Guiding Principles of Emergency Planning

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Preparedness is best thought of as a process—a continuing sequence of analyses, plan development, and the acquisition of individual and team performance skills achieved through training, drills, exercises, and critiques (Dynes, et al., 1972; Kartez & Lindell, 1987, 1990). The practice of emergency response planning varies considerably among communities. In some, the planning process is quite formal; there is a specific assignment of responsibility to an office having an identifiable budget. In other communities it is informal; responsibility is poorly defined and a limited budget is dispersed among many agencies. Moreover, the planning products might be either written or unwritten. To some extent, the emergency planning process correlates with the size of the community in which it takes place. Larger communities— characterized by an elaborate structure of governmental offices, many resources and personnel, and perhaps higher levels of staff turnover—tend to evolve formalized processes and rely more heavily upon written documentation and agreements. In smaller communities, the planning process might generate few written products and rely principally on informal relationships. Formalization of the planning process is also likely to vary with the frequency of hazard impact. In communities subject to frequent threats, emergency response may be a practiced skill rather than a hypothetical action. In one frequently flooded community, the fire department evacuates residents of the low lying areas (in the usual manner, by fire truck, to the usual location, the local school) when the flood water reaches a certain street (Perry, et al., 1981).

Despite the many superficial variations in EOPs, researchers have identified some consistencies in emergency planning. The following prescriptions, derived from Quarantelli (1982b), can be described as fundamental principles of community emergency planning that are systematically related to high levels of community preparedness (see Table 9-1).

Managing Resistance to the Planning Process

Emergency planning is conducted in the face of apathy by some and resistance from others (Auf der Heide, 1989, McEntire, 2003, Quarantelli, 1982b). A basic reason for apathy is that most people, citizens and public officials alike, don't like to think about their vulnerability to disasters. A common objection to planning is it consumes resources, that, at the moment, might seem like more pressing community issues—police patrols, road repairs, school expansion, and the like. Planning mandates help (for example, radiological emergency planning after the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant accident and chemical emergency planning under the Emergency Planning and Community Right to Know Act of 1986—SARA Title III after Bhopal), but are insufficient to overcome such resistance. Consequently, the initiation of planning activities requires strong support from a jurisdiction’s Chief Administrative Officer, an issue champion (or policy entrepreneur) who has the expertise and organizational legitimacy to promote emergency management, or a disaster planning committee that can mobilize a constituency in support of emergency management (Lindell, et al., 1996a, Prater & Lindell, 2000). However, acceptance of the need for emergency planning doesn’t eliminate conflict. Organizations seek to preserve their autonomy, security, and prestige, so they resist collaborative activities that can threaten these objectives (Haas & Drabek, 1973). Emergency planning involves the allocation of power and resources (especially personnel and budget), so every unit within an organization wants its “proper role” recognized and a budget allocation commensurate with that role.

Table 9-1. Fundamental Principles of Community Emergency Planning.

1.     Emergency planners should anticipate both active and passive resistance to the planning process and develop strategies to manage these obstacles.

2.     Preimpact planning should address all hazards to which the community is exposed.

3.     Preimpact planning should elicit participation, commitment, and clearly defined agreement among all response organizations.

4.     Preimpact planning should be based upon accurate assumptions about the threat, typical human behavior in disasters, and likely support from external sources such as state and federal agencies.

5.     EOPs should identify the types of emergency response actions that are most likely to be appropriate, but encourage improvisation based on continuing emergency assessment.

6.     Emergency planning should address the linkage of emergency response to disaster recovery and hazard mitigation.

7.     Preimpact planning should provide for training and evaluating the emergency response organization at all levels—individual, team, department, and community.

8.     Emergency planning should be recognized as a continuing process.

Adopt an All Hazards Approach

The emergency planning process should also integrate plans for each hazard agent into a multihazard EOP. Emergency planners should use their community HVAs to identify the types of natural hazards (e.g., floods, tornadoes, hurricanes, earthquakes), technological accidents (e.g., toxic chemical releases, nuclear power plant accidents), and deliberate incidents (e.g., sabotage or terrorist attack involving hazardous materials) to which their communities are vulnerable. Following identification of these hazards, emergency planners should consider the extent to which different hazard agents make similar demands on the emergency response organization. When two hazard agents have similar characteristics, they are likely to require the same emergency response functions. Commonality of emergency response functions provides multiple use opportunities for personnel, procedures, facilities, and equipment—which, in turn, simplifies the EOP by reducing the number of functional annexes. In addition, it simplifies training and enhances the reliability of organizational performance during emergencies. Only when hazard agents have very different characteristics, and thus require distinctly different responses, will hazard-specific appendixes will be needed.

