Councilmember Harrison is online.

Are you there, Councilmember Harrison?

He was talking to us earlier.

Can you hear me?

There you go.

We can hear you now.

Thank you.

Councilmember Newell, Councilmember Freeman, Councilmember Stallings, Councilmember Lockhart, we welcome you to the dais, and we're excited to get going today.

We'll start by having a uh prayer by Councilmember Lockhart, and we'll go to that point.

Our dear Father in Heaven, we're so grateful to be here today and to come together to represent the residents of Lehigh and to do the business for the city of Lehigh.

Father, we're so grateful for all that you've given us and for all that we have and the opportunities that we have living in this country and in this great state of Utah.

We ask for you to bless us with the gift of discernment that uh today as we move through these items that impact our residents and the applicants and our community, that we have the the gift of discernment to determine what what is the right answer and and what needs to be done.

And we're so um again grateful for all that we have when we say these things in name of Jesus Christ.

Amen.

Thank you, Councilmember.

Okay, presentation reports will go to two point one, so we'll start uh with emergency management training and uh invite all to get comfortable as we are about to be trained.

So we'll turn that we turn the time over to you, Scott.

Scott's gonna be.

Okay.

Scott will introduce him and we'll go from there.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Um we are a new council and a new mayor, and we have FEMA training that we'd like to present to you.

Usually it's brought on by the state, but the state is pretty packed with their training schedule, so we were lucky enough to have our county emergency manager, Peter Quittner, um, to be able to present this for us.

So we will turn the time over to him because it's pretty lengthy.

So Peter Can I ask a real quick question.

We were given these handouts.

Are we allowed to write in these throughout your presentation?

Okay.

They're fancy.

I get it.

I just didn't know.

They're fancy.

No.

Yeah, you can you can they're yours to have.

Uh there's a couple extra here.

Um if anybody else here wants them.

Um I I'll just apologize.

I didn't know this is gonna be a council meeting, and I'm like all um presenting to you to during a meeting, and uh but it's okay, we'll be fine.

But just know this is geared more as a classroom uh training, so but I encourage you to ask questions and uh I just want to make sure what I have here you guys can see.

I don't know what we're doing.

They can see we're gonna switch it.

We have a screen in front of us too.

Yeah, I just want to make sure my presentation makes it on there.

Okay.

So you you said that there's more booklets if anyone in theone else want one?

Yeah, yeah.

I have this many.

So I have this.

You want one, sir?

Sir, you're lucky.

It's your lucky day, sir.

Outstanding.

Can I have two?

You can have two.

I'll just I'll just I'll just put them right here.

Okay, they're right there.

I don't need to take any back with me.

So can you see my uh no, it's not.

No, it's black.

Uh we're still getting black over here.

I I'm not a just plugged in HDMI.

Okay.

You can plug it into any one of these.

Go ahead.

Magic.

Oh.

That was too soon.

You might need to stand here the whole time.

Yeah.

Oh.

Um, I have a jump drive.

I heard that there's a new building.

I think I can see it.

There we go.

I just want to load that.

Oh.

I didn't do it.

I promise.

Sorry what?

No, no, no.

You like an edited one.

There's one that says edited.

Is it the way you use display?

Do we need to hit F7?

I think maybe it's I don't think it is.

Because if you would the computer that's presenting up here, if you can throw it on that and just give me a little bit of a is that from you?

Yeah.

Can I get plug my little gizmo?

Well, I don't need to have it.

Um I need that so I can each slides.

Yeah.

Um well you try this.

You can well but let's try that.

See if that works.

That's got to see.

I'll just in the meantime, just put the laser around the ceiling.

I think it works.

Okay.

Okay.

I think we're off to an awesome start here.

So okay, let me just give you an introduction here.

This, just so you're so you know what you're sitting through.

This is an overview for senior officials, uh, executives, elected officials, appointed officials, and it is really geared toward just a as emergency.

So let me just start up.

My name is Peter Quittner.

I I'm the county's emergency manager.

I've been in the emergency manager for Utah County for about 15 years.

Uh I'm from the sheriff's office.

I've been there over 25 years.

And doing this over the last 15 years really uh have seen quite the change in emergency management uh in the county.

And it's really good to understand how this how disasters work and where does you know city fit in, where does the county fit in, where do elected officials fit in, and what are our responsibilities in order to get you know funding and things like that.

And so this is just geared as a a brief overview, but really I I want I would love to have a discussion.

I would love for you guys to answer qu ask questions, I'll be answering them.

And uh and just kind of work through it.

This is designed to be a lot longer course, and I try to tailor it to each community that I go to.

I've been to several cities.

Um it ends up pretty good.

Um but I don't need to hit every single slide.

There's no test.

You know, normally if you go to a FEMA course, there's a test.

This is one of the only courses they don't have a test for.

So um anyway, that's what this class is.

Uh this course, this unit.

Well, there's four couple units, but this I just really want to have a discussion point.

Okay.

Um, but this is from FEMA, and I've modified it a little bit.

But this is kind of what we're gonna be talking about, and I'll go through them pretty quick.

And I've got Tyler here, he works with me in emergency manager, but he's gonna start throwing stuff at me if I take too long.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Um but this is kind of the objectives.

Um who's heard of NIMS?

You guys heard of NIMS, the national incident management system?

Um we're gonna be talking a little bit about some management characteristics, the organizational structure of incident command, and the role of the command general staff.

And then we're gonna talk a little bit about um emergency operations centers, and then some interconnectivity between the multi-agency command group, emergency operations centers, joint information systems, and then incident command.

And then we're gonna go through a little bit of uh a unit on the senior officials' role in the preparedness for that.

This is generally what we're gonna talk about, but each delivery of this is a little bit different because people have their own experiences, they have their own uh training they've been to, and they usually have certain questions, and they want me to get into uh more into certain questions based on past experiences or what what have you.

So it'll be fine.

Any questions so far?

This is fascinating.

I know you guys are all fascinated by this stuff.

This is it's actually a lot of fun.

It's a lot more fun to do it in real life.

But I've got you the handouts.

Um those are just handouts.

Normally the this doesn't really come with a handout, but we made it into one, just so you have some reference material for later on.

Feel free to drop pictures in it and whatever you whatever you need to take notes.

Um and I've got some, I've got some, we'll get to it, but uh I've got some other things up here.

We'll be talking about delegations of authority and stuff like that.

And I've got some examples here.

And I think if I'm not mistaken, the very last page should be like a sample delegation of authority.

Did it get in there?

Okay, fantastic.

So we're gonna talk about these different things.

We're gonna we're gonna go through it.

But NIMS.

Does anybody know what NIMS is?

Want to take a stab at it?

It's okay.

National Incident Management System.

Um let's talk about what does it mean to have an incident.

I know you guys had a an incident not too long ago, uh, a fairly big one.

But what's an incident, you guys?

I mean, this is what do you guys think?

An earthquake?

