How can you plan and prepare for emergencies like a pro?

I recently spoke about this on Disaster Tough Podcast, detailing benefits of creating an analytically backed hazard vulnerability assessment. One overlooked benefit of creating a data-driven HVA, is the massive amount of credibility it provides you to your leadership. When the data is clear and they can see it, projects are funded.

Honesty about hazards is crucial in emergency planning. While planning for a zombie apocalypse may be entertaining, it's essential to focus on realistic threats like long-term power outages. In today's context, considering factors such as widespread telework in a post-Covid environment should indeed be part of your hazard assessment (THIRA). This ensures that your emergency plans align with the most relevant and probable risks.

In hospitals that experience power failures, it is important to ask all visitors to leave, as well as non-essential employees. Since elevators are essential to the geriatric population and depend on an efficient power source to operate, hospitals need to plan how to assist senior citizens, since stairwells may not be an option. Visitors with a cardiac history may also be unable to access stairwells, so these are two groups that a hospital may want to shelter-in-place. Supplies of water need to be dispensed, especially during hot weather, and/or a cooling station for those able to depart. This is an excellent scenario for a table top drill whereas all shareholders in such an emergency can collaborate on a resolution.

Risk identification and prioritization of risk treatments are pivotal to developing emergency plans for different situations – because as long as emergencies are situational so are the safety measures, too.

In addition to risk mapping, you can also develop the necessary reporting procedures in advance of any emergency. Whilst working in NATO’s Joint Operations Centre, one of the first tasks I had, as part of the BattleWatch team, was to identify emerging events and situations and categorise them so we could follow the correct procedure. Depending upon what was happening, and whether it was simple/complicated/complex/chaotic, we would either set in motion a pre-prepared response or bring together the relevant subject matter experts to discuss and agree the appropriate course of action. Doing that work in advance can save a considerable amount of time and significantly improve the quality of responses in an emergency.

The degree of readiness for an emergency cannot and should not be underplayed. It speaks to the mitigation capacity of your team to respond accordingly.

Train is definitely key and in conducting your training and drills think out of the box. A disaster can occur in the early morning so how would you respond if it happens at 3:00am? We tend to do things during working hours. But I have had incidents that had occurred at 10:00pm and was unable to reach those who were responsible for the task. So plan drills during odd hours and make it as realistic as possible.

Before building the team: one should define what would be the aim and objectives of the initial response as the design of the team require to know which specific skills will be required

In police work, it is often hard to "build your team" when there are so many variables. Often, it is the first ten people who show up that make the most difference, and who assume (for better or worse) the roles necessary to resolve, or at least stabilize, a situation. This is where strong, simple and consistently-applied systems and procedures are necessary. It is possible to fold in neighboring jurisdictions who have only a basic understanding of ICS so long as a good IC and tactician are there to direct the CP.

In aviation, assembling a specialized emergency response team is crucial. This team should have clear roles and responsibilities, from pilots and air traffic controllers to ground staff and emergency services. A defined command structure ensures smooth communication during crises. Frameworks like the Incident Command System (ICS) or National Incident Management System (NIMS) offer a structured approach to organizing your team and coordinating with other stakeholders. Regular training, drills, and exercises are essential for testing the team's readiness and capabilities, thus ensuring both safety and regulatory compliance.

More crucial than reviewing is implementing! Run drills and surprise your team with hands-on exercises to ensure they know the plan inside out.

In aviation, creating a comprehensive emergency plan is key. This plan should cover all phases of emergency management: mitigation, preparedness, response, and recovery. Each phase needs defined goals, objectives, strategies, and timelines, as well as assigned roles and responsibilities. Backup plans for different situations are essential. The plan should be flexible to adapt to unforeseen challenges, be periodically reviewed and updated, and be clearly communicated to all team members and stakeholders for effective implementation.

Create your plan - Understand the difference between the overall plan and the playbooks used for response. The overall plan may need to include information regarding roles, responsibilities, capabilities, and limitations for emergency response in general to help understand context. The playbooks should be role based action-oriented checklists arranged in phases of the emergency. But understand - a playbook is not a recipe! It will likely not be followed exactly as written. There needs to be distinction between "must do" and "might do" actions. Just like ICS and NIMS, remember management by objective and plan for the resources you will likely need for each objective.

In regards to plans and planning I always think of this quote: In preparing for battle I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable. General Dwight D. Eisenhower Plans are the guide on the path as you prepare they assist in prioritizing resource development. Do not let the plan stifle innovation and flexibility. Planning provide the knowledge and skills to handle the unexpected.

Be careful that "The Plan" has zero stakeholders and can be changed to account for contingencies. It is better to train people on a process, give tactical experts flexibility and allow them initiative, and have a strong feedback loop to stay ahead of a dynamic situation.

Keep an updated record of your resources and the resources of mutual aid partners. Share resource utilization plans with them as well as training with them and your people in mock utilization exercises.

Die Business Impact Analyse (BIA) ist ein entscheidender Schritt im Business Continuity Management. Sie hilft uns, die potenziellen Auswirkungen einer Unterbrechung der Gesch?ftsfunktionen und -Prozesse zu verstehen und die notwendigen Informationen für die Entwicklung von Wiederherstellungsstrategien zu sammeln. Die BIA ist nicht nur nützlich, um das Unternehmen besser kennenzulernen und die Verknüpfungen innerhalb und zwischen den Prozessen zu verstehen, sondern sie lieferte auch die wichtigsten Kennzahlen, die wir für das BCMS ben?tigen.

