The Game Plan
By Petty Officer 2nd Class Luke Pinneo

John Stanley, a Coast Guard contingency planner, sitting on benchCoach John Stanley stood at the water cooler with his sleeves rolled up and a headset on.

Instead of on the sidelines, he was in the hallway.

It was another conference call, this time about a deadly pandemic flu.

He smiled. He had the home field advantage.

As a contingency planner for the U.S. Coast Guard, what-if topics like pandemic flu, bio-terrorism and hurricanes are all part of a normal day for Stanley.

His job is to write response plans for all the terrible things that could happen in his district, which stretches from Maine to New Jersey.

 “A lot of folks spend most of their time responding and putting out fires rather than playing the what-if game like I do,” he said.

But when he is not at work playing the what-if game, Stanley is on the sidelines coaching eight to15-year-olds in youth hockey, soccer and baseball.

He said coaching kids on the field and planning for a disaster with federal responders are more closely related than one might think. Like coaches and athletes, contingency planners practice constantly and each player has a unique role – and typically in each case, the team is striving to improve.

“Whether it’s playing on the field or on the ice, or saving lives it’s all the same thing,” he said.

Basic human behavior comes out in both.

“Sports are a wonderful metaphor for life,” he said. “How someone behaves on the field or on the bench reveals how they’re going to behave in life.”

For 20 years, from his office at the Coast Guard First District in Boston, Stanley has practiced with dozens of local, state and federal agencies writing, refining and testing contingency plans for a host of natural and man-made disasters.

“We look at the reasonable worse-case scenario,” said Stanley.

By “reasonable,” Stanley said he looks at scenarios that would involve the Coast Guard and partner agencies.

“For example, if an asteroid hit, it would be way beyond our ability to respond,” he said.

He looks at past disasters, like Hurricane Katrina and the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, and draws from them to develop plans. In other cases, he looks ahead to try to identify threats on the horizon that have not occurred.

Once a credible threat is identified, like a virulent disease, the agencies gather to play the what-if game and through well-crafted exercises, some of them years in the making, they simulate a disaster.

Dozens of agencies participate and act out their responses, which Stanley said is usually the fun part for responders.

“People want to act, not plan,” he said.

But he said planning is paramount and an exercise lets contingency planners test their product.

“The plan is everything,” he said.

Agencies usually have their hands full during a real-world emergency. He said the plan needs to be tested and in place long before the worse-case situation unfolds.

“You don’t learn the game when you play the game – you learn it in practice,” he said.

For example, in the case of a pandemic outbreak, the U.S. Code of Federal Regulations specifically addresses quarantine protocols.

“Who’s going to know to go to 45 CFR 165 to know how this affects what the Coast Guard would do to protect the rights of a person’s privacy and their health?” he asked.

That is Stanley’s role. He does the research. He writes the plans. In many case, he writes the scenarios too. One of his scenarios will play out in April in New Hampshire, where agencies will simulate a SARS epidemic.

Stanley designed the maritime aspect of the exercise, which will involve quarantining people on a ship who have been inflicted by severe acute respiratory syndrome. There, responders will be reaching for Stanley’s plan and following it play by play.

And shortly after, once off the field, Stanley will likely be on another conference call, filling his water bottle in the hall while discussing the results with other federal coaches.

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