On February 19,1992, the Evansville-Vanderburgh County
Emergency Management Agency conducted an after-action critique of
response and recovery operations. All of the agencies involved were
invited to send representatives. Overall, the
feedback from all agencies was positive. However, several areas for
improvement were noted. These included:
Better communication is needed between the incident
scene and the hospitals regarding casualties;
Safety and accountability of emergency responders
were compromised by freelancing by individuals and
by the uncoordinated actions of self-dispatched
agencies and personnel and by the lack of a unified
accountability system;
Scene security was established early but compromised
by agencies and responders who had not been
requested by local officials and were not integrated
into the Incident Command System;
Better visual identification is needed for Command
Post and Incident Commander for reference by
agencies not on the local radio net;
Radio communications with outside agencies, including
EMS responders and Indiana State Police, were
compromised by lack of common radio net or channel;
And better coordination with the news media was
needed in light of the overload of information requests
and some misinformation provided in early reports.
Most agencies agreed that, notwithstanding a few minor problems,
communication and cooperation among the diverse groups involved in the
incident were exceptionally good. Moreover, they commended the local
Emergency Management Agency on its excellent response during its first
major disaster.
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