...I figured it's time to fan the old flames of apathy again. Here we sit, years again after another disaster, and have we learned our lessons? All of the complaining about how the fire service isn't taken seriously enough and where am I gonna get funding and all that. How much has changed since the last little fit thrown by Mother Nature and what have we learned? We got a great best-seller in Hurricane Katrina Lessons Learned and yet did we implement any of those changes? (When I say "we", I'm talking about you).

Planning is best done before the event occurs; thus the idea that it takes you "from the situtation you are in now, to the situation you desire to be in". That's a plan. It may be painfully obvious to you right now the situation you are in, but getting there requires thought and that's best done before you have no coffee, no CNN, and no telephone.

If you wonder why the fire service doesn't have money, props, etc., remember items like when others said they could do it better. Here's a reminder, from a little article I wrote after Katrina, the jist of which was published on Firehouse.com and Withthecommand.com: the article was Disaster Consequence Management: Should The Defense Department or t...

Before you get all fired up, remember the incredible contributions the military made to this catastrophic event and remember the team effort required to rescue all those people. But also remember the failure to request or allocate the correct resources, and the failure to have a system in place to type resources and credential responders; all of which is still not complete two years later as that anniversary rolls around (these committees are trying, but we certainly aren't there yet).

My point being, that I beat the horse about planning for disaster in your community the other night on here; how about the question as to whether you have taken the time to look over the NIMS Resource Typing documents to see if your agency can meet those recommendations; or have you looked over the NIMS Job Titles to see if your personnel (or yourself) meet the recommendations for the positions you could be called to filll in a disaster if called upon?

These NIMS documents are currently in draft/proposal form, but it is incumbent upon you to look them over and be informed; do they make sense, do they establish a minimum standard, and are they basicallly what you will need in a disaster? But the time is now to do these things, not after the storm hits. Credibility is a luxury only afforded to the prepared. How can you be credible if you don't even know what to do when something happens in your own backyard?

Identify the hazards that can affect your community, determine what resources you need to resolve the problems, identify if you have those resources, make a plan for utilizing the resources if you have them and calling for them if you don't. It'll be easier if you do it while you still have power on your computer, trust me.