Public Safety Committee
April 11, 2023
AGENDA REPORT
TO: Steven Falk FROM: Reginald D. Freeman
Interim City Administrator Fire Chief
SUBJECT: 2023 Emergency Operations Plan
Update
DATE: March 07, 2023
City Administrator Approval Date:
RECOMMENDATION
Staff Recommends That City Council Adopt A Resolution To Adopt the 2023 City Of Oakland Emergency Operations Plan.
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
An emergency operations plan, or EOP, is a document that describes how people, property, and the environment will be protected during an emergency. The EOP details who is responsible for carrying out specific actions, establishes lines of authority and organizational relationships, and outlines how actions will be coordinated. The EOP provides guidance for all-types of hazards which may impact the City throughout the year. The EOP guides personnel in performance of their duties before, during, and through emergency response and initial recovery.
The City Council is being asked to review and adopt the 2023 Emergency Operations Plan.
BACKGROUND / LEGISLATIVE HISTORY
The 2023 EOP builds on the draft 2016-2017 work to update the 2012 plan. This plan was developed following Comprehensive Preparedness Guide (CPG 101) version 2: Developing and Maintaining Emergency Operations Plans guidelines.
The 2023 plan was developed using community-based planning techniques so that it accurately reflects the population of Oakland, including accounting for people with disabilities and others with access and functional needs. This included performing a Race and Equity Impact Analysis (REIA) on the Plan. The REIA incorporated research and community input to identify and address any inequities in the Plan. The plan included participation from residents, City departments, partner organizations, and Alameda County.
This 2023 plan has been updated to reflect changes to the City of Oakland organization and legislation. The plan was also developed using a risk-based framework. The City’s Local Hazard Mar 29, 2023
Steven Falk, Interim City Administrator
Subject: 2023 Emergency Operations Plan Update
Date: March 7, 2023
Public Safety Committee
April 11, 2023
Mitigation Plan (LHMP) serves as the foundation for this plan. The EOP has been updated with new threat and hazard data referenced in the 2021-2026 LHMP, which was adopted in June 2021.
ANALYSIS AND POLICY ALTERNATIVES
The City of Oakland EOP applies to the jurisdictional boundaries of the city of Oakland and City- owned resources and assets and is designed to address all hazards that could adversely affect the community. It covers the full range of complex and constantly changing requirements to threats or actual emergencies and disasters. As such, it is the blueprint for all City of Oakland emergency and disaster operations, including natural disasters, technological disasters, and human-caused incidents. The plan is applicable to all City of Oakland departments and employees. It describes the fundamental policies, strategies, and general concept of operations to be used to manage the emergency or disaster from its onset through the initial recovery phase.
The City of Oakland’s Emergency Operations Plan provides for the effective mobilization of all of City resources to meet any condition constituting a local emergency, state of emergency, or state of war emergency. It provides for the organization, powers and duties, services, and staff of the City's emergency organization and describes how the City will prepare for, prevent, respond to, recover from, and mitigate the effects of all types of hazard and threats in an equitable way.
In accordance with the California Emergency Services Act (ESA) and Comprehensive Preparedness Guide 101 Version 2: Developing and Maintaining Emergency Operations Plans, the City of Oakland EOP describes methods for carrying out emergency operations, how resources are mobilized, fiscal/funding provisions to support emergency management programs/projects, the process for obtaining and rendering mutual aid, and how the public will be informed.
The concepts presented in the EOP are fully compliant with California’s Standardized Emergency Management System (SEMS), the National Incident Management System (NIMS), and the Incident Command System (ICS). The concepts presented in the EOP support regional plans, such as the Bay Area Regional Emergency Coordination Plan (RECP), the State of California Emergency Plan, and the National Response Framework. The City of Oakland EOP is a management document intended to be read and understood by City officials, departments, and partner agencies prior to an emergency.
The purpose of this EOP is as follows:
• Assign responsibilities to organizations and individuals for carrying out specific actions that exceed routine responsibility at projected times and places during an emergency. • Establish lines of authority and organizational relationships and show how all actions will be coordinated in accordance with the City of Oakland’s Emergency Ordinance, SEMS, and NIMS.
• Outline critical support services and provide a management structure for coordinating and deploying essential resources.
Steven Falk, Interim City Administrator
Subject: 2023 Emergency Operations Plan Update
Date: March 7, 2023
Public Safety Committee
April 11, 2023
• Describe the hazards and threats that may affect the City of Oakland. • Describe authorities, policies, and procedures that govern the City of Oakland, its employees, and its residents during a disaster.
• Ensure equitable response to disasters throughout the City.
This EOP applies to all City agencies and departments and is intended to be used for all applicable hazards.
