C1 Emergency Management Theory and Planning

Question 1

What is Mitigation?

Answer 1

Actives or actions providing a critical foundation in order to reduce the loss of life and property from natural and/or man-made disasters by avoiding or lessening the impact of a disaster and providing value to the public by creating safer communities.

Mitigation seeks to fix the cycle of disaster damage, reconstruction, and repeated damage. These activities or actions, in most cases, will have a long-term sustained effect.

Question 2

What is Preparedness?

Answer 2

Preparedness encompass actions taken before an event to plan, organize, equip, train, and exercise in order to deal with emergencies that cannot be avoided or entirely mitigated.

Question 3

What is Response?

Answer 3

Activities that address the short-term, direct effects of an incident, including saving lives, protecting property, and meeting basic human needs.

Response also includes the execution of EOPs and of mitigation activities.

Question 4

What is Recovery? What could be included?

Answer 4

Near and Long term actions that taken to return the organization to a pre-emergency level of operation or to a new level of operation.

Recovery could include implementation of continuity of operation or business resumption plans, activation of emergency relocation sites, and reconstitution or restoration at the regional location or new permanent location.

Question 5

What is BC? What 3 things does a BIA try to determine?

Answer 5

Business Continuity-The private sector version of emergency management.
BC usually includes a BIA (Business Impact Analysis). A BIA determines:

1) Criticality (Every critical business function).
2) Maximum Downtime.
3) Resource Requirements.

Question 6

What are the three OBJECTIVES of emergency management?

Answer 6

1) Minimize the probability of a threat or emergency.
2) Mitigate the impact when the event occurs
3) Recover and Resume normal operations

Question 7

What are the 3 types of emergencies?

Answer 7

1) Natural
2) Human (internal or external)
3) Accidental

Human threats are deliberate or adverse actions and events such as terrorist activity, arson, civil disorder, barricade, or hostage situations.

Accidental includes: hazardous material spills, power outages, communications outages etc.

Question 8

What are four examples of periodic drills and four reasons to doing them?

Answer 8

1) Tabletop exercise conducted by a CMT (crisis management team)
2) Evacuation and shelter in place drills for all employees
3) Walk-through of an emergency plan or particular emergency response function by selected organizational personnel
4) A full exercise involving outside response agencies.

Reasons:
1) Check plan work-ability
2) Determine the level of staff awareness and training
3) Evaluate the adequacy of emergency communications
4) Identify shortcomings in evacuation procedures

Question 9

What are the three rules when performing an emergency exercise?

Answer 9

1) “Train to the plan and exercise the plan”
2) Make employees take it seriously and act like it’s the real thing.
3) Be aware that accidents can happen during exercises.

Question 10

Should external agencies be notified that you are performing a drill?

Answer 10

Yes, especially if employees are doing the drill blind and don’t actually know it’s a drill.

Question 11

What are three time-tested PRINCIPLES that should be applied to the protection of life?

Answer 11

1) Evacuation and shelter, move all persons in disaster area to area of safety
2) Personal Protection, ensure that a person who remain in a threatened are as protected as possible
3) Rescue and relief, provide a ready means of support and assistance for injured persons

Question 12

For preventing and minimizing injury what are two guiding PRINCIPLES?

Answer 12

1) Design safety. Eliminate in advance conditions that increase the likelihood of injury given the nature of the emergency and the character of the organization or facility.
2) Training. Prepare those who will deal with the disaster so they will not increase their exposure through ignorance or ineptitude.

Question 13

Who is the Emergency Management Coordinator? What Emergency Management Structure for an organization should be formed when preparing/maintaining plans? What is a CMT? What are Alternate Designates? What is not recommended?

Answer 13

Emergency management coordinator. Ultimately responsible for making sure plans are incorporated properly.

A Crisis Management Team is a committee of representatives from critical departments or divisions which should be appointed to help the coordinate organize the plan.
Alternate Designates, those who can make decisions when others are away. Preferably more than one alternate should be designated per person

It is NOT recommended for an organization to create a new department solely for emergency management. The emergency management team should be comprised of representatives from every department.

Question 14

What is the ICS? What are its five main elements? Who is in charge? What should the CMT do when an ICS is deployed?

Answer 14

The Incident Command System (ICS) is a command and control mechanism used by many public agencies and jurisdictions.
1. Command
2. Operations
3. Planning
4. Logistics
5. Finance and administration.
The leader/coordinator in an ICS command system is called the Incident Commander (IC)

If one incident commander is insufficient or multiple organizations are involved, then the UC Unified Command unit can be formed. There is a single incident command post with the leaders of each agency coordinating together.

