HR 1411 Markup Hearing - Metropolitan Medical Response Program

Yesterday the House Homeland Security Committee updated their schedule for the remainder of this week. There is now a markup hearing of the Subcommittee on Emergency Preparedness, Response, and Communications scheduled for Thursday morning that will consider three homeland security bills, including HR 1411, the Metropolitan Medical Response System Program Act of 2011. This bill does not currently contain any chemical security related provisions, but it would be a good vehicle to begin addressing some emergency response planning issues for high-risk chemical facilities.

There is an amendment in the form of a substitute on the agenda for HR 1411 being proposed by the Subcommittee Chair. It changes the title used for the Chief Medical Officer of the Department. It also increases the authorized appropriations for the program from $41 to $42 million. No substantive changes were made to the coordination or emergency planning provisions of the bill.

I made some detailed suggestions for CFATS related emergency response provisions that should be included in MMRS authorization legislation when a similar bill was introduced in the last session. With markup of this legislation coming up, I’ll repeat them again. They included:

• Requiring each MMRS organization to establish a CFATS planning team, members of the team would include emergency response and medical members who have completed Chemical-Terrorism Vulnerability Information (CVI) training/certification;

• Requiring each CFATS facility with release-toxic COI on site to provide a list of all such chemicals to the local MMRS CFATS planning team;

• Requiring the MMRS CFATS planning team to develop a plan for dealing with chemical casualties for exposure to each of the release-toxic COI that have been identified in the team’s service area;

• Requiring the MMRS CFATS planning team to be involved in the planning for emergency response exercises conducted at CFATS facilities in the team’s service area; and

• Requiring DHS Chemical Facility Inspectors to include a review of MMRS CFATS planning team efforts in any inspection/evaluation of a CFATS facility containing release-toxic COI.

HR 1411 Introduced – Metropolitan Medical Response System

Last week Rep. Bilirakis (R, FL) introduced HR 1411, the Metropolitan Medical Response System Program Act of 2011. This bill is very similar to §904 of HR 5890 (Homeland Security Authorization Act) introduced in the last session and is almost identical to HR 4580 introduced by Rep. Markey in the last session. Neither bill was acted upon in Committee during the last session.

This bill would formally authorize the MMRS, a program first established in 1996 in the Department of Health and Human Services. The grant funding has been provided as part of the Homeland Security budget since 2007 (§ 723 of the Dept of Homeland Security Appropriations Act of 2007 – PL 109-295), but the program, like the CFATS program, has never been formally included in the Homeland Security Act.

As I have noted before, this is important to the chemical security community because it establishes the MMRS program “that shall assist State and local governments in preparing for and responding to public health and mass casualty incidents resulting from acts of terrorism, natural disasters, and other man-made disasters” {§526(a)}. Grants for this program could help community medical systems to prepare for large scale chemical releases from both successful terrorist attacks and accidental releases from high-risk chemical facilities.

An important reason for formalizing this program rather than to just continue funding via appropriations is that this bill would provide some oversight on the spending of the grant funds. It would require “[FEMA]Administrator, in coordination with the Assistant Secretary, Office of Health Affairs, and the National Metropolitan Medical Response System Working Group, shall issue performance measures within one year after the date of enactment of this section that enable objective evaluation of the performance and effective use of funds provided under this section in any jurisdiction” {§526(c)}.

As I have mentioned in previous blogs on emergency management, I think that there should be requirements for high-risk chemical facilities, particularly those with release toxic COI, to provide copies of material safety data sheets to local hospitals so that the medical community is aware of what industrial chemicals they might be required to treat for in the event of a chemical mass casualty event. This bill would be an ideal vehicle for mandating that communication.

Additionally, some of the grant money from this program should be specifically directed to communities that have high-risk chemical facilities containing significant amounts of release toxic chemicals on-site. The Under Secretary for NPPD should be required to provide the Administrator with a list of such communities.