The Regional continuity plan is currently under review, and a series of annual continuity trainings will be sponsored in each division in preparation for the annual continuity exercise this June.  As a reminder, aII staff are required to complete two EMI Independent online COOP classes: IS-546 Continuity of Operations Awareness Course, and IS-547 Introduction to Continuity of Operations.
	“Wednesday’s activation was our most successful to date,” Fox said. “But despite our success,  I was pleased to hear the groundhog didn’t see his shadow, and is predicting an early spring.”
`
   REGION 2 BI-WEEKLY
              Vol. 3  Issue 7					                          April 15, 2011
	The Regional Advisory Council (RAC) met in Puerto Rico last week, bringing together state, territorial and federal stakeholders to address identified shortfalls in emergency planning in the Caribbean area. Regional Administrator Lynn Canton and Deputy Regional Administrator Michael Moriarty attended the meeting, highlighting the high priority the Region places on RAC partnership and initiatives in the Caribbean Area Division (CAD). 

	A presentation on Hawaii’s Catastrophic Hurricane Planning process provided a template for a catastrophic plan for an island community. The presentation, provided by HQ Operations Specialist Tom Breslin, deeply resonated with officials from the US Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico, as it explicitly detailed island-specific challenges, including supply-chain issues that the CAD will likely face.   Attendees agreed that a viable response to a catastrophic scenario needs the engagement of not only all jurisdictions but also the private sector and residents with disabilities, citing FEMA’s Whole of Community framework as a model for planning outreach. 

	Response Division Director Dug Salley, right, advanced this approach with the announcement that Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands had received a DHS grant to create a joint Commonwealth-Federal Operations Plans (OPLANS) for the response to, and recovery from, an earthquake and tsunami scenario affecting the islands within the CAD.  

	Within six weeks, a contractor will be named and a planning team – made up of all the Emergency Support Functions (to cover everything from ‘response’ to ‘survivor needs’), Region II’s Defense Coordinating Officer, VITEMA and PREMA officials – will be on site.  The Plan itself will focus on the first 72 hours after the event through Day 7, Salley said, and after review, Salley anticipates the Plan will be validated by an exercise as early as September 2012.   


	The Regional Advisory Council (RAC) met in Puerto Rico last week, bringing together state, territorial and federal stakeholders to address identified shortfalls in emergency planning in the Caribbean area. Regional Administrator Lynn Canton and Deputy Regional Administrator Michael Moriarty attended the meeting, highlighting the high priority the Region places on RAC partnership and initiatives in the Caribbean Area Division (CAD). 

	A presentation on Hawaii’s Catastrophic Hurricane Planning process provided a template for a catastrophic plan for an island community. The presentation, provided by HQ Operations Specialist Tom Breslin, deeply resonated with officials from the US Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico, as it explicitly detailed island-specific challenges, including supply-chain issues that the CAD will likely face.   Attendees agreed that a viable response to a catastrophic scenario needs the engagement of not only all jurisdictions but also the private sector and residents with disabilities, citing FEMA’s Whole of Community framework as a model for planning outreach. 

	Response Division Director Dug Salley, right, advanced this approach with the announcement that Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands had received a DHS grant to create a joint Commonwealth-Federal Operations Plans (OPLANS) for the response to, and recovery from, an earthquake and tsunami scenario affecting the islands within the CAD.  

	Within six weeks, a contractor will be named and a planning team – made up of all the Emergency Support Functions (to cover everything from ‘response’ to ‘survivor needs’), Region II’s Defense Coordinating Officer, VITEMA and PREMA officials – will be on site.  The Plan itself will focus on the first 72 hours after the event through Day 7, Salley said, and after review, Salley anticipates the Plan will be validated by an exercise as early as September 2012.   


