CHAPTER 3

Emergency Preparedness Planning

Introduction

The United States uses a whole-community approach to emergency management, known as the National Preparedness System, working toward the National Preparedness Goal (FEMA 2015):

Within the National Preparedness System there are five mission areas—prevention, protection, mitigation, response, and recovery—under which the whole community executes core capabilities. During a response, state and local jurisdictions use a system of emergency management known as the National Incident Management System (NIMS), which integrates all levels of the response from federal to local in a common operating framework. Within NIMS is the Incident Command System (ICS) used by first responders to coordinate their response to an emergency or disaster.

Planning is an important part of preparedness and a core capability across mission areas. It is also the initial step in a continuous five-step process of improvement known as the preparedness cycle: (1) plan, (2) organize and equip, (3) train, (4) exercise, and (5) evaluate and improve.

Together these components—the National Preparedness System, NIMS and ICS, and the preparedness cycle—make up the system through which emergency management prepares the whole community, from the president of the United States to individual citizens, to reduce and mitigate risk, increase resiliency, and respond to and recover from disasters and emergencies.

Another way to consider preparedness is to envision the activities that precede a disaster and those that follow one. This is known as the emergency management cycle, as illustrated in Figure 3. The emergency management cycle has five phases, four of which are identical to the mission areas of the National Preparedness System identified previously, except for protection, which is replaced in the emergency management cycle by preparedness. Specifically, prevention and preparedness occur before a disaster or emergency, response covers the immediate period of the disaster (which typically lasts anywhere from a few hours to a few weeks, COVID-19 being the exception), and recovery occurs after the disaster and can last months to years. Mitigation follows recovery and leads back to prevention, beginning the cycle anew.

Special permitting for overweight divisible loads occurs in the response phase and the initial months of recovery until the disaster declaration expires (120 days for a presidential declaration) unless the state or the president extends the period of disaster.

For state permit-issuing offices preparing for emergency overweight special permitting, preparedness planning is a core capability, and the preparedness cycle offers the methods to increase permitting office preparedness to implement special permitting for overweight

divisible loads in an emergency. Further, permit office actions and their ability to implement special permitting for speeding supply efforts in emergencies and disasters directly impact the whole community in the response and recovery mission areas and phases of the emergency management cycle.

The following sections explore the role of state permitting offices within each phase of the emergency management cycle to enhance the preparedness of their states for responding to and recovering from an emergency or disaster. Figure 4 summarizes the activities within each phase.

Mitigation

Mitigation is the implementation of measures and projects designed to increase community resilience in a disaster or emergency. Often done in conjunction with recovery, these measures reduce the impacts of future disasters or emergencies. For state permit-issuing offices; state DOTs; and local, state, and federal emergency management, mitigation, as it relates to overweight special permitting, has a primary focus of protecting and improving community lifelines, specifically transportation infrastructure. However, mitigation may also include stockpiling critical supplies near disaster-prone areas, route planning, and other measures that improve the speed and efficiency of critical-supply delivery in disasters while also protecting roadways against damage from overweight vehicles.

Even though they may mitigate impacts, additional measures like education and training programs for carriers, enforcement officers, and permit-issuing officials about special permitting for overweight divisible loads, are part of the preparedness cycle identified previously.

Preparedness

Preparedness is the implementation of the preparedness cycle. For state permit-issuing offices this can include any number of measures related to preparing for implementing special permitting, as well as coordination with neighboring states and regional organizations. Examples include the following:

• Reviewing and revising plans and procedures for the issuance of special permits.
• Participating in statewide disaster exercise programs that include the implementation of special permitting and any logistical or transportation (routing) that may occur during a disaster.
• Conducting training for state permit-issuing office personnel, carriers, and commercial vehicle enforcement officers.

• Coordinating with neighboring states and regional entities to implement MOUs or mutual aid agreements to facilitate interstate movements of critical supplies.
• Coordinating with state and regional entities (e.g., FEMA regional offices) to plan routes, distribution points, and logistics hubs during disasters—especially for disaster-prone areas like those subject to wildfires, hurricanes, flooding, or other weather events—that can guide such plans.
• Coordinating with state DOTs to determine routing and improve the resilience of roadways and transportation infrastructure to resist damage from overweight loads (see also the Mitigation section).

Response

Response measures are those taken in the immediate aftermath of an emergency or a disaster. The unusual nature of the pandemic response to COVID-19 stretched the response phase over more than a year—that is not typical for most emergencies or disasters. Typically, the response phase for emergencies or disasters ranges from a few hours to a few weeks in length. Response focuses on immediate actions taken by first responders and local, state, and federal agencies to support them and to protect life and property.

For state permit-issuing offices, the response phase covers the initial weeks of a disaster and may begin before the disaster occurs, as in the case of hurricanes or predicted snow or ice storms or other weather-related events. During the response phase, state permit-issuing offices, using the specific requirements of state law and disaster declarations by state officials (and the president, if a federal Stafford Act disaster is declared), implement special permitting as they prepared to do so in the previous phase. Additionally, states coordinate with neighboring states and emergency management for interstate movements of overweight divisible loads where necessary.

Response supplies will typically focus on those items needed to sustain life and protect property, for example, water, food, blankets, shelters, sandbags, fuel, medical supplies, and other items considered essential to support first responders and shelter operations. Figure 5 exhibits a response flowchart based on the type of declaration.

Recovery

Recovery planning starts during the response phase, and the recovery phase begins once immediate threats to lives and property are addressed. During this phase, the goal is to restore the affected communities to a level similar to or, if possible, better than that which existed before the disaster. This phase tends to focus more on supplying materials and goods to assist in that recovery, such as building materials; some consumer goods; and other materials needed to rebuild, repair, and restore essential services like electric power supplies, water and sewage systems, and natural gas delivery.

While the recovery phase may last up to months or years, the period between the end of the response and the expiration of the disaster declaration (typically 120 days) means that special permitting for overweight divisible loads will end approximately 4 months after a disaster or emergency produces a state declaration implementing special permitting, unless extended by the state or the president. Although the end of special permitting is not usually the end of the recovery phase, by this time, for most emergencies or disasters, the restoration of critical lifelines and transportation infrastructure should allow for the state permit-issuing office to cease permitting for overweight divisible loads and resume normal enforcement operations for divisible loads and normal OS/OW permitting.

Prevention

Prevention is as it sounds—the removal of risks or contributing factors likely to result in an emergency or disaster. As it applies to special permitting for overweight divisible loads, this largely falls outside of the realm of state permit-issuing offices. There are measures, however, that states may take to prevent disaster impacts that do relate to special permitting for overweight divisible loads; these appear in the Mitigation section.