Episode 1: Staying Safe While Working in an EOC

This podcast is the first in a series of real-time discussions centering around EOC operations during the COVID-19 pandemic. We will be talking with first responders around the country to identify best practices, lessons learned and how they are navigating the unique challenges facing every community around the United States.

TRANSCRIPT

Scott Brown:
All right I’ll go first Heather. Scott Brown here. Thanks for the invite for this. I live up outside of Rochester, New York and like Heather, I work for TEEX, but my day gig is to teach MGT346 EOC Operations and Planning. So having been out on the road here lately due to current circumstances but hope to get to see some of you again real soon.

Heather Crites:
Hello and welcome to this podcast about staying safe while working in an emergency operation center during the COVID-19 pandemic my name is Heather Crites some of you may recognize me from the enhance incident management unified command course, our resident course here at Texas A&M. I am a training specialist with the Texas A&M Engineering Extension Service. With me today I have Scott Brown, Charley Oliver, and Kathy Wall. Why don’t each of you tell us a little bit about yourself.

Charlie Oliver:
And I’m Charlie Oliver also with TEEX and as Scott said my day gig is MGT346 CEOs stick course. Hopefully we can bring you some best practices and some lessons learned there’s some information we’re picking up from folks that are still out there and working.

Kathy Wall:
All right hi my name is Kathy Wall. I am also with TEEX. I’m a training coordinator. I’ve been with the organization for about 15 years. I also teach several different classes. The CBRNE response and planning class and also medical countermeasures or point of dispensing as well as the biological donning and doffing class.

Heather Crites:
Thank you guys for being here. What I would like to do ask you some questions about best practices for staying safe while working in an emergency operation center.

Charlie, what are some of the best practices for social distancing and staying healthy in the EOC that you are hearing about from some of the folks that you’ve interacted with?

Charlie Oliver:
Well first thing is if you’re feeling sick or ill stay home. You’re not helping anybody. Secondly well it’s hard to do in an EOC, but definitely try and keep that six or better foot distance between your work stations between your folks. Don’t touch up your face your mouth you know chewing on the end of your pencil those kind of things. Washing your hands frequently that’s probably one of the best things that you can do in an EOC because you’re going to be touching computer and phones and radios and all kinds of things so your best bet is to wash your hands as frequently as possible. If you can’t wash your hands use an alcohol-based sanitizer. Some of the things that we’re hearing about are screening employees before they come to work well actually having themselves screened before they come to work. Other places are screening employees when they come to work. Having a bank of questions that they asked other places are doing the temperature both before you know I haven’t on take the temperature before they record for and then taking their temperature before they leave work so they can see if it’s going up or down or if there’s a problem there.

Heather Crites:
Okay, thank you Charlie and I’d also heard that some EOCs are recommending that they frequently disinfect workstations. So Kathy I have a question for you. When we talk about disinfecting workstations and let’s say a workstation consists of a desktop computer, keyboard, mouse, telephone and Charlie brought up a good point radios what are the best practices for disinfecting those things?

Kathy Wall:
Well basically for workstations you want to clean that area, if possible, with soap and water or some other type of detergent, if it’s physically dirty. Then after that use some sort of EPA registered disinfectant. Generally for electronics like those computers and radios and these types of things you want to look and see what the manufacturer’s instructions are for cleaning and disinfecting those electronic products or consider getting some sort of a cleanable washable type of a cover for that electronic. If you don’t have any guidance from the manufacturer, then use some sort of alcohol-based wipe or spray to clean that. 70% is what CDC is recommending alcohol type of disinfectant, but you know what you can get a hold of. The main thing is when you clean these surfaces whether you’re using wipes or soap and water or some kind of a spray you want to let that area dry completely before you touch it again and make sure you don’t have any pooling of water or disinfectant on that surface. If you do have any type of pooling, use a disposable paper towel or cloth or something to kind of get that solution up so it’s not pooling on that surface. You want to leave that disinfectant on there for about a minute before you clean it off completely. You can also use some household bleach diluted substances to clean these surfaces. If you want to mix up a bleach solution of one-third cup of bleach to a gallon of water, you can use that. For smaller amounts like four teaspoons of bleach per quart of water and you can use those types of things to clean them also. The main thing is once you clean it let it dry completely before you touch it again and I do recommend that you clean it at the beginning of your shift, clean it at the end of your shift, and if you can, a couple of times throughout the day, if you’re touching it fairly frequently.

