Mayor Brown Hosts Disaster Preparedness Planning

Mayor Byron W. Brown today welcomed participants in the in the ReadyCommunities Partnership’s 2008 Buffalo Pilot Planning Session at Police Headquarters.

The ReadyCommunities Partnership is a public/private collaboration by leaders from all sectors to identify and demonstrate how innovation, technology and best practices can help identify and fortify local critical infrastructure, and leverage local private and community sector assets to augment public sector response capability during the first 72 hours of a national or large-scale crisis.

ReadyCommunities Partnership is a project of the Community Institute for Preparedness, Response and Recovery and the Corporate Crisis Response Officers Association.

“With this pilot project we are going to demonstrate in Buffalo how to bring these key sectors together to develop, plan and execute a resilient redundant infrastructure model that brings in the private sector locally and nationally, to help identify and fortify local infrastructure critical to the resilience of Buffalo and surrounding communities,” said Mayor Brown. “We have to lead the change in expectations - that there is no 'they' who are going to do the work - we have to do the work, promote engagement, develop the cross boundary solutions, and work with our state and federal partners to work out our realistic division of labor during the first 72 hours of crisis and how resources flow into communities to pay for response and recovery.”

Mayor Byron W. Brown traveled to Washington, D.C. on April 2nd, to participate in the ReadyCommunities Partnership’s 2008 Briefing and Initiatives Planning Session. The session was a follow-up meeting to the Mayor’s attendance at the December 16, 2007 National Congress for Secure Communities conference, which was a two-day forum designed to foster public/private partnerships for disaster preparedness and response at the local level. Former U.S. Undersecretary for Homeland Security Asa Hutchinson joined Mayor Brown in the April 2nd planning session.

Approximately 50 participants are registered for the meeting and they include representatives of the American Red Cross; City of Buffalo Fire Department; City of Buffalo Police Department; IBM; M&T Bank; Erie County Emergency Medical Services, Bioterrorism & Emergency Preparedness; Environment Canada Environmental Emergencies Section; Sprint; State of NY Police, Troop A Counterterrorism Unit; US Army Corps of Engineers; U.S. Coast Guard: US DHS/CBP – US Border Patrol HQ, Buffalo Sector Intelligence Unit; and City of Niagara Falls Fire Department.

The goals of the Buffalo pilot are to:

1) develop ways of linking FEMA and the city government into critical local service, communications and distribution infrastructure; and then pairing these services with those of national corporations or organizations that could reinforce that infrastructure during the early hours of crisis;

2) use the Essential Public Network (EPN) to tie this critical private and community infrastructure into the existing FPS secure portal currently being developed by the Buffalo police department that includes Canadian, maritime and regional authority representatives;

3) invite Buffalo-area U.S. Congressional, state legislative, agencies, local representatives and their senior staff into the EPN to connect with the Federal Protective Service (FPS) portal to improve secure communications between government and community/regional leadership;

4) develop a template of the private sector best practices required for the pilot to form the basis of a request for government funding to expand the pilot results into a regional UASI demonstration in 2009.

“As I state in Washington, D.C. in April, it's important to engage our congressional, state legislative and state/local representatives in this process, so that there's complete transparency and knowledge of the barriers, requirements and solutions,” said Mayor Brown. “Our goal is to define our objectives quickly, quantify our plan now, identify and recruit our key pilot partners, demonstrate our cross-boundary communications capability, identify a sample of critical local infrastructure, and then demonstrate how our local and national partners can help fortify and leverage our local capabilities to make our region more resilient. We'll also work with the Kennedy School of Government to develop the Buffalo case study and report this to the delegates of the 2008 National Congress for Secure Communities.”