Earthquake, yeah, absolutely, absolutely.

And if you're cheating, you can just read it off here.

I would say an incidence is an occurrence caused by either a human or natural phenomenon that requires response action to prevent and minimize loss of life or damage to property and/or the environment.

You study.

I can tell.

I don't know.

You can be worried about it.

This is going to be weird for me because usually I can just safely hide in a corner or something.

Uh okay.

So, yeah, that's an incident.

It's really anything.

Really, anything could be an incident.

Um that was great.

There's a legal basis for NIMS, uh, Homeland Security Presidential Directive 5, and uh uh the directive eight.

So management, it talks about, and we're not going to get into, we're not gonna read it all or anything, but it this just gives you a legal basis for NIMS nationwide.

Um everyone's trained the same, uh, but it's how we manage domestic incidents, it talks about national preparedness.

There are these books you can find online if you really do want to go more in depth about the national response framework and the national incident management system.

You can these are you can download them, they're PDFs, uh freely available on the web.

And you're more than welcome to do as much research as you'd like.

So uh the national response framework talks about certain partnerships.

You have you have the way we always talk about it is incidents.

Let me just pose a question.

If something happens here in Lehigh City, whose responsibility is it for the incident?

For Lehigh City, yeah.

It's mine.

Okay.

So it's the city's responsibility.

Okay.

And then when you need more stuff, you'll reach out to people who can give you more stuff or provide you extra guidance or whatever it is.

And then it keeps going up until it gets to the federal government.

Now I will say there has been some changes recently when it comes to some of our thresholds for disaster.

Um we'll get to that.

But generally speaking, incidents, they happen local, they and they're handled locally, right?

Ideally, you have all the resources you could ever want to be able to take care of whatever the problem is, um, and everyone goes home safe and everything's done, and everything's fantastic.

They don't always happen like that.

Um, sometimes you need to reach out for assistance.

And this is where this uh partnership uh really comes into play, and and we'll get we'll get more into that.

But what NIMS does, like it says, it's a consistent template.

So if someone's trained here locally and trained out of state, we're all trained the same way.

So theoretically, we could take people from one state, put them into another state, and we have uh exponential uh help.

We have more people that you can you can throw to the incident, and they're all trained the same, use the same terminology, and are familiar with how things are done.

So and during the during this, if anyone has questions, please just stop me.

Um but uh we this this talks about you know what NIMS is, the different uh entities that get involved, uh what they do, and so you're talking about federal level, state level, territorial, we do have tribal in Utah.

You have local governments, private sectors, non-governmental organizations, and this is what this is the how to you know to prepare prevent, sorry, to prepare for, prevent, respond to, recover from, and mitigate the effects of incidents, regardless of cause, size, location, or complexity.

And the why is to reduce the loss of life and property.

And when we talk about mitigating emergencies, the national statistic is for every um dollar you put into mitigation efforts, you save about seven seven dollars worth.

So, yes, ma'am.

This might be jumping ahead a little bit, but uh, when you talk about these relationships and partnerships with the different levels of government, once you allow another level of government in, doesn't that change the control of the situation?

I have a big smile on my face right now because that's a that's an awesome question.

Okay, and and we're gonna get to that.

The answer is no.

You always re you always retain control of your incident.

So even if it and we'll get to that, but even if you call in the county, the state, FEMA, you guys own the incident, you will always have the incident.

If anyone, let's say you called me up as for for the from the county, and I come in and I assist and I help in some way, and you really don't like what I'm doing, you can say, hey Peter, feel free to leave, you know.

Um but uh you it's always your incident, you're just bringing in other assistants to help you manage your incident.

Answer your question?

Yeah, thank you.

Okay, and that's that's a fantastic question because it's a very relevant question, and there's some documents that will uh specify that that we're gonna.

Okay.

Any other questions so far?

All right.

There's components of NIMS, um, incident command system, emergency operations centers, multi-agency coordination groups, joint information systems falls into command and coordination.

But you also have resource management, communications, information management.

It's all part of this national incident management system.

Again, today, right now, we're just covering uh 30,000 foot view.

We're not gonna get too deep into the weeds on this stuff, but just so you can understand kind of how this whole mechanism works.

Okay, when we talk about command, this is the act of uh directing, ordering, or controlling by virtue of explicit statutory, regulatory, or delegated authority.

Um that last one is kind of what we're talking about, what was goes towards your question.

Um we're gonna talk more about this, but this is let's let's ask this question.

You guys who has the explicit authority for management of all incident operations?

Well, I'm confused.

Okay, ask a question.

Um this is just me not knowing, so I'm it's fine, right?

Okay, it's okay to ask questions.

Um like I I think I've just been made aware that in some instances there's kind of this like fight over who's in charge.

And so I think that's why I'm kind of confused.

Like if the local entity is in charge of the incident, incidents, and that's clear as day, then why am I hearing about other entities fighting over who overrides the other one?

Without answering that, I I guess I would need to know like who's fighting, is it just inside your city?

Is it city county?

Is it city, county, state?

I I guess I don't know.

And I I guess I struggle to ask because I I don't want to open up a can of worms, but um, when we had that incident at UVU, was it UVU's police that was in charge, or was it the county, right?

Like there was I and just me hearing it seemed like there were multiple entities that were confused.

But does that make sense why I'm just like if it is so clear, why does it sometimes seem like it's clear as mud?

I I totally understand, and I'll just say this.

Any incident is going to be chaotic.

I I don't think you'll find one that just isn't chaotic in some way.

Communication is always an issue, but we train for something small, and that's the same framework gets applied to a larger incident.

So specifically UVU one, you had their agency was taking care of all the preparations, but at some point they needed help.

So there was actually calls made saying, come help us.

So we got there.

Now, I guess it would depend who who was confused about the public confused about what everyone else was doing, or was it the actual first responders that were confused about what their role was because from the outside from an outside perspective, it might look very chaotic, but very organized internally.

And so that was a massive, I mean, worldwide implications of that incident.

So there's a lot of microscopes on that incident, but generally speaking, um, there's a lot going on, and it might look like it's chaotic, but might be organized chaos.

Totally fair.

Okay, so it I I want to make sure I'm good.

Fully answer your question, and by going through this, some of that may become a little more clear as well.

Any other questions so far?

Okay.

Back to the explicit authority uh for the management of all incident operations.

What was your answer before?

It's the mayor.

There you go.

So you have a mayor that has responsibility.

Does that mean you have to go pick up a hose and and put the cold stuff on the hot stuff?

Not necessarily.

It doesn't.

But so you have people to do that.

Right.

Okay.

Just like you have uh police officers.

It doesn't mean you're gonna go pick up the badge in the gun and go do the job yourself.

You give that authority to people in your community in your city.

So the same thing applies to outside entities coming in as well.

Now you have people to do all that, and they do a great job.

They're trained to do that at an operational level.

Um, but overall, you're exactly right, it ultimately the buck stops with you.

