Special Board of Aldermen 06-08-2021 Page 4
The final section is all hazards/all threats. Again, we don’t want to focus around one specific hazard or
threat in our program. Historically we’ve done a really poor job of that as a country. We originally were
concerned about an attack from the USSR and then that focused towards natural hazards, and then we
had 911 which focused us towards terrorism, and then Hurricane Katrina happened, and we shifted back
towards hurricanes as our primary concern. Every time we shift like that, we leave other hazards and
threats behind where we need to actually be paying attention to them as well.
So how does this emergency operations plan align to other plans in that the city or that the State have?
Well the first | think important connection is to the city’s hazard mitigation plan. As | mentioned in our last
slide, there are four phases. One being mitigation which is the reduction of risk within the community. The
Board of Aldermen and the Mayor had approved the updated Hazard Mitigation Plan two years ago so
we’re currently with an up to date Hazard Mitigation Plan within the community. The key connection here is
that that plan focuses on those risk reduction and pre-disaster recovery types of plan whereas the
emergency operations plan focuses really on the short-term recovery as well as the emergency response
phases. Ultimately we have to ensure that both of them kind of work together and are align so that our
whole emergency management program is effective.
There are also plans that the State that this coordinates with predominately the state emergency operations
plans. One of the things that you'll see is the connection between our request for emergency assistance
from the State and how that aligns to the processes that the State emergency operation center has
established as well. Finally, there’s a very similar plan as well at the federal level called “the National
Response Framework”. That’s about FEMA’s role as well as other federal agencies role within the
emergency management program. How we would request assistance from them as well.
So “Updated Considerations”. So some of the things that we look at when it comes to the update of the
emergency operations plan are 1) we want to review this document yearly and identify if there’s any
changes that are needed. We also want to ensure that we review it and make any updates after an
incident. So COVID being a good example of this, we really want to make sure that we incorporate any
necessary changes as we move into future updates of this document. If there’s no updates that happen on
a yearly basis because there hasn’t been an incident or no significant changes, the goal is to really go
through a comprehensive process every four years. That’s what we were doing last year and what we’ve
continued on with this year.
There’s a guidance that’s been created by the federal emergency management agency called “CPG 101”
the Comprehensive Preparedness Guide and it has a methodology for how you’re supposed to go through
this planning process and ensure that it’s inclusive and that it covers all the necessary components that are
necessary during an emergency. Then when the plan is completed, it’s called “Promulgated by the Mayor’.
The Mayor signs off on this as a completed and approved plan for the city. It’s essential that it’s been
signed off by the Chief Executive of the City because most homeland security funding really requires this
plan to be approved by the city and up to date. As an example if the Police Department is going after some
homeland security funding, or the Fire Department is doing the same, one of the things that they'll be asked
as they go through the application process is when was the last time that this emergency operation plan
was updated.
The National Incident Management System is another key topic that we want to include tonight and the
reason for this is this was implemented significantly after 911 based on the sort of the failures that we saw
and how our emergency management and public safety works within this country and what the country
decided to bring all of those different disciplines together — Fire, Police, Public Health, Public Works, all
those different organizations together in a standard framework for how incidents are managed. It was 1)
required for the city to say that they've adopted the National Incident Management System back post 911
and to ensure that any of our documents like this city Emergency Operations Plan is using the National
Incident Management System as its approach for coordinating different departments and other non-city
partners. There are a couple of key aspects to NIMS. One being something called “the Incident Command
System. It’s essentially the way that we establish an organizational structure or hierarchy as to which
agencies and departments are doing what and who’s responsible for leading those incidents. It also
