FEMA mandate worries agencies State officials cite paucity of guidance on standards

AUGUSTA – Beginning Oct. 1, first responders in Maine, such as firefighters and emergency medical technicians, will need to meet national standards established by the Federal Emergency Management Agency. The problem, according to state and local officials, is that FEMA has not set those standards yet.

“I personally have some concerns that they may have a solution that is searching for a problem,” said acting Maine Emergency Management Agency Director Charles Jacobs. “To be candid, we have not received a lot of detailed guidance from [the Department of] Homeland Security in Washington.”

A fact sheet on the FEMA Web site is the only guideline the state and local agencies have in developing their credentialing standards, and Jacobs believes the state can use existing credentialing methods for first responders until they get better guidance.

“We will do what we have to do to comply with this,” he said, “but we have little guidance.”

Local officials also are concerned with the amount of training that might be required of volunteer and part-time first responders, who often make up a good chunk of the personnel in rural parts of the state.

Rumford Fire Chief John Woulfe, president of the Maine Fire Chiefs Association, said that standardized training is important, particularly when trying to coordinate activities at the scene of any disaster. But he said having the federal government set credentialing standards could create an administrative nightmare.

“We have a lot of volunteer firefighters in this state, and in the country,” he said. “If the intent of this credentialing system is to have everyone trained at a minimum level across the country, then yes, that is going to have an impact on volunteers.”

Woulfe said many volunteer departments in the state are having a problem today keeping volunteers because the training requirements take a lot of time, and in some cases, the volunteers have to pay for all or part of the training.

He said his own fire department is a mix of professionals ranging from those with a high degree of training to on-call firefighters with fewer skills.

“They are color-coded so I know who is trained to go into a fire, or has [hazardous materials] training or who should stay outside of the fire and provide support,” he said.

Woulfe also said most departments in the state have developed mutual aid agreements that take into account training levels of other agencies.

Jacobs believes state firefighters have worked out a good system on their own and it is most often used when crews volunteer to go out of state. Often they are assigned to forest fires in other parts of the country. He said if FEMA allowed existing standards to be used, it would ease the concerns he and others have about the new system.

Jay Bradshaw, director of Maine Emergency Medical Services, said there are 6,000 licensed emergency medical care providers in Maine. He said there are programs to update skills all the time, but he acknowledged there could be a problem meeting federal standards.

“We provide training CDs to agencies, and they certify that their people have taken the course,” he said. “If FEMA requires we certify that everyone has actually taken the CD course, that is going to be a problem.”

Bradshaw, like Jacobs, said there has been little guidance about what will be required, and that has caused concern. Robert Schwartz, executive director of the Maine Chiefs of Police Association, said police chiefs have similar worries.

“We are pretty sure all of our full-time officers will meet the standards because they all have gone through the [Maine Criminal Justice] Academy,” he said. “But a lot of police forces use reserve officers, and they do not necessarily have that level of training.”

Schwartz said his concern is that FEMA won’t allow reserve officers to be credentialed. He said in a disaster situation they can be very helpful by handling traffic control and other duties that free the full-time officers to deal directly with a disaster.

Sen. Susan Collins, chairwoman of the Senate Homeland Security Committee, defended the need for a credentialing system but not the way FEMA is implementing the program. She said the investigation into the response to Hurricane Katrina convinced her of the need for a system.

“It is important that we go forward with this system,” she said. “But unfortunately, the department once again has not provided the guidance to the states and localities that they need, nor the financial resources to accomplish the goal.”

Collins said there were several examples in the Katrina response where emergency workers had no credentials at all, and that caused problems as law enforcement agencies tried to prevent looting and maintain order. But she said Homeland Security and FEMA need to be practical in implementing new rules.

“The credentialing process is important, but we need to be realistic about how many requirements we put on those that are simply volunteers,” Collins said.