Greetings!    

In this issue you will read how St. Louis area hospitals used E·SPONDER for a state run drill.  Also included is an article about E·SPONDER's involvement in the MABAS Exercise at the FRI show.  See how Tampa used E·SPONDER to lower their costs at the Super Bowl and read how Michael Byrne used his Emergency Management experience in Haiti. 

E·SPONDER would like to wish all of you a safe and happy holiday season.

ST. LOUIS AREA HOSPITALS PARTICIPATE IN STATE RUN DRILL USING E·SPONDER

On October 27th, Metropolitan St. Louis area hospitals participated in a state run drill.  The drill simulated response efforts to a 7.7 magnitude earthquake along the New Madrid fault.  The simulation included the destruction of bridges across the Mississippi River in various locations as well as dealing with numerous casualties and injuries.

E·SPONDER was used as a communication platform among all participating hospitals to provide critical status updates to all hospitals involved during the earthquake drill.  BJC staff found the tool to be very effective and easy to see the sequence of events.  During the exercise numerous members of the command team were identifying multiple ways that E·SPONDER's incident command software can be used in the future to document activity and interface with BJC's hospitals, a task which at present is done by phone.  The BJC team used the tool for determining bed availability which significantly reduced the phone traffic.  "We are excited about the future use of E·SPONDER as our primary communication platform for emergencies involving BJC Healthcare", said Debbie Mays, BJC Director of Emergency Preparedness and Safety.

SIMULATED TORNADO TRAINING EXERCISE BY MUTUAL-AID FEATURED AT FIRE SHOW 

E·SPONDER's state of the art alerting technology is used to notify, mobilize and deploy hundreds of resources within minutes.

An impressive mutual-aid training exercise designed to demonstrate the effectiveness of utilizing cutting edge technology to query first, then dispatch, mobilize and deploy hundreds of emergency vehicles and personnel was a huge success.

 
MABAS, the Mutual-Aid Box Alarm System of Illinois, orchestrated and hosted this massive emergency response drill which occurred during Fire Rescue International's annual meeting held at Chicago's McCormick Place.  There were three suburban Chicago response sites at which fire units simultaneously responded.  The sites were -- Tinley Park, Glenview and Hoffman Estates.

The purpose of the exercise was to assemble more than 900 firefighters from across four states in neighboring MABAS Divisions, in three different staging areas to be available to respond in the face of a massive storm system affecting central Illinois. (Keep reading).

MICHAEL BYRNE SHARES WISDOM FROM DECADES OF EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT EXPERIENCE AND HIS RECENT HAITI EXPERIENCE

Michael Byrne is a National Incident Management Assistance Team (IMAT) leader for FEMA. Byrne is a veteran of the New York City Fire Department and served as director of the New York City Office of Emergency Management.

Byrne has been senior vice president of ICF International; justice and public safety director for Microsoft; and senior director of preparedness, response and recovery for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

This spring, he took time out from a speaking engagement at the Resilient Communications for Emergency Response conference to talk with Emergency Management magazine about his deployment to Haiti. (Keep Reading).

INNOVATIVE TECHNOLOGY HELPS TAMPA POLICE RAISE SECURITY, LOWER COSTS AT SUPER BOWL

E·SPONDER is proud to support the Arlington Police Department, lead agency for Super Bowl XLV in Arlington, TX in early 2011.  We'll be sure to publish a story after the event, but the following showcases how E·SPONDER has supported past Super Bowls. Learn more about using E·SPONDER for special events by visiting our website.

When Tampa, Florida, was chosen to host Super Bowl XLIII, the Tampa Police Department had to coordinate security planning among more than 60 organizations for the 10-day celebration.  Tampa turned to the Microsoft Citizen Service Platform, which offers many solutions for government organizations. 

E·SPONDER, a Microsoft partner, provided an online collaboration environment based on Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007, where all parties could share critical information.  Using additional Microsoft and partner technology, E-SPONDER created a comprehensive command-and-control platform with unparalleled real-time visualization and communication capabilities. 

The E·SPONDER solution not only enabled Tampa police to provide strong Super Bowl security at a much lower cost, but also improved their ability to fight crime and to plan for crises such as a possible H1N1 (swine flu) outbreak. (Keep Reading).

FIND US ON YOUR SOCIAL NETWORK

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HOT OFF THE PRESS...

FEMA announces the issuance of new ICS Forms.  To view these forms, click here.

E·SPONDER will include these new forms in its 2011 product.  Stay tuned.

NEW CLIENT SPOTLIGHT

Apache County
City of Fort Worth

Indianapolis Police Dept.

Los Angeles World Airports

Oakland County MABAS 
Illinois MABAS

GRANT OPPORTUNITIES

Assistance to Firefighters Grant
The primary goal of the Assistance to Firefighters Grant (AFG) is to meet the firefighting and emergency response needs of fire departments and nonaffiliated emergency medical service organizations.

Police Grants Help

Current Grant Opportunities for Law Enforcement/Police.

Grants.gov 
A central storehouse for information on over 1,000 grant programs and provides access to approximately $500 billion in annual awards.

Fire/EMS Grants Help

Current Grant Opportunities for Fire/EMS

Catalog of Federal Domestic Assistance
Provides a full listing of all Federal programs available to State and local governments of the United States; domestic public, quasi-public, and private profit and nonprofit organizations and institutions; specialized groups; and individuals.

2011 TRADE SHOWS

Microsoft Public Safety Symposium

March 22- 24, 2011

Redmond, WA

2011 National UASI Homeland Security Conference
June 20 - 22, 2011

San Francisco, CA

 Fire-Rescue International 2011

August 23 - 27th, 2011

Atlanta, GA