Item 26 - Adoption of the City of Santa Ana Emergency Operations Plan

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City of Santa Ana Emergency Operations Plan Part I Basic Plan 4.6 Emergency Operations Center External Communications and Interface Two primary responsibilities of the City's EOC are to support the operations of field responders and to maintain City government services and functions during an emergency event. This requires the EOC to communicate and coordinate with the City's field responders, with external agencies responding to the event and with other governmental entities responding or providing services or resources. Agencies responding to the emergency may utilize a variety of facilities or personnel to manage the event, including: • Shift supervisors (Watch Commander, Battalion Chief, other managers) • Dispatch Centers • Incident Commanders/Incident Command Posts (ICPs) • Department Operations Centers (DOCs) • Other jurisdiction EOCs • Other City Department offices or facilities Because the City's EOC is not frequently activated, communication between these personnel and facilities and the EOC is not a routine procedure, and requires a positive effort to maintain. The purposes for communication between these personnel and facilities and the EOC include: • Gathering and exchanging information on the status of the emergency situation • Receiving and processing requests for resources needed for the response • Preparing and distributing alerts and warnings or other emergency information to the public • Providing policy direction and setting priorities for the response • Formulating tasks and objectives to drive EOC operations • Tracking of costs, damages and losses generated by the emergency A variety of methods may be utilized between the EOC and other responding personnel and facilities. This is both to accommodate the differing communication systems normally used by these entities, and to provide alternative methods of contact in the event that communications systems that are normally used are disrupted by the emergency event. Communications alternatives include: • A department or agency representative present in the EOC • Phone communications, including landline, cell and satellite phones • Radio communications, including Orange County Countywide 800 MHz radios, VHF or Operational Area Radio, or public amateur (ham) and FRS radios • Email messages • WebEOC internet-based incident management system • Fax messages • Face-to-face messengers The table below provides a communication diagram of City departments and external agencies that the EOC most commonly needs to communicate and coordinate with, the purposes for which the EOC may need to communicate with the department or agency, and the possible methods of communication and interface between these agencies and the EOC. These listings are not exclusive, but represent the primary and most foreseeable agencies, purposes and methods of communication that the EOC should prepare for. 155