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| 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
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