Emergency Preparedness Planning: Denver, Colorado Emergency Preparedness: Denver

The City of Denver is located in the state of Colorado, on the western edge of the Great Plains and the eastern boundary of the Rocky Mountains (City-Data.com, 2009). The city is 5,332 feet above sea level and covers 153 square miles. The climate is sunny, semiarid, and the mountains to the west protect it from most severe weather events.

The Denver-Aurora Metropolitan area is much larger, encompassing 8,387 square miles (U.S. Census Bureau, 2010). The population has rapidly increased between 2000 and 2008 (30.7%) and the most recent estimate suggests 2.5 million people make the Denver Metropolitan area their home. By comparison, the City of Denver had close to 600,000 residents in 2010 (U.S. Census Bureau, 2012). In terms of residents with special needs, close to 10% of the metropolitan population was over the age of 65 in 2008, 252,000 had disabilities (10%), and 266,100 (11%) lived below the poverty line (U.S. Census Bureau, 2010). Of those living in poverty, over 36% were children under the age of 18.

Planning

The Mayor's Office of the City of Denver is responsible for developing plans for emergency preparedness and mitigation for all hazards (OEMHS, 2010). This responsibility has been delegated to the Office of Emergency Management and Homeland Security in the Mayor's Office. The City and County of Denver do not publish their Emergency Operations Plan online, but considerable information can be obtained from recent reports about what planning has been done. Based on the information provided in a 2010 EOMHS report, the City and County of Denver annually revises the Emergency Operations Plan (EOP) to meet federal guidelines OEMHS, 2010). As a result, significant deviations from federal recommendations for emergency preparedness at the local level would not be expected in the Denver EOP.

Denver's EOP has four sections: (1) EOP concept and purpose (base plan), (2) response responsibilities for 15 emergency support annexes, (3) preparedness activities that must be performed by emergency support annexes, and (4) how incident managers (hazard or situational annexes) will orchestrate emergency support organization responsibilities during an emergency (OEMHS, 2010). This EOP format is based...

3-6) and is therefore consistent with national guidelines. What is not discussed at length is preparedness planning for evacuation plans, especially for citizenry with special needs. The Mayor's report mentions planning for evacuations and mass care, but provides no details. The report also mentions regional standing committees had been established, including one each for special needs and mass evacuations. This suggests evacuation and special needs preparedness planning has been delegated to regional authorities, which is consistent with national guidelines (FEMA, 2010).
One of the main emergency support organizations is the city and county governments; therefore the EOP includes continuity of operations plans (COOPs) for government agencies. These plans identify the locations where all 144 city agencies can relocate during an emergency evacuation, thereby ensuring the government is able to respond to and recover from emergencies and mitigate the impact of the emergency by returning to normal operations as soon as possible. To help validate the effectiveness of these plans, the OEMHS conducts regular tabletop exercises.

The Denver EOP includes a Local Emergency Planning Committee (LEPC), whose responsibilities are identifying and tracking significant chemical hazards in the community, developing preparedness plans for chemical hazard emergencies, and to keep the public and first responders informed about these hazards. This committee consists of the primary stakeholders, including residents, businesses, first responders, medical professionals, and elected representatives. The Denver LEPC is an integral part of Denver's EOP, which is consistent with FEMA's suggestion that emergency response plans developed by local LEPCs contribute to, or become the community's official chemical hazard emergency response plan (FEMA, 2010).

The Denver EOP includes the formation of an incident management team, which consists of major stakeholders who may be impacted by a disaster during special events in the Denver area (EOMHS, 2010). These stakeholders include first responders, parks and recreations, EOMHS, and public transportation. If the incident management team evaluates a special event and discovers a significant safety risk to…