Three Steps to Emergency Planning for your Public Agency

Tallahassee, FL — If you live in an area vulnerable to natural disasters, chances are you’ve been encouraged to build an emergency plan for your family. Some helpful tips might include identifying primary and secondary means of transportation, communication, evacuation, and putting together a survival kit for sheltering in place. At the heart of this process is identifying the resources you might need, identifying the resources you have, and figuring out how to bridge the gap between the two, before any emergency situation actually happens.

For your home, emergency planning means keeping everyone safe and protecting property to the greatest extent possible. But how do we approach emergency planning for your public agency?

By taking a detailed look at three things — People, Places, and Processes — you can build the foundation of a strong plan for an emergency situation:

1. People — Make sure your staff have personal preparedness plans, to identify the things they need to take care of so they can focus on their work.
2. Places — Make sure facilities are available and a secondary location identified if something should prevent your primary location from being used. For example, in the case of extensive wind damage to your original office, where will your staff set up instead? If the area has potential for flooding, what flood zone is your office in? What zone is the secondary location in?
3. Processes — Most important is communication, and aside from that, what are the essential functions of your agency? What additional resources do you need to continue providing these essential functions when standard resources such as electricity, water, phones, and internet service are not available? Are you able to secure these resources ahead of time so the plan can go into place quickly in the event of an emergency?

To ensure you have covered all of your bases for People, Places, and Processes in your agency, the best approach is to develop a detailed Continuity of Operations Plan with an Emergency Management Consultant. A qualified consultant knows all the right questions to ask and can help you identify resources in your area to ensure your constituents receive the services they need.