Um and it's important to understand that.

So, which is why you regain control, you you you keep control of the incident at all times.

Okay.

Could you just stay at the mic so that people online can hear you?

Oh, okay, I'm so sorry.

I can't hear.

I'm a wanderer by nature.

Sorry.

I'll try my best.

I'll try my best.

Okay.

Um we're talking about coordination now, and multi-agency coordination is what allows all the levels of government, all disciplines, all to work together more efficiently and effectively.

Um, this is where we have you know, the the police officers working with firefighters, working with EMS, working with everybody from the health departments, it depends on what the incident is.

But we're all trained similar, so we can all come together and work together, and we're more efficiently more efficient when we do it.

Okay, so you have during incidents, you have multi-agency coordination groups.

Um this is this is quite important.

The act is a policy level body.

So even though, as the mayor, as city council members, you might not be out making tactical decisions, operational decisions on how something gets done, it's more important for you guys to act as this policy level body, and that allows you to drive the incidents via policy, answer tough questions, and and give it give um and make sure that information gets relayed to the people who are running the incident tactically and operationally, okay.

Um but so that's what a multi-agency command group, you're a policy level body, and uh which supports resource prioritization and allocation.

If if if uh if let's say that the cops don't have enough bullets, um you make sure you they get bullets, uh make sure they have enough whatever it is, whatever widgets they are that they need in that emergency.

Um those types of decisions.

Um you make multi-agency decisions, uh you enable decision making among elected and appointed officials with those managing the incident.

So it'll dive deeper into this, but what the point we're trying to get across is it's this organized group that comes together, and there's has there's there are people on the ground making tactical decisions, operational decisions, and there's people that are that are running policy and make sure that that you cover your basis that way.

It's just as important, it's just doing different things.

Emergency operations centers, uh, these are physical or virtual locations where staff, stakeholders, and partners gather to support the incident.

Get a whole bunch of people doing different things that have different specialties, uh, different responsibilities.

You all get in a room and you make sure the incident gets handled.

Um so I can give you some examples.

Uh like I said, I've been through several uh presidential.

Sorry, I'm wondering.

I've been through several you might have to keep just tracking me down.

I apologize.

But there's several incidents where we've been uh that I've been in a part of, and um it honestly elected officials want to do the right thing.

They all do.

They want to do, but but sometimes during an incident, it's it's chaotic.

You're not exactly sure where you can best help, where do I belong, where do you want me to go, what do you need me to do?

And um, so an emergency operations center is is a place where you get people that really um understand their roles and responsibilities, and they make those decisions and really support the incident, and it'll talk more about that.

Uh joint information systems.

So, joint information systems, I can give you really uh quick example.

In 2018, we had the Bald Mountain Pole Creek fires that were burning down south.

They were the two largest fires in the nation going at the same time, both of them were in our county, and we had a whole bunch of cities, whole bunch of mayors, a whole bunch of city council members, a whole bunch of PIOs from different agencies that all really want to give their people the right information as quickly as they can.

If you if you remember uh if you remember that incident, we had displaced tens of thousands of people from their homes because the fires were burning.

And there's if you think of something to that scale, that level of magnitude, in order to get all the people back to their homes, you want to do it calm.

You want it, you don't want it to be chaotic.

But sometimes it's big enough where you have so many resources that you need to put in place first.

You don't want it all just to be chaotic and just because you're not gonna fit 30, 40, 50, 60,000 people down main street at all at the same time.

Um, and so you might need to strategically place resources, get re resources ready and prepared for what announcements you're going to make to the public, and then you're prepared to handle them.

And so joint information uh system, um you coordinate that messaging.

We had a whole bunch of PIOs that in the beginning of the incident, they would take the information and they would go disperse it to their community.

Then you had one community doing something we weren't ready for, and so we really learned the hard way.

We really need to get our PIOs together and really coordinate our messaging to our community because it's it's bigger, it was that incident was a lot bigger than one city.

It was it multiple cities were involved and tens of thousands of people.

So that's one way to explain and and really help you understand why it's important to have coordinated interagency messaging, um, where you you might need to develop public information plans and strategies, and um just and tackle some of those hard issues that you don't always think about.

No matter how many how much training you do, how many incidents you go to in real life, there's always something new in the next incident, and it's always different.

Any questions about that?

Okay, and if someone has questions back here, someone please let me know.

Um we talked a little bit about this incident command system, but uh it's a standardized approach to on-sune command, control, and coordination, and it puts a common structure where people work together from different organizations and all accomplish the goal.

Um I think it's got some uh this is important for you guys.

Uh we'll get to the it's got some other visuals to help explain this, what we were just talking about.

But this is an overview of senior officials' roles.

Um this is some of the responsibilities you really need to be concerned with, but and I I don't think you disagree with any of these, but ensure the safety of the citizens and protection of property, ensuring the continuity of your government, activating special, uh sorry, specific legal authorities, disaster declarations, evacuations, states of emergency, other protective actions, uh delegation of authority, so you delegate your authority for the incident command to an incident commander that's that you bring in uh specifically uh to do that, coordinate with PIOs to keep the media and public informed, requesting assistance from state agencies through the emergency operations center, resolving any resource allocation conflicts, coordinating with other senior officials and your other community partners, and participation in multi-agency coordination groups.

A lot of a lot of what's one of the challenging things to be an elected official is you might not have 20 years or more of doing this, so you're all ready to go when the big one hits.

Okay, a big one could be whatever type of an incident it is.

So we do these kinds of courses, but the cool thing is is you have people that have been here for 20 years, 30 years that do that, and so you can rely on those people.

And so you can rely on those people.

And so sometimes you guys know this, it's more importantly that you get to the information of the right people, and you get the questions answered the way you need.

But this is all this is all important stuff that you need to worry about during an incident.

So as elected officials or senior officials, um, we're not always making the tactical decisions, but supporting that your the continuity of your government and these other priorities that I've outlined here.

Okay.

So this is ICS organization and some of the features.

And I I need to start skipping some of these.

Um let's let's go through this here.

Okay, ICS, incident command system.

Mentioned it a little bit before.

It's a standardized on-seen, all hazards, incident management concept, and allows users to adopt an integrated organizational structure to match the complexities and demands of single or multiple incidents without being hindered by jurisdictional boundaries.

Basically, it says it teaches us all how to work together to accomplish a unified goal.

Um these are some of the incidents uh using ICS, you have fires, uh structural wildland, natural disasters, uh disease outbreaks, we all live through that.

Um search and rescue missions, hazardous materials incidents, really almost anything you can think of can be can be uh an incident.

Even you might not think either even uh visits from dignitaries can be a big deal, and other planned events.

So, some of the benefits, uh ICS uh incident command system, it really can adapt to meet the needs of the incident of any size, kind, or complexity.

Now I use this uh example for reason.

