Fiscal Year 2010 Community-Specific Integrated Emergency Management Course (IEMC)

Reminder Monday, December 1, 2008, is the deadline for the FEMA/EMI IEMC Community Specific applications for 20010. Only originals will be accepted - no faxes please. Please contact Robyn Knappe if you anticipate needing a slight extension. Information below.

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Each year States, counties, cities, tribal communities, and specialized jurisdictions throughout the United States apply to the Emergency Management Institute (EMI) to conduct an IEMC for their jurisdictions. IEMCs are exercise-based courses comprising of discussion-based, tabletop, and functional exercises in addition to group planning sessions, formal self-evaluation feedback opportunities, and lectures presented by subject matter experts. Following detailed scenarios and prescribed master scenario events list (MSEL), IEMCs are conducted by expert exercise controllers who communicate information (from citizen calls to notification of destruction) to the participants via telephone, TV news broadcasts, radio, messenger, electronic maps, crisis information software, emails and faxes.

IEMCs place jurisdictions’ emergency operations center (EOC) personnel in realistic crisis situations within a structured learning environment. The jurisdiction selects the scenario it wants to exercise, for example, a special event, hurricane, or terrorist incident - the exercises are then developed to reflect the hazards or events facing the jurisdiction, the type of EOC used by the jurisdiction, and the organizations included in the jurisdictional emergency plans.

A community-specific IEMC builds awareness and skills needed to develop and implement the jurisdiction’s policies, plans, procedures, and mutual aid agreements in an EOC environment. Skilled EMI exercise specialists conduct a pre-course analysis in the jurisdiction in order to collect local information, identify critical infrastructure, study transportation systems, and analyze current response plans. From this information, exercises are built to test the jurisdiction’s planned approach to specific hazards and to surface issues for which the IEMC participants may need to re-evaluate and develop corrective action plans.

Recent IEMCs have included Daytona Beach, Florida and NASCAR in preparation for the Daytona 500 and Dallas-Ft. Worth International Airport for a terrorism incident and Denver with the Democratic National Convention. Upcoming IEMCs include a university incident during a natural disaster for Yolo Co., CA and the University of California, Davis and a catastrophic weather event for Tulsa County, OK and 3 tribal communities.

IEMCs are designed for personnel who fill specific emergency support positions within their community - officials from local, regional, state, and federal emergency management agencies, senior level personnel from response agencies and organizations (e.g., law enforcement, fire, emergency medical services, public health), managers from volunteer organizations active in disasters (VOADs), and representatives from private organizations which participate in local, regional, and state responses. Each participant is assigned a role similar to their real-life position. To view a list of positions of appropriate attendees, please go to the IEMC website at: http://www.training.fema.gov/EMIWeb/IEMC/iemcpos.asp. Generally, IEMC's are geared toward communities of 100,000 population or more.

All application packages will be submitted to the State Training Manager for CDEM, Robyn Knappe, 9195 E. Mineral Ave. #200 Centennial CO 80112. Contact Robyn at robyn.knappe@state.co.us or 720-852-6617 for more information.

For information on how to prepare an application for a community-specific IEMC, for continual updates on IEMCs, and to sign up for our free email subscription service, click on the link: Sign up via our free e-mail subscription service at our web site: http://www.training.fema.gov/EMIWeb/IEMC/IEMC_15.asp.

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Colorado Governor's Emergency Management Conference
February 24 - 26, 2009

The Colorado Governor's Emergency Management Conference will be February 24, 25 and 26, 2009, at The Inverness Hotel and Conference Center in Englewood, Colorado. The agenda and times can be viewed on the Colorado Emergency Management Association (CEMA) website. All exhibitors and attendees can register and pay by credit card or check at www.cemacolorado.com.

The theme for the 2009 Governor’s Conference will be “The Evolution of a Disaster." Using the variety of disasters and planned events over the past year, the flow of the conference will highlight lessons learned in planning, response, and recovery. Emergency management and response agencies will present workshops from real field experiences for all to share. The annual conference is an opportunity to improve the capability of the emergency management community through networking and education.

