IWFA Helps Disaster Recovery Effort

The International Window Film Association (IWFA) is co-sponsoring a series of strategic disaster simulations that it says will test community response capabilities not only with regard to immediate action and reaction in case of a large-scale disaster, but also in terms of long-term recovery. IWFA executive director Darrell Smith is serving as a co-chair of the event.

"We're involved in the planning and oversight of the event," Smith said. "I will be serving as a member of the control team, which will provide input to all of the various response teams who will be in charge of simulating what community and regional responses will be to a major disaster such as a terrorist attack on a major city."

The IWFA has been involved with the Safe America Foundation, a non-profit organization that developed the simulation, for the last seven years and Smith has served on the advisory board, serving on the board of directors for the last four years.

The event consists of table top discussions by members of the business community-both private and public sectors-about a disaster scenario. The groups will then discuss the situation and the rebuilding process. Participants in the event represent all levels of association within the community, from each level of government (city, county, state and federal) to industry, infrastructure, public institutions and the media.

The simulation is unique in the fact that, while many companies have their own plans in place now for how to handle a large-scale disaster of any sort, multiple companies with different plans are coming together and looking at how and if currently laid plans will work alone and as part of a community. Immediate scenarios that will be studied include if emergency response personnel will be able to respond to multiple scenarios at one time and if there are enough resources-both human and physical.

"We'll look at what will be affected here?" Smith said. "We need to make sure there is bottled water if there is contamination going on. Supermarkets will need to be notified that certain food supplies will be on short supply if the city gets shut-down for days or weeks."

Should the planned disaster include explosions, simulated injuries of employees will be included, and as Smith indicated, if buildings with safety film on their windows get "hit" it will be noticeable in their injured, compared with injuries from buildings without safety film.

"It will show these participants what commercial buildings can be doing if in or near an attack," Smith said. "Upgrade your glazing, improve the windows and doors in your building and it means employees will have a better chance of survival or a lower chance of injury."

Other aspects of long-term recovery that will also be addressed include how companies will handle workers who have experience the disaster and lost a co-worker or who may need extended time to recover from injuries.

More than a year of planning has gone into creating the scenarios, event logistics, and location choices. The first event is scheduled for this summer in Atlanta and is to be followed by events tentatively scheduled in Chicago and Dallas.

What disasters the participants in the event will face at the simulation has yet to be announced-and won't be until the event takes place-but officials at Safe America confirm that those involved will face multiple disasters to prepare themselves and their city for catastrophe on a grand scale, not unlike what the United States faced on September 11, 2001.

At press time, the Atlanta simulation is scheduled for June 29-30.