Hurricane Preparedness: Emergency Operations Plan

To be prepared for the 2021 hurricane season, in the last three days we have highlighted SAFETY (always #1), STAFFING COVERAGE, and PUBLIC-PRIVATE PARTNERSHIPS.

Today the topic is the EMERGENCY OPERATIONS PLAN (aka EOP). An EOP must be kept up-to-date (or in some cases, actually written — surprising as it sounds, some organizations really are yet to create one). For those organizations that have invested the time and resources to develop an EOP, it is essential to update those plans on a regular basis. Too often, these plans sit on a shelf and collect dust, only to be referenced when a crisis occurs. If the plans are not current, then the plans, processes, personnel and even phone numbers could all be outdated by the time they are needed.

When faced with a crisis, success comes from staff being able to access, reference and execute an up-to-date EOP. As part of their EOP, communities and utilities need to identify their restoration priorities in advance. Every community has a unique recovery plan that serves as the recovery strategy. Recovery requires all organizations and agencies to work together via Public-Private Partnerships, to coordinate restoration, for when a robust liaison program exists, it makes this task much more manageable.

I have coined a phrase, ‘from dairies to hospitals. Over my career, I have worked with communities where the most important asset that the county leaders wanted restored was a hospital, and have worked with local communities where the most important services to restore were to local dairies and a local cheese factory that employed much of the community. It is about supporting the community, and by doing so, listening to what they feel is important.        

It is important to review and update these plans on an annual basis, focusing on community-based restoration. There is every chance that priorities may have changed over the last year. For instance, critical infrastructure owners may have installed a generator that no longer requires a location to be prioritized, or a local dispatch center may have entered into an agreement to have another center perform their dispatch functions if necessary, meaning that their center no longer requires to be prioritized.

Prioritization can be a monumental task, but when a hurricane impacts a community, having the most up-to-date plan possible benefits everyone. It is also vital to understand the importance of remaining flexible. There will always be an emerging situation that was not addressed during the prioritization review process, but that must now be escalated. For instance, in the response to Hurricane Sandy, hundreds of election polling places were added to the list of priorities because of the upcoming presidential election. Prior to that, polling stations where never on any prioritization list that I ever saw.

Tomorrow we will highlight the BUSINESS CONTINUITY PLAN.