Canton on Emergency Management

Emergency Management Solutions - August 2021

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Feature Articles

Why Your Emergency Plan Will Fail: Ignoring Basic Concepts Part 1

    By Lucien Canton

When to AAR

    By Tim Riecker

Edgy Marketing – Balancing Speed and Reputation In The Digital Space

    By Erik Bernstein

What's really wrong with alert and warning?

    By George Whitney

Why Your Emergency Plan Will Fail: Ignoring Basic Concepts Part 1

While emergency plans will never be classified as great literature, like any good novel, they should have a narrative flow. That is, they should have a logical progression that is easy for the reader to follow. This allows the reader to understand the intent behind the plan and to quickly locate needed information.

Unfortunately, many of the plans I review are confusing and lack coherency. This is often the result of ignoring basic emergency management concepts during plan development.

One of the most basic concepts, which I believe was formulated originally by E.L. Quarantelli, is recognizing that disaster response actions can be divided into two categories: response-generated and agent-generated.

Response-generated actions are generic and tend to be performed in roughly the same way in most response operations. For example, a fire department responding to a structural fire will generally approach each fire in the same way. On-scene tactics may vary but standard operating procedures will govern the overall response.

Agent-generated actions, on the other hand, are specific to the hazard that has caused the disaster. These actions represent a departure from the usual methodology and are often unique to the specific hazard. A fire department faced with a major conflagration, may opt to use tactics that run counter to normal SOPs, such as switching from saving individual structures to creating firebreaks, limiting response to other alarms, or activating mutual aid.

What does this mean to your planning? Simply put, response-generated actions can be largely preplanned. It is possible to identify lead and support agencies, tactics, potential staging areas, etc. In short, the bulk of your emergency plan consists of pre-planning for response-generated needs. This creates a “toolbox” of potential resources that can be modified or redirected depending on the crisis. In very simple terms, you identify specific needs and assign the appropriate resource.

Agent-generated actions, on the other hand, are essentially contingency plans for specific hazards. They tend to be very specific and highlight the differences between “normal” response and response to a specific hazard. This may be reflected in revised assumptions or may contain specific instructions to responding agencies, in essence a rough draft of the initial action plan. An example would be a hazard-specific annex or plan that addressed flooding in a specific location. This annex or plan might show the anticipated location of the command post and staging areas, evacuation routes, etc. Anything not addressed in the annex or plan would be assumed to follow the guidance for response-generated needs. In this example, sheltering down outside the flood zone would follow the plan for this response-generated action.

Why is this concept important? Mixing the two sets of actions can lead to confusion. Some parts of the plan may contain too much detailed information while other parts do not have enough. Responsibilities can be muddled, and the wrong tactics may be implemented. More importantly, understanding this concept emphasizes the importance of knowing your risks. This allows your hazard-specific annexes to identify critical differences from your basic plan and supporting annexes and address them without duplicating effort. The result is a more coherent plan that is easier to understand and implement.