Promote Multiorganizational Participation

Emergency planning should promote interorganizational coordination by developing mechanisms that elicit participation, commitment, and clearly defined agreement among all response organizations. This obviously should include public safety agencies such as emergency management, fire, police, and emergency medical services. However, it also should include organizations that are potential hazard sources, such as hazardous materials facilities and hazardous materials transporters (pipeline, rail, truck, and barge) and organizations that must protect sensitive populations, such as schools, hospitals, and nursing homes. Coordination is required because emergency response organizations that differ in their capabilities must work in coordination to implement an effective emergency response. To perform their functions effectively, efficiently, and promptly requires members of the community emergency response organization to be aware of one another's missions, organizational structures and styles of operation, communication systems, and mechanisms (such as agreed upon priorities) for allocating scarce resources.

Rely on Accurate Assumptions

Emergency planning should be based upon accurate knowledge of community threats and likely human responses to those threats. Accurate knowledge of community threats comes from HVAs. As discussed in Chapter 6, emergency managers must identify hazards to which their communities are vulnerable, determine which geographical areas are exposed to those hazards (e.g., 100 year flood plains and toxic chemical facility Vulnerable Zones), and identify the facilities and population segments located in those risk areas. They also need to understand the basic characteristics of these hazards such as speed of onset, scope and duration of impact, and potential for producing casualties and property damage.

When identifying the hazards to which their community is exposed, planners and public officials frequently recognize the limits of their expertise. They recognize their lack of accurate knowledge about the behavior of geophysical, meteorological, or technological hazards and contact experts to obtain the information they need. Unfortunately, the same cannot usually be said about accurate knowledge about likely human behavior in a disaster. As a familiar saying goes, the problem is not so much that people don't know what is true, but that what they do “know” is false. As noted in the previous chapter, Quarantelli and Dynes (1972) and Wenger, et al. (1980) have described widespread myths regarding people’s disaster response that persist despite research refuting them. Belief in disaster myths hampers the effectiveness of emergency planning by misdirecting resource allocation and information dissemination. For example, officials sometimes cite expectations of panic as a reason for giving the public incomplete information about an environmental threat or withholding information altogether. This response to the myth of panic is actually counterproductive because people are more willing to comply with recommended protective actions when they are provided with complete risk information. For these reasons, the planning process must be firmly grounded not only on the physical or biological science literature on the effects of hazard agents on human safety, health, and property, but also on the behavioral literature describing individual and organizational response in emergencies.

Finally, household, business, and government agency emergency plans must be based on accurate assumptions about aid from external sources. In major disasters, hospitals might be overloaded; destruction of telecommunication and transportation systems (highways, railroads, airports, and seaports) could prevent outside assistance from arriving for days; and restoration of disrupted water, sewer, electric power, and natural gas pipeline systems could take much longer. Consequently, all social units must be prepared to be self reliant for as much as a week.

Identify Appropriate Actions while Encouraging Improvisation

An effective preparedness process must balance planning and improvisation (Kreps, 1991). The EOP establishes the emergency response organization’s basic structure and broad strategies before a disaster strikes. In particular, it will document which organization is responsible for each emergency response function and, in general terms, how that function will be performed. Similarly, per-disaster training must explain how to perform any specific tactics and operational procedures that are likely to be needed during response operations. Even though emergency managers can forecast what types of disaster demands are likely to arise, there will always be some degree of uncertainty about the magnitude and location of those demands. For example, the emergency manager of a hurricane prone community should develop procedures for mass evacuation, but will be never be completely certain about how the population in each neighborhood will respond. The fact that people’s response to warnings is reasonably well understood makes it foolish to improvise an evacuation plan as a hurricane is approaching.

