When was the last time you exercised your agency's emergency operations plan? When was the last time you even looked at it? Has anything changed since that last look?

Chiefs have many written policies, guidelines and protocols to keep current, and dwindling resources to assign to these important issues. At times these updates are placed in the whenever box, as in “whenever there's time.” But problems arise when an emergency precedes the whenever.

I found I needed to dust off and revise the EOP for Wyoming, Ohio, after four activations for severe-weather emergencies in the last year. We handled the emergencies and accomplished our tasks efficiently, but the incidents also showed how many things in the plan had changed — people, policies, even dispatch procedures — and emphasized the need to move the revisions from whenever to now.

If you don't have — or understand the concept of — an EOP, it differs from your standard operating procedures or guidelines for daily operations. It more closely parallels the National Response Plan in its integration of additional resources from outside your department. As an emergency intensifies, or continues for a longer duration, these outside resources should be used for a seamless response. For example, in the recent activations of our EOP, most of the additional resources needed were from various other city departments, i.e., building, police and public works.

But like the Incident Command System, an EOP also can be expanded to include finance, planning and administration, and other levels of public or private agencies for more severe incidents. For our clean-up after a windstorm in September 2008, these additional resources included the county's emergency management agency, the Red Cross, outside contractors, insurance adjustors, and eventually the state emergency management agency and FEMA for reimbursement of the additional expenses.

While the EOP is compatible with NIMS, it must be easier to grasp, especially for individuals who do not use either ICS or NIMS on a regular basis. The purpose of the EOP is to formalize the steps needed to prevent, if possible, or mitigate the adverse affects of an incident while cooperating with other local governments and organizations.

It is assumed that the city will continue to be exposed to potential hazards throughout an incident; that we need to plan to handle these incidents for up to 72 hours on our own or with limited local aid; that we will attempt to warn of an impending incident when possible; and that proper implementation of the plan will lessen both loss of life and property in our jurisdiction.

An EOP has four basic sections, although you may wish to expand or add more categories as needed for your community. My EOP includes:

General overview. This section discusses the three degrees of severity, with a school- bus incident with multiple casualties being on the low end of the scale and a bio/chemical incident or severe tornado affecting a large population or area at the high end. In each case, the level of notification and support personnel from within the city is clearly defined and suggestions are in place for additional resources.

Organizational assignments. This pre-assigns city personnel to their areas of responsibility and defines the expectations of those positions for the duration of the emergency.

Operational annex. This is an alphabetical list of responsibilities according to assigned position. It also lists, by the severity of the incident, the responsibilities and outcomes expected for each position.

Resource annex. Like the operational annex, the resource annex is an alphabetical list of contact information, primarily for outside agencies that the city employee or department head may wish to call for assistance.

Finally, the EOP discusses the direction and control of the incident, including the continuity of government, with a list of succession should a disaster injure or kill key members of the administration.

The EOP itself is only 14 pages; however, the operational annex is 84 pages and the resource annex is another 56 pages. Each city department, department head and assistant department head has their own copy, and additional copies are located in the pre-determined emergency operations center or alternate site.

Given their experience with incident command and, in some states, their statutory responsibility for handling emergencies, fire chiefs mostly likely will be responsible for establishing EOPs. It behooves them to write and periodically update these plans so departments can implement them quickly when needed.

The first and most severe activation of my department's EOP brings us back to that September 2008 windstorm, when remnants of Hurricane Ike collided with a cold front along the Ohio Valley. The windstorm and wind-driven rains toppled old trees and led to a six-day power outage over 80% of the city.

During that period, the fire department responded to 147 calls, 93 of them within the first 10 hours of the storm. These calls included trapped motorists on flooded highways, fallen trees on homes and myriad downed power lines with intermittent power outages. In the early hours of the storm, we were dispatched to neighboring communities to assist with several structure fires and residential collapse that resulted in the occupant's death. The most serious structure fire involved a power transformer that snapped off a pole and fell into a multi-family apartment. That fire also injured two firefighters.

Within in the first hour, the storm's intensity and its duration became evident, and the city activated the EOP. Fire/EMS, police and public works mapped the scope of the incident and established priorities. They also requested that the Hamilton County Communications Center assign a single talk group to Wyoming fire units for both dispatch and radio traffic.

It became evident quickly that two water-pumping stations lost power. The water tower and reservoir had adequate emergency generators, but the main well pumps were dormant. Public works made restoring that power their first priority and clearing the main thoroughfares or setting detours their second. For example, Route 4 — which becomes the main north-south highway through Wyoming — was impassible for four days because of several trees and electrical-transmission lines downed in the street. Public works had to establish a detour to keep this main artery into Cincinnati flowing. However, this led to other issues, such as commercial trucks becoming lost, wandering into very narrow residential streets and needing assistance to turn around.

Police made several code-red reverse-911 calls to city residents to update them on everything from school closings to alternate traffic routes to power-restoration estimates. For the most part, residents quickly adjusted to the changes, including the city's initial call to conserve water and to treat all intersections as four-way stops. A few impatient citizens, however, reported the same downed power lines or outages repeatedly, believing that magically would place them on the top of the repair list.

The city deployed 10 fire/EMS apparatus and 14 public-works vehicles and construction equipment, either for direct incident-related calls or to assess the main areas of damage. This deployment became more formalized on the second day, as the building department began triaging structures to determine if they could continue to be occupied. At the same time, multi-jurisdiction conference calls began with Duke Energy, which recently had taken over gas and electric service from the Cinergy Group. Unfortunately, city and county public officials wouldn't learn until the fourth day of the incident that Duke did not operate with the same priorities or procedures as Cinergy. For example, Duke placed public buildings, schools and nursing homes on a lower priority than commercial or retail buildings.

On the second day, the city council authorized special funding to deal with the additional costs of the storm for personnel, equipment and repairs. Tires became an essential commodity, as the debris damaged several vehicles, including an aerial truck and a support unit. The finance department became an integral part of the EOP, as it tracked expenses and purchase orders that ultimately became the key for federal reimbursement.

The city used the EOP throughout the six-day incident, and it became the standard for subsequent emergency operations this year during a Jan. 8 ice-and-snow storm, a Feb. 11 windstorm, and a June 2 torrential storm with flooding. The after-action reports of the 2008 incident became the basis for several EOP changes and enhancements. Most noticeable was the need to use alternate communications methods among the city departments. Even though the fire chief can request a separate talk group through the Hamilton County Communications Center, the 800 MHz system quickly became overloaded, as the incident affected nearly all of the city of Cincinnati and Hamilton County. Cell phones also were rendered inoperable by the power outages and damage to cell sites. Wyoming relied on its older 158 MHz city band or the high volume of radio traffic among city crews while emergency dispatch only came through the 800 MHz talk group. Next year, the city will make improvements to the VHF city band to ensure redundant communications if the 800 MHz system again becomes overwhelmed. At this time, coordination with Duke Energy is ongoing, with several suggestions for their handling of prioritization under discussion.

All things considered, having an EOP ready has proved to be beneficial. Dust off yours and see what changes are needed today — before you need the plan tomorrow.

Chief Robert R. Rielage, CFO, EFO, MIFireE, is the chief of Wyoming (Ohio) Fire-EMS, a 78-member combination fire department bordering Cincinnati. He previously served as the fire marshal of the state of Ohio. A graduate of the Kennedy School's Program for Senior Executives in State and Local Government at Harvard University, Rielage holds a master's degree in public administration from Norwich University and is the immediate past-president of the Institution of Fire Engineers-USA Branch. He is a member of the FIRE CHIEF Editorial Advisory Board.

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