Army Emergency Management Program - Federation of American ...

Chapter 2
Concept of Employment
2–1. Overview
a. Intent. This publication is focused on coordinating, integrating, developing, preparing, and employing EM
capabilities: (1) to reduce the risk of emergencies impacting an Army installation through preparedness, mitigation, and
prevention activities and (2) to develop response and recovery capabilities to manage all natural, technological, and
terrorism hazards impacting or with the potential to impact the jurisdiction, supported mission, the protected populace,
or supporting critical and routine infrastructure.
b. Operational environment. As described in chapter 1 and detailed in chapter 4, Army installations exist in a broad
spectrum of geographic, physical, political, social, information, and hazard environments. This means that any guidance
provided by a higher headquarters level will need to be tailored to the specific operational environment applicable to a
specific installation commander.
c. Hazard environment. As defined by chapter 5, the EM program must address the full range of natural, technological,
and terrorism hazards. These hazards and the resulting emergencies that occur when these hazards impact mission,
people, or infrastructure vary dramatically in onset (sudden, gradual, slow), duration (short, medium, long), and impact
(low, medium, high). The resulting emergencies may be broken down into Type 1–5 (incidents).
d. Resilient community. Successful response and recovery operations begin with a resilient Army community that is
actively engaged in the Ready Army Community Preparedness Campaign. The majority of any installation’s available
resources during response operations exist in the individuals, Families, tenants, and businesses that work, live, and
operate on the installation on a daily basis. These residents and tenants decide early on how well response operations
will succeed or fail in meeting the goals of the Army EM Program (see chap 1 for vision, mission, and goal
information). It is these residents that will recognize a hazard, notify the installation dispatch center via 911 (or the
local emergency number), and take the initial protective actions in accordance with their instincts, experience, and
training (Ready Army), to include evacuating, sheltering-in-place, treating the wounded, and providing critical information
to first and emergency responders. These residents will take these actions well before the mass warning and
notification system is activated or the first unit is on the scene. Once the mass warning and notification system is
activated, past engagement through the Ready Army Community Preparedness Campaign will have helped build the
level of trust, knowledge, confidence, and aptitude to follow the protective action recommendations quickly and
effectively. This consistent, positive messaging prior to an emergency extends to building the trust base required for
effective EPI throughout the response and recovery phases.
e. Continuity at all levels. Successful response and recovery operations require continuity at all levels from the
highest levels of government (continuity of government) to all critical or essential operations (continuity of operations
(COOP)) to essential services, headquarters and staff functions, tenant organizations, and commercial businesses
(business continuity). The reason for the installation’s existence is to enable mission execution in support of the
national military strategy. The mission essential functions (MEFs) necessary to perform these missions reside in all
manner of information, expertise, capabilities, and facilities. It is not operationally or financially possible to sustain all
MEFs all of the time in an all-hazards environment. However, it is possible to mitigate the potential effects of these
hazards to these MEFs through a comprehensive, integrated continuity program. The same applies to all of the
headquarters, staff, and business functions that organize and maintain all of the necessary elements of operational
readiness and community life on the installation. All of these supporting functions make up the “normalcy” that the
installation is striving to achieve during the recovery phase. The sooner these functions are restored to normal
operations, then the sooner the protected populace can return to a semblance of normal, daily life after an emergency.
This speed to recovery is enabled first and foremost by an aggressive continuity program at every level.
f. Capability development. In order to execute the concept of employment for these EM capabilities, installation
emergency managers and the installation emergency management working group (EMWG) will need to answer the
following questions:
Who is responsible for building and maintain these EM capabilities (see chap 3)?
Who makes up their protected populace (see chap 4)?
What protective strategies apply to each category of personnel (see chap 4)?
What hazards apply to their geographic area (see chap 5)?
What are the relative risks of these hazards in order to concentrate efforts on the highest overall risks to the
installation’s mission, personnel, and infrastructure (see chap 5)?
How do they plan effectively to decrease overall risk from these hazards (see chap 6)?
How do they develop a resilient community which involves all assigned personnel? (see chap 7)?
How does NIMS implementation, especially resource management, contribute to all phases of EM (see chaps 8–9)?
How do they develop and execute continuity programs within an all-hazards context (see chap 10)?
How do they implement command, control, and communications (C3) capabilities in support of all emergencies (see
chap 11)?
How do they manage evacuations, conduct SIP operations, and conduct mass care operations in support of displaced
DA PAM 525–27 20 September 2012
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