EOP Development and Implementation
For many years, the federal government provided state
and local governments with criteria for evaluating their EOPs. Some of this
guidance was developed for specific hazards such as nuclear power plants and
toxic chemical incidents whereas other guidance had an all hazards approach.
The guidance for chemical hazards (National Response Team, 1987, 1988) appears
to have been derived from the earlier guidance for radiological hazards
(Nuclear Regulatory Commission/Federal Emergency Management Agency, 1980), but
there are marked differences between the guidance for these two hazards, on the
one hand, and the all hazards guidance on the other (Federal Emergency
Management Agency, 1996b). Of course, no emergency manager wants to develop one
EOP for chemical/radiological incidents and another EOP for all other hazards.
Consequently, the presentation below attempts to integrate these two different
sources of guidance for EOP development.
EOP Components
The Federal
Emergency Management Agency’s (1996) State
and Local Guide (SLG-101) advocates structuring EOPs in terms of four basic
components
·
A basic plan,
·
Functional
annexes,
·
Hazard-specific
appendices, and
·
SOPs and
checklists.
Basic Plan
The basic plan
should describe the EOP’s
·
Purpose,
·
Situation and
assumptions,
·
Concept of operations,
·
Organization and
assignment of responsibilities,
·
Administration
and logistics,
·
Plan development
and maintenance, and
·
Authorities and
references.
The purpose states what the EOP is supposed
to do and briefly summarizes the basic plan, functional annexes, and
hazard-specific appendices. The situation
and assumptions briefly reviews the information developed in the
jurisdiction’s HVA and describes any policies that limit the authority of the
emergency response organization. The concept
of operations provides a narrative describing the sequence of emergency
response activities, beginning with activation upon notification of emergency
conditions, continuing through hazard operations to combat the hazard agent and
population protection activities to save lives, and ending with deactivation
upon termination of the emergency. The organization
and assignment of responsibilities describes the structure of the emergency
response organization and explains which agency, NGO, or private sector
organization is responsible for each emergency response function. The administration and logistics section
describes policies for expanding the emergency response organization through
mutual aid, and incorporation of volunteers. It also addresses policies for
identifying resource needs, expedited acquisition of additional resources,
tracking resources allocation, and payment or other compensation. The plan development and maintenance section
defines the provisions for reviewing, exercising, and updating the EOP. The authorities and references section
addresses the legal and administrative basis for the EOP and refers the reader
to other documents, such as the HVA and departmental SOPs for further details.
In addition, the first page of every plan should
contain the date of the original plan and the dates of all plan revisions
arranged chronologically. Typically, copies of EOPs are provided to multiple
offices and organizations (some inside and some outside a jurisdiction).
Emergency managers must ensure all people and organizations on the plan
distribution list have the most current version of the document.
Functional Annexes
The definition of
the functional annexes is a problematic aspect of writing an EOP. SLG-101 lists
direction and control, communications, warning, emergency public information,
evacuation, mass care, health and medical, and resource management as the eight
core functions that emergency response organizations perform. This appears to
be a reasonable list but, as Table 9-4 indicates, it is inconsistent with
federal guidance for nuclear power plants (NUREG-0654) and chemical incidents
(NRT-1). Moreover, as will be discussed later, the core functions proposed in
federal planning guidance are inconsistent with the basic functions defined in
the Incident Command System and Incident Management System. Fortunately, local
jurisdictions still retain the authority to decide how they will define these
emergency response functions in their EOPs. Thus, a jurisdiction can organize
its EOP in the way that is most compatible with its normal organizational
structure. Nonetheless, local jurisdictions that favor the NUREG/NRT function
definitions will tend to be most compatible with the emergency response
organizations for nuclear power plants and chemical shippers and carriers.
Similarly, local jurisdictions that favor the ICS/IMS function definitions will
have the greatest compatibility with external fire and law enforcement agencies
providing support under mutual aid agreements.
Whatever typology
a jurisdiction uses for defining its EOP annexes, the set of annexes must
collectively address all disaster demands. Thus, the emergency manager must
provide coordination among those writing the annexes. It is especially
important for those who must implement an annex to be the ones who write it. In
most cases, a single organization will have responsibility for an entire annex
(e.g., the fire department will write the fire annex), but multiple
organizations may need to collaborate in other cases (Mass Care). Each annex
should address the federal Emergency Support Functions (ESFs) from the National
Response Plan that would be expected to provide support to that annex (see the
appendix at the end of this chapter).