Resource accumulation and management are critical. Do not become a hoarder. Too many have organizations with all the right equipment and supplies on paper to find that much is unusable due to age. Effective training requires the use of the resources and their immediate replenishment. Evaluate mutual aid partners to determine if they have an effective resource management system. If they do not they could fail you on the day.

In terms of supplies, try to make a bag or backpack with anything you may need for any given situation. Better to have it and not need it, than to need it and not have it!

In aviation emergency planning, resource gathering is a critical step. This involves securing adequate equipment, supplies, personnel, information, and funds to execute your emergency plan. Systems should be in place to inventory, store, and maintain these resources. Partnerships and agreements with other organizations, such as local emergency services or neighboring airports, can provide additional support during emergencies. Ensuring resource availability and accessibility is essential for effective emergency management and operational continuity.

When you write something in order, it means that you are prioritising them in this order. Thus, human assets, should be first, not be after physical or others.

I would recommend that a security controls review is conducted regularly to measure the effectiveness to deter, detect, delay, respond and recover during planned and unplanned incidents, assessing all physical, people, procedural and technology controls, current state. Particularly important when recognising that increasingly the complete loss of systems from cyberattacks is a possibility.

It is important to protect assets from multiple hazards, not just one. I recall one of my emergency response experiences. In a large island, there was a short extension of land, where the city's hospital was located. There was a small river draining in the sea, separating the island from the main land in case of a flood. The hospital had all the assets, but will be useless, if two emergencies strike together: a tsunami from the sea and a flood from the main island. The hospital may get destroyed and the hazards affected people cannot get treatment. I was reminded of Kutch (Gujarat) earthquake of 2001 in India, where city hospital was one of the first buildings to collapse and kill many doctors. So consider multiple hazards, not just one.

In aviation, protecting assets is vital for minimizing losses during emergencies. This means safeguarding physical assets like aircraft and infrastructure, as well as human, financial, and informational assets. Techniques such as backups, encryption, and redundancy protect against data loss, while insurance can mitigate financial risks. Security measures help defend against theft or sabotage. Systems for monitoring, reporting, and recovering assets after emergencies are essential for a rapid return to normal operations. These layers of protection not only ensure safety but also help in complying with regulatory standards.

Can not stress how important security is before, during, and after an event is. If an event is human initiated there is a probability they may attempt to reduce your ability to respond before the event. Security during an event is more than keeping the public away. The bomber Eric Rudolph often set a second device meant to attack responders.

After disaster debriefing is part of the self improvement process. An honest hard look at operations what went well and what did should be part of your organizations after disaster plan.

100%! I'm a strong proponent for continous education, especially in a field as versatile as EM. Include research on current practices in your analyses and evaluations. These will be a good starting point for emergency planning, but will also ensure that best practices are incorporated. Due to emergencies being situational, it does not make sense to have a standardized plan. However, frameworks can be developed across the board in order for these methodologies to be easily implemented from one organization to the next. Learning from experiences is key. It's how you grow as an individual, and how you can make your organization more resilient.

The often-forgotten step: Learn from your experience. In a drill or exercise, there is often a hotwash and after-action review. Make sure these tied to improvement planning. In an actual event, it will be critical to keep good logs and notes as things may unfold quickly. Designating a lessons-learned person as part of your emergency management team will facilitate this process. Their role will be to collect documents, make observations, and lead the process during and after the emergency.

Great comments here! After-action reports are so valuable, and depending on the event, an interim action report can be just as important. This is something we undertook during our EOC activation in response to COVID-19 with great success. We have already made significant improvements to our plans and processes as a part of these reports/debriefs!

You can also learn from others experiences by recreating their situation in training. Often times we would take a real-life incident and recreate it as close to the actual incident as we could then use it as a reality based training scenario.

All the planning in the world can be for naught if the plan has not been practiced. By exercising the plan, it provides an environment to practice the response activities and identifies challenges and successes. Exercising the plan increases familiarity and muscle memory. When developing the plan, it’s important to involve everyone with a role in it. Even the guy with the red stapler! Inclusion across all areas of an organization or discipline will come in handy when one area that assists with response is not available (for any reason). The plan will have built in redundancy as the areas that don’t have a primary role are already familiar with it and can step in with minimal guidance.

Collaborate with partners. Collaborate with your partners before, during and after the emergencies. Long before the emergencies happen, there should be a continuous process to collaborate with partners through planning, training and exercises. These collaborative work before the emergencies, establishes the framework for the response during emergencies. The collaborative work should continue even after the emergencies for the next emergencies down the line. The cycle continues.

All great points. However, I agree with Michelle that the importance of training and practicing the plan is missing in these 7 steps. When things go sideways, you want to be as comfortable as possible, knowing the strategy to mitigate the issues. It is important to define roles and responsibilities as well as the alternate when someone is not available. If you don't know the plan, at the least you need to know where to find the necessary information in the plan. The plan is essentially useless if it sits on a shelf and collects dust. Knowing and exercising a continuity plan reduces the panic when there is a real emergency!

If you are planning an exercise, make sure that your players can win. They'll make mistakes they can learn from, so there will be plenty to discuss. Continually killing off the role players with left-field problems does no one any good. Make it a solvable field problem and your team will gain confidence.

Great flag Chief Kaye! We are fortunate to have such a well supported EM training and exercise plan in Saanich for our corporate staff, as well as almost 100 emergency program volunteers who train and exercise on a regular basis to ensure they are ready to response when called upon.