Heather Crites:
And when we talk about washing hands frequently, Kathy, what does that mean are we talking every half hour every hour?

Kathy Wall:
Generally CDC guidance says to wash your hands after you’ve touched an item or a surface that may have been been frequently touched by someone else. This is door handles, tables, countertops, the electronics obviously you know any of these types of things that are frequently touched by yourself or someone else, wash your hands. The common things you know before, during, after, preparing food and obviously before you eat after touching your face or blowing your nose, coughing, sneezing, any of these kind of things, wash your hands again. Anytime you touch garbage. If you’re in the EOC, you’re going to be moving papers these types of things putting it in the trash can, make sure you wash your hands after that. Some of the more common things that folks don’t think of, which I hate to even mention, but you know when you’re going into the bathroom make sure you wash your hands when you leave use that hand sanitizer that’s outside the bathroom door before you go back to your workstation. These types of things there’s not a hard fast rule of every hour on the hour, but just common sense when you touch something frequently or somebody else has touched it frequently wash your hands.

Heather Crites:
And you mentioned using hand sanitizer and I’ve kind of heard some different things about why we should use soap and water versus hand sanitizer. Can you expand on that a little bit?

Kathy Wall:
Well soap and water is best. Viruses in general are not living organisms. The corona viruses and this year’s version that we have, the COVID-19. These viruses are basically encased in this little layer of fat and soap can break down that fat and break it down so it then it won’t infect you. Also the second thing about soap is it doesn’t make your hands a little slippery and with enough rubbing you can pry off those germs and then rinse them off. If you do not have access to soap and water and you can’t wash your hands for that 20 seconds that we learned like a kid, you know singing happy birthday or something to that nature, then use a hand sanitizer. Alcohol-based hand sanitizers are great. They can remove a number of the microbes that are on your hands, but we also need to remember that hand sanitizers do not eliminate all types of germs. Studies have shown that if you’re gonna use a hand sanitizer just make sure that you generally don’t have heavily soiled or greasy hands. If your hands are physically dirty, in some way shape or form, use soap and water. But if you don’t have access to that and you just want to make sure that you don’t have these germs or these microbes on your hands anymore then use that hand sanitizer.

Heather Crites:
And Charlie brought up a good point about screening employees when they report to work and possibly again before they go home. What are some of the best practices for screening employees? What is proving to be most effective?

Kathy Wall:
Well what we’re seeing is a lot of different protocols that are coming out and CDC is also posting a lot of these different protocols. And for the EOC, the best thing to do is either ask yourself these questions or ask these folks these questions when they come into their shifts. And these are simple yes-or-no type of questions. Since your last day of work or since the last day you’re at this facility, whether you’re working here or a visitor, have you had any of the following: Do you have a new fever anything over a hundred point four or higher or do you feel like you have a fever?; a new cough, a cough that you cannot contribute to some other health condition like an allergy or something to this nature?; Any new shortness of breath, once again that you can’t contribute to some other type of a health condition? Any type of a new sore throat or throat irritation, once again that cannot be attributed to something else? Any muscle aches muscle weakness that you can’t attribute to some sort of physical activity, whether it’s exercise or lifting or moving of some sort of equipment? If that employee or that visitor answers yes to any of these types of questions, then you need to activate your agency’s protocol for COVID-19. Should you consider reviewing these screening results? Okay asking those other health history questions do you have seasonal allergies these types of things? Recommendations that they’ve had for possible exclusion for this person from coming to work you know maybe you’re saying okay well today is not your day. We’ll get you replaced. Maybe we need your medical person to do some sort of a follow-up with these folks or send them to their medical doctor for some sort of a follow-up.

Heather Crites:
All-right and then through the screening process what if you discover that the person coming to work they’re asymptomatic but you find out that they were living with a family member who has tested positive for COVID-19? What should be the course of action?

