The reality of EOCs, however, is that many municipalities make do with the limited resources they have.
But small and large EOCs have learned some of the same lessons -- communicate, plan for the worst, maintain old-fashioned methods of communication and share basic necessities, to name a few.
Plan for the Worst
Dallas/Fort Worth (DFW) International Airport is the third busiest airport in the country, with 60 million passengers flying through each year. Its new 13,950-square-foot, $12.4 million Airport and Emergency Operations Center is proclaimed by DFW officials to be the "most advanced airport operations center in the world, post 9/11."
The center houses four primary operation areas: the Airport Operations Center, the EOC, Airfield Operations and the Department of Public Safety dispatch area, allowing officials to better coordinate their work.
"When we were building this EOC, it was under the guise that if something were to go down big enough to affect the region, it's inherently going to affect the DFW Airport as well, so we might as well be ready for it," said Lanita Driskill, emergency management specialist at the airport's Department of Public Safety.
The EOC has two main control panels that allow the center to split into two fully functioning EOCs in the event of both a regional and airport disaster. The EOC has 42 staff members, who, in the event of an emergency, wear color-coded vests that distinguish job functions.
Equipment at the EOC includes 32 desktop computers networked with dedicated printers and copiers, paper shredders, inbound and outbound fax machines, a ham radio, standard office supplies, a GIS plotter, six projectors with screens that drop down from the ceiling, four smart boards, 10 plasma screen TVs, and clocks with world time zones. There is also a policy table for the command staff and separate tables for affiliated agencies. A microphone system links communications throughout the EOC, and a large policy breakout room can be sectioned off.
A paradigm shift for the airport was consolidating the various emergency response organizations previously located in different areas of the 18,000-acre airport and resettling them into one location.
"If you can bring everybody under one roof, especially from an airport perspective, you're going to have much better situational awareness and a much better ability to reason on the fly, and respond quickly and in an organized and unified way," said David Magana, manager of public affairs for DFW Airport.
The new EOC at DFW Airport was under construction when Hurricane Katrina struck in August 2005. Shortly after, 100,000 evacuees came to the north Texas region. The experience was something no emergency manager at the DFW Airport EOC was prepared for, yet the biggest lesson learned from the catastrophe was that planning for the worst is essential.
"I think the lessons we learned are the same lessons everyone else learned, which was that no matter how much planning you can do, you can always do more, and your response has to be coordinated on so many levels when it reaches a certain proportion of a disaster," Magana said. "Your response has to be so well coordinated since there are so many opportunities to fail."
Manage the Crisis
An integral part of any EOC operation is communication -- for an EOC to be successful in a disaster, communication redundancies are necessary.
Many Louisiana jurisdictions learned this the hard way when Katrina hit. Plaquemines Parish, for instance, was completely under water and lost all communications, including redundancies, during the storm.
"The more you can build up as backup systems, the more success you will have," said Jesse St. Amant, director of the Plaquemines Parish Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness. "No one in this entire region thought we would have total communications failure, yet it did happen."
Since then, Plaquemines Parish was one of the first jurisdictions in the country to implement the 760 MHz radio system that will instill communication interoperability throughout the region, St. Amant said.
A successful EOC requires year-round planning and a standard operating procedure, St. Amant said. An essential element of emergency planning in the region is the Louisiana Disaster Act of 1993, which lets parish governments and emergency managers make and suspend laws, including curfews. Because of this governance power, Plaquemines Parish evacuated nearly all of its 2,800 residents before Katrina struck.
To effectively coordinate responses, St. Amant said, an EOC should also have liaisons with outside agencies. His EOC wish list includes a good lawyer and public affairs officer.
One of the key lessons learned from Katrina was the importance of good relationships and communications with the media -- especially the national media. In a telltale instance of miscommunication between the media and emergency managers, St. Amant recalled the anecdote of a reporter stationed in New Orleans' French Quarter who said that the area had only sustained little damage and flooding had stabilized. But in reality, St. Amant said, levees were failing and people were drowning in their attics. This incident considerably slowed recovery time in the New Orleans region.
