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U.S. States Hurry to Implement New Federal Response System Over Next 10 Months By Joe Fiorill BALTIMORE — U.S. states have embarked on intense campaigns to implement new federally mandated WMD- and terrorism-response practices by a deadline of next October, according to state officials and federal documentation (see GSN, Nov. 16). U.S. President George W. Bush ordered last year that federal antiterrorism funds be made contingent “beginning in fiscal year 2005” — the 12-month period that began Oct. 1 — on states’ implementation of the National Incident Management System (NIMS). A recent Homeland Security Department letter to states indicates the deadline has effectively been pushed back a year, however, and some state emergency leaders said at a convention here yesterday that they are just beginning to train personnel around their states to use the new system. “Everyone is very focused on the implementation of NIMS,” Executive Director Trina Sheets of the National Emergency Management Association said today in a telephone interview. Bush ordered the creation of the management system and the associated National Response Plan in a February 2003 directive, and the Homeland Security Department issued the system in March of this year. Together, they lay out a uniform national approach and a clear chain of command for managing natural disasters and terrorist attacks, including WMD incidents. In a Sept. 8 letter to governors, Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge laid out a list of “minimum FY 2005 NIMS compliance requirements” — incorporating the new system into existing training programs, using current federal grants in ways appropriate to the system, aiding municipalities in adopting the system — but said grants would not be conditional on meeting the requirements until fiscal 2006. “In order to receive FY 2006 preparedness funding, the minimum FY 2005 compliance requirements described above must be met,” he wrote. Sheets said Ridge’s letter means “there are no financial strings attached in ’05.” States are required only to be “working toward” the requirements during this fiscal year, she said. Notwithstanding Ridge’s letter, top emergency-response officials from around the United States complained later in September to a House of Representatives subcommittee that deadlines under the incident-management system were too short (see GSN, Sept. 30). In presentations yesterday at the Mid-Atlantic All Hazards Forum here, several state officials cited implementation of the new system as a top priority but indicated key aspects of the effort were just beginning. West Virginia Military Affairs and Public Safety Secretary Christine Farris Morris said her state is about to start training emergency personnel around the state in the system, while Pennsylvania Emergency Management Agency Plans Bureau Director Evelyn Fisher cited training as one of several priorities for her state over the coming year. Sheets said the “time frames are fairly short” but that emergency responders — many of whom already use the Incident Command System, on which the new national system is based — are not starting from scratch in implementing the new program, unlike some workers in health care and other affected fields. Sheets’ group found earlier this year that 37 states were already offering Incident Command System training. She added that today is the deadline for responses to a new survey by the association seeking to determine whether states will reach full National Incident Management System compliance in fiscal 2005 or fiscal 2006. Ridge wrote in his letter that states and other affected entities, such as territories and tribes, should try “to the maximum extent possible … to achieve full NIMS implementation and institutionalization across the entire response system during FY 2005.” He acknowledged, though, that Bush’s directive “established ambitious deadlines for NIMS adoption and implementation.” As a result, he wrote, “FY 2005 is a start-up year for NIMS implementation.” Sheets said her conversations with state officials have suggested most states will be compliant with the new system in time for next October’s deadline. “I would expect the vast majority are going to be compliant — not to say it won’t be difficult, because it will, given the short time frames,” she said.
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