**October 16, 2007 FEMA Emergency Management Higher Education Project
Report**

\(1\) BUSINESS CONTINUITY PLANNING \-- OR LACK OF:

AT&T. \"AT&T Study: Almost One-Third (30 Percent) of U.S. Businesses Do
Not Consider Business Continuity Planning a Priority.\" AT&T News Room,
May 29, 2007. Accessed at:

[[http://www.att.com/gen/press-room?pid=4800&cdvn=news&newsarticleid=23862]{.underline}](http://www.att.com/gen/press-room?pid=4800&cdvn=news&newsarticleid=23862)

\[Excerpt: \"For the sixth consecutive year, AT&T\'s Business Continuity
Study surveyed 1,000 IT executives from companies throughout the United
States that have at least \$10 million in annual revenue for their views
on disaster planning/business continuity trends\....

Despite another year filled with hard-lessons learned from tornadoes,
floods and fires, 30 percent of businesses across the country are still
not prepared for the worst-case scenario, according to AT&T\'s annual
study on business continuity and disaster recovery preparedness for U.S.
businesses in the private sector.

Key findings from the 2007 AT&T Business Continuity Study include:

\....Companies may have a false sense of security. With 30 percent of
companies citing that business continuity planning is not a priority,
the results suggest that companies may have a false sense of security.
Fifteen percent believe that their systems currently in place are
sufficient; 14 percent believe that the probability of a disaster
causing business disruption is small, and 13 percent believe that the
probability of a major disaster is small.

Businesses are not heeding government warnings. The private sector does
not give much credence to warnings issued by the government. Of
businesses hit by a disaster, only 41 percent take action when the
federal or state government issues an alert. This is compared with an
even lower figure of 33 percent for those companies that have not been
affected before.

Putting a plan on paper is only half of the battle. Overall, a majority
(57 percent) have updated the plans in the past 12 months; however,
fewer than half (41 percent) had actually tested the plan in the same
period.

Man-made disasters are a real threat. Roughly 82 percent of executives
surveyed say that cyber security is part of their overall business
continuity plan in 2007. Key security threats cited by companies
included viruses and worms (nearly 75 percent), hackers (45 percent) and
SPAM (37 percent).

Education is key. Seventy-eight percent of businesses that have lived
through a disaster have educated employees (compared with 63 percent,

respectively) and defined corporate security policies (76 percent
compared with 62 percent, respectively) as part of their cyber security
planning.

Small/medium-sized companies are even less prepared. More than one-third

(36%) of small/medium-sized businesses indicate that business continuity
planning is not a priority/not important. Smaller businesses are also
less likely to have a business continuity plan in place. More than
one-third (34%) of small/medium-sized companies surveyed do not have a
business continuity plan compared to one-fifth (21%) of large
companies.\"\]

\[Note: The full report can be accessed via:
[[http://www.att.com/biz_continuity_study_2007]{.underline}](http://www.att.com/biz_continuity_study_2007).

\(2\) EAST COAST INSURANCE AND HAZARDS:

Vitello, Paul. \"Hurricane Fears Cost Homeowners Coverage in East.\" New
York Times, October 16, 2007.

<http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/16/nyregion/16insurance.html?_r=1&ref=us&oref=slogin>

\[Excerpt: \"It is 1,200 miles from the coastline where Hurricane
Katrina touched land two years ago to the neat colonial-style home here
where James Gray, a retired public relations consultant, and his wife,
Ann, live. But this summer, Katrina reached them, too, in the form of a
cancellation letter from their home-insurance company. The letter said
that \"hurricane events over the past two years\" had forced the company
to limit its exposure to further losses; and that because the Grays\'
home on Long Island was near the Atlantic Ocean - it is 12 miles from
the coast\...their 30-year-old policy was \'nonrenewed\', or
canceled\.... In the last three years, more than three million
homeowners have received letters like the Grays\' as insurance
companies, determined to avoid another \$40 billion Katrina bill, have
essentially begun to redraw the outline of the eastern United States
somewhere west of the Appalachian Trail\.... Companies including
Allstate, State Farm and Liberty Mutual have \'nonrenewed\' policies not
only in hurricane-battered places like Florida and Louisiana, but in New
York and other Northern states that have not seen hurricanes in years.
Since last year, those three companies and others have turned down all
new homeowners\' insurance business in New Jersey, Connecticut, Rhode
Island, Maryland, Massachusetts and the eight downstate counties of New
York\.... The companies say they are obliged to avoid undue risks where
they see them, and to remain solvent. \"Considering what happened
between 2003 and 2005,\" said Robert P. Hartwig, president of the
Insurance Information Institute, an industry lobbying group, \'and
considering that the best meteorological minds are telling us that for
the next 15 to 20 years hurricane activity will be heavier than normal,
if we didn\'t do something to reduce our exposure, we\'d be out of
business\'.\"\]

\(3\) MASS CASUALTIES:

World Health Organization. Mass Casualty Management Systems: Strategies
and Guidelines for Building Health Sector Capacity. Geneva, Switzerland:
WHO, April 2007, 36 pages. Accessed at:

[[http://www.who.int/hac/techguidance/MCM_inside_Jul07.pdf]{.underline}](http://www.who.int/hac/techguidance/MCM_inside_Jul07.pdf)

\[Foreword: \"Major emergencies, crises and disasters have become more
frequent during recent decades, especially in middle and low income
countries. They affect more and more people, disrupting health sector
programmes and essential services, and slowing the process of
sustainable human development.

