Preparedness and Mitigation

As an academic field as well as an applied practice in the public and private sector, emergency management is still in the early stages of its establishment. As such, it has thus far drawn heavily on existing external fields including emergency medicine, fire suppression, public health, business risk management, and law enforcement for many of its foundational elements and core competencies. However, these disciplines are steeped in their own traditions, methods, and cultures, and they were not developed with the same goals as those in the emergency management field. Without its own foundation joining academia and structured analytic methodologies with the practices and competencies required of emergency management professionals in all sectors, advancement outside of the government sector will fall behind. The management of major emergency events and disasters requires navigation through extreme complexity and often requires coordination among hundreds to thousands of individuals and dozens of agencies and organizations. It is out of this need that a systematic approach for the preparedness function of emergency management must take such a prominent position today, not only for emergency managers and the traditional emergency services but for all emergency management stakeholders (including individual private citizens).

Fig. 4.1, which was developed by the FEMA National Preparedness Directorate, shows the planning process, beginning with planning for the range of hazards that exist and working in a systematic approach toward a cyclical process to establish and improve preparedness. This cycle recognizes the importance of the four major components of any preparedness effort: planning, equipment, training, and exercise. This cycle also represents preparedness not only for government jurisdictions at all levels but also the preparedness actions taken by individuals, businesses, nongovernmental organizations, and other entities.

FIGURE 4.1 The preparedness planning cycle.

Step 1: Planning

In Fig. 4.1, the preparedness cycle begins with the creation of various plans through which disaster response and recovery become possible. Planning is an ambitious effort in and of itself, and it requires significant effort to achieve the many tasks involved. Planning most often begins with the hazards risk assessment process described in Chapter 2, Natural and Technological Hazards and Risk Assessment, wherein all applicable hazards are identified and assessed for prioritization. While it is true that modern emergency management philosophy proclaims plans are most effective when they address all hazards risks, it is important to be aware that all-hazards preparedness is most effective when it takes into account, and therefore places a general focus on, those hazards that are actually likely to occur. Each community makes the best of the limited funds they have, so their full spectrum of equipment, resources, and trained staff need to focus on what actually might happen. This is why, for instance, communities in North Dakota might dedicate significant funds for the capabilities and resources to manage snow removal equipment, while communities in Florida spend the same effort and funding on conducting evacuation plans, even though both involve an “all-hazards” focus.

Planning also involves a scoping of community vulnerability. In the planning phase, vulnerability helps planners understand why disasters occur, where they are most likely to have the greatest impact, and, thus, what the appropriate response should be. Vulnerability assessment for a jurisdiction, business, organization, or individual also includes an assessment of current preparedness levels to determine the capabilities and resources that may be counted on and therefore planned for. This always includes the outside resources that may be called upon in times of need, such as mutual aid partners (e.g., town-to-town, business-to-business), emergency management assistance compacts (e.g., state-to-state assistance), inter-jurisdictional assistance (e.g., federal assistance, state-to-local assistance), contracts with private businesses and resource suppliers (e.g., debris removal companies, hazmat remediation businesses), and others. Statutory authorities—the foundation of emergency management actions—must be understood, since government practice and authority is always dictated by law, even (or especially) in times of emergency.

Emergency planning is what often fills the majority of time spent by emergency management officials and those individuals tasked with the management of emergencies at businesses or in organizations. Luckily, as stated in Chapter 2, Natural and Technological Hazards and Risk Assessment, most events that occur on a daily basis fall within what is considered “normal” and are therefore managed with little or no problem. The product of planning is, of course, the plan, which is often called the emergency operations plan or the emergency plan.

Step 2: Organization and Equipment

Preparedness is limited by several factors, two of which include actual possession or access to the equipment needed to manage response requirements and the organization of people and agencies through which the necessary response and recovery tasks will take place. Emergency management is technical in practice, and its various functions rely more and more on the use of equipment. There are several categories of equipment in the emergency management profession, including, e.g., personnel protective equipment (PPE), which protects responders from the effects of the hazards; communications equipment, which allows responders to talk to one another both within and between different organizations; and special search and rescue equipment, which allows responders to enter compromised buildings, navigate hazardous waters, or detect signs of life.