REGIONAL ROUND-UP

 	The Virgin Islands Territorial Emergency Management Agency (VITEMA) certified its first class of student/volunteers as Teen CERT (Community Emergency Response Team) members last month, kicking off a pilot program in the Territory that replicates efforts in Puerto Rico and New Jersey.  
	Twenty-seven students of St. Croix’s  Seventh-Day Adventist  School spent 20 hours over four days learning a range of disaster response skills, including fire suppression, above right, light search and rescue procedures, and CPR.  The inaugural class, above left, will be asked to join VITEMA in future training, community outreach, and various exercise events.

    TRAINING TEEN CERTs
USVI Trains Teens 
 FOR CERT
 IMAT-DCE COMMUNICATIONS EXERCISE
	The IMAT maintains VSAT and BGAN capability, left, which is tested every month. Last week, the team drilled with the DCE, to ensure seamless communications in the field.
	IMAT Planning Section Chief Danna Lopez, below, works with Kirk Henderson, below right, to establish connectivity during the Comm Ex.
Iris Epsenhart (IA) is at left. 
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  HOLD THE DATE:        	     APRIL 28 
  Take Our Daughters And    	Sons To Work®  Day

 	Now in its 18th year, this national public education program helps children discover the power and possibilities associated with a balanced work and family life. The program aims to go beyond “shadowing an adult” in their workplace, to prompting children to dream without limitations and to think imaginatively about their family, work, and community lives.
	
	RA Lynn Canton invites all Region II parents and their children to join her in the Office of the Region Administrator at 9:00 am Thursday, April 28 for a child-friendly overview of the Region’s business. Please RSVP if your children will attend, including both their names and age.  
Send this information to Carri.Hoffman1@dhs.gov and/or  
Kristina.Simpson@dhs.gov 

	Dorothy Ower, left, has been with FEMA since 1996 and from the first, she’s been ‘FEMA flexible.’

	Dorothy started in Planning in a regional office in Springfield, NJ, working on the paperwork for a disaster declaration, but they needed someone for a PDA in the Albany area, and she was tapped.  Being so new to the agency, Dorothy didn’t have a credit card to rent a car, so she traveled to Manhattan, got the card and headed north. Her team lead didn’t show up until late the following day….  Once the JFO opened, Dorothy was deployed as a Planning Specialist. But  since it was a small disaster, she also wrote IA reports. When the FCO needed an executive secretary, Dorothy took on that assignment. 

	Dorothy has worked in all 10 Regions, crisscrossing the country from the Atlantic to the Pacific, the Canadian border to the Gulf of Mexico, and east to Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands. She has served in almost every section of a JFO: Planning, PA Data Processing, Operations, Individual Assistance, Community Relations, and at a DRC, before joining the FCO cadre as a Chief of Staff and sometime DFCO.   

	She feels one of her biggest contributions to FEMA occurred in 1997-98 when she was deployed to headquarters to join the team that developed the FCO cadre. (It did not exist prior to 1999.)  Before that, the Response and Recovery Division Director served as the FCO in a JFO or an FCO was designated by the Region. Dorothy’s team was tasked with developing standards for FCO recruitment, establishing test and selection criteria, and preparing a comprehensive FCO training program.  Congress approved the initial group of 25 FCO positions, of which19 were part of the first group hired and trained in 1999.

	Dorothy not only watched the JFO’s operations evolve — with a FCO at the helm — but also remembers when FEMA was a stand-alone agency, had “Cabinet” status, and the declaration request process had fewer steps. Her institutional memory is an asset she brings to each deployment.  “No two disasters are alike,” Dorothy says. “The more you work, the more you understand the bigger picture.  Experience helps me to understand how synergy in a JFO works, and why it is so important.”

	Although Dorothy has seen a lot of changes (and affected many), one thing continues to impress her: How DAEs’ outside experience complements the FEMA mission. “Staff coming on board bring with them expertise that fit their FEMA position. This helps make the organization a success in a very short time,” she says.

	Before joining FEMA, Dorothy was an Associate Manager for Prudential Healthcare Systems (Prucare) for 15 years, overseeing three departments and more than 60 employees. 
  
