Is YOUR Department Ready For “The BIg One?”

National Preparedness Month provides us all another opportunity to take time to focus on the wide variety of risks that confront our communities and emergency services providers. While it is obvious that fire and other emergency service organizations are consistently refining their capabilities to address the service challenges of their operational environments, it is less obvious as to what material investment they are making to protect their own personnel and resources. Emergency services providers across the Nation spend countless hours assessing ways to improve their service delivery capabilities in the mindset of “responders,” but what happens when circumstances develop that make these “responders’ simply another part of the at risk population?

USFA has just released a Technical Report entitled Fire Department Preparedness for Extreme Weather Emergencies and Natural Disasters which highlights a number of key issues to be addressed in developing organizational preparedness initiatives for specific hazards. The report offers various practical examples of lessons learned which have been incorporated into emergency operating plans and mutual aid agreements, which can serve as food for thought and models to others.

In the state of California, fire departments have invested huge sums and tireless efforts to develop sophisticated earthquake related emergency operations plans and resilience capabilities addressing a wide variety of issues, including structural standards for facilities, sustained periods requiring self reliance, and staffing challenges. However, many other jurisdictions across the Nation sharing similar seismic fault risks have yet to plan and exercise for such a potentially catastrophic eventuality. While this and other such natural risks may be relatively infrequent occurrences, their high consequence impact potential should prompt studied preparedness efforts.

Has your department conducted formal operational risk assessments for all the likely weather emergencies or natural disasters that could compromise its resources and the service expectations of the community? Has your organization developed innovative ways to leverage resources for high impact events that take in to account the lessons learned from previous events that could be shared by others?

Article Written by Ken Kuntz / USFA - Source USFA Website