Kathy Wall:
If anyone has tested positive in their household that they’ve had frequent contact with, CDC is recommending that 14-day self-quarantine where they monitor their own symptoms. The main goal is to try to get them to that self-quarantine piece, but once again if they say that yeah I have somebody that has COVID-19 tested positive or even has signs and symptoms of this, this is someone that’s not going to be coming to work for about 14 days while they self-quarantine.

Heather Crites:
When it comes to one’s temperature what is considered a high temperature and what is cause for concern?

Kathy Wall:
The CDC recommendation that we’ve seen now is any temperature that’s 100 point four or over. And if you have a temperature of 100.4 respiratory symptoms you should immediately self isolate. Notify your local physician, stay health organization or whatever your protocol states for that EOC and then coordinate get some sort of a referral or consult with a health care provider. Because of the close proximity of workers and the number of essential personnel working in an EOC I would advize some sort of a protocol that that can address this airly quickly. I would also say it’s really a good idea to have folks reporting for duty. Measure their temperature before either they leave their hotel if they’re having to stay out of town, their house, or definitely take their temperature before they come to work or start their shift.

Heather Crites:
Scott what other guidance do you have for us?

Scott Brown:
Well Kathy’s done a great job covering all the good stuff. I mean if we were gonna go really into this I might be looking at latex gloves at an EOC. You know for each position the hand sanitizer the Lysol spray bleach wipes at each workstation. I certainly would expect to see the wash your hands signs in prominent display. The idea of what’s appropriate staffing for what’s going on. We get to see a lot of EOCs when we travel the country. And we’ve been in some beautiful Taj Mahal’s where they could easily accommodate 60 people and still keep social distancing going strong. We’ve got other friends that tell us there’s nobody even coming to our EOC because three people makes it impossible to have social distancing and so that leads you down the road to how can we do our job when we can’t get enough people in the room. What’s the technology we have to support distributed or virtually EOCS. There’s a lot that goes into that. We can talk a little bit about that later. Kind of an eye-opening thing for me with this particular situation is there’s nothing really new “Under the Sun” pandemic wise. If you take independent study 520 you’re gonna find out all of this stuff has been thought about but it must have been up on the shelf you know with the Emergency Operations plan covered with dust because it seems like we got caught a little flat-footed here. But kind of back to your question. I might keep food limited in the EOC to make sure things were moving around. And just generally maintaining your personal situational awareness in the room. And what does that mean? I would be checking up on my fellow workers if there were any. Do they look peaked? Did they come to work when they shouldn’t have come to work? Charlie mentioned you know putting the pen in your mouth. What are those those little tics and little personal things that you do that you probably shouldn’t be doing? Touching your face, all that kind of stuff comes to mind. And then there’s the work rest cycles. Are you stressed? Are you working shift work and you’re not used to working shift work and all those sorts of things and so you got a Trained Safety Officer in your EOC this might be their time when they shine a little bit.

Heather Crites:
Speaking of the work rest cycle, Charlie would you recommend limiting shift hours? You know that this is obviously going multiple days, months would you recommend limiting how many hours per day someone should be staffing the EOC?

Charlie Oliver:
I think you’ll find that those ratios are already there. It’s common knowledge that twelve hours is probably about the maximum. The folks I’ve been in contact with most of them are trained to limit it to eight hours a day. They’re not running night shifts other than maybe a one-person contact type operation you know. But a lot of it is gonna be dependent on the circumstances of your jurisdiction and how involved your EOC is with all of the events surrounding the COVID-19. Whether you’re a combined EOC and you’ve got to help department running their operations right they’re in the same room with you, whether your doing some virtual type of EOC. All of those types of things are going to come into play.

Heather Crites:
Charlie I’ve mainly focused on the primary work space in the EOC but what are some other areas in the EOC that some of these same practices need to be considered?

