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* This article is a modified version of Unit 7 of FEMA's Independent
Study Course IS-235 Emergency Planning.
The knowledge of how to plan for disasters is critical in emergency management. Planning can make a difference in mitigating against the effects of a disaster, including saving lives and protecting property, and helping a community recover more quickly from a disaster. |
Emergency planning is a continual cycle of planning, training, exercising, and revision that takes place throughout the four phases of the emergency management cycle: Mitigation, preparedness, response, and recovery.
The end product of emergency planning is a community Emergency Operations Plan (EOP). An EOP can be defined as a document describing how citizens and property will be protected in a disaster or emergency.
There are four steps in the emergency planning process:
Emergency planning necessitates a coordinated team effort involving different levels of government and many community agencies and organizations.
Working with personnel from other agencies and organizations requires collaboration. Collaboration is the process in which people work together as a team on a common mission--in this case, development of a community EOP. Collaboration is more difficult, however, in the face of differences among agencies in terminology, experience, mission, and culture. Thus, collaboration also requires flexibility to agree on common terms and priorities, and humility to learn from others' ways of doing things. Collaboration does not come automatically. Building a team that works well together takes time and effort.
Teams go through stages in the process of becoming productive.
The team leader is important in motivating members to work through their differences and focus on the common goal of developing an EOP. Other team members may also play different roles, including task master, innovator, organizer, evaluator, and finisher.
A productive team displays the following characteristics:§ Commitment to a common goal (i.e., development of an EOP).
Hazards are conditions or situations that have the potential for causing harm to people or property.
Hazard analysis determines:
The steps in the hazard analysis process are:
Risk is the predicted impact that a hazard would have on the people, services, and specific facilities in the community. Quantifying risk involves:
In surveying risk, it is helpful to develop response priorities. The following is a suggested hierarchy for setting priorities:
The final step in the hazard analysis process is creating and applying scenarios based on the community's hazard and risk data. A scenario should describe the:
The format of the EOP includes three parts:
The recommended format for the basic plan includes the following components:
1. Introduction, which includes:
- The Promulgation document, signed by the jurisdiction's CEO.
- Signature page, signed by all response organizations.
- Dated title page and record of changes to the EOP.
- Record of distribution, which lists EOP recipients.
- Table of contents.
2. Purpose Statement, which includes the EOP's purpose and a synopsis.
3. Situation and Assumptions. The Situation characterizes the community, including hazards and populations. The Assumptions Statement delineates what was assumed to be true when the EOP was developed.
4. Concept of Operations, which explains the community's approach to emergency response, including activation levels and the sequence of actions before, during, and after an emergency.
5. Organization and Assignment of Responsibilities, which assigns responsibilities by organization and position and identifies shared responsibilities (specifying who has primary responsibility and who plays a support role).
6. Administration and Logistics, which addresses resources.§ Plan Development and Maintenance, which assigns planning responsibilities to participants and describes the revision cycle.
7. Authorities and References, which cites the legal basis for emergency operations and relevant reference materials.
Annexes and appendices are different in content and address different topics.
An annex explains how the community will carry out a broad function in any emergency, such as communications or evacuation.
An appendix is a supplement to an annex that adds information about how to carry out the function in the face of a specific hazard. Thus, every annex may have several appendices, each addressing a particular hazard. Which hazard-specific appendices are included depends on the community's hazard analysis.
Both annexes and appendices are organized in similar fashion to the basic plan.
There are eight functions that typically are addressed in annexes in every EOP (one function per annex):
In addition, communities may choose to add other annexes that make sense for their situations (e.g., radiological protection if the community has a nuclear power plant).
Hazard-specific appendices are attached to each functional annex to specify how that function should be carried out in the face of a particular hazard. Topics addressed in hazard-specific appendices include special regulatory considerations, planning requirements, priorities, and unique hazard characteristics that require special planning.
In addition, each annex or appendix may use supporting documents as needed to clarify the contents (e.g., a map to show evacuation routes, a form to request resources, or a table to list position responsibilities).
Implementing instructions are documents, developed by individual agencies, that provide detailed instructions for carrying out tasks assigned in the EOP.
There are several types of implementing instructions that organizations can develop:
This article summarized the fundamentals of the emergency planning process, including the rationale behind planning. An effective all-hazard emergency operations planning process saves lives and protects property threatened by disaster.
Further reading