Hazard-Specific Appendices
Hazard-specific
appendixes provide information about the ways in which the response to a
particular hazard agent differs from the standard response to community
emergencies. It is important to avoid confusing specific types of threats (such
as terrorist attacks) with general emergency response functions. Terrorist
attacks can involve any one of four types of hazard agents—flammables/explosives,
chemicals, nuclear/radiological materials, or biohazards. Each of these is a
specific hazard that will require substantial adjustments to some emergency
response procedures (e.g., emergency assessment) and much smaller adjustments
to others (e.g., incident management). Thus, terrorist attacks should be
addressed in hazard-specific appendixes, not functional annexes.
SOPs and Checklists
SOPs and
checklists describe the steps that individuals and organizations will take to
perform specific emergency response tasks. Some of these may be included in the
EOP whereas others may simply be referenced.
Training and Exercising
All personnel who
are expected to participate in the jurisdiction’s emergency response need to be
trained to perform their assigned tasks. In addition, they should participate
in periodic refresher training to ensure their knowledge and skills remain
current. In general, the highest priority should be given to tasks that are infrequent, critical, and difficult to perform. Training is needed
for infrequently performed tasks because people’s knowledge and skill decay
over time. Training is needed for critical tasks because the cost of an error
is high. Training is needed for tasks that are difficult to perform because
these are the ones for which skill decay is most rapid. There is increasing
recognition that people must be trained to perform both taskwork and teamwork
(Cannon-Bowers & Salas, 1998; McIntyre & Salas, 1995). Taskwork involves the performance of
positional duties. For example, a hazmat technician must be trained to don
personal protective equipment, patch and plug leaky containers, replace
defective valves, and conduct decontaminations (in addition to many other
tasks). Training for taskwork usually involves cross-training to develop
interpositional knowledge (teaching one team member how to perform another team
member’s job) and explaining the emergency response organization’s overall
concept of operations to all emergency responders.
Another
consequence of the infrequent occurrence of disasters is not possible to
evaluate emergency responders’ performance frequently. Accordingly, emergency
management agencies schedule periodic drills and exercises to test performance
and critiques to provide feedback. These topics will be discussed more
completely in Chapter 12.
Table
9-4.
Typologies of Emergency Response Functions.
Organizational
Functions
|
Organizational
Subfunctions
|
NRT-1
Functions
|
ICS Functions
|
Local
Plan Annexes
|
Emergency
assessment
|
|
|
|
|
|
Threat
detection/emergency classification
|
Ongoing incident assessment
|
|
|
|
Hazard/
environmental
monitoring
|
Ongoing incident assessment
|
Planning
|
|
|
Population
monitoring and assessment
|
|
|
|
|
Damage assessment
|
|
|
Recovery
|
Hazard
operations
|
|
|
|
|
|
Hazard source
control
|
Containment and cleanup
|
Operations
|
Firefighting or Fire/rescue; Hazmat/Oil spill
|
|
Protection works
|
Public works
|
Operations
|
Public works/ Engineering
|
|
Building
construction
|
|
Operations
|
|
|
Contents
protection
|
|
Operations
|
|
|
|
|
Operations
|
Utilities
|
Population
protection
|
|
|
|
|
|
Protective action
selection
|
|
|
|
|
Population warning
|
Warning systems and emergency public
notification
|
|
Warning
|
|
Protective action
implementation
Personal protection of citizens
Evacuation/ Transportation;
Radiological protection
Impact zone access
control/security
Law enforcement
Law enforcement
Reception/care of
victims
Human services
Shelter/Mass care; Human services
Search &
rescue
Fire and rescue
Search & rescue
Emergency medical
care
Health and medical
Health/Medical services
Hazard exposure
control
Response personnel safety
Incident
management
Agency
notification/
mobilization
Initial notification of response
agencies
Warning
Mobilization of emergency
facilities/equipment
Planning
Communication/
documentation
Responder communications
Direction & control
Analysis/planning
Planning
Internal direction
& control
Direction and control
Command
Communication
Public information
Public information/ Community
relations
Command
Emergency public information
Finance/
administration
Resource management
Planning;
logistics; finance/admin
Resource management
Logistics
Logistics
Donations management
External
coordination
Direction and control
Command
Legal
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