Charlie Oliver:
Oh it’s the entire EOC. You’re gonna have a break room you may have conference rooms or breakout rooms where you’re holding meetings. There’s EOCs that have a designated smoking area. That’s gonna be another area your going to want to take care of disinfect and decontaminate and limit the number of people and you know. Break rooms where you’re going to have food or a kitchen where you’re gonna have food or food service, there’s another area that you’re going to want to stay on top of as far as social distance. Saying not everybody gets to go eat at once. Do you have enough room to socially distance people while they’re eating? Are they gonna have to come back to their desk and sit down and I kind of recommend against that because you now have got another problem on your hands. All of those areas in the EOC, whether it’s the restroom, the shower room, the break room, the main room, breakout room, or even the lobby they’re all things that need to be considered when it comes to social distancing and disinfecting and taken care of.

Heather Crites:
Scott, earlier you mentioned something about virtually EOCS or some sort of hybrid type thing where maybe a few people come in and others are working from home. What are you hearing about this?

Scott Brown:
Pretty common these days. A few people come to work and everybody else that scattered around is logging into some virtual system and I’m gonna push the idea of the term web EOC. I will tell you our experience when we go places they go, yeah yeah we got web EOC, and I go well every time you open the EOC do you spend an hour going through what’s my username and password and everybody laughs and jokes about it, but that I think is gonna be the thing that would trip people up the most trying to make that happen. If you don’t have the reps with the system and you’re not comfortable with it, expect to have to grind through the processes to figure out how you’re gonna do it. Once you get to the point where you’re gonna get everybody set up, decide whether you’re gonna go full-blown org model or you’re gonna man all the sections. All that kind of stuff. And if you do it that way you’ve got to figure out those processes for how you’re gonna move information around the room. It’s not the same as coming in and being able to look on the walls. You got to know where to go to find things. Maybe the significant events log is taking a little bit more of a active role in being that central point. Maybe you build email threads that are just dedicated to a certain section so that they can have kind of their own private conversations for the people coming up with chat rooms and things like that. So there’s lots of ways to move the information but if you’re unfamiliar with those methodologies you’ll find yourself struggling through it for a little bit.

Heather Crites:
Charlie what some of the advantages of a virtual EOC?

Charlie Oliver:
the biggest one right now would be social distancing. It’s automatic because there’s nobody there except you and you’re working from your home or some location. Another thing is your response time is going to be way shorter. Unless this is a planned event where everybody’s sitting around waiting for it to happen, the activation is as quick as you can get to your computer and log on to whatever system you’re using. Weather events, boy that would be a great thing there, because you can again you just go to your office go to your kitchen table wherever it is and log on to your system and the EOC is up and running relatively quickly. We joke the EOC is an unfamiliar place staffed with uncomfortable officials and that’s normally because it’s a place where people don’t normally go and there’s something bad has happened. If you’re you know it’s kind of a strange thing. But if you’re operating from a familiar environment you’re much more at ease and it’s a little easier for you to do things like search around and figure out okay where do I get the information somebody told me that once let me let me think about that for a minute. It’s a little easier for them to do that. Some people think that by under virtually EOC, you spread the risk of power failure and things like that. I’m not a one hundred percent certain of that. Simply because most power failures are pretty widespread anymore they’re not localized. Usually if you get a power outage it a good chunk of a county. So you may have a lot of your people down, but on the other side of that coin that very same coin is that if the power goes down at the EOC and everybody’s remote and they have power, then EOC is still up and running.

Heather Crites:
What are you seeing are some of the disadvantages of a virtual EOC?

Charlie Oliver
As Scott alluded to, sharing information is going to be a huge one. In a physically staffed EOC, you can get up moving around a room. If you’ve got a question, you have a general idea who to go ask to get the answer or at least to be pointed in the right direction. From a virtual perspective, you’re going to have to know where to look for that information. Is it in a chat room? Is it in a file folder somewhere that I have to go find. You know that type of thing. You could just do a lot of emailing back and forth or IM messaging back and forth and going, hey where do I find this, I need this information, that sort of thing. But the information transfers definitely I think going to be a disadvantage. Technology itself is kind of a disadvantage. I jokingly tell people I’m an analog guy stuck in a digital age, but there are a lot of us out there that we know how to turn the computer on we know how to use a few systems that we use on a daily basis. But logging into a system the we only use when it’s a bad day. I think everything else it kind of ties into those issues. Information flow, information sharing, familiarizing with technology. Plus the fact you don’t get to have that face-to-face conversation with somebody. Unless you’re using video conferencing and even then it’s not the same.

