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DE RUEHC #1905/01 1402355
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R 202355Z MAY 09

FM SECSTATE WASHDC
INFO ALL DIPLOMATIC AND CONSULAR POSTS COLLECTIVE
RUEHTRO/AMEMBASSY TRIPOLI 7451

UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 04 STATE 051905 
 
THE FOLLOWING DIR FSINFATC 001346 DTG R 202044Z MAY 09 
SENT ACTION TO SECSTATE WASHDC IS BEING REPEATED FOR 
YOUR INFO: 
 
QUOTE: 
< 
UNCLAS DIR FSINFATC 001346 
 
MCO PLEASE PASS TO ALDAC 
DEPARTMENT FOR S/ES-O/CMS, DS/IP, AND CA/OCS/ACS 
 
FOR AMBASSADORS, DCMS/POS, AND EAC 
 
E.O. 12958: N/A 
TAGS: AEMR AMGT ASEC CASC
SUBJECT: CRISIS MANAGEMENT BEST PRACTICES AND LESSONS LEARNED 
 
REF: (A) State 6306, (B) State 13929 
 
¶1. SUMMARY: FSI delivers approximately 100 Crisis Management 
Exercises (CMEs) annually at Foreign Service posts worldwide.  This 
cable highlights best practices and key lessons learned from the 
FSI-directed CMEs conducted over the past 12 months.  END SUMMARY. 
 
------------------------------------------ 
Emergency Action Plan (EAP) Best Practices 
------------------------------------------ 
 
¶2. Posts with staff that are familiar with the content of the 
Mission's EAP had the most accurate plans and are likely better 
prepared to effectively confront crisis situations.  Reviewing the 
EAP should be part of the new arrival check-in process.  Some posts 
include a review of the EAP in new staff orientations.  In 
addition: 
 
-- A CD-ROM version of the EAP should be available at all satellite 
locations without access to OpenNet. 
 
-- A link to the EAP should be placed on the post intranet home 
page, so all officers and LE staff can easily access the 
unclassified portions. 
 
-- Hardcopies of the updated unclassified EAP need to be placed in 
critical locations, such as the ACCs and Safehavens, in the event 
the computer systems fail. 
 
------------------------------ 
Who Is The Incident Commander? 
------------------------------ 
 
¶3. CMT would like to highlight Embassy Kyiv's best practice of 
creating a single chart that clearly designates the primary and 
alternate incident commanders for each annex and supporting function 
listed in the 12 FAH-1 Emergency Planning Handbook.  Posts can 
download a copy of this chart, labeled the Model EAC Chart, from the 
CMT homepage at http://fsi.state.gov/fsi/lms/cmt (also reachable by 
typing CMT in the iNet search field).  Some posts have realized that 
not every primary or alternate incident commander needs to be an 
American. 
 
------------------------- 
Role-Specific EAP Binders 
------------------------- 
 
¶4. Some posts have developed role-specific binders to assist the 
primary incident commanders of each EAP annex.  These role-specific 
binders are more compact and targeted than the full EAP, making it 
easier for the incident commander to customize, update, and 
internalize his roles and responsibilities.  Each binder includes 
relevant check-lists, tripwires, contact lists, emergency contact 
information for all staff (including email addresses and cell phone 
and landline numbers), and tabs for the additional information 
needed for their specific role.  Emergency Action Committee (EAC) 
members bring their role-specific binder to every EAC meeting in 
order to review materials and add useful information.  The binder 
can be easily passed to the alternate EAC member, when the primary 
EAC member plans to be absent from post. 
 
------------------------- 
Alternate Command Centers 
------------------------- 
 
¶5. Have you test-driven your ACC recently?  Often posts will conduct 
an inventory of their ACC to ensure that required equipment is 
present, only to find later other surprises that interfere with 
effective usage of the ACC: 
 
-- One post found that their ACC was extremely uncomfortable in the 
summer, without fans or some sort of climate control; 
 
-- Another post realized that a microwave, small fridge, and 
coffeemaker were necessary for productive multi-day use; 
 
-- A third post learned that the generator refueling procedure 
required crossing the entire city, which would be an unrealistic 
proposition during extensive civil unrest or a natural disaster; 
 
-- A fourth belatedly discovered that there were no reliable 24-hour 
bathroom facilities. 
 
