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Symposium on disaster
preparedness and recovery
These brief excerpts are from the symposium on disaster preparedness and recovery at the ICCFA 2007 Annual Convention & Exposition. To order an audio CD of the full session, call the ICCFA at 1.800.645.7700.
Topics covered include:
The damages suffered by one company during Hurricane Katrina and the amazing rebuilding process that has brought them back to near-full operations;
The role of D-MORT after Hurricanes Katrina and Rita and the challenges presented by those massive tragedies;
How businesses can prepare for potential disasters in their communities, including measures such as crisis communications plans, contingency planning and others;
How best to work with families in the aftermath of a disaster; and
The potential impact on our profession should our communities be affected by the Asian bird flu or other causes of mass fatalities.
Gerard Schoen,
Lake Lawn Metairie Funeral Home & Cemeteries, Metairie, Louisiana, hit by Hurricane Katrina.
In our centralized prep facility we wound up having about 19 bodies in our possession. We figured out what we could do best was trying to contain the bodies as best we could. In past years one other time we had placed bodies in elevated mausoleum crypts, and that met with very poor results, so we decided the best thing we could do was wind up double-tagging, pouching and placing them in a walk-in cooler where we had racks, as high as we could.
The other thing we figured out we could do is protect the assets, the main thing being the professional equipment, and we would up having four hearses and seven limousines along with lead vehicles. So on Sunday morning, a group of about six of us wound up moving the motor equipment to a high-rise covered parking garage.
The other thing we figured out to do last-minute notice was to take the pending files that we had funerals for the next few days as well as our pending pre-arrangement files.
We would up having two employees walk back to the funeral home, and they were in the funeral home along with a horticulturist for the cemetery, after the hurricane passed. We had about six roof leaks in the building. We had massive wind damage in our adjoining Metairie Cemetery. We lost over 200 trees.
My brother and I made it in about seven days after the storm with police help. The goal was to assess how we could get back to the funeral home to get back to the bodies. The rescue of the bodies was our number one goal other than the safety of our employees.
We were able to team up with Kenyon and go to the funeral home on September 11 once the water receded enough so we could get in there with amphibious vehicles, and we removed the 19 deceased. It was a media craze; we had helicopters overhead trying to film us and we would up having media follow us in. We had police escorts help us with that.
Your learn a lot about people's characters in disasters. We had some very dedicated, loyal employees step up.
What we could have done differently: Collected family's contact information. You have your basic phone numbers. What happens there when a hurricane comes through? All the phone systems go down. Alternative phone numbers, cell phone numbers, as well as e-mail addresses.
John Vickers, Vickers, Verrette and Dornan Funeral Home, Chalmette, Louisiana, who worked with D-MORT after Hurricane Katrina.
Of the 200 victims we were told were in the Superdome, the only one we found was someone who had died a natural death. Medical personnel had wrapped the body up and left documentation of who it was. There were no "200 victims" in the Superdome.
Many times we ran into living victims stranded in their homes and out of water. We very seldom ate our meals or drank our water because we were giving them away to victims we were encountering in the field.
The biggest problem we had in Louisiana, because we were working in swampy areas, was the alligators, the cottonmouth snakes and the rattlesnakes and copperheads. The heat was very oppressive, 95 to 100 degrees; the mosquitoes and gnats were horrendous. And we also had to contend with the possibility of hazardous wastes.
One of our D-Mort members who was from New Jersey I don't think had ever seen an alligator other than in a picture. He walked up on this 18-foot alligator, and of course the alligator reacted violently to him invading his space. In a photo taken at the scene, if you look closely, you can see the footsteps where our D-MORT member quickly exited. I know the encounter was traumatic for both of them. I don't know what the alligator did that night, but our D-MORT member spent the night in Lafayette Hospital with an anxiety attack.
John Warren,
Kenyon International, Houston, Texas.
One of the things missing in relation to Katrina and Rita and most other such events is the call center. When an aviation crash happens, an 800-number is shown on the television screen and people can call in to find out if their loved ones were on the plane. But call centers could have a much broader use; they can be greatly helpful in missing person registration.
Lessons learned: Focus on what it takes to be able to maintain your operation. Gerry mentioned moving your equipment to high ground. You also need to think about transportation, communication, what additional equipment you need such as temporary storage and power-generators. One of the things we've noticed is that after hurricanes, generators become scarce resources. We had had funeral homes bring in major power sources and the next morning they would be stolen. So secure not only your building but also your equipment.
You need to build programs and systems that are not bureaucratic. A lot of people think the more a plan weighs, the better it is. That is not true; plans should follow steps, should be looked at as checklists and should be designed for the first 24 to 72 hours. After 72 hours, most plans go to hell in a handbasket anyway.
Bob Gordon Sr., CCFE,
Eternal Hills Memorial Gardens & Funeral Home, Klamath Falls, Oregon. Gordon, an ICCFA past president, was one of the association's representatives in the two-day "Fatality Management Pandemic Influenza Working Group Conference" in 2006.
Hurricanes are disasters that last a short time in a small geographic area, when you consider the country as a whole. If there is a bird flu pandemic, it will affect the entire country, and it will come in waves.
President Bush recently stated that despite preparation at the federal level, any pandemic would be handled primarily at the local level. Don't figure Big Brother is going to come and help, because it's not going to be an isolated, short-term situation.
The Health Care Sector Coordinating Council, a joint government and private sector group was one of 22 coordinating councils formed to help the federal government prepare for a mass disaster, whether natural (such as a hurricane) or man-made (terrorism). The council's purpose is to protect the country's health infrastructure, and by extension, the death-care infrastructure.
The government defines infrastructure as buildings, defending them with guards, guns and gates. The private sector defines infrastructure as the individuals who will serve and the supply chain that will be there to take care of things.
The model we've studied is the 1918-19 Spanish flu epidemic. Using that model, it's assumed you would have 40 percent absenteeism from your workforce. Twenty-five percent of your workforce would be sick; the others would be staying home to care for sick family members. The fatality rate would be 5 to 7 percent, more than double the normal fatality rate.
What should you do to prepare? Cross-train in all aspects of your business. Who will operate the backhoe? Can the backhoe operator answer the phone?
How would you handle an increased work load? I think most of us could increase our workload 20 percent for an extended period of time-not forever-and probably get it done with our normal contingent of employees. But if we had half of our normal employees working, that wouldn't last very long, because we would burn them out.
Where can we get temporary workers? Can we get retirees? One of the things our company is trying to do is find retired people who can work part-time, can help do removals, run funerals, handle death certificates, answer the phone.
You ought to check your preneed contract and make sure it has an act of God clause in it.
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Copyright ICCFA 2007
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