>>>Karen Marsh: I know there'll always be a little bit of noise but... So we are gonna move on to our luncheon speaker for today and I am very pleased to introduce you to Bruce Lockwood. Bruce is a Commissioner on the National Commission on Children and Disability-Children and Disasters-excuse me, Children and Disasters and he has 25 years of experience in emergency management, emergency medical services, and public safety. He is currently the Public Health Emergency Response Coordinator for the Bristol-Burlington Health Department in Connecticut and he is also the President of Region One IAEM. So please give your attention to Bruce Lockwood. [APPLAUSE] >>>BRUCE LOCKWOOD: Thank you. Can y'all hear me, cause we're gonna try and switch from the microphone there to this one so we don't crack. I am honored, truly honored to be here today. Just to give you a little background, I have now, I think, about 27 years depending on who's counting. And I have worked in career departments, part-time positions, and I retired based on volunteerism as you heard Russ Decker and everybody talk about earlier in the week. I retired in June as the Assistant Chief in charge of EMS Division of a fire department in the town I live in. So I have worked in small communities of 8,000 and upwards to... One of the things that was not read off is I am also the first Vice Chair of Capital Regional Emergency Planning. It's 41 communities servicing the capital region area in Connecticut and I believe we serve, if the Chief is here (and I can see him), 1.3 million people. We are the fiduciary and oversee the implementation and the strategic plans for the grant guidance. So... Thank you. My name is Bruce Lockwood. I was appointed by Nancy Pelosi in February of 2008 as the Local Emergency Manager to serve on the 10 member commission. There are a total of 10 commissioners. Our other nine commissioners are Ernie Allen. He is the co-Founder and President/CEO of National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. Dr. Michael Anderson. He's the in-term Senior Vice President of the Chief-and Chief Medical Officer of University Hospitals in Ohio. Mary Carlson, who is the Preparedness Chief for Homeland Security and Emergency Management in the State of Alaska; the Honorable Sheila Leslie, the Assemblywoman from the State of Nevada; Graydon (ph.) Greglord (ph.), who had a EMS service in Massachusetts and other places and has moved on to be the Senior Policy Analyst and Associate Director for the National EMS Preparedness Initiative at the Homeland Security Policy Institute for George Washington University; Dr. Irwin Redletter (ph.), Director of the National Center for Disaster Preparedness at Columbia University, President and co-founder of the Child's Health Fund; Dr. David Shoenfeld (ph.), Director of the National Center for School Crisis and Bereavement in Cincinnati, Children's Hospital Medical Center; Mark Shriver, who is our Chair and is the Vice President and Managing Director for U.S. Programs for Save the Children; and Lawrence Tann (ph.), Chief of Emergency Medical Services in Newcastle County, Department of Public Safety. We have a very broad range of individuals who are sitting on this commission and as we continue through, you'll see what our charge has been. So why a commission? Why form a commission? Well, you had the opportunity to hear from Administrator Fugate earlier this week and one of the things he talked about was inclusion as we look forward and inclusion into planning processes. One of the things I will tell ya that we are seriously looking at as a part of the commission is just that process. We have not come out and said that there should be a separate annex for children in planning, but they need to be included in the planning and as a part of that process. The commission structure and the formation we'll talk about, the purpose, the subcommittees we have. We very quickly learned that 10 people with 24 months cannot accomplish this job by ourselves. The areas of interest we have are school preparedness, emergency sheltering standards, pediatric medical countermeasures, and pediatric disaster training. Those are just some of the highlight areas. And how can you as a community take-help us take action? Well, why form the commission? Well, children make up 25 percent of the population. And I don't know if you all checked but none of them voted in the last election. So 25 percent of our population who have no voice, have no way to go to Capitol Hill and argue their points, have fallen through the cracks. Unique needs are often overlooked in disaster planning and management. You know, I was asked a while ago, "Well, I don't get this. Why do we have a commission and why is it a big deal?" By a show of hands, how many of you have kids? Okay, can I ask you a question? Why are we not banging down the door right now or why were we not banging down the door before as planning was being done in our communities at all different levels asking what was being done. University of Arkansas studied 1,318 pre-hospital emergency medical service agencies surveyed nationwide. Two hundred and eighty-four, or 13 percent, had specific disaster plans for children. That's it, 13 percent. Save the Children Report for 2009, seven States required basic emergency preparedness requirements for schools and childcare facilities. Seven. That's it. There are seven States currently working on legislation that would require that. Seven! Where am I? And presidential disaster declarations are up 47 percent since 1980. So we're seeing an increase in disasters but we haven't at any point taken a hard look at what our needs are related to the kids. Administrator Paulsen actually coined the phrase of "benign neglect" when it came to us discussing the issues of children. Why? Disaster training exercises, medicine, equipment and intend-that-are all intended for adult population. I can tell you as an Emergency Manager who has worked since 1999 looking at the needs of children in our shelters; I am ashamed to say that when I left that office two years ago, we had not bought one child cot, not one child-related item. We had built things into our facility that would allow us to deal with the needs of children related to