Dorothy is routinely deployed as a Chief of Staff (COS) for the FCO but on small disasters such as her current deployment, DR-1954-NJ, she serves as both the COS and the DFCO.  Her biggest challenge in this dual role is not overseeing two positions, but building a sense of team in a JFO where there is a diverse composition of personnel. “And doing that often requires flexibility,” Dorothy says. 
	But for all her ‘flexibility,’ Dorothy is steadfast in her focus. “While procedures and regulations can be frustrating both to DAEs and applicants in the struggle to keep up with changing requirements,  the most important thing is the people, Dorothy says.
 “The people who train and mentor us, our FEMA family who come together, often as strangers, to begin operations, and the local, county, state and federal people… We all form an alliance to bring response and recovery efforts to the people we serve.  FEMA is in partnership with the public. You can’t quantify the human factor.”

RA Canton, right, stops by Dorothy’s desk in the JFO for an update on DR-1954-NJ. 
FEMA FLEXIBLE; ROCK-SOLID FOCUS
	By Phyllis Deroian 
 R-2 PREPARED; FURLOUGH AVERTED
 CR At 11th Hour Negates Week of Plans
	Last week, as Congress debated whether to pass a Continuing Resolution to fund the federal government, Region II’s senior leadership —
living the preparedness credo — planned for the worst…
	Many of those preparations fell to the new Regional Counsel, Anthony Ruffini,  at podium right, who had a steep learning curve. “I’ve never been through a furlough,” he noted. “The last time it happened was 1996, and I was in my first year of college. 
	“But early last week, I personally realized the situation was serious when I began getting emails from Headquarters that began using the word  ‘hiatus,’ instead of ‘furlough.’ Hiatus sounded so much more abstract. I just knew they meant business.”  
	Anthony says his initial challenge was balancing the needs of FEMA Headquarters with those of the Region. “Headquarters needed us to comply with Office of Management and Budget (OMB) processes. Here in the Region, we needed to take care of our people.”
	
	Ruffini noted that many people in the Region live paycheck to paycheck. “The senior leadership decided early on that people needed to be kept informed. They needed to know their status and what options might be available in the event of an extended shutdown. That’s why Lynn Canton (pictured above with Ruffini) wanted an “All Hands” meeting last Friday. She wanted everyone to know the shut-down plan.” 
	Since only employees paid by Congressional appropriations would have been affected by the shutdown, Ruffini spent the early part of the week identifying the fund codes for each of the Region’s more than 150 employees.  He then drafted individual emails to ensure everyone had the legal notification of furlough required by law, and the exempt knew who they were.
	As with many preparedness initiatives, this one happily proved unnecessary when Congress passed a Continuing Resolution at the 11th hour. “It was actually the 11th hour and 26 minutes — 11:26pm—  when they announced the deal,” Anthony said. “But I learned a lot, particularly that Region II works really well in a pressure cooker situation. Everyone pulled together.” 
	 A good thing for an emergency management agency. 
	A second positive outcome: Lynn and Deputy Regional Administrator Mike Moriarty had a wager on whether the shut down would happen. Mike will be buying her dinner. 


Region II staff at “All Hands” meeting last Friday, hearing how the projected furlough would affect them, and getting instructions on a orderly work stoppage. Staff at the CAD and the Region’s two JFOs tuned in via VTC. 

	A team of  eight new External Affairs  DAEs and two mentors were at the CAD this week, part of an EMI External Affairs Overview course to familiarize them with  FEMA programs, Region II and the CAD’s disaster operations. 

	The interns are from various regions, including Regions 4, 6, 7 and 9. One of the Mentors was Region II’s own Caridad Martinez, a Community Relations Field Supervisor. Over the course of the two week program, the interns will also shadow several External Affairs functions at the CAD. 
EA DAEs TRAIN AT THE CAD