Um you have these incidents that are very small, and if you think about it, uh a good example I used to to uh kind of explain an incident, uh I'm a police officer by trade, I have been like I said, for 25 years.

If I get a call that says there's something going on, a suspicious person or doing whatever it is, and I get dispatched to that, I drive my patrol car, I get there on scene, I evaluate, I take care of the problem, uh, I make decisions, uh finish the incident, and I I check it on clear.

I I basically I do the same thing in that one incident by myself as a big incident that might take a lot of different people.

It's just that the need for all that complexity wasn't there.

When you have these bigger complex incidents, you need additional people to step in to take some of those responsibilities.

I manage to be the incident commander, the PIO, uh do logistics, everything, all just myself, because I just doesn't need more assistance.

And so this ICS system allows any type of incident to be put in front of you and scale your response to that and be able to take care of it effectively and efficiently.

But it also allows people from different agencies, like we like I mentioned before, to come in and help manage the incident as well.

There's not a lot of communities, especially in Utah County.

We have a couple larger agencies, larger cities that have a lot of resources.

We actually have a lot of uh cities that don't have as much resources as Lehigh or Provo War or something like that.

And there's if when we have a really big incident, we need help from our partners.

We all do.

And this really allows us to work together, and we're trained the same, and and um we ask for help when we need help, we give help when we can when others need help.

And it's an important concept.

And so we bring in people and other entities, other resources from other uh areas to provide assistance when it gets turned into a big incident.

Sometimes we'll actually bring in just incident management teams, they specialize like uh a really good example of that are these large fires.

You have a type one incident management team that has hundreds of people, they come in, their sole job is you've given them the authority to come in and manage a disaster for you.

They know their job, their responsibilities, they do it well, and then when it's over and done, they go home and they do their thing, and you've retained incident uh the responsibility for the incident the whole time.

But this so that's the benefit of ICS is to really scale as you need it.

Um it does cut uh cut down costs so you don't duplicate your efforts.

Okay, so when we talk about the organization, uh this differs from day-to-day administrative organizational structures and positions.

So if you have somebody uh uh like like me, I'll just say um if I was a patrol sergeant on patrol, um I might be asked to come in and do a different function.

I might be asked to do a PIO role or something.

So what they need in ICS might be different from what your permanent responsibility is, just it's important to know.

Um your emergency managers you have here help train people to do that and might come with uh come up with uh different procedures that can help you guys understand what you might need in that role.

So a good example is a chief, might not necessarily be a chief in an ICS structure.

Okay, so it's it's not um yeah, we've talked about that one.

There's some management uh characteristics.

I I'm not gonna dwell on these a lot, um, but some of the things are common terminology.

Uh there was a uh a desire, probably oh, 15, 20 years ago when I was first a police officer.

We used 10 code, you know, we've all heard 10-4, good buddy, you know, 10-4, and we we would tend everything, and that's how we would communicate, and it became second nature for us.

And it got to the point where we bring in other people and they don't know what I'm saying because we would communicate like that, and people are like, what?

And it just became second nature, it's like speaking a whole nother language.

So there was a drive started at the federal government saying, Hey, you guys are you guys are you guys are really good at what you do and everything, but we don't know what you're saying when we come in and we help you.

So can we make a push to get back to some common terminology?

And so there's been a drive to do that, and so we do try to use a lot of common terminology.

There is still some as a police officer.

I still use you know, 10-4.

You know, we a lot of people know what 10-4 means.

Uh okay.

But uh we we do try to use common terminology, um, but some of these things up there, or some of the other characteristics of that that I don't need to hit each one.

But again, stop me if you have questions.

But this organization is modular, so this is referring back to what I was talking about, how it can scale in complexity, and it'll give you a better example in a minute, but um, it depends on the incident, it's driven by the incident and the need for you to bring in other people, and you don't always have to expand your incident massive if if you just need a couple extra people.

You can do so as you need.

Um it allows you to manage your resources uh effectively, quite effectively.

Okay, so there we do use a chain of command, and it and we use a unity of command.

So chain of command is an orderly line of authority within the ranks of the incident management organization.

Unity of command means that every individual has a designated supervisor to whom he or she reports at the scene of an incident.

So there's just some just some terminology differences that we just want to be make uh we just want to be aware of.

This is kind of the kind of the who does what.

Um it's a good overall example.

Your incident commander has overall responsibility for the incident and sets the objectives, and then you have different sections that you break it out into, and and it can be much larger than this.

This is a very simplicated version, uh, simplified version.

But so you have your operations section where it develops tactical organization and directs all resources to carry out the plan itself.

You have a planning section, they develop the the incident action plan to accomplish the objectives.

Logistics provides resources and services needed to support that incident, and you have a finance admin section, which monitors incident-related costs, provides overall fiscal guidance.

So that's just a very basic example of how these individuals, these planning sections can act independent from each other, but yet help with the overall uh goals of the of the incident.

Any questions on this one?

Okay.

So incident commander's role uh again, we're not gonna go through each one, but overall leadership for the incident response.

Um this is important, but does it receive policy direction from the senior official?

So as a mayor, you come in and you want to make sure you communicate with that incident commander, make sure that incident commander is really has those goals and objectives in mind.

Um it's just important to communicate.

But uh the incident commander does all these other things as well, uh, as well as delegating authority to to everybody that they need to, and uh coordinates with the other entities as well.

Okay, so your senior officials' role in the incident command.

Delegate authority for on scene operations to the incident commander.

That last page in there is a sample delegation of authority.

That is the manner in which you give somebody else the authority to manage your incident according to how you want it managed.

That can be terminated at any time.

But when you have somebody you bring in from the outside, you guys are saying, come in, manage this incident.

We're giving you the authority to do so, but anytime we can take it back.

Okay.

Um then you provide policy guidance on priorities and objectives, activate specific legal authorities, and oversee resource coordination and support to the incident command through the EOC.

I did a tabletop with another community, and again, these are these were individuals that were unaware of what their responsibilities needed to be.

And everyone thought when they got on got in this exercise, they were going to be the ones that were going to be telling everyone what to do, how to do it, how much to do it.

Um really through this exercise, it really came to life that their responsibility, and it was really amazing to see when they just kind of they got it.

A flip uh a switch kind of flipped in their minds, and they realized I don't need to be the one telling the police officers where to go and how to do their job.

I don't need to tell the firefighters how much water or how much to do, whatever it is.

Um they provided guidance, and you let your trained officials that have been doing this for a long time manage their people to accomplish the goals.

And uh a switch flipped, and they saw that and they realized I came into this thinking, I had to make all the decisions of when to evacuate, when to do this, how much to do that, and they realized they were putting all this unnecessary stress upon their shoulders, it just didn't need to be there because you have people that do all that, so you just need to provide the guidance to those people, and uh the stress level goes way down.

So it was it was really kind of neat to see.

Umegation of authority.

This is what one of the things I promised we'd come back to.