Heather Crites:

Scott, Charlie kind of touched a little bit on the communication and technology challenges. What do you have to add to that?

Scott Brown:
Well this will seem simplistic but all of the stuff that you has to be accessible via the web right. I mentioned web EOC earlier but that’s not the only program out there that has a capability. Again everybody’s got to be on the same page when it comes to that though. You might find out that some of the things you thought were easily accessible are you know web EOC, typically we see it run in environments where the web EOC server is generally in the same proximity as the EOC and so maybe when you’re trying to reach it from when people widely geographically dispersed maybe your firewall isn’t going to allow that so you got to double-check on those sorts of things. Are people running software an accessing thing on their wireless and is there gonna be any issues with that at home what does our internet service provider allow for, are there any security protocols that they’d have to have in effect, do they have simple things like they’re using hotspots or cell phones provided by their company, is wireless access points but they have data limits on them and they’re gonna have to get those up in the environment to kind of unlimited. So checking on the plans that people are subscribed to. We’ve heard some fairly fabulous stories about people getting at home and only to find out that the laptop that they had been issued wasn’t properly configured to access the software or they didn’t have the permissions. We a TEEX are on office 365, a Microsoft environment. We use the two-factor authentication to access things try to log in get a code sent back in under the code get access to the stuff so all of that there’s a familiarity level and knowing how to use the tool sort of thing that has to be overcome. Once you get over that though, things will tend to smooth out but just be prepared to deal with it upfront.

Heather Crites:
What are some of the ways to overcome communication challenges?

Scott Brown:
I’m gonna go to routine here. I mentioned and I’m gonna guess most people when they go to an EOC the displays are set up consistently so that you’re not having to glance around the room to find out where the significant events log is being displayed. And so it’s those kind of things that would bring comfort and consistency to your EOC operations in a distributed environment. Know who’s keeping that, know where to go, who to contact for certain kinds of information. Who’s going to take the ownership to make sure the planning process is going to get done and I’m going to put a pitch in for the planning process even if you’re doing that geographically dispersed continue to run that process to have those meetings to build that plan to guide your actions for the next operational period. So schedule, schedule, schedule. Think battle rhythm and consistency in how you conduct your business.

Heather Crites:
I like how you recommended knowing who is responsible for maintaining the situational log. Is it your recommendation that one person maintains that?

Scott Brown:
Yeah that almost kind of goes to if we let everybody draw on the map everybody will draw on the map in the EOC and so that’s why we restrict that to a few people to keep that up. That’s their job. They’re the people that put the information in the significant events log. They have the training. They can do the vetting of the information. It just seems to make it run smoother.

Heather Crites:
Do either of you have anything more to add regarding virtually EOCs?

Scott Brown:
I gotta tell you, the one thing I’ve seen, even in the same room, a couple of our contacts are telling us. Even though they’re 10 feet from each other, they’re still running teleconferences in the room so they don’t have to get up, go to another room. They don’t have to crowd themselves in the room. So we’re on TEAMS right now from Microsoft TEAMS, scattered all over the country a little bit, but they’ll use that even though they’re literally 10 feet from each other in the EOC. Kind of interesting I thought.

Heather Crites:
Charlie, typically EOCs have lots of visitors. In this kind of pandemic situation what is your recommendation on how visitors should be handled?

Charlie Oliver:
well the short answer is no visitors and while that sounds easy to accomplish it’s not. Because some of your visitors are we’re gonna be a paygrades higher than your boss and so they’re going to want to come in anyway. So you’re going to have to treat them the same way you treat your employees. You’re going to have to basically run a health screening on them before they can come in. When the Mayor shows, up well okay Mayor, here’s your mask, here’s your gown, and here’s your gloves. Don’t touch anything and we’ll escort through the process.

