Have you ever wondered who responds to emergencies at the Lab and what decisions are made on how to address incidents of concern? We posed some questions to Security and Emergency Services (SES) Division Director David von Damm, Emergency Manager James Nuñez, Business Continuity Coordinator Ayla Quesada, and Emergency Management Specialist Gus Bannan, who explained the role the Critical Incident Management Group plays in preparing the Lab for crises.
What is the Critical Incident Management Group (CIMG)?
The Critical Incident Management Group is the nucleus around which the emergency response organization forms. It’s usually a roster of between three and seven individuals, who rotate on a weekly duty schedule, and are led by an incident commander. When an incident is reported – usually through the SOC (Site Operations Center) – the CIMG is in charge of assessing the situation and ensuring the right resources are brought to bear to respond appropriately to the incident.
For example, we might bring in people from a certain science division or area, or building managers themselves. Security and Fire personnel will probably play a role if the emergency has anything to do with an alarm or anything to do with a physical breach at the Lab. In addition, for a wide variety of operational and logistical issues we would also bring in the usual players: Strategic Communications, Government & Community Relations, Facilities, and EH&S for safety and environmental concerns.
When an incident occurs impacting the Lab’s personnel or property that requires a coordinated or prolonged response involving multiple Lab entities, the CIMG provides subject matter experts needed for a structured response. The team also helps escalate, or de-escalate, a response as needed, and ensures the right resources are brought to bear to respond to the incident including others in Operations, Research, to include police and fire emergency responders.
How is the CIMG different from the Lab’s past approaches to crisis management?
The Lab has always had an emergency services capability, but traditionally that was focused on our partnerships with first responders, who assisted during security and safety incidents, most of which concluded relatively quickly: think of a fire alarm activation or traffic accident.
But for prolonged incidents, lasting days, weeks, or months, we realized we needed an additional approach to help safeguard the Lab and its people.
The CIMG has a core group of individuals who are on call for periods at a time to respond to incidents, and are ready to make a high-level assessment of the scope of such incidents. Moreover, they are familiar with the Lab and its people and help make sure the right individuals are informed and consulted in the wake of an incident.
For example, in case of a gas or water leak, we would be communicating with building stakeholders and bringing in lab safety personnel to be a part of the response and solution. By making sure we have the right stakeholders providing first responders with the right information we can determine the best next steps.
Does the CIMG change before and after an emergency incident?
The CIMG is scalable: As an incident grows in complexity or size, the CIMG adds people with expertise to address the Lab’s needs.
One of the most important things about the CIMG is that it is always prepared to assess a situation and transition, if necessary, from daily operations to one of addressing emergency needs. We have an obligation to conduct operations on our Lab site in a way that’s safe for the greater public. We’re physically right next to the UC campus and surrounded by neighborhoods with private homes. In an emergency, there’s a potential they could impact us or we could impact them, so we have to make sure that we can integrate with local first responders. And our CIMG is organized in a way that would be familiar with any emergency response team, whether it’s Alameda County Fire Dept. or Berkeley Police, we use the same nomenclature.
Let’s say that we have a region-wide earthquake where there’s a lot of damage and the Lab is impacted on both operations and the research side. The CIMG could scale up to the point where 100 people are coordinating resources, doing damage assessments, making sure we’re getting medical care, and whatever other emergency services we need to coordinate with our emergency response partners.
But in this example, the emergency doesn’t stop once the shaking ends and the fire trucks and police cars leave. We still have an emergency at the Lab and we still have to conduct our mission. The CIMG would continue to operate, assessing infrastructure damage with our partners in Facilities, prioritizing resources with the Environmental Health & Safety division, and coordinating the recovery with all the relevant Lab divisions so we can get back up on our feet as a laboratory as efficiently and as safely as possible.