¶6. One best practice is for posts to conduct ACC drills, which 
require an embassy section to work out of the ACC for a defined 
period of time, such as a half or full day.  This experience will 
undoubtedly generate a very helpful punch list, which can be 
addressed prior to those pesky riots blocking embassy access. 
 
----------- 
Safehavens 
----------- 
 
¶7. Over the past year, a number of posts have pressure tested their 
safehavens in actual crises.  Interesting lessons learned include: 
 
-- Does the safehaven have a hardcopy of the EAP? 
 
-- Is the key for the locked supplies closet easily accessible? 
 
-- Who is the floor warden for the safehaven? 
 
-- Does the safehaven SOP include cell phone rules to guide 200 
anxious employees all trying to call out at the sametime? 
 
-- Does the safehaven include a binder wth employee rosters, spouse 
and older children numbers, and other useful emergency notification 
information? 
 
¶8. Consider obstacles to entering the safehaven.  Entering a 
safehaven often means entering a controlled access area, requiring a 
cleared American to be posted to allow LE staff access.  SOPs also 
need to be updated in cases where certain hard line areas may be 
locked down during a crisis, inhibiting personnel inside from 
proceeding to the safehaven, until Post One can release their 
doors. 
 
¶9. Keep Post One available for crisis communications.  Several posts 
noted that switching the phones over to Post One when entering the 
safehaven created a new problem: Post One would immediately become 
inundated with calls from the public and press, hindering their 
ability to react during and after a crisis, and impeding the 
Operations Center's ability to reach Post One.  A best practice is 
to update the recorded message on the public number, and leave Post 
One free to handle crisis communications. 
 
-------------- 
Communications 
-------------- 
 
¶10. Many posts ran into communications issues, whether expired 
satellite phone contracts, insufficient quantity of satellite 
phones, lack of radio training, or outdated Post Emergency 
Notification Systems (such as phone cascade lists).  Some lessons 
learned include: 
 
-- Some posts with appropriate local infrastructure committed to 
leveraging text messaging as an additional phone tree option. 
 
-- One post recommended that the cell phone numbers of spouses, 
members of households and older children, and personal email 
addresses of all staff should be added to their SMS Emergency 
Notification System under their own collective. 
 
-- Others posts decided to implement an embassy housing cluster 
warden system, to facilitate mesages should cell towers go out of 
service. 
 
¶11. Many posts realized the fragility of the celllar and landline 
phone networks and the correspnding importance of radios.  As a 
result, some posts concluded radios should be issued to senior LE 
staff, or that additional radios should be procured to equip both 
work spaces and residences.  In addition, radio coverage or 
alternative communications mechanisms should be made available to 
schools that serve mission children; for example, one post installed 
radios in their international school buses and trained drivers on 
their usage. 
 
-------------------------------------- 
Which LE Staff Can Come to Work Today? 
-------------------------------------- 
 
¶12. Do you expect your senior LE staff to report to work during a 
crisis?  Some posts discovered it was insufficient to simply 
designate the more experienced LE staff as emergency personnel and 
assume they could show up at the embassy during a crisis.  In the 
CMEs, LE housing locations would have required LE staff to transit 
burning barricades, blocked bridges, or other dangerous chokepoints 
during civil unrest, city wide terrorism, or a natural disaster. 
Understanding which senior LE staff can commute to the embassy under 
different emergency conditions can be very helpful when drawing up 
realistic emergency rosters. 
 
---------------------- 
External Participation 
---------------------- 
 
¶13. Include non-post constituencies in your Crisis Management 
Exercises (CMEs).  Several posts invited host government emergency 
preparedness officials, members of the international schools, local 
OSAC members or other key AmCit community contacts, and/or members 
of other foreign missions to sit in on the CME.  Having these 
additional local participants paid dividends, such as allowing the 
EAC to quickly query how local response would affect the EAP, 
learning that local officials had additional resources that could be 
brought to bear on a crisis, or considering how our actions would 
trigger a cascade effect among other foreign missions.  One host 
government clarified the availability of additional safehaven 
facilities, should embassy offices, warehouses, or housing be 
damaged in a natural disaster.  Additionally, host government 
participation in the exercise may serve a useful training function 
and could assist the host country in better preparing for its 
emergencies. 
 