Heather Crites:
Shifting gears a little bit. We’ve talked a lot about best practices in the EOC but let’s talk a little bit about mental health. This is a very stressful environment to be working in. In what ways have you seen stress manifest itself?

Scott Brown:
I can actually speak from a little personal experience here. So I was in the Pentagon on 9/11 and I can tell you they sent us once we figured out that we shouldn’t be at the Pentagon any longer we all got home and they sent us home and told us to stay home. There but for the grace of God go I and that could be you know applied to a situation like getting or not getting COVID-19 did I bring it home to my family? Am I the weakest link in the chain sort of thing. And so you’ve got to keep an eye on folks to make sure that they’re kind of sticking with a good healthy routine, getting plenty of sleep, watch the alcohol consumption, ease off on the sleep aids, do we suspect drug use, has tobacco usage gone up? So all those vices that may be there in certain amounts may spike during periods like this.

Heather Crites:
What are some ways to remain healthy mentally?

Charlie Oliver:
I think probably the simplest one, but probably the hardest one, is manage what you can and accept what you cannot. That’s paraphrasing the words of Alfred E. Newman. And that just aged me. But what, be worried there are certain things that you can control those are the things you need to concentrate on those things you can’t control let it go. Don’t go with rumors. Hey, if you’re looking for information, go to the source. Take a break. You know I’ve said this more than once sometimes, it’s great to take a break from reality. There’s other things that you can try. There’s breathing exercises and other stress relieving tools that you can you can apply. One of the biggest one is one of the things as a social distancing does not mean the social isolation. It doesn’t mean, shut yourself off from the world. I think one of the other things as far as EOC is concerned is if there are resources available to help you out that EOC manager or whoever’s running the show should be making those tools available to you. Letting you know where you can find them.

Heather Crites:
Kathy, what other suggestions or recommendations do you have for mental health?

Kathy Wall:
Well Charlie touched on it when he said you know take a deep breath. You really need to take a deep breath and studies have shown that taking a few long deep breaths will reset your mind and your body especially if you don’t have the ability to take a physical break from where you are at especially leaving that physical or stressful situation. Mentally set your mind to trust that everything you are doing is leading to a positive outcome. I tell folks in some of our classes that have a Productivity Journal so if you want to use that 214 activity log as your productivity journal think about it from the standpoint of the more productive you are the more positive you’ll be.

Heather Crites:
Those are all really great suggestions. There are currently a lot of resources available to not only first responders but to each of us as well. I encourage you to visit your local county or city website and see what is available in your area. Before we sign off Charlie and Scott I understand you each are working on some EOC online learning. Can you tell the listeners what you guys are working on and what to expect?

Scott Brown:
Look for what I’ll call cliff note versions of some of the key processes in EOC. Things that we teach in our class. So firstly I’ll be walking you around the the planning P and talking about the meetings and the prep actions for all of that so hopefully have that out to you early next week.

Charlie Oliver:
And I’m going to be putting together what I’m going to call EOC 101 that basic piece of information about why we’ve got one what we’re supposed to be doing who should be in there. Talking about the three basic processes that will go into detail with future learning endeavors whether they’re podcasts or webinars but that’s the kind of stuff we’re working on right now.

Heather Crites:
Kathy do you guys have anything you’re currently working on?

Kathy Wall:
Our team is currently working on short little either podcasts or webinars on biological agents, biological outbreaks. What all that entails as far as you know assessing folks and creating these types of things. Also we’re working on another one on protection from a standpoint of how to protect that responder, first receiver. And it’s going to be standard protection type issues whether it be you know chemical or biological we’re going to try to cover all the CBRNE agents in that. And then also our new medical countermeasures course. We’re gonna try to spool that up to do that on a virtual format too as well.

Heather Crites:
alright great. A lot of good things to come. I want to thank Scott, Charlie, and Kathy for being with us today. I would also like to thank all of those supporting the efforts behind the scenes that contributed information and share their best practices with us. And to all the responders both front line and behind the scenes, thank you for your dedication and countless hours to the COVID-19 pandemic response. Please visit us at www.teex.org