Uh, it can be in writing, it can be in it can be verbally, but it does include the legal authorities and restrictions, financial authorities and restrictions, uh, reporting requirements, demographic issues, political implications.

It can it can contain all of this.

Um it's important to get that document.

Uh and I don't I don't know if we I have one, I if I've got a one filled out here, but that that example document in there can be a general guide for you.

But this is the this is the document in which you give that entity to come in and give the authority to manage your incident.

Uh okay.

So when we're talking about incident management roles, the incident commander, we have EOC director and staff, joint information systems, senior officials.

Do you have a question?

Yeah, let me ask you a quick question.

Yeah.

When does that delegation come in?

So we have an incident here in Lehigh.

I'm how quick am I gonna delegate that out?

It's a very good question.

So you have I love the delegate.

That's awesome.

That's awesome.

So you don't always need a delegation of authority, right?

Because again, the example of a police officer going to a call, getting dispatched to a call, taking care of it all.

There's no need to delegate something in that circumstance.

You have firefighters that are trained, and they're used to going out, putting out fires.

Um you have your medical people that are used to all the things they do.

At some point, you're gonna want to communicate with your officials, your police chiefs, your fire chiefs, your other uh city officials, and you're going to evaluate the circumstance.

And it won't always be clear at what point you need to do that.

But there's uh there's a different presentation I give that says when a community reaches out to another community for help.

And what it and it can be as easy as here's an example, real life example.

We had uh dump fire flood over in Saratoga, Eagle Mountain, and in that incident, that was 2012.

In that incident, they needed a very specific resource.

The community had mostly what they needed, but they didn't have everything, they needed armor-lined dump trucks.

Well, nobody had them, the military had them.

So there was a need to bring in an entity just for that specific reason.

So we brought in military folks for that.

It doesn't mean you can't do I mean it doesn't mean you have to do everything, you don't need to completely turn over your entire incident to somebody.

It might be just pieces that you need assistance with.

So when it comes to when you want to delegate your authority, if you're bringing in a team that you're asking to run the whole incident, it's a good idea to do that.

So we recently had an incident at Point of the Mountain, and Chief Craft is here.

Um I'm just curious how that worked.

When like did Mayor Johnson at the time delegate authority to Chief Craft that like right away, or what how did that work?

I can't answer any of that.

I can answer that.

Because maybe that's your question, right?

So my authority's already been delegated.

Yeah.

When I was sworn in, the council at the time delegated authority to me to run the incidents.

When we delegate to outside entities, like I didn't, I never delegated that out.

We kept that the whole time.

When our resources are going to be overrun, we don't have enough resources in the city to run it, we'll ask for help.

And if so, we'll ask for help, we'll get the help.

But then if we're gonna be overwhelmed more where we can't handle our own incidents in the city as well as maintain that incident, then we'll delegate.

So two years ago, Dry Creek um fire, we delegated that to county because we couldn't control our own city and run that incident.

So for me, it's all about resource management and making sure that our city is still protected while that big incident's going on.

That makes sense.

Sorry, I was gonna say, I think with our department heads and specialties, we've already given that authority to you to emergency management and the police.

So this is specifically for outside entities coming into the city that aren't okay.

Yeah.

It becomes uh a lot more important when you tie in money to it.

There's some check boxes, you have to check when you want to tap into uh FEMA and some of those entities that really can provide some robust assistance.

May I say one more thing?

So he's talking specifically about the FEMA side of the house, and money is really important.

So Dry Creek, I'm gonna go back to Dry Creek.

We delegated that early because we want a helicopter and we didn't want to pay for it.

And so when you delegate it, that entity, at least on the wildland side of the house, FEMA's a little bit different because you have to prove that you can declare an emergency, that's a whole different set of rules.

Like on the wildland side of the house, I don't want to pay for a helicopter, so I'm gonna delegate that to the state as soon as they step foot on a fire like that, right?

I I know that it's gonna cost us a lot of money, we don't have a lot of money, so here's here's your fire, have fun.

I I have a question about that.

Um back to the fire at Traverse.

My understanding was there's like an EOC, the emergency operation center was kind of like there at the public safety building.

We start but there was also like Sir I was on site.

Scott was coordinating some things, maybe, yes, no, I don't know.

I was hoping he'd go into that a little bit more just to try to like have like people with the places of the you know what I mean to examples.

Yeah, we could spend a lot a lot of time uh digesting into that.

We opened the emergency operations center because we didn't know like how long we were gonna be there, what resources we needed, um, and that's that's where all of that's around policy making stuff like but to say I want to bring in a bulldozer because it was unsafe, I don't necessarily have the authority to just hire a bulldozer.

They in the EOC who's there, they have that authority and they have the checkbook to do that, so that's why they were there.

CERT, cert is a um what's the word volunteer?

Well, they're volunteered, but they're a support service to us, so they show up and they help with meals and you know if we have to go to the bathroom and they help us change some bottles, and they they serve a very specific purpose, so we don't have to pull firefighters off the line.

Uh cert cert can do some of those things.

So two completely different entities, if you will.

So we've opened our EOC four or five times in the last five years.

Um it's just if the incident's big enough, we need help, and yeah.

So, like the fire on traverse.

So incident command, would that be with you on the mountain, or would that be at the EOC?

That would be with me on the mountain.

Okay.

Yep.

So one of the reasons this is a very tougher question is every political subdivision has their own policies, their own response plans.

And so what one city does, another city has the ability to plan something differently.

The county, we might do something different.

So it's really important that you tie into your officials that you have that do these things.

Your emergency managers, they're aware of your plans.

They help uh develop some of those plans plans with your uh with your other senior officials, your police chiefs, your fire chiefs, and so it's it's different.

So I'm giving you a very 30,000 foot view.

It's important for you guys to ask questions, do exercises, some of these things to know more specifically what you guys do here and how it might be different from somewhere else.

Can I just say something to maybe take pressure off the council and the mayor?

And Scott can verify this.

The Scots can verify this later.

But we were told before that our role as elected officials was you know, if there's an emergency, head over, I guess, to the broadband room, right?

Be there in case we have to approve funding or something like that.

So we're not out there.

We might want to be out there with the fire hose or something helping, but that's what we got to do.

But I'm that might be brought up in the middle.

Oh, can we?

Okay, that's even better.

Just stay by your phone.

Okay, see my own.

I'll give you a real world example of that, and that is there was another community that was having uh a natural disaster, and all of the elected officials, all this the uh city council members wanted to come out on scene.

And when they come out on scene, and again, this is nothing about you guys, this is just past history of doing that.

They came out on scene because they have an honest desire to do good, to help with the incident and help resolve the problem.

They came out on scene and then they went to look at things, and there was no more body to take care of some of the policy issues that we needed, we needed action taken on immediately.

So you do you might want to like the spirit is out there helping do, but sometimes there's a better place in a room to help drive policy and help really give the stewardship to your other entities, your other officials that are trained to do that.

