Emergency preparedness planning is conducted at the national, state, and local levels and FEMA provides extensive guidelines on how these governments should develop an emergency operations plan (EOP). This essay examines how well the Denver EOP matches FEMA recommendations. Based on this analysis, the EOP for the City and County of Denver's exceeds these guidelines.
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 The City and County of Denver do not publish their Emergency Operations Plan online, but considerable information can be obtained from recent reports about what planning has been done.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 on the Emergency Support Function EOP Format published in CPG 101 (FEMA, 2010, p. 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 attendees, a safety plan is developed and implemented. The formation of an incident management team seems to represent an effort by the Denver government to go the extra mile to ensure the safety of its citizens, since this type of planning is not highlighted in national guidelines (FEMA, 2010).
The hazard/situational annex of Denver's EOMHS is the Emergency Operations Center (EOM) (EOMHS, 2010). The primary responsibility of the EOM is to monitor the city for signs of an emergency requiring a response beyond the routine scope of first responders, orchestrate the response of multiple emergency support annexes, and manage information sharing and the mitigation efforts. This level of monitoring requires the staffing of a 24/7 duty officer position. While this level of commitment is not mentioned in the CPG 101, the establishment of Denver's OEM meets the EOP requirements for a hazard/situational annex (FEMA, 2010).
The EOMHS (2010) has a Logistics Section that is responsible for managing assets (equipment) predicted to be needed for an emergency response. The Logistics Section maintains an asset inventory representing a $700 million investment by the City of Denver into emergency preparedness. The Logistics Section is also responsible for procuring additional preparedness assets as needs dictate, in addition to establishing procurement relationships with corporations and state and federal governments that may need to be mobilized during times of emergency. The procurement and planning of assets deemed necessary for an emergency response is a critical component of EOPs according to national guidelines (FEMA, 2010).
Denver OEMHS (2010) preparedness policy places a strong emphasis on public information and training for emergency preparedness. The philosophy is that residents will be the first persons on the scene of a disaster, at least until first responders arrive, and are therefore a critical component of emergency preparedness. National guidelines call for public and private collaboration in EOP development (FEMA, 2010) and Denver's EOP more than meets this recommendation (EOMHS, 2010). Denver's EOMSH provides free Community Emergency Response Training (CERT) to the public, in addition to other outreach and education programs related to emergency preparedness. In 2010 alone, 15 CERT classes were conducted with 335 attendees.
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