The Disaster within the Disaster

A breakdown in leadership can make rescue scenes infinitely worse

Catastrophic disasters can challenge the most prepared and well-trained rescuers. But in many of the events I’ve responded to, a common occurrence known as the “disaster within the disaster” is a constant threat to the response.

It happens for many different reasons, but has its roots in a lack of planning and preparedness and a confused, unfocused and overwhelmed response. It’s easy to play armchair quarterback when you hear about it or see it on the news, but it’s very different when an event happens in your town, affecting your agency, family, friends and you directly.

What Is It?
The “disaster within the disaster” is primarily a failure in leadership and decisiveness that may create a tipping point in the vent. Other contributing causes may include ignorance, arrogance, apathy, fear and indecision. The factors and circumstances may be different at times, but the results are often the same: chaos.

The first rule in a disaster is to understand that although you didn’t create the mess, it is within your power to respond effectively and act immediately. That’s often easier said than done.

The best responders and agencies I’ve seen are able to respond effectively because of individual and agency support, commitment, training, practice and an ability to think and plan ahead. True leadership is critical in a crisis situation. Some would even elevate it to an art form, depending upon the severity of the emergency.

Anyone Can Lead
The ability to adapt, improvise and overcome is crucial to both the response and the agency’s and individuals’ ability to lead in time of crisis. During the Oklahoma City bombing, we had firefighters on our rescue teams who were put in charge of captains and battalion chiefs because of their technical skills and knowledge related to structural collapse, rope rigging and aerial breaching abilities.

When you’re evaluating risk vs. reward and capability vs. competency, it’s easier to understand why rank should not outweigh experience when people’s wellbeing hangs in the balance, as does the success of the mission.

The firefighters who took on positions of leadership had been the backbone of our development as a rescue team. Many of them had conducted regular training for the team, including our captains and battalion chiefs.

Synchronized Response
For the rescuer the challenge at both the operational and management level is to be synchronized and to know not only what your next move is, but what your next 25 moves will be—and keep it that way throughout a dynamic situation.

That takes a lot of practice and is often harder than it sounds because it requires a tremendous amount of forethought, discussion, planning and preparedness. It also means you must not waste any time because seconds count and lives may hang in the balance.

I’ve seen good rescue teams standing on the sidelines because of poor leadership and good leaders who had to work extra hard because of individual rescuers’ performance issues.

There isn’t a always a perfect match on game day and as former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld once said, “You go to war with the army you have.” When the bell goes off, it’s show time and the where, what, how and when has often already been decided for us.

We’re often behind before we ever even get there, but it doesn’t need to stay that way and shouldn’t continue to be that way as the incident progresses. Control is critical to mastering the incident.

Preventing a Failure of Leadership
Preventing the “disaster within the disaster” starts long before the event ever occurs. It must encompass all levels of the organization and often requires that an agency not only look at itself, but beyond to improve coordination, communication and collaboration with other key stakeholders and potential players.

Individual actions can play a significant role in preventing an event from getting worse and certainly may be key to improving it, but maintaining good relationships with your local police agency, public works department, structural engineers, heavy equipment owners and operators, lumber company owners, coroner and a long list of other critical players can only help you in your moment of need.

Example: I was involved in a bank vault rescue once where our ability to call for the right tool—which we did not own—was based upon my prior relationship with a concrete coring company. I didn’t need to own their tool to be successful, but I did need to know where to find that tool late at night, understand its capability and have a prior relationship with the owner. The result: We rescued a small child.

I sometimes hear people comment that technical rescue is a low-frequency, high-risk profession and because disasters don’t occur everyday, you should expect that those types of events will be a “cluster” when it comes to an organized response.

I would argue that if it’s predictable, it’s preventable. Imagine if we applied the same logic to fires, hazardous material responses or medical incidents. Preventing the “disaster within the disaster” is based on making a serious commitment to disaster preparedness, planning, training and prevention. Key to all of those items is also an individual desire to become a master of the craft—because you have to love it a little to truly be good at it and stick with it.

Harold Schapelhouman is a 26-year veteran firefighter with the Menlo Park (Calif.) Fire Protection District. At the start of 2007, he became the first internally selected fire chief in 21 years for his organization. Previously, he was the division chief in charge of special operations, which includes all district specialized preparedness efforts, the local and state water rescue program, and the local, state and national Urban Search and Rescue Program (USAR).

Schapelhouman was the task force leader in charge of California Task Force 3, one of the eight California USAR teams and one of the 28 federal Department of Homeland Security (DHS/FEMA) teams.