Plans

Planning is one of the most important activities in the "Preparedness Phase" of the four phases of emergency management - Mitigation, Preparedness, Response and Recovery. Planning is followed with training and exercising the plan to evaluate how well is works. The plans developed must be consistent with Federal and State laws as well as local ordinances. Typical emergency management plans identify a mission or purpose, organization responsibilities, and direction and control aspects. Appropriate personnel are trained to these plans and then the plans are evaluated usually through some type of training exercise, which results in making the appropriate modifications and revisions.

King County supports a number of programs aimed at responding to and preparing for regional and personal emergencies (click on highlighted text for more information):

  • The Comprehensive Emergency Management Plan (CEMP) used by elected and appointed King County officials to mitigate, prepare for, respond to, and recover from disasters.

  • The Regional Hazard Mitigation Plan (RHMP) helps to identify and mitigate the impacts of disasters. This is one of the steps in creating a community more resilient to natural, technological and societal hazards.

  • The Hazard Identification Vulnerability Analysis (HIVA) identifies all the potential hazards that exist or affect the King County region, including history of hazard events, probability of future events, and potential impacts.

  • The Regional Disaster Plan (RDP) is a unique "mutual aid agreement" that establishes the framework to allow public, private and nonprofit organizations an avenue to efficiently assist one another during a disaster.

  • The Disaster Debris Operating Plan Templates and Checklist provides templates and a step-by-step process for developing a debris plan for a jurisdiction. The Checklist provides those items that need to be addressed in a comprehensive Debris Operating Plan.

  • The King County UASI Evacuation Template is designed to aid jurisdictions in preparing an evacuation annex to their Comprehensive Emergency Management Plan (CEMP), or to serve as a stand-alone plan for a specific hazard. The template presents evacuation planning concepts that are applicable across all scales and scopes of evacuations.

Committees