Good Running Shoes
Mike Martinet, executive director of the Office of Disaster Management, Area G, in Los Angeles County, is a self-proclaimed iconoclast when it comes to EOCs. Martinet provides emergency management services to 14 cities within Los Angeles County, and believes that, especially in larger jurisdictions, an overreliance on technology can hinder emergency management and EOCs.
"There's lots of EOC software out there," he said. "People look at EOC software and then forget that it can fail, and they lose the ability to do things manually, with paper and pencil if push comes to shove, or do things on a stand-alone computer, like Excel spreadsheet or Access database if the network doesn't work."
Martinet is not against using the latest technology, but he insists EOC staff should learn to maintain two systems of emergency operations: one using new technology and the other based on "old-fashioned" emergency management methods.
Martinet believes EOCs should be like offices, and accordingly stocked with office supplies, especially a quick and solid photocopier, since copies can be a primary source of communication if communications fail during a disaster. Often EOCs will have to print, copy and distribute photos, news releases, action plans, notices, informational bulletins and other forms.
"You're going to need a fast copier," Martinet said, "or it's going to slow down your ability to respond effectively."
The importance of a photocopier was one of the lessons learned from Katrina, where the smaller Louisiana areas outside New Orleans received very little attention because communication was lost, although some of these areas were more devastated than the big city.
Also learned during Katrina was that EOCs should be stocked with good running shoes, Martinet said. Since power was knocked out in the New Orleans area for about a week, communications in most areas relied mainly on hand deliveries. And a simple thing like adding cushions to chairs can go a long way in creating more comfort in a stressful environment, Martinet said. EOCs should also have soundproof rooms to reduce noise and stress in the EOC environment.
After 9/11, which saw the New York City EOC demolished along with the Twin Towers, Martinet developed the "EOC in a Box" -- a kit he distributes to the cities he services that contains essential items for emergency managers to carry on operations in the event of a demolished or inoperable EOC. The boxes include batteries, cameras, envelopes, calendars, calculators, clocks, dry erase board, pens, a Federal Emergency Management Agency public assistance guide and EOC section signs, among other things.
"Who would imagine the New York EOC would become a pile of dust?" Martinet said. "If it could happen to them, it could happen to anybody else. Every city should have a primary and backup EOC location, and I know of many cities that had a backup EOC, but they certainly didn't have any supplies."
EOC in a Closet
At the New York State EOC, which is housed in a Cold War-era bomb shelter, "creature comforts" prevail, including wood finishing, comfortable lighting, ergonomic work areas and a workout room for employees to let off steam from the stress of working in a disaster.
The New York EOC was put to the test during and after 9/11, running emergency command and control for more than two months.
"If there's one thing you need to learn in the operation of an EOC, it is maximum flexibility," said Dennis Michalski, assistant director of community affairs for the New York EOC. "Just as the ICS [incident command system] creates the ability to expand or contract an incident and a response, so must your facility increase and decrease with the size of a response you're going to mount in any type of incident."
But all EOCs are not created equal. James Lancy -- emergency management coordinator for Arvada, Colo., and its Fire Protection District -- calls his facility an "EOC in a closet."
A cost-effective way of running an EOC is to give it a dual purpose: In Arvada -- just outside of Denver -- Lancy said, the EOC doubles as a conference room.
When the Arvada EOC is needed, tables and chairs are shuffled around and the emergency equipment is pulled out of the closet. In the event of a disaster, Lancy said the most important thing is effectively communicating with co-workers and surrounding jurisdictions.
A recurring theme among emergency managers is the necessity for communications and networking with outside resources. Driskill suggests that smaller EOCs with limited resources connect with vendors who may be willing to donate in the event of a disaster. She also recommends contacting ham radio operators in the community.
In Arvada, the most important emergency response is effective communication with local jurisdictions. Yet planning is cited as the most important factor for all EOCs, since, as St. Amant put it, "if you don't manage the crisis, it will manage you."
