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

Read Also

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