Many lives could be saved if the affected communities were better
prepared, with an organized scalable response system already in place.
In addition, survivors of mass casualty incidents often suffer
disabilities or health impairment - physical or psychological. These can
severely strain the health sector and draw scarce resources away from
other essential programmes. Again, much of this is avoidable.

Experience shows that the community is the first to provide emergency
assistance in such incidents. For this reason, preparedness planning
increasingly emphasizes building capacity (human, organizational and
infrastructural) at the community level. Empowering communities to
develop emergency management plans for mass casualty incidents requires
strong involvement by health authorities at all levels, especially the
national level, as well as support from other sectors.

The common gaps in health system preparedness around the world are
generally well understood, but they are often not addressed in a
comprehensive and systematic way. In particular, many countries have not
yet developed Mass Casualty Management Plans, and communities are too
often left alone to develop preparedness and response plans without
guidance from higher levels.

In September 2006, a Global Consultation on Mass Casualty Management was
held in Geneva at WHO headquarters. The Guidelines set out in this
document are the direct result of the consultation. They are designed to
help policy makers, decision makers and emergency managers at all
levels, especially at community level, to overcome the gaps in health
system preparedness for managing mass casualty incidents.\"\]

\(4\) NATIONAL STRATEGY FOR HOMELAND SECURITY:

Waterman, Shaun. \"Analysis: New Homeland Security Strategy.\" United
Press International, October 15, 2007. Accessed at:

<http://www.upi.com/International_Security/Emerging_Threats/Analysis/2007/10/15/analysis_new_homeland_security_strategy_/6159>

\[Excerpt: \"The new strategy, issued last week in a conference call
with reporters, was seen as underwhelming by most commentators. It
called for a \"culture of preparedness\" among Americans across the
country and emphasized that response to disasters was initially a
function of state and local, not federal, government. \"We very
consciously said, \'This is a shared responsibility,\'\" Townsend said.
\"So we spent a lot of time with think tanks, with state and locals,
with private sector stakeholders, to make sure we got a variety of
views, not all of which agree with us.\" But recently resigned senior
homeland security preparedness official George Foresman said that
consultation had been inadequate. \"There was a missed opportunity to
engage a larger group of stakeholders\" in drawing up the strategy, he
said. \"The desire to get it done expeditiously led them down a path
where they did less (consultation) than they could have if they had done
it more deliberately,\" he said. Heritage Foundation analyst James
Carafano called the new strategy a \"bureaucratic ticking-the-box
exercise\" that lacked the sine qua non of a real strategy \--
\'something that forces you to make hard choices\'.\"\]

\(5\) PANDEMIC:

Doolittle, Amy. \"Ill Prepared: Pandemic Flu Could Cripple Government.\"

Federal Times, October 15, 2007. Accessed at:

[[http://federaltimes.com/index.php?S=3109974]{.underline}](http://federaltimes.com/index.php?S=3109974)

\[Excerpt: \"When you ask federal officials around the country if they
are prepared for a pandemic flu, the answers are unsettling.'It is kind
of a train wreck if we get into a pandemic because if it hits the entire
country at once, if it spreads at lightning speed, it has the potential
to overwhelm us,\' said Ray Morris, executive director of the Minnesota
Federal Executive Board."I would agree that even though a lot has been
done, a lot more needs to be done.\" The country is overdue for an
outbreak of pandemic influenza, officials with the Centers for Disease
Control and Prevention warn\.... CDC warns that such an outbreak could
disable up to 40 percent of the federal work force - either by making
them ill, killing them or forcing them to stay at home to care for ill
relatives or as a safety precaution. In all, experts say, a pandemic
could sicken as many as 40 percent of Americans and kill as many as
200,000\.... The most critical problem is a lack of planning. The
government\'s current national response plan for a pandemic flu does not
identify which organizations are responsible for coordinating and
practicing agencies\' responses.

But unofficially, that responsibility has fallen upon the Federal
Executive Boards (FEBs), which are regional associations of top federal
career executives\.... But neither OPM nor \... \[FEMA\] has yet
provided the 28 FEBs across the country with guidance and standards on
how to help feds prepare for a pandemic. As a result, FEBs lack clear
direction on how to practice and coordinate preparedness among federal
agencies in their regions. And they lack the authority to force state
and local governments to work with them, officials say.\"\]

\(6\) TOP OFF EXERCISES:

Rose, Joseph. \"Terror Exercise Is All Set to Blast Portland on
Tuesday.\"

The Oregonian, 15Oct07. At:

<http://blog.oregonlive.com/oregonianspecial/2007/10/terror_exercise_is_all_set_to.html>

\[Provides a brief run-down on previous TOPOFF exercises as well as the
one now in progress.\]

B.Wayne Blanchard, Ph.D., CEM

Higher Education Project Manager

Emergency Management Institute

National Emergency Training Center

Federal Emergency Management Agency

Department of Homeland Security

16825 S. Seton, K-011

Emmitsburg, MD 21727

\(301\) 447-1262, voice

\(301\) 447-1598, fax

wayne.blanchard@dhs.gov

[[http://training.fema.gov/EMIWeb/edu]{.underline}](http://training.fema.gov/EMIWeb/edu)

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