IAAM Response: Task Force Learns From Katrina

Facility managers stand to learn a lot from hurricanes Katrina and Rita and their aftermath.

Just as news images brought awareness of the role public facilities play in emergency relief, the events they captured are inspiring changes to Intl. Assn. of Assembly Managers policies and practices.

As Rita approached East Texas, IAAM officials thought they would have to postpone their Sept. 24–27 Arena Management Conference in Grapevine, Texas. But the gathering took place as scheduled, giving attendees the chance to hear from operators of Southeast facilities, some of which still housed hurricane evacuees.

"We had conversations with folks from the Cajundome and Astrodome, and talked about their experience with sheltering," said David Ross, IAAM president and director of the Show Me Center in Cape Girardeau, Mo.

Based on these discussions, IAAM established a task force to "record the experience, as well as the expertise and resources we have for running our facilities, so that we can share it with other professionals," Ross said.

The task force will be led by Greg Davis, director of the Cajundome/Convention Center in Lafayette, La., which has been used as a shelter for Katrina evacuees. Helping lead the task force will be Rick Hamilton, director of Ocean Center in Daytona Beach, Fla., who has responded to hurricanes with officials from his state.

In addition to soliciting input from IAAM members with crisis-management backgrounds, the task force will work with organizations like the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the American Red Cross to create best practices and convey facility managers' views.

Ross said the task force's goal is to finish a set of best practices for facility managers by next August, when his one-year term as president ends.

The group is expected to examine issues surrounding sheltering. Although facility managers currently are prepared to protect groups using the building temporarily, recent events have introduced the additional possibility of housing large numbers of people for long periods — something most arenas, convention centers and stadiums were not designed to do. With no showers, beds or ongoing food stocks, facility mangers must develop plans for bringing in these items, or partnering with groups that can provide them.

The task force will build on IAAM initiatives developed after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. At that time, it formed the Safety and Security Task Force, which now offers training programs through the Center for Venue Management Studies.

The relationship that IAAM developed with the just-forming U.S. Department of Homeland Security in November 2001 will be a "critical piece" of the new task force's mission, said Dexter King, IAAM executive director.

"We have a very strong relationship with DHS, having worked with them in creating the vulnerability self-assessment tool," he noted.

King hopes that the tool, referred to as ViSAT, will be integrated into the revised best practices and adopted by all IAAM members. IAAM's annual Intl. Crowd Management Conference, set for Nov. 6–9 in Dallas, will also provide shelter management discussions.

But there was even more to the disaster response on the part of IAAM members. Michael Enoch, former IAAM director and active member, was one of many volunteers who, coordinating their efforts through King and his staff, helped out in affected areas.

"The Wednesday following the hurricane, I was on a conference call for the IAAM membership committee and somebody mentioned that the Astrodome was getting a lot of people, and it was like doing a Super Bowl 24/7. The staff was exhausted and needed some help," said Enoch, a Las Vegas-based consultant.

Enoch was joined by Russ Simons, principal of design-build firm HOK, and Richard Anderson, general manager of Petco Stadium in San Diego. They traveled to Houston to help Jeff Gaines, assistant general manager at the SMG-managed Reliant Park. SMG also flew managers from its other facilities around the country into affected areas.

"We did event-management tasks, keeping the facility running and trying to look at the crowd as an event," said Enoch. While some answered phones and directed traffic, others assisted law enforcement and helped build showers and communications systems.