Equipment is primarily dictated by the hazards that exist and the functions laid out in the emergency operations plan. The purchase and maintenance of emergency management equipment have always been a challenge for communities because of limited funds available. Clearly, though to a limited degree, the more equipment a jurisdiction can acquire in order to manage the consequences likely to befall that jurisdiction, the more prepared they will be to meet the needs of people and property when the time comes. However, as that ideal will likely never be reached, and so many competing demands exist in the community for those same funds, difficult decisions must be made. In recent years, however, a few solutions have emerged that help communities to better meet their equipment needs. These include a great expansion of federal funding for which equipment is eligible, expansion in mutual-assistance practices wherein equipment that is rarely used is shared among several communities, and the development of cheaper and more effective technologies, wherein equipment that was once considered “out of reach” is now more realistically accessible.

Step 3: Training

Training of emergency response officials is paramount to their ability to conduct the tasks required of them. Contemporary practice recognizes that it is not only the officials involved with the traditional emergency services who must participate in emergency management training but also the elected officials responsible for key disaster-specific decisions, the businesses and nongovernmental organizations operating in the community that will be called upon to provide products or services, and the individuals whose responsibility it is to decrease their own vulnerability and assist in the overall community response. This is a lofty goal but one that has expanded at a rate that rivals most other disciplines. Training is conducted both at technical institutes, such as fire and police academies at the national, state, and local levels, and at the various universities, colleges, and community colleges around the country and the world. Training is also conducted by nongovernmental organizations, like the American Red Cross, by private companies that specialize in training for profit, and in the communities themselves, as is the case with the ever-popular Community Emergency Response Team (CERT) courses that are offered in all US states and territories. And finally, the goal of enabling a trained public is one that continues to grow in importance in the writings and words of practitioners and scholars alike.

Step 4: Exercise

The adage that “practice makes perfect” is certainly true with emergency management. Training is even more so a critical component of preparedness efforts because the rare nature of emergency events means that few officials have experienced them firsthand and thus have little applicable experience to rely on when these events do occur. Through a regimen of training, including drills, tabletop exercises, functional exercises, and full-scale exercises, a much better understanding of the realities of response is achieved, as well as the identification of shortfalls or failures in planning, training, organization, or equipment.

Step 5: Evaluation and Improvement

The final step in the preparedness cycle takes the lessons learned and applies them to future iterations. Evaluation and improvement are generally the product of two sources. The first is that of exercise. By examining how the plans, equipment, and trained staff respond to imagined scenarios it is possible to identify where changes in planning, purchases of more or better equipment, and more comprehensive training should be applied. Evaluation and improvement is also the result of actual disaster experience. Disasters show us in bold fashion the full limits of an emergency management organization’s capabilities and identify the highest benefit to cost ratio for future spending and dedication of time and staff resources. Through the use of after action reporting (AAR), disaster experiences become lessons learned and the foundation of future planning cycles.

Many of the topics described here are expanded upon in the remainder of this chapter. The cycle of preparedness is one that, as its cyclical nature dictates, is ongoing. Moreover, all steps are occurring at all times, in a constant state of evolution and improvement as information, budgets, staff, political will, and perceptions change.

Mitigation Versus Preparedness

Despite their unique definitions and both being distinct emergency management functions, significant confusion often arises over what constitutes mitigation and preparedness (and to what extent these two functions overlap). At the federal level, mitigation and preparedness are highly defined, with FEMA maintaining two completely distinct directorates (mitigation and national preparedness) to manage these functions. However, at the state, local, organizational, and private levels, there is much less of a defined boundary between the two. The major distinction between these two functions at every level is best characterized by the mission of the actions themselves, which calls into play the definitions that have been provided for mitigation and preparedness. In most simple terms, mitigation attempts to eliminate hazard risk by reducing either the likelihood or the consequences of the risk associated with the particular hazard. Associated activities, devices, or actions try to prevent a hazard from ever manifesting into a disaster in the first place, or they try to make the disaster much less damaging to humans, property, or the environment if an emergency or disaster situation arises. Typically, these actions are taken prior to the instance of an emergency event. Preparedness, on the other hand, seeks to improve the abilities of agencies and individuals to respond to the consequences of a disaster event once the disaster event has occurred. Preparedness assumes the occurrence of an event, whereas mitigation attempts to prevent the event altogether.