their ability to have play areas and... We used a community building that had the public library and child library. But we had not looked at those basic needs that we needed at the most basic level. Children do not equal little adults lumped into a broad category, at risk, vulnerable, or special needs. We were on a conference call today and we found that when you go out and look at the current CPG101, it lists children under special needs and at risk. They're not listed as their own category. There are children with special needs, but there are the unique needs of children as we look at what we need to do in a planning phase going forward. A lot of times children are regarded as liabilities in disasters, not assets. You heard in-one of the speakers earlier this week who got up here and talked about the fact that we need to start talking about survivors and not victims. Well, there have been some struggles. I can tell you this. In the town of Canton where I was the Emergency Manager before I went to the city of Bristol, we actually engaged our kids to help us work in sheltering areas. We trained them, American Red Cross Sheltering Programs. We involve them because we recognize the fact that the fastest multiplier I have in a community is my residents. All right? And I would rather have my kids working inside my facilities with me than to be a liability. If I can manage them and control them, and I don't mean a control in a bad way, but, you know, organize them so that they have something to do, we have less problems. Pets, not children, are our priority in funding for disasters. We all know that. The legislation came out requiring us to deal with pets, but the issue was there was no-never a mandate that said you had to deal with kids. They make up 25 percent of the population we have to deal with. And, by the way, by a show of hands there was probably more than 75 percent of you who are directly impacted cause you have a child or you have a relative with a child. There's clearly no one who's not impacted by that. Recovery equals rebuilding of infrastructure rather than young lives. We have learned out of the Gulf Coast that we have put a lot of effort into rebuilding the infrastructure, and clearly we understand infrastructure needs to be rebuilt but at what cost? We have done some unbelievably terrible things in the sense of case management. We have allowed families to fall through the cracks along with their children. As a result of that, we have children who will be long-term impacted by the events of that area simply because we didn't put any time into that effort. Accountability. At the end of the day who is responsible for children before, during and after a disaster. Parents. And I agree with you. But here's my other question. What happens to the children who become orphans during an event? What happens to the children who somehow become separated, even if it's temporarily, from their parents due to medical reasons or whatever? We have to incorporate some component of our planning into the process of understanding that we will have children possibly that don't have a parent. And in that case, how do we define-who do we make responsible for that process? All right, commission overview. How did we get started? Well, advocacies and other groups banged on enough doors. And we are an independent commission. We are authorized by Congress under the Consolidated Appropriation Act of 2008. We are bipartisan. If you look at the legislation, it said who got to appoint who and who had to be on the commission. There was a breakdown of all those positions. Ten members appointed by the President, Senate, and House leadership. We're diverse. I already told you about the 10 commissioners but we have expertise drawn from multiple disciplines-pediatrics, State, local emergency management, nongovernmental organizations, and State legislature. What is our purpose? There's days we have to remind ourselves what our purpose is. We are here to examine and assess the needs of children as they relate to preparedness response recovery from all hazards. There are a great deal-number of practitioners here in the room and it is-I've had the conversations over the week. The one thing I tell everybody is we're not telling you to stop planning for adults or anything else; we're asking you to incorporate kids into your planning. So... But the pro... And I don't wanna say the problem. The focus of the commission is our focus is kids. And I can tell you this. There are days where we have subcommittee meetings and an issue will come up and we will have to stop ourselves and say, "We know that's a priority but that's not the focus of the commission. We need to push that forward to those people who need to deal with it." The focus of the commission by statutory legislation was to focus on the needs of kids. We are to identify, review, evaluate existing laws, regulatory-regulations, policies, and programs. There's a lot of good work being done around this country. I can tell you that as a commissioner that the number of people who come before us and talk about what it is they do... And, by the way, these people are very passionate and I wanna repeat that, very passionate. Why do we keep talking into this mike? I don't know. I'm losing my mind. They're very passionate. The reality is that there's a lot of good work. What we're trying to do is highlight some of that good work as a commission and then identify gaps where we can't find any of that type of work or policies and procedures, and then try to make suggestions as we move forward in our report, which we'll talk about. Identify, review, and evaluate lessons learned from past disasters. Do we know from previous disasters what some of the outcomes were? Why do we choose sometimes to relive those? We identified it as a problem. Why didn't we start to look at it and address it? I had people come to me after I got appointed to the commission who had been deployed who said to me, "Bruce, we got there and there was no formula. There was no..." And they're going through the list of things-diapers, simple diapers-and this is 10 days into it. They go, "How do we do that?" They were making things up out of like towels and etc., to what they needed to do. So