Florida Catastrophic Planning Project Overview

The Florida Catastrophic Planning (FLCP) Project considers two catastrophic events: a breach of the Herbert Hoover Dike (HHD) around the waters of Lake Okeechobee and a Category 5 hurricane making landfall in South Florida, which has a population of nearly seven million.

In April 2006, experts hired to evaluate the HHD said that the dike posed “a grave and imminent danger.” If the dike were to fail, the communities surrounding Lake Okeechobee would be flooded, resulting in great human suffering and loss of life. Additionally, Florida’s vulnerability to hurricanes has long been a concern for emergency planners. In 1992, Hurricane Andrew struck South Florida with near-catastrophic effects. In 2004, Florida was hit by four major hurricanes, raising the level of awareness of this threat. More significantly, the response to Hurricane Katrina vividly illustrated the importance of catastrophic planning.

While Florida has successfully handled many significant disasters, it is the job of emergency management to be thinking of the next “what if” and plan for it. A direct hit by a Category 5 hurricane with a subsequent failure of the HHD could have a devastating impact—not only on Florida but also to the entire U.S. economy. Millions of people are expected to be displaced for a significant period of time. Concern over this prompted the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and the State of Florida to begin the FLCP initiative in the fall of 2006.

The main products of the FLCP project will be two sets of plans:
County, regional state, and supporting federal response plans for a failure of the HHD
County, regional state, and supporting federal response plans for a catastrophic event impacting South Florida, specifically a Category 5 hurricane

As part of technical assistance to develop these plans, this project includes data collection and comprehensive capability assessments of local, state, and federal resources to support response to a failure of the HHD and a Category 5 hurricane striking South Florida. Analysis of the assessments and draft county plans will help to identify resource gaps, inconsistencies, and competing interests for limited resources. These issues are addressed by participants from multiple agencies and levels of government through operational workgroups and at planning workshops.

Approach

This project uses a collaborative, local-up approach to develop or enhance regional response and recovery plans to strengthen the coordinated response by federal, state, and local resources. A nine-member planning team (seven planners stationed in Florida, one at FEMA Region IV, and one at FEMA Headquarters) directly supports the FLCP Project by assisting in a host of planning activities, such as providing technical assistance directly to the counties; conducting workshops, meetings, and research; and coordinating with local, tribal, state, federal, private industry, critical infrastructure, and non-profit partners.

In preparation for the November 2007 State/Federal Integration Workshop, a team of State and Federal subject matter experts was formed to identify objectives, perform background research, draft invitation lists, prepare read-ahead materials, and ensure the comprehensiveness of handouts for each functional area at the workshop. After the workshop, this group evolved into the Interagency Operational Workgroups. Made up of subject matter experts from all levels of government, these workgroups are helping to drive catastrophic planning in operational response aspects such as Law Enforcement, Health and Medical, Mass Care, and Search and Rescue.

Scenario-Based Planning

The FLCP planning process is driven by a planning scenario known as Hurricane Ono. In this approach, a plausible, but fictional, event and its consequences are used to develop core concepts and coordinate existing ones. This planning process promotes communication and builds stronger relationships among federal, state, local, and tribal agencies and non-governmental organizations that are critical in an effective unified response and recovery.

The Hurricane Ono Scenario

After a winter of drought conditions and a summer during which several lingering tropical depressions have saturated central and southern Florida, the level of Lake Okeechobee has reached eighteen feet.

Hurricane Ono, a large Category 5 hurricane, makes landfall at 11 a.m. EDT on Monday, September 10, just north of Fort Lauderdale. The storm travels northwest across the state, maintaining Category 4 strength as it grazes the southwest reaches of Lake Okeechobee. The surge on the lake causes a breach of Reach 2 of the HHD in the vicinity of Clewiston. Tornadoes spawned by the hurricane also touch down on the dike, causing breaches in Reaches 1B and 1C near the towns of Pahokee and Belle Glade. Wind and flood control actions also cause the S80 structure on the St. Lucie Canal to fail. Ono continues across the state and, after spending 36 hours over land, exits into the Gulf of Mexico at Pinellas County.

Once over the Gulf, Ono regains strength, turns north, and makes a second landfall as a Category 4 hurricane on the Gulf coast of Alabama, between Mobile and Pensacola, before deteriorating rapidly into a tropical storm.

Consequences

Preliminary models show that Ono would prompt an evacuation of nearly 3 million residents, put most of South Florida under 1–4+ feet of water for weeks, destroy the homes of more than 70 percent of the population, leave six million people without electricity; and cripple the state’s transportation infrastructure. The expected impacts of Hurricane Ono are described in more detail in the Consequence Projections documents linked below.

