies also use a company credit card for this function. The purchasing agent is responsible for tracking the expenses incurred during the containment and recovery.

Public Relations Coordinator. This person controls all official announcements concerning the disaster. This person is critical if injuries have been suffered by anyone during the disaster. Accidents can also occur during recovery, so this person must be fully aware of what is happening so that a minimal but truthful statement can be issued to the press.

Human Resources Manager. This manager makes the decisions on personnel issues that are consistent with company policy. This person will probably be the one who calls in emergency staff from home and deals with employees who refuse to assist in the after-hours recovery. The Human Resources Manager is also the one who can send people home (with or without pay according to your company’s disaster guidelines). They ensure that employee engineering and skilled trades skill assessments are up to date.

Security Manager. This person will be fully occupied securing the disaster site to prevent material from being stolen. If you do not have one, then appoint someone to this important post and hire a security service to safeguard your equipment.

Safety Person. This person is very concerned that anyone entering or exiting the damaged area is accounted for on the status board and provided with the proper safety devices. The safety person briefs the teams on safety issues before they enter the disaster area and debriefs them after they come out (to learn if there are any new hazards).

Materials Manager. You will need someone to contact all inbound materials shipments and have them held at the terminal or redirected to a warehouse for temporary storage. Shipments that have not left the suppliers’ dock may be canceled. This person should be skilled at traffic management for expediting shipments of emergency supplies.

Sales Manager. This manager needs to get on the telephone to critical customers and keep them apprised as to the viability of their orders. Customers may see a splashy news report that sounds like your facility has been flattened when in reality all you lost were a few offices. Timely calls will prevent nervous people from canceling orders at a point when a continuous flow of business is very important.

Facilities Engineer. If there was any structural damage, no one should enter the building without engineering approval. If heavy equipment is needed to move debris, this person will be very busy directing that operation.

Data Processing Support Manager. Needed for the operations center and the recovery effort.

Medical Director. Needed if you have an in-house medical staff.

Vital Records Manager. This person provides advice for recovering vital records or safeguarding undamaged records.

As time moves on, don’t forget to reach out and request help from your vendors. Just as you will “go the extra mile” for your customers, so will they for your future business. As you make emergency material orders, bring their sales representatives onsite for advice. They may even send over technical experts to help you recover. After all, if you don’t recover well, then you won’t be a very good customer in the future. However, your vendors will not know you are having a problem unless you tell them!

EMERGENCY OPERATIONS CENTER: WHEN A DISASTER STRIKES

Now that your Emergency Operations Center plan is ready, what do you do when an emergency strikes? It takes time to bring together the proper people to begin addressing the problem. This time gap between when the disaster strikes and when the disaster recovery team is assembled is a critical time during which events must not be allowed to take their own course. When a disaster strikes, the Disaster Recovery Manager must take immediate and decisive steps to protect people and property. This prompt action buys time to organize a proper reaction. Drilling the Disaster Recovery Manager and his team during disaster plan testing will make this an automatic process.

When the problem strikes, you have three major actions to accomplish at the same time. These may occur in rapid succession and overlap. In an emergency there will be massive chaos, so be prepared! Your three initial actions are to protect human life, to contain the damage, and to communicate with management and fellow employees.

Protect Life

Your first action is to provide for the safety of all employees, visitors, and bystanders—everyone! Work in the area of the disaster stops, and people are evacuated while an assessment is made. This can be expensive but is a very wise precaution. If, for example, this is a 10-story building and there is a fire on the second floor, everyone on the floors above needs to get out in case the fire climbs higher and to avoid smoke inhalation. Everyone on the floors below must leave due to water damage (from the fire hoses) and to avoid the potential of a building collapse (full or partial). By evacuating everyone, you can account for who is missing and may need to be rescued inside. You can also identify which managers and supervisors are onsite and ask them to keep their staffs together. You may need their help in the immediate recovery efforts.

Predesignate rendezvous areas by department. Someone (or several people) should be assigned as assembly area leaders whose job it is to account for everyone. They will need a roster of all active employees to check off names. Many companies identify the rendezvous points by attaching signs on the parking lot light posts. People need to know where to go!

To signal an evacuation, use an in-building page to alert everyone. In a noisy factory, you may need to set off the fire alarm—even if the problem is not a fire—just to get their attention. The important thing is to get everyone out safely with a minimum of panic. It is better to use a prearranged signal but in an emergency you must use whatever is at hand.

Besides a fire, you might need to evacuate due to a toxic material leak, a sudden structural problem, or even someone waving a gun around in an office. There are many reasons why this might be necessary. Everyone must know what an evacuation alarm sounds like and what to do when it goes off.

Contain the Damage

Once everyone is out, a quick assessment can be made to determine the extent of the damage. How this assessment is done depends on the nature of the problem. The first action is to call for help. If there is a fire, call for the fire department. If it is a toxic leak, activate your environmental hazard containment team (you should have one if you keep toxic material onsite). The on-scene manager must be sure the call gets through and must not delegate this important task without following up.

Next, notify top management of the situation. If this is a weekday, executives may already be there. However, if this is a Saturday night and you just evacuated the building, then they need to be tracked down and told. This is not a time to be a go-it-alone hero. You need their support for the immediate recovery steps.

Determine if there is anything you can safely do to contain the damage. This is a judgment call. If everyone is out of the building and accounted for, then you might want to await emergency support. If anyone is missing, try to determine where they may have been in the building so this information can be passed on to the rescue crews. They have the equipment to go in there and you do not. If the building has structural damage, do not reenter it without the clearance of a structural engineer.

As you work to contain the damage, you need to establish security around the building. Chaos is a momentary opportunity for a thief to snatch and run, so try to identify anything leaving the building and who has it. Use your idle employees to assist your security team. Ask for volunteers. Make a list of who is helping with this before they move out.

Communicate

For the first few moments, people will tend to follow whoever seems to be in charge and knows what to do. In times of crises, leaders tend to emerge. Unfortunately, some of these will be misguided and could tend to pull people in the wrong direction. So after the previously mentioned actions are taken, get an announcement to every assembly point that:

Briefly describes the problem. Don’t speculate. If you don’t know, say so.

Tells them what actions you need from them. If the problem appears severe and it is close to quitting time, ask the assembly point leaders to account for everyone. If you know whom you need to stay and help or if you want to ask for volunteers, do so now. Send the rest of the people home. Keep all the department managers onsite so they can better understand if they should call their people to cancel work for the next day.

Keep the executives informed with hourly status reports. The hourly status report should include:

1. Assessment of the extent of the damage.

2. List of what is needed to recover the site in people, data, hardware, and software.

3. The decision to recover onsite or at the alternate site.

4. Keeping everyone informed of the situation. Use the Public Relations department as a spokesperson for all external contacts.

5. Activating the Emergency Operations Center and assembling the recovery team.

6. Requesting priority on purchasing support from the facility’s accounting manager.

CONCLUSION

The goal of the Emergency Operations Center is to help return the business to normal as quickly as possible. While you can’t eliminate the damage to your business from a disaster, a well-designed plan for managing the recovery will dramatically reduce your recovery time and speed the return to business as usual. As with most management functions, communications is the key to the commander controlling the situation and leading the recovery to a successful conclusion.