Nonetheless, uncertainty about what proportion of the households in each neighborhood will begin an evacuation at each point in time makes it foolish to devise a rigid evacuation plan that has no provision for modification as an incident unfolds. An emphasis on specific detail can be problematic in at least four ways: (1) the anticipation of all contingencies is simply impossible (Lindell & Perry, 1980); (2) very specific details tend to get out of date very quickly, demanding virtually constant updating of written products (Dynes, et al., 1972); (3) very specific plans often contain so many details that the wide range of emergency functions appear to be of equal importance, causing response priorities to be unclear or confused (Tierney, 1980); and (4) the more detail incorporated into written planning documents, the larger and more complex they become. This makes it more difficult to use the plan as a device for training personnel to understand how their roles fit into the overall emergency response and consequently makes it more difficult to implement the plan effectively when the need arises.

In summary, planning and training should identify the actions that are most likely to be appropriate, but also should emphasize flexibility so those involved in response operations can improvise in response to unexpected conditions. That is, planning and training should address principles of response in addition to providing detailed standard operating procedures (SOPs) and should encourage improvisation based on continuing assessment of disaster demands.

Link Emergency Response to Disaster Recovery and Hazard Mitigation

There will be an overlap between emergency response and disaster recovery because some portions of the community will be engaged in emergency response tasks while others will have moved on to disaster recovery tasks (Schwab, et al., 1998). Moreover, senior elected and appointed officials need to plan for the recovery while they are being inundated with policy decisions to implement the emergency response. Consequently, emergency managers should link preimpact emergency response planning to preimpact disaster recovery planning. Such integration will speed the process of disaster recovery and facilitate the integration of hazard mitigation into disaster recovery (Wu & Lindell, 2004). The necessary coordination between preimpact emergency response planning and preimpact disaster recovery planning can be achieved by establishing organizational contacts, and perhaps overlapping membership, between the committees responsible for these two activities.

Conduct Thorough Training and Evaluation

Disaster planning should also provide a training and evaluation component. The first part of the training process involves explaining the provisions of the plan to the administrators and personnel of the departments that will be involved in the emergency response. Second, all those who have emergency response roles must be trained to perform their duties. Of course, this includes fire, police, and emergency medical services personnel, but there also should be training for personnel in hospitals, schools, nursing homes, and other facilities that might need to take protective action. Finally, the population at risk must be involved in the planning process so they can become aware that planning for community threats is underway, as well as what is expected of them under the plans. As noted previously, they need to know what is likely to happen in a disaster and what emergency organizations can and cannot do for them.

It is also essential that training include tests of the proposed response operations. As noted above, emergency drills and exercises provide a setting in which operational procedures can be tested. They also facilitate interorganizational contact, thus allowing individual members to better understand each other’s professional capabilities and personal characteristics. Furthermore, multifunctional exercises constitute a simultaneous and comprehensive test of emergency plans and procedures, staffing levels, personnel training, facilities, equipment, and materials. Finally, multifunctional exercises produce publicity for the broader emergency management process, which informs community officials and the public that disaster planning is underway and preparedness is being enhanced.

Adopt a Continuous Planning Process

Finally, effective emergency planning is a continuing process. Hazard vulnerability, organizational staffing and structure, and emergency facilities and equipment change over time, so the emergency planning process must detect and respond to these changes. Unfortunately, this point is frequently not recognized. Wenger, et al. (1980, p. 134) have found “there is a tendency on the part of officials to see disaster planning as a product, not a process”, a misconception that confuses tangible products with the activities that produce them. Of course, planning does require written documentation, but effective planning is also made up of elements that are difficult to document on paper and are not realized in hardware. These include the development of emergency responders' knowledge about resources available from governmental and private organizations, the acquisition of knowledge about emergency demands and other agencies’ capabilities, and the establishment of collaborative relationships across organizational boundaries. Tangible documents and hardware simply do not provide a sufficient representation of what the emergency planning process has produced. Furthermore, by treating written plans as final products, one risks creating the illusion of being prepared for an emergency when such is not the case (Quarantelli, 1977). As time passes, the EOP sitting in a red three ring binder on the bookshelf looks just as thick and impressive as it did the day it was published despite the many changes that have taken place in the meantime. For example, new hazardous facilities might have been built and others decommissioned, new neighborhoods might exist where only open fields were found previously, and reorganization might have been taken place within different agencies responsible for emergency response. In short, the potential for changes in hazard exposure, population vulnerability, and the staffing, organization and resources of emergency response organizations requires emergency plans and procedures to be reviewed periodically, preferably annually.