115 The Emergency Operations Plan

Course Overview:

This is a new course in our series of short courses for REACT members to be ready to perform communications duties in emergencies. It provides Team officers and members an introduction to writing an emergency operations plan to guide Team actions in a major emergency or disaster. An emergency operations plan answers the routine questions about response in a disaster so that Team leaders can focus on the unique decisions needed for the current event.
Our The Emergency Operations Plans covers:

• What and Why
• The Planning Process
• Completing the Plan
• What Do You Do with the Finished Plan
• Relationship to the IAP
• The Last Check

The course manual is 27 pages in length, and should take no more than 2 hours to complete. There is a detailed final examination – when you are ready, contact our training staff at Training@REACTIntl.org to obtain the web address and password for our online testing system.  Continuing education units are awarded for course completion.

Completing a course on writing an emergency operations plan does not make you an expert and it does not generate a finished plan for your Team. It gives you a tool. When you complete this course you should review your current plan to see if you have learned new ideas that need to be included. If your Team does not have an emergency operations plan, now is the time to talk to your Team officers and get agreement to identify members who would be willing to help develop one. Once you have words on paper, conduct an internal Team tabletop exercise to test what you have written or use your plan during one of REACT International’s quarterly online disaster exercises. Contact Training@REACTIntl.org for more information.