¶14. Based on lessons learned from recent evacuations to neighboring 
posts (Beirut/Nicosia, Belgrade/Zagreb, Ndjamena/Yaounde, 
Tbilisi/Yerevan, and Minsk/Vilnius), CME scenarios will now 
occasionally include a receipt of evacuees exercise, or an 
evacuation to a neighboring post exercise.  Several posts have 
commented that it would be useful to have a representative from the 
neighboring post present in their CME, to mitigate common 
misunderstandings and pitfalls in a neighboring evacuation and 
improve mutual regional support. 
 
------------------------ 
The Importance of Drills 
------------------------ 
 
¶15. While many post employees know the actions they should take 
during a drill when in their primary workplace, many were less sure 
of what to do when they were in less familiar surroundings, such as 
visiting a different embassy section housed in another building. 
Conducting regular and frequent drills will increase the likelihood 
of an employee responding correctly in an unfamiliar environment to 
the different assembly points and shelter options.  The frequency of 
drills must at a minimum be conducted per regulations listed in 12 
FAH-1 H-765, but drills should be stepped up during and immediately 
after the summer months, when staff turnover is highest. 
 
----------------------------------- 
Revised Pandemic Influenza Guidance 
----------------------------------- 
 
¶16. The Department recently issued additional guidance on pandemic 
influenza tripwires (reftels), reaffirming that evacuation should 
not be expected and other methods of departure may not be available, 
and making it essential that posts and individuals make prior 
preparations for remaining overseas during a pandemic.  Airports 
will likely have already closed and/or countries will likely have 
denied entry for travelers from infected areas, before a post can 
effectively act on departure possibilities.  Posts that conduct a 
pandemic influenza Crisis Management Exercise are often surprised by 
the amount of work that must be done to properly prepare for such a 
crisis.  The possibility of a pandemic influenza remains, and posts 
should be cautious of warning fatigue. 
 
---------------------- 
Skills Bank Lists 
---------------------- 
 
¶17. Official personnel and their adult members of household often 
possess useful skills outside of their cones or specific position 
descriptions that may prove beneficial in the event of an emergency, 
such as plumbing, electrical, computer, or day care skills.  To 
leverage these skills, several posts have drafted and instituted a 
voluntary Skills Bank worksheet, which has been included into the 
Human Resources check-in packets.  The skills can then be listed in 
the EAP Appendix 2. 
 
---------------------------------------- 
CME Lessons Learned Fiscal Opportunities 
---------------------------------------- 
 
¶18. Leverage your recent CME lessons learned by soliciting 
department support.  The focus of a CME often sheds light on 
non-functioning or absent equipment, such as radios and satellite 
phones, or office equipment for the ACC.  Savvy posts will use the 
lessons learned cable after the CME to justify additional funds to 
close these critical gaps in crisis preparedness. 
 
--------------------------- 
Post-Directed Tabletop CMEs 
--------------------------- 
 
¶19. Emergency planning is a perishable skill.  During the 
intervening periods between FSI-delivered CMEs, posts experience 
significant staff turnover.  To improve post readiness, EACs have 
the option to conduct a post-directed, tabletop CME to educate new 
transfers or prepare for an anticipated crisis (e.g. scheduled 
elections civil unrest, seasonal flooding and mudslides, or 
increasing regional terrorism).  Sample distance learning table-top 
CMEs can be found on the CMT website at 
http://fsi.state.gov/fsi/lms/cmt.  FSI trainers can, on a 
resource-available basis, help posts customize the distance learning 
table-top CMEs and provide controller mentoring and guidelines. 
Contact FSI/LMS/CMT program officer Chris Dorn at DornCH@state.gov 
for more information on how FSI can help you run a productive, 
post-directed, tabletop CME. 
 
¶20. MINIMIZED CONSIDERED 
 
CLEARANCES CONTINUED: S/ES-O/CMS: MWLIBBY; MED: GDPENNER; 
CA/OCS/ACS: MBERNIER-TOTHE; AF/EX: MARAYNOR; EAP/EX: KCSTANTON; 
EUR/EX: JASTEWART; NEA/SCA/EX: MPHOHE; WHA/EX: AMEVANS; FSI/EX: 
CJRUSSELL 
 
UNCLASSIFIED 
DRAFT UNQUOTE CLINTON