And so it's it's definitely difficult to do sometimes, but that was just an incident where I was I I came into the county and they asked me to be there to help them through this incident, and I was by myself in there, and all of the the officials in the city were out in the incident.

I don't I can't track anyone down, and so things were kind of delayed.

Um did you have a yeah, yeah.

So, mayor, to answer your question basically, and I think it's been done in kind of a generalized way.

But if when you asked, at what point do I delegate that authority?

That perfect example with the fire chief Hilly, you know.

Yeah, uh, because they have the experience of when it's okay, there's a little much for us.

So like me, I'm new to this world, uh, and I'm kind of intimidated by a by this whole program and and the responsibilities uh that are associated with it.

But if if you really stop to think about it, you're not alone in this.

You've got your police, you have your fire, you've got the city council, you got all of the department heads that will work together and and and help counsel each other with that.

So I got your back there.

If I could chime in, you know, when they're on scene, they're busy, you know, they've got a million calls and communications they're dealing with.

Call me or call Cameron.

We're in in the chain of this operation, both of us are designated as the liaison.

So one of the two of us will be your point of contact.

So we'll get you information just as quick as we get it.

Okay.

Is anybody have any questions about this slide while I have it up?

Again, if you have specific questions, feel free to ask.

Um, and we'll get you the answer you need.

Okay.

This uh this is just basically showing that as the complexity of the incident goes up, the ICS structure expands.

Uh it can go from a very small structure to a very large.

I have I have an example here where we ran um you can't really see, maybe not everyone can see, but there's there's over a hundred people in this ICS structure.

This is something called an area command where we have multiple um ICS structures.

We have different uh multiple uh incident commanders in different areas, and this was countywide, and so very small complexity to a massive, massive mechanism that has a lot of different pieces uh making sure it runs efficiently.

Okay.

Um this is important when you when it comes to policy.

Um, when you're talking unified command, this is just saying we're not going to forget about anybody.

Um we're gonna do our best to make sure we take into consideration everyone's uh legal authorities and make sure we check all the boxes, cross all the T's, dot all the I's and we we do that by bringing in other entities, other people with different skill sets.

Police officers, firefighters, uh attorneys, uh public works officials, health department people, and we make sure we we really try to check all the boxes best we can.

We get all those people together in a unified front and have a unified command.

But that does differ depending on what type of incident it is.

Okay.

Um, so unified command uh helps establish the the objectives, uh incident action plan, the uh the command structure.

You don't need to be worried as city officials, how to ramp that up, what people to put where, all your other your other uh entities you have out on the uh out on the that are actually out in the field, your incident commander, they will help dictate that.

You so you don't need to worry about that.

They'll bring in the people they need to to manage uh the incident as they need.

When it grows in complexity, they'll add pieces and parts here and there.

So you don't need to worry about that.

But it's really important for you to know how it grows and maybe why it grows.

Okay.

Um any questions.

Okay.

Uh when we're talking about emergency operations centers, um, under the national incident management system.

Um we talked a little bit about this, what purpose emergency operate operations centers serve.

And and again, they're all different depending on the incident, depending on the complexity of the incident.

Um they can function with different structures.

Uh it's going to depend on your city's policy, and you really get with your emergency managers to find out what type of a structure you have when they set up an emergency operations center.

And it's really important that you do you don't see it for the first time in an incident.

So if you do an exercise, a tabletop, whatever it is, so you understand what that looks like for your community working from your plans.

Um, but some of the functions in an emergency operations center, you uh it's all about information, data, uh, supporting resources, the needs of the incident, allocation of uh and tracking of those resources, coordinating plans, uh trying to anticipate the needs of the incident.

Uh you you you come up with plans to support the incident command and um coordinate and help drive policy direction.

This is what an ins uh an emergency operations center is really support for the people out on the field, out on the ground with taking your Traverse Mountain fire.

Um you had all the firefighters out there doing their job, they are working hard.

They don't they can't be bogged down with some of this stuff, and so you have an emergency operation center that gets together and says, okay, what are they gonna need in 12 hours?

What are they gonna need?

Um, what types of resources can we as a community, as a city council, what can we provide them to make their job easier?

Do we need to notify our legal?

Do we need to get some policy uh decisions made?

One of the most important things, um specifically talking about uh have you heard the term I'm declaring a disaster?

Okay, so a disaster declaration.

There's also a declaration of a state of emergency.

So it's really important to know the difference.

So I'm declaring a state of emergency, can generally be thought of as something that's going to happen.

We need to be prepared to handle it.

So we're gonna stage resources, we're gonna do whatever it is.

Okay.

A disaster, I'm declaring a disaster means something has happened to us now, and now we're responding.

Okay.

Um, some of the important things when it comes to declaring a disaster or declaring an emergency is understanding how that what changes in your city government.

For example, when you declare a disaster, it suspends normal it can suspend normal procurement rules, is one example.

So you might have a process where you go through 12 checks and balances and 12 different approvals to go from needing something to buying a widget.

Okay, very basic example.

Well, this having a disaster declaration enables the people taking care of the incident to say, I need that widget now, it's important, I'm going to buy that now.

So you're hindered by procurement rules as a government entity, where having a disaster declaration can suspend some of those and really helps you really in a timely fashion really solve the problem.

Okay, that's just one example, but it's important distinction.

Uh okay.

Um, this is I I I do want to take just a second to talk about this because things have changed recently.

In our county, uh, we have a threshold, it's a disaster threshold.

So if something happens, in order for us where we're specifically talking about tapping into financial resources from our federal government, it turns into a big disaster, right?

Well, in order to ask for help financially, monetarily, we have to meet certain thresholds, and there's a couple different ways you could do it.

Just recently, that procure that the threshold changed.

In Utah County, we had about a three million dollar uh threshold.

So if we had something happen in a disaster, and now not all things qualify, but if you had damage to infrastructure, roads, bridges, um, and and and uh you know, damage to homes don't necessarily count, but it's really think about the infrastructure that equaled three million dollars, uh whether it's a weather event, whatever it is.

Then you could say we as a county, because the the first level that you can actually qualify for a declaration financially up to the federal government is at a county level.

Okay, so at that, and that's my responsibility.

The county, I'll reach out to all the different emergency managers in the community and say we had a storm event, came in Santaquin and left through Alpine.

Um I point in the right direction.

Oh yeah, I'm doing okay.

So I had to reach out and say who got hit?

Who's got damages?

And so at a county level, I'm allowed to take all those cities' damages and add them all up.

And if we met if we met three million dollars, we could say, state, we're declaring a disaster, we're at we're we're seeking some financial um assistance.

And uh the state has its own threshold.

State threshold was about six million dollars.

Just recently, those thresholds have increased dramatically.

So now instead of three million dollars a county, I think it's more in the neighborhood of 15 to 20 million.

Um, and the states has gone way up as well.

So there's uh FEMA is being uh there they're uh analyzing how they want FEMA to work in the future.

