An Airport Guide for Regional Emergency Planning for CBRNE Events (2009)

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5In many ways, airports are like small cities or towns. Though there are few permanent residences at airports, many have hotels. Inside the terminal are restaurants, shops, and fi- nancial services. Airports have their own fire stations, secu- rity force, and operations that handle utilities and engineer- ing services. They provide trash collection, emergency medical services, and communications. Airports also are multimodal transportation centers where taxis, planes, cars, buses, trucks, and sometimes underground or surface rail combine to move people and goods to various locations on site and away from the “jurisdiction.” All of this infrastructure and the constituents at an airport— employees, contractors, tenants, and the general public—are vulnerable to a host of hazards and potential disasters that can and do occur. During the Cold War era, threat was defined primarily in terms of nuclear attack from enemies abroad. Civil defense shelters, “duck and cover” drills, and radiation detectors were well-known to Americans. Today, disaster preparedness is more far-reaching and inclusive of all hazards: extreme weather, hazardous materials accidents, natural disaster events, and acts of terrorism. The public and private sectors have invested heav- ily in improving threat assessments, plans, training, resource- sharing, communications, and stockpiles of critical supplies. The lessons learned from the major events of the last decade have triggered new laws and regulations that expand preven- tion strategies and augment response capabilities. The same disaster preparedness and response planning stan- dards that govern cities, counties, states, and federal agencies are now being viewed for their applicability to airports. And as government planning moved beyond a focus on surviving a nuclear weapon attack to comprehensive disaster planning, so, too, are airport managers expanding contingency plans from those based primarily on aircraft crashes to all potential emer- gencies. A goal of this project is to examine the special types of demands that a CBRNE event would place on the airport’s emergency response structure and how the immediate region would be affected, as well as what critical resources might be available from within the region to manage the emergency. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) sets standards for airport emergency plans (AEPs), reviews those plans, and certifies airports, in part, on the basis of an acceptable AEP. Political jurisdictions are guided by Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) regulations for emergency preparedness and home- land security. The National Response Framework (NRF) and the National Incident Management System (NIMS) are the primary tools that governments are expected to use. NIMS was “developed by the Secretary of Homeland Security at the request of the President, the National Incident Management System (NIMS) integrates effective practices in emergency re- sponse into a comprehensive national framework for inci- dent management. The NIMS will enable responders at all levels to work together more effectively and efficiently to manage domestic incidents no matter what the cause, size or complexity, including catastrophic acts of terrorism and dis- asters. Federal agencies also are required to use the NIMS framework in domestic incident management and in support of state and local incident response and recovery activities.”2 In early 2008, the FAA issued a draft of new guidelines and standards for the development of AEPs. The new guidelines draw from NIMS and are based on FEMA’s Comprehensive Preparedness Guide (CPG) 101, “Producing Emergency Plans,” among other related standards. Once the FAA guidelines are final (expected by the end of 2008) and then applied, they will set the stage for growing standardization on emergency re- sponse and will help airports coordinate their plans with emer- gency partners in the area. The new FAA standards will have to be followed by any airport that receives federal aid for projects as airports construct more comprehensive AEPs. Re-casting AEPs along the lines of the NRF and NIMS is a sensible step to take. Why is this so? C H A P T E R 1 Background 2http://www.nimsonline.com/nims_faq.htm#0

The answer lies in the reality of what happens when a major disaster occurs. Almost by definition, significant emergencies generally overwhelm the capabilities of a given jurisdiction to respond with their own resources, or those available to them. Airports rely upon outside resources for most emergencies. Emergency medical services (including transport) for a mass casualty incident are a good example. Hazardous materials response teams, bomb squads, hostage negotiation units, de- contamination units, volunteer organizations, and public in- formation specialists typically are not located at airports. Those assets and others exist within government structures—cities, counties, states, or federal agencies—and they follow NIMS and the NRF, if not by the book then very close to it. The ben- efits of airports and their regional disaster response partners sharing a similar preparedness platform are apparent—a smoother coordination of response to a disaster. In order to facilitate coordinated response among the crit- ical stakeholders and to minimize disruptions of neighboring communities and health care facilities, airports have an inter- est in connecting their tactical response plans with the plans that surrounding, mutual aid organizations have in place. The purpose of this publication is to help airport managers develop or improve their strategic relationships and written emergency plans with surrounding jurisdictions so that in the event of a major disaster, especially one involving chemical, biological, or radiological substances, an airport will be in a stronger position to manage a better and more effective re- sponse. The authors have tried to avoid duplicating material that is already well-covered in various FAA and DHS stan- dards and regulations, including those which are identified in Chapter 5. Rather, this document is intended as a tool to complement other guidelines. 6