Emergency Readiness - Readiness Levels (Part One)

 

Hills West of Savanna Creek, Alberta (Photo by V.A. McMillan)

Well, 2020 may go down as a “novel” year, a year most folks would not care to repeat anytime soon. Yet, 2021 is starting with similar tensions that brought 2020 to a close. Thus, bringing me to this post on Emergency Readiness.

Let’s talk about readiness. What is readiness and why should we care?? Good questions. Readiness is the act of being ready. My American neighbours have a couple examples of readiness in their history – The Minute Men and Rogers’ Rangers. The Minute Men were American Patriots who acted as the QRF (quick reaction force) during the War of Independence – coming to the aid of their community or neighbouring community when under threat by their enemy. They got their name because they were expected to be ready on a minute’s notice. Meanwhile, Rogers’ Rangers were an American unit attached to the British military during the Seven Years War under the command of Major Robert Rogers. Rogers’ Rangers Standing Orders (1759) [http://www.psywarrior.com/ranger.html] are classic readiness orders that still hold value today. These standing orders detail things like deploying scouts when on the move, never use the same route out as you use to return to prevent being ambushed, post sentries when going to ground at night, march late and rise early, and keep your rifle clean, with sixty rounds and keep your hatchet sharp. Technology, field gear and weapons may change but the essence on readiness remains the same.

I am going to suggest a readiness system that ranges from level zero (not ready) to level five (extremely ready). This system of readiness draws upon the concepts devised by Colonel Jeff Cooper and his “color code” for gunfighting [https://modernsurvivalblog.com/security/coopers-color-code-definition/]; as well as, more recent additions to this “color code” [https://www.artofmanliness.com/articles/managing-stress-arousal-for-optimal-performance-a-guide-to-the-warrior-color-code/] and Lt Colonel John Boyd’s OODA Loop for decision making [https://taylorpearson.me/ooda-loop/].

 

Emergency Readiness

Level Zero – Not Ready

Level One – Ready, with at least a week’s notice

Level Two – Ready, with at least a day’s notice

Level Three – Ready, with a few hours notice

Level Four – Ready, within an hour’s notice

Level Five – Ready, within a minute’s notice

Level Zero: This would-be what Cooper calls Condition White, you are not ready. This would be a state of relaxation or stand-down to recover and recharge your soul, your internal life battery and get ready for the next period of readiness. It is also the same state for those who have no understanding or willingness to be prepared or ready for an emergency.

Level One: This would be the state of having had training, made a “plan”, and had the required gear & equipment for emergency preparedness; however, your personal system for coordinating all of these key components has not yet been developed. With enough lead time you will be ready, but that lead time would be measured in days or weeks. Further training with others and/or conducting drills or exercises would assist you to progress to a higher readiness level. Cooper may call this Condition Yellow – relaxed alert, a condition when you are less likely to be caught off-guard.

Level Two: This state of readiness is a giant leap forward from level one. Your gear & equipment has been sorted and stored in a specific location, you have your plans written down and you practice your skills & training regularly (annually or semi-annually); however, deploying your gear & equipment and enacting your plan still requires more than a day’s notice. Continued group training/practice, as well as, conducting exercises & drills will further enhance performance and reduce response time. Cooper’s Condition Orange – increased vigilance, would be similar.

Level Three: Achieving this level of readiness will keep you and your family safe during most natural disaster events and many man-made crises events. This level of readiness ensures you can evacuate from a flood or wildfire, or shelter-in-place from a chemical leak. You have the skills & knowledge to know what to do, you have the gear & equipment to stay or to go, and you have written and exercised plans that your family uses. Each member of your family has a bugout bag/GO bag/ready pack. Your vehicles are rarely parked at home with less than half a tank of fuel. Your home is rarely without a few weeks’ worth of food in the pantry, fridge, or freezer. You have alternate light sources and battery packs to recharge critical communications devices to endure a typical power outage. At this level you meet or exceed the government’s expectation for 72-hour of preparedness. Although, this might be similar to Cooper’s Condition Red; there are physiological differences, that would not be experienced by at this readiness level unless a response was required, then, level three would be closer to Condition Red.