While planning discussions are applicable to a range of catastrophic events, Hurricane Ono and the projected consequences establish the necessary capacity of response and recovery functions. Consequence projections also illustrate the catastrophic scenario and highlight the situational complexities that should be considered during planning. For example, if research and analysis indicate that a segment of the population in the area of impact are projected to require post-storm evacuation assistance, the plan must address the personnel, resource, transportation, triage, staging, jurisdictional, legal, and geographic challenges that such a demand would present.

Workshops

Both the planning workshops and the individual county planners providing direct technical assistance build off of each other, sharing the common framework established by the catastrophic scenario and projected consequences. These workshops provide a venue for discussing planning issues, allowing a range of emergency management personnel—including local, tribal, state, federal, volunteer, and private industry—to participate in the planning. The workshops are framed by the Hurricane Ono scenario. Since they are not exercises, but rather planning workshops, all of the information regarding the Hurricane Ono scenario and consequence projections are presented up front so the information is readily available for discussion and reference as needed. Participants at all levels of government help to solve the planning challenges presented by the scenario, and the operational knowledge and experience captured make the resulting plans more viable.

Five major workshops have been held thus far:

The November 2006 Phase 1 Kickoff Workshop in West Palm Beach, Florida, allowed representatives from each of the Lake Okeechobee counties to receive technical assistance that focused on direct HHD failure impacts and to list and prioritize actions for the development or enhancement of their county CEMP HHD annexes.
The February 2007 Regional Planning Workshop in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, joined the two phases of the FLCP Project with the introduction of the Hurricane Ono scenario. It focused on local capabilities and needs and initiated development of decision matrices.
The April 2007 State Planning Workshop in Tallahassee, Florida, allowed participants to discuss state-level concerns from previous workshops and to identify state capabilities and needs and continued development of decision matrices.
The June 2007 Regional Planning Workshop, hosted by the Miami-Dade Office of Emergency Management, revisited issues of local importance and provided an opportunity to refine decision matrices.
The November 2007 State-Federal Integration Workshop focused on coordination across these levels of government in planning to address identified gaps and challenges.

The next workshop will be held June 17-20, 2008 in the Orlando area, with an overview session the evening of June 16. The overall goal is to refine the vertically and horizontally integrated rough draft catastrophic plan pieces developed through working sessions and by Operational Workgroups during Winter/Spring 2008. Portions of the draft plan will have been used during the June 2008 Statewide Hurricane Exercise. More details on the workshop, including venue and registration information, will be released soon at http://www.floridacatastrophicplanning.com.

Scenario-Based Resource Planning and Decision Tools

Scenario-based resource planning uses the project scenario to establish a common framework for evaluation of capabilities across a region and throughout the multiple levels of emergency management. Since real life disasters do not generally follow the plan, the formulas and calculations inherent to an effective decision-making process need to be captured. This process gathers key steps and skills known to experienced individuals and converts them into accessible institutional knowledge. These formulas and calculations can usually be best expressed in the form of decision matrices that can be manipulated to provide a means of quickly determining resource needs and shortfalls for various events. In the planning stages, the information provided by the matrices allows the entire emergency management system to be analyzed for gaps. On the ground, the matrices enable rapid, informed decision-making during response. Finally, the development of the matrices highlights policy limitations for official consideration both prior to and during events. FLCP decision matrices are intended to satisfy the requirements of the scenario and to provide a scalable, adaptable tool for emergency managers to use in the field. The Scenario-Based Resource Planning document, which can be found in the Documents section below, describes this process in more detail. Decision matrices created during the catastrophic planning process thus far can also be found in the Documents section below.

To register for an upcoming workshop, please visit http://www.floridacatastrophicplanning.com.

Scenario-Based Resource Planning and Decision Tools

Because real life disasters do not generally match the planning scenario, the formulas and calculations inherent to an effective decision-making process need to be captured. This process gathers key steps and skills known to experienced individuals and converts them into accessible institutional knowledge. These formulas and calculations can usually be best expressed in the form of decision matrices that can be manipulated to provide a means of quickly determining resource needs and shortfalls for various events. In the planning stages, the information provided by the matrices allows the entire emergency management system to be analyzed for gaps. During response, the matrices enable rapid, informed decision-making. Finally, the development of the matrices highlights policy limitations for official consideration both prior to and during events. The Scenario-Based Resource Planning document, which can be found in the Documents section below, describes this process in more detail. Decision matrices created during the catastrophic planning process thus far can also be found in the Documents section below.

Documents

Annexes

Agendas

Maps

Other
Matrices