Preparedness: The Emergency Operations Plan

The emergency operations plan (EOP) is the playbook by which emergency management response operations are conducted. However, the development of an EOP is not just a documentation of what will be done and by whom, but rather it is the process by which these factors are determined. The planning process, like the preparedness process, is a cyclical one dependent on each of the subsequent steps on the preparedness cycle, and each determines how the other changes periodically. Planning must be dynamic to be effective to meet the changing character and needs of the jurisdiction or organization for which it is conducted.

Emergency plans literally come in all shapes and sizes and in all manner of quality. These plans, however, are designed by a standard paradigm. Through an evolutionary process of lesson sharing, doctrine, and guidance, select components now appear in almost all emergency plans. These components have formed because they are the most logical presentation through which the response and recovery needs of jurisdictions and agencies may be represented and therefore relied upon in times of need. These components include the following:

• The Base Plan: Contains the most comprehensive information about the community, its risks, its statutory authorities, and the general concept by which emergency operations are conducted (including the officials responsible and the tasks for which they will be held accountable). This section also includes the assumptions according to which the plans were created and the process by which the plans are updated and distributed.

• Functional Annexes: Describe in more detail the different types of assistance that the responsible agencies and officials will provide, assigning responsibility for more task-oriented information. The functional annexes tend to be more operational in nature than what is found in the base plan.

• Hazard or Situational Annexes: Hazard annexes recognize that despite the all-hazards nature of base plans, some of the factors are unique to specific hazards that must be described in detail and communicated to emergency management and related officials when the need arises. Using hazard annexes keeps situation-specific information out of the base plan, which can make the base plan more concise and more effective in the time-constrained period of disaster response.

The planning process and the emergency operations plan both depend heavily on all of the steps in the preparedness cycle. Planning both dictates and accounts for the equipment that must be purchased to treat the disaster consequences that are planned for and to carry out the tasks assigned. Planning also becomes the basis of training and exercise, and responders train to the capabilities laid out in the plan and rely upon the assumptions captured by the plan to determine those core competencies that are sought. The exercises that are conducted test the jurisdiction’s or organization’s ability to carry out what is prescribed in the plan.

Nationwide planning efforts are currently guided by the FEMA-produced Comprehensive Planning Guide-101 (CPG-101) 2.0. This federal document was created to provide general yet standardized guidelines on developing EOPs and the terminology used in planning efforts and emergency management in general. The purpose of this guide was to promote a common understanding of the fundamentals of planning and decision making, which in turn would foster a more coordinated response when multiple agencies responded in concert to large-scale, multijurisdictional events. Given the pressures on communities to adopt the National Incident Management System (NIMS) and the contingencies placed on federal grant programs, it is understandable that communities would require such guidance. CPG-101 is not the first instance of the federal government providing guidelines. In fact, as long as 50 years ago, the Federal Civil Defense Guide was released for the same purpose. The Civil Preparedness Guide1-8, Guide for the Development of State and Local Emergency Operations Plans, and State and Local Guide (SLG) 101, Guide for All-Hazards Emergency Operations Planning followed, and they were influential predecessors to CPG-101. CPG-101 Version 2.0 can be accessed at http://bit.ly/2ejKUQX.

FEMA has developed a suite of planning guides and templates—see FEMA Planning Tools and Guides sidebar.

FEMA Preparedness Planning Tools and Guides

Plan Analysis Tool

The Plan Analysis Tool (http://bit.ly/2f02gXd) supplements CPG 101 by providing a one-page matrix to track the development timeline for a new plan or the revision of an existing plan. The tool also captures the planning elements contained in CPG 101 to support the analysis by a jurisdiction of its existing plans.

Comprehensive Preparedness Guide 201, Second Edition

FEMA’s Comprehensive Preparedness Guide (CPG) 201, Second Edition provides communities additional guidance for conducting a Threat and Hazard Identification and Risk Assessment (THIRA) (http://bit.ly/2fmRNC7). The first edition of this guide, released in Apr. 2012, presented the basic steps of the THIRA process. Specifically, the first edition described a standard process for identifying community-specific threats and hazards and setting capability targets for each core capability (http://bit.ly/2fhIt3y) identified in the National Preparedness Goal (http://bit.ly/2fmV8RD) as required in Presidential Policy Directive (PPD) 8: National Preparedness, CPG 201 (http://bit.ly/2f08nuv).