Level Four: This level of readiness will see you successfully survive known natural disasters and man-made crises albeit you may have to leave valuable gear or equipment or possessions behind. Your skills, training and knowledge combine to give you and your family an edge over 90% of the others in your community. This will help you to help your family and then help your community. Readiness is a habit now, a way of life. You no longer have to think about it, you just do it. At this level of readiness, the only events that would cause you great challenge would be fire in your home or a tornado or a tsunami; all other natural disaster events or man-made crises could be handled as you have planned. Psychological, physiological, and situational awareness are heightened at level four however the negative effects of Condition Grey would likely only be felt if deployed at this level and only for the duration of the high intensity stage of the event. Due to the high level of training, practice, drills, exercises, skills, knowledge, gear & equipment, at level four readiness a person should experience less tunnel vision, less cognitive impairment and enhanced situational awareness because this is the level you train at.

Level Five: The highest readiness level, meaning you require the least amount of warning or notice to employ your training or plans. At this level, you keep your vehicle preloaded with essential gear & equipment. Family GO bags are the only items needed to grab when leaving your home. You have digital copies of family photos and documents on USB drives and they are in your GO bag. Water and food are preloaded in your vehicle. Your vehicle is always kept with at least ¾ of a tank of fuel. Vehicle maintenance is not neglected. Achieving level five readiness is to be at peak performance mentally, physically, and emotionally. You are as ready as you can be. Unlike, Condition Black, level five is a good place to be. Maintaining level five readiness, however, is another story which will be explored in detail in Part Two [https://mtnmanblog.blogspot.com/2021/01/emergency-readiness-readiness-endurance.html].

So, no matter where you currently are along the emergency readiness continuum, Level Zero to Level Five, everyday is an opportunity to improve or maintain your readiness. Remember as skills and training increase your knowledge you become less dependent on gear & equipment for your success. The more you know the more you can improvise when necessary for achieving your goal.

Until next time…watch your six!

VAM.

(PS - Yes, I copied from Mountainman's Mantra...with permission.)

Useful Links:

https://www.artofmanliness.com/articles/managing-stress-arousal-for-optimal-performance-a-guide-to-the-warrior-color-code/

https://modernsurvivalblog.com/security/coopers-color-code-definition/

https://taylorpearson.me/ooda-loop/

http://www.psywarrior.com/ranger.html 

Emergency Readiness - Readiness Endurance & Fatigue (Part Two)

 

Mountain Road, Alberta (Photo by V.A. McMillan)

In Part One [https://mtnmanblog.blogspot.com/2021/01/emergency-readiness-readiness-levels.html] we covered emergency readiness levels from zero to five. Let’s carry on and explore Level Five in more detail with a focus on the challenges of maintaining this level of readiness for prolonged periods and a strategy to minimize a loss of effectiveness over time.

As mentioned in Part One, Level Five Emergency Readiness is the peak of performance and readiness. Your kit is squared away. Your vehicle is squared away. You have comms and backup comms. You have backup power and lighting. You are trained and exercised. You have a plan or plans for known events that would require your readiness. You are confident. Your family is confident in you, too. If anything happens that requires you to deploy or respond to a natural disaster or man-made crisis you are READY.

BUT… (there is always a but) how long can you stay at this heightened level of readiness?? What is your endurance level?? Are you mentally strong enough to stay here at Level Five for a week?? A month?? Six months?? A year?? Two Years?? What if you do not deploy?? What if no events occur that require your response?? What if an event is building in intensity but has not breached the event horizon to become actionable?? How long could you stay at peak readiness??

This is where readiness and preparedness need to transform from just a skillset into a lifestyle. You live preparedness and readiness. However, even in a perfect world staying at Level Five is difficult to do, much less do indefinitely. If you are employed to be ready, then you are also employed with others and can form teams. With teams staying at Level Five for prolonged periods becomes possible because you can rotate between heightened alert levels and down time to recover for your next period of heightened alertness.