During an emergency, the CMT (crisis management team) supports the incident commander)

Question 15

What is NIMS?

Answer 15

National Incident Management System

Question 16

What is DHS?

Answer 16

Department of Homeland Security

Question 17

What are the six typical duties of the CMT and who makes it up?

Answer 17

The duties of the Crisis Management Team are:
1) Coordination and implementation of appropriate contingency plans
2) Coordinating resources of support needed by responding agencies
3) Coordinating with internal and external agencies as required
4) Developing alternative courses of action for presentation to decision makers
5) Developing a media management strategy and preparing appropriate press releases regarding the incident.
6) Maintaining contact with victims and family members as appropriate.

Management representatives, employee representatives, public affairs, human resources, facilities engineering, security, safety and occupational health, legal counsel.

Question 18

What is a EOC? CMC? Should there be a backup?

Answer 18

An Emergency Operations Centre (EOC) or Crisis Management Centre is from which the emergency response can be directed. Team members in the EOC must maintain concentration, so entry should be restricted to the EOC to minimize distractions.

There should be a designated backup EOC/CMC. Both the primary and backup EOCs should have potable water source and backup water supply, and a method of disposing of human poop.

Question 19

Is communications important in an emergency? What should be readily available?

Answer 19

Yes, Yes it is.

Numbers for key staff, law enforcement and fire departments well as those of all other emergency services should be readily available at all times to avoid delay in calling them.

Question 20

Who should always be ready to take charge? What is Command and Management Succession?

Answer 20

A senior management member should always be available to take charge. If an emergency happens after hours, a security officer or another senior staff member will need to take charge.

Companies can prepare emergency succession lists with phone numbers may be stored in a safe or contained within a plan.

Some plans/bylaws allow board meetings to occur and decisions made even when quorum cannot be established.

Question 21

What is mutual aid?

Answer 21

Mutual aid is when businesses or organizations agree to help each other in a disaster.

This could allow earlier restoration of business operations/continued operations.

Question 22

What considerations should be given for family support and victims?

Answer 22

The person who is responsible for communicating with families should ensure family members and victims are informed of efforts taken to resolve the incident.

The support centre for family and victims should be as far away from media as possible. Should have, food beverages, temporary lodging, counseling or pastoral support, and the person/people should coordinate transportation for the families to the incident site if appropriate.

Question 23

After a disaster, is more or less security presence required on site?

Answer 23

More than less, the disaster could have damaged fences or walls that wold allow looters/outsiders to gain easier access to the facilities; therefore, additional guards may be required.

Question 24

What doe shelter in place mean?

Answer 24

Shelter-In-Place (No shit, really? Who knew?) May be a designated area.

Question 25

What should be done/considered for an emergency shutdown?

Answer 25

Specific employees with familiar with equipment shutdown should be assigned to shutdown of the equipment.

Shutdown crews may need to stay in a facility to shut down the equipment for an extended period, they should be provided with a Shelter In Place location

Question 26

What is the definition for BC? What is the goal of BC?

Answer 26

A comprehensive managed effort to prioritize key business process, identify significant threats to normal operation, and plan mitigation strategies to ensure effective and efficient organizational response to the challenges that surface during and after a crisis.

The goal of BC is to resume critical functions as quickly as possible. Contracting out of specific functions is an option.

Question 27

What is organizational resilience?

Answer 27

“the adaptive capacity of an organization in a complex and changing environment”

“the ability of an organization to resist being affected by an event or the ability to return to an acceptable level of performance in an acceptable period of time after being affected by an event.

Question 28

What is a BIA? What should be done with records?

Answer 28

A Business Impact Analysis is an integral part of the business continuity planning process. It is used to identify an entity’s critical functions. And to help develop and prioritize recovery strategies.

Vital backup records should be stored at backup locations to ensure the survival of a business.

Question 29

What are the five considerations for a backup site?

Answer 29

1) Power
2) Communications
3) Backup data
4) Emergency funds
5) Equipment and supplies

Question 30

What are the four ELEMENTS of emergency Management?

Answer 30

1) Mitigation
2) Preparedness
3) Response
4) Recovery

Question 31

What are the three Resumption Activities?

Answer 31

1) Process Resumption Prioritization.
2) Resumption of Critical Processes.
3) Resumption of remaining Processes.