Emergency Management recently finished the 5 year revision cycle of our Emergency Management Plan. Â In Montana, and most places, emergency management is responsible for developing a plan that identifies roles and responsibilities along with the overall system that governs your community during a disaster. Â While this may seem like a simple task, it actually entails a lot of work and takes a long time. Â During a disaster government isn’t able to conduct business like they do on a typical day. Â Our emergency personnel will likely be over taxed, some tools or resources may not be available anymore, and some agencies may need to perform functions that aren’t their typical jobs. Â All of these are examples of what we call planning assumptions.
We take these assumptions and use them to develop plans on how we would operate in these situations. Â We try hard to stay at a high level focusing on roles and responsibilities and not get sucked into hypothetical tactical situations. Â As you might guess, this can take a lot of time to get all the associated government agencies on the same page in this process. Â To help with the work load, Gallatin County reviews 1/5th of the plan each year and adopts a new plan at the end of the 5 year cycle which we completed in December 2016 for all municipalities and unincorporated Gallatin County.
To help emergency officials remain proficient in disaster activities we regularly test our plan with a variety of exercises. Â In March 2017 we will be conducting our next county wide disaster exercise focusing on escalating incidents. Â This exercise will likely involve around 100 emergency officials for an evening of working through a fictional incident. Â The fictional incident will have been developed by a planning team consisting of personnel from many agencies who will have spent 4 month developing the scenario.
You can learn more about Gallatin County’s preparedness planning on our Planning Page.