Key Components of the Plan
There are three main areas of focus outlined in the City of Oakland Emergency Operations Plan:
• Basic Plan: This part of the City of Oakland EOP describes fundamental systems, strategies, policies, assumptions, responsibilities, and operational priorities that the City will follow to guide and support emergency management efforts.
• Emergency Support Functions (ESFs): The City of Oakland EOP establishes 17 ESFs that describe discipline-specific emergency goals, objectives, capabilities, and responsibilities. These ESFs include references to City agency/department plans and procedures.
• Hazard Specific Annexes: There are six supporting hazard specific annexes that highlight unique planning assumptions, policies, procedures, and emergency preparedness, response, and recovery actions specific to a particular hazard or threat.
These include earthquake, severe weather, wildland fire, tsunami, terrorism, and civil unrest.
The overall vision for the EOP is to ensure that when threatened by any hazard, the City of Oakland is prepared to take immediate action. The City will marshal its resources, and work with the whole community – including voluntary organizations and the private sector – and, if necessary, solicit assistance from outside the jurisdiction. The City of Oakland EOP recognizes that residents and all sectors of the community have a critical role and shared responsibility to take appropriate actions to protect themselves, their families and organizations, and their properties.
Emergency Operations Plan Maintenance and Revision Process
To maintain EOP capabilities and to be prepared for any emergency or disaster that may affect the City of Oakland, EMSD developed and maintains a multiyear EOP plan revision strategy.
Table 8-1 on page 113 provides a standardized list of activities necessary to monitor the dynamic elements of the EOP and the frequency of their occurrence.
In addition, Emergency Management Services Division of the Oakland Fire Department (EMSD) has a rolling EOP Maintenance Schedule that ensures that the entire EOP is reviewed on an annual basis throughout the year, shown in Table 8-2 on pages 113-114. The schedule provides a recommended timeframe for updating the base plan, ESFs, and incident-specific Steven Falk, Interim City Administrator
Subject: 2023 Emergency Operations Plan Update
Date: March 7, 2023
Public Safety Committee
April 11, 2023
annexes. The entire plan must be revisited at least annually and whenever each annex is activated and/or exercised.
Various components or the entire EOP may be revised out-of-schedule if a real or simulated incident has occurred and there are significant lessons learned that should be changed in the EOP or any of its supporting annexes. The EOP should also be changed to reflect changes in administration and legislation or to reflect new resources, training, or procedures. Changes to phone numbers and contact information should be made throughout the year.
Oakland EMSD will schedule meetings with various City department and agencies as well as community groups to help facilitate the revision of the various components of this EOP.
Addressing Equity in Emergency Planning
The planning process for this Emergency Operations Plan was designed to stimulate better, more effective, sustainable, and vital connections between stakeholders, toward the common objective of mitigating risks to the community, especially those vulnerable populations most impacted by emergencies and disasters. The plan emphasizes equity to empower the City’s most vulnerable people to play a role in building resilience. This is referred to as the application of an equity lens, which is defined as a critical thinking approach to undoing institutional and structural biases by evaluating burdens, benefits, and outcomes on underserved communities.
An equity lens was applied throughout the public outreach process, in the evaluation of risk, and in the development of emergency response actions.
The planning team believes that equity in emergency management is a right that belongs to everyone, and that the City must operate under the certainty that everyone has a right to fair and equitable treatment in times of emergency and the concerns and needs of all communities should be known and adequately addressed in emergency management practices. Ensuring that emergency management systems and practices are equitable and serve the needs of all Oaklanders is a key priority of this plan.
To meet the needs of an equitable EOP, the City conducted a Race and Equity Impact Analysis (REIA). The REIA included academic research into marginalized communities during disasters.
This information was analyzed to determine themes where emergency preparedness, mitigation and response gaps should be addressed. Next, that research was presented to community groups and members for input on the findings. Community input was then incorporated into the EOP to build equitable responses to events.
Section 2 of the EOP (the Hazard Analysis), references the types of hazards and threats that face the City. Incident-specific annexes have been developed to address the most common and/or highest risk threats. The planners creating this EOP also consulted and ensured that this plan aligned with the California State Emergency Plan (SEP) and the Bay Area Regional Emergency Coordination Plan (RECP). Individual department emergency plans and procedures were also incorporated into this plan and are evident in Section 4 of the EOP (Organization and Steven Falk, Interim City Administrator
Subject: 2023 Emergency Operations Plan Update
Date: March 7, 2023
Public Safety Committee
April 11, 2023
Assignment of Responsibilities) and in the ESF annexes. This plan fully complies with the Standardized Emergency Management System (SEMS).
