R.I. EMA head discusses plans to handle the coronavirus

CRANSTON – Seventeen-hour days are what Marc Pappas is putting into the fight against coronavirus. As head of the Rhode Island Emergency Management Agency, he can expect that to be the norm for him and many of his staff the next many weeks, if not months, in what state officials describe as a rapidly evolving situation with no clear end in sight.

Speaking with The Journal on Thursday morning at RIEMA headquarters in Cranston, in a building that also houses leadership of the state National Guard, which works in partnership with the emergency agency, Pappas expressed confidence in the situation thus far.

“I think we're in a really good spot right now,” he said.

Pappas had just come from a meeting with leaders of several state agencies to learn their latest plans and preparation. Pappas and his staff of about 40 take direction from the governor’s office and the Rhode Island Department of Health, but RIEMA coordinates actions of most other divisions of state government.

“Just today, we're having most state agencies come in and brief out where they are, what they're doing, all the calls that they have scheduled, all the meetings they have scheduled, so we can corral it into what we call a ‘battle rhythm,’ which is a document,” Pappas said.

“Somebody should be able to look at that and say, ‘OK, there's a health call at this time. There's an EMA call at that time. There’s a governor's call at this time. There's a meeting of this group at this time. So it's just a running schedule.”

Calls and meetings, of course, are prelude to action. Here, too, Pappas and his team play a sort of maestro – a maestro with authority to make things happen.

Pappas gave two examples.

The first was any child in the foster-care system, which is overseen by the Department for Children, Youth and Families. “If the child becomes ill, what is the foster family to do?” Pappas said. “If the foster family becomes ill, what do they do with the child?”

RIEMA is helping DCYF figure that out.

The second example Pappas gave was the Department of Corrections.

“What do they do with prisoners?” Pappas said. “If they become sick, where they go? What are the policy guidelines for the transportation of prisoners to and from local jails to and from the Adult Correctional Institutions, to and from the Training School?”

Pappas’ agency is helping with that, too.

Perhaps stating the obvious, Pappas said “this is not a typical snowstorm, or a hurricane or a flood,” the more customary threats to Rhode Islanders’ safety and wellbeing where RIEMA plays a lead role. Weather disasters all end, comparatively quickly, even if recovery takes longer. The COVID-19 outbreak that is now a global pandemic is expected to worsen, with no timetable for conclusion.

Pappas said that point was brought home with Gov. Gina Raimondo’s declaration of a state emergency on Monday and her Wednesday guidance that no Rhode Islander should organize or attend an event with more than 250 people, decisions made in concert with Health Department director Dr. Nicole Alexander-Scott. Containment now, the women said, gives the state the chance to mitigate consequences later.

“We've got our eye on coordination across state government,” Pappas said, “making sure that agencies and directors and agency heads are all working in sync with what the governor's priorities are and in support of what Dr. Nicole Alexander-Scott is doing in Health.”

Pappas closed the interview with advice to the state’s approximately one million residents.

“My general message would [be] just to not panic now. Dr. Nicole Alexander-Scott and the governor laid out how to take the precautions of hand washing, of ‘social distancing,’ of limiting mass gatherings. If folks can do that, it will really work to stop the spread of COVID-19.

“Absolutely it's a personal responsibility for everybody to take those things seriously and to do them.” gwmiller@ providencejournal.com

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On Twitter: @gwaynemiller