information, it did not provide a consolidated view so that regional staff could 

determine:  

Who had been deployed to the disaster sites;   

Who was en route, but had not yet arrived; 

Who had been sent by FEMA headquarters, but had not been entered 

into ADD; and,  

Who had arrived at the disaster sites and whether or not they had 

checked in with the region.   

To gain a complete picture of where people were during the hurricanes, the 

regional deployment coordinator developed a custom database that contained 

all of the information available and used it to prepare daily reports.  Although 

the reports tracked the  daily  status of people, they did not provide real time 

information, potentially placing emergency personnel at risk.  For example, 

when FEMA ordered an emergency evacuation of Orlando, Florida, its 

regional staff could not obtain from ADD an up to date list of deployed 

personnel and their exact locations.  Regional staff had 11 hours in which to 

manually compile the information, and identify and contact the approximately 

200 response and recovery personnel deployed to that area.  Fortunately, in 

this instance, the evacuation was successful.  However, the ability to track 

deployed personnel on a real time basis is a critical factor to ensuring 

personnel safety, especially during catastrophic events.  According to FEMA 

officials, the Response Division, which is responsible for ADD, is in the 

process of developing a replacement for the deployment system. 

FEMA cannot use LIMS III for real time tracking of emergency equipment 

and supplies deployed to disaster sites.  LIMS III is essentially an inventory 

system used to manage equipment and accountable property, such as cell 

phones or pagers.  LIMS III contains information on the number of items 

available and where they are located.  However, once the items are identified 

for deployment, LIMS III does not indicate when they will be shipped and 

when they should arrive.  To compensate, emergency personnel in Florida 

said that they tracked items on a spreadsheet and spent a significant amount of 

time calling trucking companies to determine the status and projected arrival 

times of in transit goods. 

Further, LIMS III does not effectively track the exact location of equipment 

and supplies after they have been issued.  FEMA officials said that they do not 

use LIMS III to issue accountable property during emergency situations, 

because it takes too long.  For example, although accountability property 

officers made electronic records in LIMS III of bulk goods received during the 

Emergency Preparedness and Response Could Better Integrate Information Technology  

with Incident Response and Recovery 

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