we clearly need to evaluate our lessons learned, whether it be through after-action reports (inaud.), so we are looking at as much information as possible. And then we'll report findings and recommendations to the President and Congress. Our interim report will be due this October and our commission staff is working diligently writing, rewriting, sending it out to commissioners, and rewriting to try to capture the breadth of what we're looking at right now. And then there will be a final report for October of 2009. One of the things that we are looking at is for the annual conference for IAEM in November is that we actually have gotten a breakout session on Sunday. And by then the interim report will be out and we're actually working on what that format will be when we go to that breakout session. We're being honest. We're looking for your input. When we put the interim report out, we expect comments back. So it'll be process that hopefully we can go through down in Orlando. All right, we have four subcommittees. Remember I told you we realized that... And, by the way, you think 24 months is a long time until you're actually sitting there and realize, wow, we only have 24 months. We have four subcommittees-evacuation, transportation, and housing, which sheltering is underneath-I chair that committee; pediatric medical care, which is chaired by Dr. Michael Anderson from the University Hospitals in Ohio; education welfare and juvenile justice, which is chaired by the Honorable Sheila Leslie from the Nevada General Assembly-and that is where school emergency planning, daycare, and etc. is currently housed; and then human services recovery with the case management and those other issues is chaired by Dr. Irwin Redletter from the Columbia University. We have brought in stakeholders and committee members and had some very lively discussions at times, but at the end of the day we've come to a consensus on where we're at, and we have-we've done some really great work. All right, school preparedness in the 2007 GAO report. Most schools and school districts have a plan for emergencies using a multi-hazard approach; however, plans often lack community-wide coordination and integration in State and local planning. I served as the Chair of the School All Hazard Planning Committee for the town of Canton as the Emergency Manager. And we were-we were unique in that manner that our chief elected official actually mandated it. But, honestly, most schools treat themselves like little villages. They don't reach out to their outer community. They wanna keep everything internal. Their problems stay inside their walls. And what we pointed out was that's great but once it spills outside your wall, we have to come. By the way, you don't own any fire trucks, you don't own any ambulances, you don't own any police cruisers. You need to involve your community partners so they know what you're doing inside the building. And, by the way, you need to know what they're doing outside the building and there has to be a collaboration. Over two-thirds of school districts do not regularly train with their community partners. I could tell you this. Connecticut just passed a State law. It used to be that you... The wording was you're required to have seven fire drills a year of which three could be one of your all hazard drills. The new legislation adopted, just passed within the last 60 days, is those three drills are now required to be all hazard drills. So Connecticut will be moving along in that direction. Over one-quarter of school districts have never trained with first responders and school districts lack procedures for continuing education during extended school closure. Could that be a problem this fall? I know that thing called H1N1. School preparedness preliminary recommendations that we are making: collaboration with local and State emergency managers and community partners and planning training and exercises come to the table. Incorporate basic preparedness concepts into the school curricula. Russ, Region One, you out here? Russ Webster in Region One stood up here when they did their Region One report out and they're running a program called the Step Program. And they're currently piloting a program for the high school level. The ability to incorporate training at the public preparedness level into school-level training will only make our communities better prepared. By the way, you understand that if we make our communities better prepared through personal preparedness, as emergency managers what should happen for us? Our jobs should get easier. And I don't mean that in a flippant way but if you're prepared, it means that I don't have to try and meet all your needs at the exact same time. Incorporate... Support psychological first aid training to build in resilience of teachers, parents, and children. Does a disaster affect everyone? It affects them differently, right, but it does affect them. Support academic and mental health needs of children in a post-disaster environment. Don't just expect they'll get over it. This is a section I'm pretty proud of. We have worked since pretty much the first commission meeting, the American Red Cross and the National Volunteer Organizations Active in Disasters. We're in the process of putting standards together, new, national standards for sheltering, and we facilitated our subcommittee to work with them and there is now an annex that is being piloted related to the needs of kids in sheltering, some of the items that we've spelled out in that document. It's being piloted during this hurricane season. And we know that disasters are more than hurricane season but it's obviously an opportunity, that we're pretty sure that at some point we'll have a hurricane and at some point we'll have to shelter somebody, and that other areas have the opportunity to pilot this. And then the intent would be that we'll take that doc-the information back that's sent back and we will work as a subcommittee very diligently and very quickly to try and then have that incorporated into the national standards. We have one recommendation and I keep saying it over and over again. We need to incorporate the child's annex into the master document. Don't make it a stand-alone part of