We don't have all the guidance from the federal government yet on what it's going to look like.

So I can tell you what it's been for the last 15 years, at least since I've been doing this, and I can just tell you it's changing.

So I would rely heavily on your people, your emergency managers.

Um so when more information comes out, you're fully aware of what those thresholds are that will that can trigger some other financial assistance.

For example, there's a statewide disaster recovery fund that the state of Utah has put into place where you don't need to go through the federal side of assistance, and you can ask the state for assistance.

So that's fairly new in the last couple of years.

And so it depends on the type of incident, depends on what you're seeking, what you need.

So it's really important not for you to know all those things, but to ask the right people to get you the information.

That's your emergency managers, yes, man.

When you're adding up the total for like multiple cities, so we have city infrastructure, but then within our city, we have state infrastructure.

So if something were to happen to 2100 north, we don't own that as a city, but can you count that towards Lehigh's damage, or would that go to a state?

Does that make sense?

It does make sense.

Okay.

Um you can count most of those where it really becomes sticky is if they're federal resources.

Like if you have federal buildings, like at Camp Williams.

Yeah, yeah.

Okay.

Yeah.

So if you had a federal building right here in the middle of the city, and it got damaged and it was three million dollars.

You can't count that three million dollars toward your threshold for the city infrastructure.

But you're talking power, water, roads, um, all sorts of stuff that can be uh the that can go into that.

But that's a good question.

Very good question.

Uh okay.

Um, but some of the benefits, I think giving some of those examples helped, but it helps uh it helps create a good situational picture.

It simplifies the information.

Um it helps with your long-term operations, like I kind of I talked about.

Uh, but that's just some of them.

Okay, so um we talked a little bit about the delegation of authority, and you can put whatever you want as a city.

Um your legal team can they can give you guidance of what you should or what they think you should or should not put in that delegation of authority.

You could literally say if you wanted to, you can't bring in anything that's colored blue.

You know, you could do something like that.

I don't know why you would, but you could.

I'm just saying you guys have the authority to set the expectations of whatever team or entity is coming in, and they have to meet those expectations at any time you can cancel those.

Okay.

Um but you also uh sorry, I just went gonzo.

Can you still see it?

Yeah.

Okay, I can't.

I can see it right here.

I'm good.

Crisis averted.

Is James good?

Yeah, I see how you should be able to see the screen phone.

Okay.

Um no, it's this is I cannot see it.

This is not moving.

Here.

So I uh oh I sorry.

Hey, we're yeah, we're in our own little incident here.

Okay, so um, this is some of the senior official stuff and and uh some of the guidance for the EOC, but um it helps determine in your in your policy will we'll go over this and should cover all this, and you can have emergency operations plans that dictate all this.

Uh at the county, we're moving toward a comprehensive emergency management plan that uh that deals with this and a lot of other things.

Um like I said before, it's important for you to understand your plan and how it relates to you to you guys in your city here.

Um questions.

Okay.

Is it no either technical difficulties?

It shows fine here, but let's see.

You're on this computer.

I knew that.

But it's I knew that the whole time is also.

I didn't, I forgot about that.

Okay.

Um does this still work?

This doesn't work.

Did that change for you guys?

I see it.

Okay, I did that.

Good.

Oh, but I'll have a microphone over here.

Yeah.

This screen is working.

Okay.

Good.

All right.

Um this one here.

Um, I I uh what time do you need me to be done with this?

I need to know that.

Six.

So about 20 minutes or so?

Okay.

All right.

Um, this is just talks about uh the MAC group, the EOCs, the joint information system, and incident command, and how they kind of all work together.

Um but uh multi-agency command group.

We talked a little bit about this already, provides policy guidance, uh, supports resource prioritization.

Uh for example, if let's say you have um a widget, I don't want to cause any battles here, but a widget of some sort, and you have the the your fire uh personnel are out on scene, and you have your law enforcement, the police are out on scene, and they both need the same widget.

Who gets that widget?

You know, um, and they're both they both have valid functions.

They both have things they're trying to accomplish.

And so sometimes it might need an emergency operation center or multi-agency command group to say we're really gonna have you guys prioritize X, Y, and Z.

Okay.

So it really can kind of uh prioritize uh the resource uh prioritization and allocation.

That's just a very basic way of thinking about that.

But um, but it it also enables decision making among elected and appointed officials and senior executives, and um a lot of times this group is comprised of elected officials, senior decision makers, senior public safety officials, high-level subject matter experts.

Sometimes you just bring in people that you know that know they know what they're talking about because they're trained in that.

But the the senior official role, um of this is kind of going over it in a different way.

I didn't click that one.

Did I just click it?

Oh, that might have been the ICT.

Okay.

It's okay.

Um you define the mission and strategic direction, right?

You have it's it's really easy to say a fire or a law enforcement incident, but those are really the incidents that the firefighters they know their job really well.

The police officers, they know their job really well.

Those really aren't usually the incidents you really need to worry about stuff like this, but it's the stuff you just can't anticipate.

When we have uh uh a pandemic, uh something dealing with the public works.

We had we had runoff uh 2023.

We had our county had about 14 million dollars in disaster uh when it came from our spring runoff in 23.

That was something that's different.

How do you manage that?

What what are our priorities when you manage something that's over uh uh a time period that is not just a quick incident?

How do you prepare for it?

What kinds of what what do we need to put priorities on?

So when you think about something outside what we would think would fit in that box, where a lot of these things need to be answered, and and really where you come together as a as a coordination group and say, let's tackle these problems, let's come up with some directives and let's let's let's strategize and move forward.

Um I think we've talked a bit a lot about this, but um now is it not moving.

Okay, I think this may froze again.

But um, okay, so you have operational priorities here, and at a policy level where you apply those priorities, but you really want to take into consideration those priorities which are which are saving lives, protecting property, the environment, stabilizing the incident.

You really want to think about your basic human needs, um restoring of utilities, and again, it could be most of the disasters I've been involved with, believe it or not, um a large majority of them deal with public works.

Public works are some of the people we work with the absolute most countywide, um, whether it's canyons, roads, bridges, culverts, whatever it is.

We just work with public works entity a lot.

And so when you're talking about access to areas and those types of things, it really can be really important to identify some of those operational priorities.

Um, your joint information uh your joint information system.

We talked a little bit about this.

Uh I I could get hung up on this for uh quite a while, and I don't want to, but that example I gave you of the bald mountain pole creek fires really needed to be on the same page.

I think that was a really good example of showing you how and why it's important to be on the same page and releasing information that's the same information at a coordinated time throughout multiple communities because it has a very large impact.

When we repopulated our communities, um when we evacuated, we had to set up uh police officers to help individuals go back to their homes, get essential medications, deal with pets and you know, livestock and things like that.

So you don't always think about that being such a big deal, but it is a big deal, and I tell you, people here in Utah County take their pets very seriously.

