Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
provided and the scope of the response and recovery phases that will need to be
supported. The active shooter incident can be viewed as an iceberg, meaning that
the response phase may be over in a relatively short period with the recovery phase
comprising the bigger share in the event. It is very important for the emergency
manager to be mindful that the recovery phase may last for many days or weeks.
The psychological impact of the attack on the survivors, responders, as well as the
families and friends of the victims will be significant and may require both time
and compassionate expert counseling. The emergency manager may be called upon
to support these crisis management activities for the duration of the recovery. In
addition, there will likely be a prolonged need crisis and risk communications that
may need to be supported by the emergency manager. The decision to open an
EOC, at least at a minimal level, will often be made based on the recovery phase
activities and not on the actual response operations.
The emergency manager will likely be the individual tasked with the facilita-
tion of a comprehensive after action review (AAR) for the incident. The AAR will
usually be compiled some time after the actual attack occurred, in order to capture
the events comprising the recovery phase and to enable the various organizations
and agencies involved to conduct their internal “hot wash assessments.” During
the actual response and early recovery phase activities, most organizations, agen-
cies, and individuals involved in the response and recovery operations will likely
not be focusing significant, if any, efforts on collecting necessary information and
data that will become very useful when the AAR is begun. For this reason, one of
the more useful activities for emergency management personnel may well be the
active observation, documentation, and data collection during the response and
recovery operations. To be effective, the emergency manager will need to consider
a combination of two strategies. First, (s)he will need to encourage, where and
when possible, the active collection of relevant data by those directly involved or in
supervisory roles. It is important to emphasize that the intent of this activity is col-
lection only, not analysis—that will come later. It may be useful for the emergency
manager to provide a repository for this information that can be accessed by various
agencies. In addition to the facilitation of information/data collection, the emer-
gency manager may also engage in actual data collection. This activity involves
the documentation of many activities and the compilation of a timeline. Another
critical activity will be the compilation of names and contact information of agency
points of contacts and leaders involved in the incident response and recovery, which
will be useful in the AAR.
Important
: It was noted that the emergency manager should consider the estab-
lishment of a data repository for the incident for the explicit purpose of the AAR.
With this is mind, it is extremely important for the repository to
not
contain origi-
nal records and reports dealing with the actual attack and response that could
be construed as being evidentiary in the criminal investigation and proceedings
that may follow. In addition, all data collected should be labeled “For Official
Use Only—Work in Progress—For Assessment Purposes” or some similar label