Comprehensive Preparedness Guide 502

FEMA’s Comprehensive Preparedness Guide (CPG) 502 (http://bit.ly/2fhNsDO) focuses on the critical partnership and the exchange of information between fusion centers and Emergency Operations Centers (EOCs). The guide does not provide a “one-size fits all” approach to fusion center and EOC coordination. Rather, it outlines the information sharing roles of fusion centers and EOCs while identifying the planning and coordination considerations each entity must take into account.

Developing High Quality Emergency Operation Plans for Houses of Worship

The Guide for Developing High Quality Emergency Operations Plans for Houses of Worship (http://bit.ly/2f04y8C) provides recommendations in the development of plans not only to respond to an emergency but, also, outlines how organizations can plan for preventing, protecting against, mitigating the impact of and recovering from these emergencies. The guide introduces houses of worship to a new approach to planning that includes walking through different emergency scenarios to create a course of action for each objective the team is trying to accomplish. The guide emphasizes that successful planning requires all stakeholders be engaged in the planning process from the start—including community partners such as local law enforcement, fire officials, emergency medical services, and emergency management staff.

Developing High-Quality School Emergency Operations Plan

The Guide for Developing High-Quality School Emergency Operations Plan (http://bit.ly/2e760XT) provides recommendations in the development of plans not only to respond to an emergency but, also, outlines how schools (K-12) can plan for preventing, protecting against, mitigating the impact of, and recovering from these emergencies.

Guide for Developing High-Quality Emergency Operations Plans for Institutions of Higher Education

The Guide for Developing High-Quality Emergency Operations Plans for Institutions of Higher Education (http://bit.ly/2f06bTZ) provides recommendations in the development of plans not only to respond to an emergency but, also, outlines how institutions of higher education can plan for preventing, protecting against, mitigating the impact of and recovering from these emergencies.

Source: FEMA, http://bit.ly/2fhLfIq.

Many states guide EOP planning efforts through the release of standard planning guidelines. Some states even provide templates for EOP development, which allow for standardization of not only content but of structure as well. From a state-level coordination perspective this makes perfect sense because a unified command response will call upon some form of synchronization from the various agencies involved. Such templates ensure that responders are referring to the same functions and using the same terminology, among other needs. Virginia is one state that has such guidelines, which can be accessed at http://bit.ly/2fAIOlF.
Mitigation Tools
· Hazard Identification and Mapping is the most essential part of any mitigation strategy as it allows for the analysis of the hazards in a particular area. The resources for identification and mapping are numerous and are available from several government agencies.

· Design and Construction Applications provide one of the most cost effective means of addressing risk. Building codes, architecture and design criteria, and soils and landscaping criteria all can be used to reduce a structure’s vulnerability.

· Land Use Planning offers many local options for effecting mitigation, including acquisition, easements, storm water management, annexation, environmental review, and floodplain management plans. It also encompasses a myriad of zoning options, such as density controls, special uses permits, historic preservation, coastal zone management, and subdivision controls.

· Financial Incentives are emerging as an effective means for promoting mitigation and include special tax assessments, passage of tax increases or bonds to pay for mitigation, relocation assistance, targeting federal community development or renewal grant funds for mitigation, impact fees, and transfer of development rights. Neighborhood Development Floating Zones and the Community Rating System are two innovative examples of financial incentives.

· Insurance mitigates some of the financial costs of disasters, though critics argue it merely transfers the risk from the policyholder to the insurance company (and thus societal risk remains constant). The National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) was considered one of the most effective mitigation programs ever created, though Hurricanes Katrina and Rita and a series of major floods have had a devastating impact on the National Flood Insurance Fund. Federal legislation in 2012 and 2014 made various reforms to the program.

· Structural Controls, a controversial technique, can have positive and negative effects, and merely control the hazard rather than reduce it. The most common structural control is the levee, but also includes seawalls, bulkheads, breakwaters, groins, and jetties, among others.

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