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.