When I was in the army one of the taskings that would rotate through was for one company of soldiers to assist DART (disaster assistance response team). For one month, one company would be on 24-hours notice to deploy anywhere in the world if DART was sent to a location to respond to a natural disaster or man-made crisis. Usually, DART would deploy with enough resources to make clean drinking water, have their own power supply and comms, a medical team and soldiers for local protection and assisting locals with disaster recovery tasks until local infrastructure could resume without assistance. So, for thirty-days 100 or so soldiers would maintain their readiness of having their full fighting order, ruck and a duffle bag packed and ready to go. If a disaster occurred the troops only needed to get dressed, grab their kit and report to base, get personal weapons issued and jump on a plane to be transported to the location in need of assistance. Since, deployment did not always occur, normal daily routine continued – morning PT, company or platoon tasks or training on base and off-duty time limited alcohol consumption and distance away from base, you were on standby after all. This being on standby to deploy at any hour to any location is taxing, especially if you do not get deployed. Getting deployed may be exhausting but you are doing what you trained for and that pays you a small dividend. For any one company it could be 18 – 24-months between DART taskings due to the rotation through the whole army.

In the civilian world many first responder organizations are also on standby to respond on-call to emergency events. The fire department and EMS are most recognizable to this model of alarm bells going off at the station or hall and crews gear up and mount up on their response vehicles and deploy to the scene to assist the citizens at fire or medical emergencies. First responders use teams and rotate them, so a fresh crew is on-duty for 8-12-hours before being replaced by another crew. In this way, response times are kept to a minimum because readiness is at the maximum. To keep crews at their peak training, drills and exercises are employed for this one purpose. However, not everyone in the civilian world belongs to an agency.

For those who operate as a single-family unit or maybe as part of a limited mutual support group of friends or neighbours, achieving Level Five readiness is a great achievement. Maintaining that level is challenging. Maintaining that level for prolonged periods is monumental. A protracted low-intensity event that has the potential to explode into a high-intensity event at any moment is extremely taxing on individuals. If you are the party creating the low-intensity event and you know exactly when you are going to escalate into a high-intensity event your troops/forces/members are afforded the luxury of knowing the timeline and being able to energy up to the increased demands of the event. On the other hand, those who are on the receiving side of such events and lack the foreknowledge of the timeline, they must maintain heightened readiness for prolonged periods thus exhausting themselves before the escalation even begins. The alternative is to lower the readiness level and then gamble that you can mobilize in time. These low-intensity events that have the potential to become high-intensity events become acts of attrition by the aggressors against the defenders. Or, as a former soldier that is how I see things.

Here is my strategy for endurance. First you need a group or team, one that you trust. Next, tasks need to be divided between sub-units of the group. These tasks include – QRF (quick reaction force) Level Five, Follow-up units – Level Four and everyone else – Level Three. If the event is for a fixed period, then afterwards a period of Level Zero to recuperate while maintaining one unit at Level Three or Four would be a wise practice. Otherwise, if the event is of an unknown duration, it becomes necessary to rotate the sub-units through Level Five, Four and Three. If folks have a job, the rotation cycle will likely work well on one-week rotations. During this lead up time is a good time to start/continue cross-training team members into the Level Fire tasks. Remember, if your group has four Level Three teams, two Level Four teams and a lone Level Five team, the Level Three teams need to be brought up to Level Five, just so your Level Five team can get rest occasionally. Burnout your top team in the lead up and they could become non-effect when you need them the most. Also, the rotation will help build stronger teams across your whole mutual support group. On tactic for conducting this increased training would be to disperse your Level Five team so that one member is attached to each of the Level Three and Four teams. Once the knowledge has been shared, practiced, and exercised/drilled, then everyone will be able and comfortable taking their position in the team rotations as Level Five for a week. Remember one effective method of ensuring the teams are growing is to engage each team in an operation debrief and learn what they feel are their strengths and what gaps exist to focus future training on.

Emergency preparedness and emergency readiness are both individual disciplines and team sports. If each member of a team contributes to the team’s achievements and is mindful of their personal responsibilities and stays focused, there are few goals that cannot be achieved together. 

Until next time…cover your buddy’s six!

VAM. 

(PS - Yes, I copied these over from Mountainman's Mantra.)

Useful Links:

Part One https://mtnmanblog.blogspot.com/2021/01/emergency-readiness-readiness-levels.html

Fire Piquet https://mtnmanblog.blogspot.com/2017/07/bugout-location-fire-piquetsecurity.html