the document because if I build my shelter based on what I read in the front part of the document, when I get to the back part I go, "I was supposed to do that?" So when we talk about feeding, it should cover everything for feeding-adults, kids, whatever it needs to be. It should be incorporated into the document. And I don't know if-how many of you are familiar with it but the Sphere (ph.) Document is the format that we would like it to be seen as but not the Sphere Document, just that type of layout, format, etc. So guidance shelter management and staff to create a safe and secure environment. At the end of the day isn't that what our shelters are supposed to be about? I don't think any emergency manager in this room or any one of you ever has a plan of being a permanent housing process after a disaster. Matter of fact, I had a rule when we opened our shelter in the town of Canton. My staff was to walk around the room and try and make connections with families and whatever. Their goal was to close my shelter as fast as we opened it. Collaboration with the American Red Cross, FEMA, HHS, State and local emergency planners, and National Volunteer Organization [sic] Active in Disasters. We are populating the ARC and local emergency managers in the hurricane season this year and we are working to-with FEMA to develop a list, a cache of necessary plies-supplies for children-food and diapers available for when a shelter opens. And we're looking at this from a tiered standpoint. It shouldn't just be FEMA. I think that demographically when you look at and you're buying your sheltering supplies, if you know that a certain percentage of your population are children, wouldn't it make sense to buy the stuff that fits? So we have to look at those things and they have to be done... And that's the one thing. We're not mandating a percentage. We're saying is you gotta go out and look at your demographics and see how it works. Pediatric medical countermeasures. As of June 15th, 2009, 26 deficient-26-26 States deficient of anti-virals to treat 25 percent of their population. That's on flu.gov. We're not making those numbers up. Rate of influenza and virus infection for the H1N1, among the highest in children right now. Maybe the medications aren't even appropriate for kids. Some of these things haven't even been tested. We've just decided cause it works for an adult, we're gonna give it to a kid. So that has to be truly looked at and it's one of the things that will come out in our recommendations. Pediatric training. Competency-based training is in basic and advanced pediatric medical care for nonmedical volunteers, EMS professionals, nurses, physicians, and allied health professions. I work in an ar-I work and live in an area where we have one Children's Hospital. No lie, if I pull up to the wrong hospital with a kid in the back at Amos, what do you think they're gonna tell me at the door? "Oh, we don't do kids." Should they at least have the capability of handling the basic needs of a child during a disaster because, by the way, if there's only one Children's Hospital in Connecticut, will we very quickly overrun it? Yes. So there should be some basic capabilities at all levels. Basic. Key elements of standardized curriculum and training programs to include user-friendly patient care guidelines for child-children based on specific scenarios; pediatric specific severity criteria and treatment guidelines; clinical practice guidelines for triage treatment and transportation; and guidance for emergency medical services hospitals, emergency management, fire, law enforcement; and how to incorporate pediatric-related objectives into routine drills and exercises. How many of you have run an exercise in the last year? Okay. How many of you know what H-SEEP is, Homeland Security Exercise and Evaluation Program? When you wrote your goals and objectives for that exercise, how many of you incorporated a kid's objective into your exercise? You all see two hands? Twenty-five percent of our population and we're not including 'em in our exercise process. How can you as a community help us lead? Well, encourage involvement of schools, childcare, summer camps, group homes, juvenile justice facilities into disaster planning. You know what? I was asked something yesterday about, "How come-how come [such and such] is on [So and So's] Web site and my stuff isn't there?" And I went, "Did you ask?" "What?" I said, "Did you ask? If you ask, it'll probably go up." "You mean it's that simple?" "Yeah." Well, how about we create partnerships where we ask. There's a gentleman in this room, where is he, sitting over there in his red, white, and blue shirt. I steal his line all the time. Mike (Unint.), who is the past President of the Associa-IAEM, given testimony to Congress said this, "If we shake hands before the incident, we won't point fingers after the incident." Okay? So invite those people that need to be at your table as you're preparing your exercises and find a way to incorporate. By the way, you can incorporate a part of their exercise and not actually have that be a part of the main exercise. We do it all the time in Connecticut. We run up a main exercise and allow little incidental exercises going off to the side and allow them to test an objective. It's not that tough. All right, well, here's the point we're at. If y'all have any questions... God, I can't believe I said "y'all." Who have I been hanging around with this week? y'all! Y'all. If anybody has any questions related to the commission, we can share with you what we can share with you. The one thing that does come out of the-the-the statutory requirements is that we have to report to the President and Congress and-which means that we can't tell you everything until they actually have a report in their hand because it would just be bad. So that's it if none of you have any questions. Thank you for your time. Thank you for your service. It's truly those of you at the ground level... I don't know if you've all heard the-the-the percentage but by true definition in this country 1 percent of the population is truly defined as a first responder. So that tells you that in a large scale emergency who's really responding. Okay? Thank you. [APPLAUSE]