For those of you who have designed your emergency response plan around the4 Phases of Emergency Preparedness, you should know that there has been a change to that structure. FEMA has added a fifth phase: Protection. The 5 phases now look like this…
Prevention, Protection, Mitigation, Response, and Recovery
Prevention – the capabilities necessary to avoid, deter, or stop an imminent crime or threatened or actual mass casualty incident. Prevention is the action schools take to prevent a threatened or actual incident from occurring.
Protection – the capabilities to secure schools against acts of violence and manmade or natural disasters. Protection focuses on ongoing actions that protect students, teachers, staff, visitors, networks, and property from a threat or hazard.
Mitigation – the capabilities necessary to eliminate or reduce the loss of life and property damage by lessening the impact of an event or emergency. In this document, “mitigation” also means reducing the likelihood that threats and hazards will happen.
Response – the capabilities necessary to stabilize an emergency once it has already happened or is certain to happen in an unpreventable way; establish a safe and secure environment; save lives and property; and facilitate the transition to recovery.
Recovery – the capabilities necessary to assist schools affected by an event or emergency in restoring the learning environment.
If you don’t already have a copy of FEMA’s Guide for Developing High-Quality School Emergency Operations Plans, simply click here for a free download. In addition, I am a trained EOP/Emergency Operations Plan facilitator and would be happy to help if you need to update your plan. Simply contact me here.