Welcome to the Elma Emergency Planning Committee web page.
The Elma Emergency Planning Committee was started to develop, maintain, and update the Town of Elma Disaster Plan, to better prepare the Town of Elma, emergency responders, and to protect residents and their property during a disaster or a large scale emergency. The overall goal is to minimize the impact caused by an emergency in the Town of Elma.
Anyone interested in becomming a member is welcome. We meet at 7 pm on the 4th Wednesday of the odd months in the conference room at the Elma Town Hall. No expierience is needed. So far we have worked on emergency shelters in town, the CERT program, HAM Radio, transportation,recruitment, public awareness.
You should have received a pamphlet with the Elma Phone Book this past Summer called "Don't Be Left In The Dark". This was provide by the EEPC and the Elma Kiwanis.
What is a Disaster Plan:
General:
The Town of Elma’s Disaster Plan is a document that:
- Assigns responsibility to organizations and individuals for carrying out specific actions at projected times & places in an emergency that exceeds the capabilities or routine responsibility of any one agency, e.g. the Fire Department.
- Sets forth lines of authority and organizational relationships, and shows how all actions will be coordinated.
- Describes how people and property will be protected in emergencies and disasters.
- Identifies personnel, equipment, facilities. Supplies, and other resources available – within the Town of Elma or by agreement with other jurisdictions – for use during response and recovery operations.
- Identifies steps to address mitigation concerns during response and recovery activities.
As a public document, a Disaster Plan also cites its legal basis, states its objectives, and acknowledges assumptions.
Local Plans:
Local government must act first to attend to the public’s emergency needs. Depending on the nature and size of the emergency, State and Federal assistance may be provided to the town. The town’s Disaster Plan focuses on the measures that are essential for protecting the public. These include warning, emergency public information, evacuation, and shelter.
State Plans:
States play three roles. They assist the Town when capabilities are overwhelmed by an emergency; they themselves respond first to certain emergencies; and they work with the Federal Government when Federal assistance is necessary. The State plan is the framework within which Town plans are created and through which Federal Government becomes involved. As such, the State plan ensures that all levels of government are able to mobilize as a unified emergency organization to safeguard the well-being of State citizens. The State Plan is of critical importance.
Why the Town of Elma needs a Plan:
Governments Responsibility for Emergency Management:
When disasters threaten or strike a jurisdiction, people expect elected officials to take immediate action to deal with the problem. The government is expected to marshal its resources, channel the efforts of voluntary agencies and private enterprise in the community, and solicit assistance from outside of the Town of Elma if necessary.
In all States and most localities, that popular expectation is given force by statute or ordinance. Congress also recognizes State and local emergency management responsibility in the Robert T. Stafford Disaster Relief and Emergency Assistance Act, as amended:
- “It is the intent of Congress, by this Act, to provide an orderly and continuing means of assistance by the Federal Government to State and local governments in carrying out their responsibilities to alleviate the suffering and damage which result from […] disasters (Sec. 101(b), emphasis added).
- “The purpose of this title is […] to vest responsibility for emergency preparedness jointly in the Federal Government and the several States and their political subdivisions” (Sec. 601).
The elected leadership in each jurisdiction is legally responsible for ensuring that necessary and appropriate actions are taken to protect people and property from the consequences of emergencies and disasters.
Comprehensive Emergency Management:
Governments can discharge their emergency management responsibilities by taking four interrelated actions: mitigation, preparedness, response, and recovery. A systematic approach is to treat each action as one phase of a comprehensive process, with each phase building on the accomplishments of the preceding one. The overall goal is to minimize the impact caused by an emergency in the Town of Elma.
- Mitigation: actions involve lasting, often permanent, reduction of exposure to, probability of, or potential loss from hazard events. Cost-effective mitigation measures are the key to reducing losses in the long term. Attention to mitigation opportunities can make a safer community for all of us.
- Preparedness: While mitigation can make a community safer, it does not eliminate risk and vulnerability for all hazards. Therefore, the Town of Elma must be ready to face emergency threats that have not been mitigated away. Preparedness involves establishing authorities and responsibilities for emergency actions and garnering the resources to support them.
- Response: The onset of an emergency creates a need for time-sensitive actions to save lives and property, as well as for action to begin to begin stabilizing the situation so that the jurisdiction can regroup.
- Recovery: is the effort to restore infrastructure and the social and economic life of a community to normal, but it should incorporate mitigation as a goal.
Criticality of All-Hazard Plans:
The centerpiece of comprehensive emergency management is the Disaster Plan. First, the plan defines the scope of preparedness activity necessary to make the plan more than a mere paper plan. Training helps emergency responders to become familiar with their responsibilities and to acquire the skills necessary to perform assigned tasks. Exercising provides a means to validate plans, checklists, and response procedures and to evaluate the skills of response personnel.
Second, the plan facilitates response and short-term recovery (which set the stage for successful long-term recovery).
Finally, a plan that is flexible enough for use in all emergencies – including unforeseen events – provides a community with an emergency management “bottom line.”
What a Disaster Plan is Not:
We must understand what a Disaster Plan is not. While it has been referred to as a “response plan” and the “centerpiece” of its comprehensive emergency management effort, that does not mean that the plan details all aspects of that effort.
Other types of Plans:
Emergency management involves several kinds of plans, just as it involves several kinds of actions.
- Administration Plans: Describe policies and procedures basic to the support of a governmental endeavor: typically they deal less with external work products than with internal processes.
- Mitigation Plan: A jurisdiction may outline its strategy for mitigating the hazards it faces; in fact, a mitigation plan is required of States that seek funds for post-event mitigation after Presidential declarations under the Stafford Act.
- Preparedness Plans: Preparedness planning covers three objectives: maintaining existing emergency management capabilities in readiness; preventing emergency management capabilities from themselves falling victim to emergencies; and, if possible, augmenting the Towns emergency management capability.
Plans versus Procedures:
Although the distinction is between plans and procedures are fluid, writers of a Disaster Plan should use it to keep the Disaster Plan free of unnecessary detail. The basic criterion is: What does the entire audience of this part of the Disaster Plan need to know, or have set out as a matter of public record?
Ex: A Disaster Plan that assigns responsibility for putting out fires to the fire department would not detail what should be done at the scene or what fire department is most appropriate. The Disaster Plan would refer to the fire department SOP’s for that.