Emergency management involves several kinds of plans. While this EOP may serve as the centerpiece for the City of Oakland’s emergency response, it does not and cannot cover all aspects of emergency preparedness and is meant to work in coordination with other existing local plans, including:
• Department/Agency Emergency Plans and Procedures
• Recovery Plans
• Continuity Plans
• Joint Operational Plans and Regional Coordination Plans • Mitigation Plans
Timeline and Key Dates for the Adoption of Emergency Operations Plan
Step 1: Forming the Planning Team: EMSD hosted a series of four (4) planning workshops in August 2020 to orient departmental stakeholders to the draft EOP. The workshops introduced planning partners to the purpose, organizational responsibilities, timeline.
Step 2: Understand the Situation: The threat and hazard identification and risk assessment process were completed by a multidisciplinary team under the Local Hazard Mitigation Plan (LHMP) project from December 2, 2020 thru April 9, 2021. This information was used to inform planning priorities and was incorporated into the draft EOP.
Step 3: Determine Goals & Objectives: The following operational priorities were established to guide the development of response goals and objectives:
• Saving lives
• Addressing human needs
• Caring for people with disabilities and others with Access or Functional needs • Protecting property
• Protecting the environment
• Restoring basic services
• Supporting community and economic recovery
• Equitable community response
These were used to guide the planning team’s subject matter review.
Step 4: Plan Development: Stakeholders were allotted until September 25, 2020 to complete the subject matter expert review. EMSD compiled the suggested changes and then hosted a series of seventeen (17) planning workshops to review suggested changes with all affected stakeholders through January 2021. After the content review, the plan was checked for conformity to local, state, and federal regulations.
Step 5: Plan Preparation, Review and Approval: The plan was posted for public comment on April 30, 2021. The initial public comment period concluded on June 30, 2021. Public input was Steven Falk, Interim City Administrator
Subject: 2023 Emergency Operations Plan Update
Date: March 7, 2023
Public Safety Committee
April 11, 2023
reviewed, and changes were incorporated by July 16, 2021. A second public comment period was held from July 26, 2021 through August 27, 2021 to provide residents the opportunity to review the changes and updated hazard data. REIA research was conducted from September 1, 2022 to December 22, 2022. The REIA public engagement period was from January 1, 2023 to March 1, 2023. Final compilation of the plan was completed by March 31, 2023.
Step 6: Plan Implementation and Maintenance: After the plan has been adopted, internal and external stakeholders will train and exercise the plan to ensure successful response operations.
Plan maintenance includes incorporating any lessons learned from exercises/activations and an annual review. The plan is a living document and will continue to be revised.
Adoption of the proposed resolution advances the Citywide Priority of Holistic Community Safety, by ensuring that facilities, organizations and our community can prevent, protect against, mitigate the effects of, respond to and recover from all manner of incidents.
FISCAL IMPACT
Failure to adopt the plan may compromise the City’s ability to obtain critical grant funding.
Additionally, having the plan in place will help ensure there is an enhanced level of coordination between agencies, which will be critical to the immediate response and overall resilience of the city and prevent potential future economic impact to the city.
PUBLIC OUTREACH / INTEREST
Broad public participation in planning helped to ensure that diverse points of view about the area’s needs are addressed. This plan was drafted during the COVID-19 pandemic, limiting in- person public outreach events. However, the planning team developed a public involvement strategy that amplified the number of voices contributing to the plan development and laid the groundwork for ongoing engagement after the plan’s completion.
Following the creation of the draft plan, a public comment period commenced on April 30, 2021 and concluded on June 30, 2021. A second public comment period began July 26, 2021 through August 27, 2021 to provide residents the opportunity to review the changes and updated hazard data. The City of Oakland hosted 17 public meetings to inform the public about the EOP. The REIA public engagement period was from January 1, 2023, to March 1, 2023. The City of Oakland hosted six meetings to engage the public in the REIA process.
At the outset of the planning process, a page was created on the City of Oakland website specifically for residents, stakeholders and officials to learn and stay during this process:
https://www.oaklandca.gov/topics/city-of-oakland-2021-emergency-operations-plan-update.
COORDINATION
The Budget Bureau and the Office of the City Attorney were consulted in the preparation of this report.
Steven Falk, Interim City Administrator
Subject: 2023 Emergency Operations Plan Update
Date: March 7, 2023
Public Safety Committee
April 11, 2023
SUSTAINABLE OPPORTUNITIES
Economic: There is no economic impact caused by the passage of this resolution.
Environmental: There is no environmental impact caused by the passage of this resolution.
Race and Social Equity: See page 4 for the section titled, “Addressing Equity in Emergency Planning.”
ACTION REQUESTED OF THE CITY COUNCIL
Staff Recommends That City Council Adopt A Resolution To Adopt the 2021 Emergency Operations Plan.
For questions regarding this report, please contact Jessica Feil, Manager, Emergency Management Services Division, Oakland Fire Department, (510) 238-6067.
Respectfully submitted,
Dr. Reginald D. Freeman
Chief, Fire Department