Please join us for this years exciting conference! For more information please contact Cindy VonFeldt at 720-852-6628.

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CDEM Deputy Director Appointed

Colorado Division of Emergency Management (CDEM) Director, Hans Kallam, has appointed Bruce Holloman to serve as the Deputy Director for CDEM. On a daily basis, Bruce will continue to perform his current operations duties. Additionally, Bruce will act on his behalf for all matters of the Division in the absence of the Director. Bruce's leadership and management experience complement the Division's current staff and will help continue our mutual success in the future.

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The course is designed to provide students with hands-on problem-solving opportunities regarding chemical and biological incident response. It will introduce topics and information, provide laboratory experiences, and culminate with a free-play exercise to practice concepts taught in the classroom and laboratory. Dugway Proving Ground (DPG), West Desert Test Center (WDTC) Joint Operational Testing & Training Division, currently provides many of the nation’s protectors with state-of-the-art advanced chemical and biological counter-Terrorism courses.

This Ph.D.- taught course provides lectures and hands-on training in chemical and biological environments, focusing on agent characteristics, sampling, protection, detection, decontamination, and signatures. Onsite courses allow students to work in biological level 2 and 3 laboratories with live agents, and in certified chemical facilities with actual chemical agents. Biological and chemical simulants that trigger detectors systems are used to enhance practical exercises for real-time readings and realism of the training.

For more information please visit www.acbirc.net

Click here for a student application.

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2009 Western Colorado All-Hazards Conference
March 31 - April 3, 2009
Grand Junction, Colorado

The 2009 Western Colorado All-Hazards Conference, schedule for the Spring of 2009, will be help at the Two Rivers Convention Center in Grand Junction, Colorado. This conference provides professional development and networking for:

• Emergency Management
• Law Enforcement
• Fire / EMS / Hazmat
• Fire Safety
• Public Health
• Hospitals / Medical
• Mental Health / Human Services
• Schools / Crisis Teams
• Public Works
• Agriculture
• Medical Examiners / Coroner
• Government Officials
• Volunteers

For more information or to sponsor this event, contact Nanci Quintana at 970-248-6947 (nanci.quintana@mesacounty.us) or Diana Andrade at 970-683-6642 (diana.andrade@mesacounty.us).

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Catastrophic Incident Annex to the National Response Framework

The Department of Homeland Security recently released the revised Catastrophic Incident Annex to the National Response Framework (NRF). This Incident Annex establishing the overall strategy for implementing and coordinating an accelerated, proactive national response to a catastrophic incident. The Incident Annex can be found at: http://www.fema.gov/pdf/emergency/nrf/nrf_CatastrophicIncidentAnnex.pdf

A revised Catastrophic Incident Supplement is being written and will be released, at a later time (TBD), as a separate document.

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CRS Report for Congress: Would an Influenza Pandemic Qualify as a Major Disaster Under the Stafford Act?

Legislative Attorney Edward C. Liu has written a report titled Would an Influenza Pandemic Qualify as a Major Disaster Under the Stafford Act?. This report provides a legal analysis of the eligibility of an influenza pandemic to be declared by the President as a major disaster under the Robert T. Stafford Disaster Relief and Emergency Assistance Act. In 1997, the discovery of a virulent H5N1 strain of avian influenza raised the possibility of a flu pandemic occurring in the United States. In such an event, the Stafford Act could provide authority for federal assistance. Although it is widely agreed that emergency assistance under the Stafford Act could be provided by the President in the event of flu pandemic, questions remain as to whether major disaster assistance would be available.

An analysis of the Stafford Act suggests that this issue was not addressed by Congress when it drafted the current definition of a major disaster, and that neither inclusion nor exclusion of flu pandemics from major disaster assistance is explicitly required by the current statutory language.

To read this report, please visit http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/RL34724.pdf.