Um it's important to people.

Uh medications, life life-sustaining medical devices they have.

A lot of times when they grab and go, they don't always have that, so sometimes there's a need to get back into their homes, and and you have to do that in an orderly fashion.

You have to set that up.

You have to prepare for that, plan for that.

And so when you put out information, you really want to coordinate the timeliness of that information, make sure that the same information goes out.

One of the problems we had in in 2001 on those fires is we had a lot of community groups, so we're not officially affiliated with the counties, the cities, or anything like that.

They wanted to help, and they did their own thing.

It was a problem, it was a big problem.

We have had uh uh fires in communities uh um that the social media put out all of the people evacuate go here, and all of the well, it was the wrong location, and it was actually where the fire personnel was staging.

So now we have this mass confusion, and it was a problem.

And so social media that there's good intentions, people want to do the right thing, and they try to get information out there quickly, but sometimes it's not always effective.

You want to make sure the right information goes out at the right time.

So a good rule of thumb for us is if we were to share anything out, it should be from like the Lehigh City page, and we just share what Lehigh City has said, right?

We shouldn't be making an Instagram reel about where I like we should probably just share what the city has on our pages if we were to share it all.

Um it's easy to say that, but there are times in an emergency disaster where you want one of your public officials to get in front of a camera to talk to the community.

Yeah, yeah.

I'm just saying one of them, but but you might ask your fire chief to get up and and and really talk to the community and say, I need you, you're the subject matter expert.

I need you to explain this.

It could be the police chief, it could be your public works, it could be whatever it is.

I'm just saying it's a good rule of thumb to say that, understanding there are certain certain circumstances that might arise that you might want to do something else, but you just coordinate that amongst your your city and whatever groups of people that are helping you.

You want to make sure that is very um, you guys discuss that.

You talk about, hey, if we do something, we have to do it the right way.

So we actually created this joint information system and this joint information center where we had all the PIOs coming to a certain location, everyone checked in at the same time.

We get and we had one individual that was running that incident and said, This is the information we're gonna put out.

This is the time we're gonna put it out, and this is this is um kind of the scope of what we're trying to accomplish.

And then at the right time, so in the meantime, we would go out and and place our resources where they needed to go in the community to accomplish whatever it is we're trying to accomplish.

And then the information went out, and we were in a position we are ready to support that.

So it it took stress off people, it went in an orderly fashion, it was great.

Just one example of that.

Any questions about that?

Again, this is these are real world examples that have happened in our county that that we can draw from.

It's not theoretical.

This is we've learned from things that have happened to us.

Um, so this is this is more about your public information.

We've talked about this.

Um, I think we've done a pretty good of uh of talking about this.

We just went through a slide, um, the responsibilities of the senior officials' role.

Um we went through most of these things already, but it's you'll have them in your books.

You can refer back to them.

Uh it's just a good, you know, you see it a bunch of different times in a bunch of different ways to help you understand as a senior official what am I supposed to be doing.

And these are my these are my priorities.

These are some of my priorities.

Um again, this is a general guide.

Okay, this talks about um the the officials' role and preparedness.

And what I would say, I can boil this down is support your people that you've put in the positions to accomplish whatever you need to.

Support your police chiefs, your fire chiefs, your emergency managers, your public works folks, support all those people and and enable them and and give them the stewardship to be successful.

And sometimes if you I would encourage you, if you don't have exercises, whether it's tabletop exercises, functional exercises, full-scale exercises, whatever it is, I would say it's very helpful for you to be to participate in those things so you understand what all this looks like, and you understand what your role would be.

Tabletop exercises are a great way because it doesn't take a lot of time in a in just a couple hours, they can have you can have your emergency manager set up an exercise for you.

You can come in on a lunch or whatever, you call it an extended lunch or after a city council meeting, and you can walk through a scenario.

And by doing those, sometimes you think it's not the real thing, it's not the same thing as being about uh out in the community, but it gets you to to understand your policy and how you should behave as a body and the types of things that you need to make decisions on.

And it and by doing so, it also lets your your um your other and your other officials that you place in those positions know that you support them in what they're doing.

You've given them the stewardship, like the fire chief said, he's been given that authority to do this already.

It's good to know that you support them in that, and you're gonna you're gonna do everything it takes to make sure that he has the resources to take care of that stewardship and to uh to accomplish all the all the goals he has there.

Same thing with the police department, same thing with public works and IT and human resources, whatever it is.

You can you can tailor this to almost any one of your city departments.

Um the the official role, I mean it's gonna go into some other slides here, which again are in your book, and read it as much as you want later on.

But we've talked about this.

Check your plans, your policies, get with your legal, make sure they match up with state laws, make sure they you guys are all on the same page.

Um the more you exercise, you're gonna understand the the terminology and the systems, you're gonna understand the different hazards, and you can have your emergency managers set up different scenarios and accomplish different things, and you can see it from a different different take.

Um I would also encourage you to go through the time to set up a delegation of authority to do that.

In this in a tabletop exercise where the you could have the police officers can be talking about some injects that they have to take care of, the firefighters are doing stuff they have to take care of, public works are doing that.

Your thing could be we're going to go through and have this delegation of authority that we're going to put together, and we're gonna have our legal be a part of it, we're gonna have our emergency managers be a part of it, and we're going to go through that that uh process to actually draft a delegation of authority.

So when you do it for the first time, it's not foreign.

Um my role at the county, I uh will uh do the disaster declarations and I'll and I'll run by those, I'll run those things by legal by by our commission chair, and and the county is uh large uh geographically, and so a lot of times I'm running around to different, I'll go to their homes, I'll do whatever it takes in an emergency or disaster.

I need to get signatures.

Um what's important to know that you can do a lot of things verbally and follow it up with the paperwork after the fact.

So I wouldn't let anything slow you down.

You could do work with your legal, um, you can actually call it the county and say here we're declaring a disaster or whatever it is, and that's just as binding.

And I I'll just say that's fantastic.

When you have a chance, would you follow it up with the document?

But if you need me to start working on some resources that you might need, or if it's moving it on to the state or FEMA, depending on what it is, I can get going on those resources, and then you have the time to follow it up with the paperwork.

Um most of the time, that's actually how it happens.

We'll call up, I'll call it the state partners and and our federal partners and say, this is what I'm going through, this is what we're dealing with.

We've got a declaration coming just to let you know we're we're declaring a state of disaster.

And um, and then they'll be like, okay, great.

So they get the things rolling.

If it's a specific resources, there's certain teams that we have at the state when it comes to hazardous materials, um, explosives or uh like explosive ordinance disposal units.

There's resources we can get coming, just knowing we followed up with the paperwork.

So don't let that slow you down.

Um so I would encourage you during those exercises to do some of those things as well.

Um of your resource management systems, you look at how you guys as a city have your resources, where you have all that information, um, how you track things.

We we haven't talked a lot about this, but one of the most important aspects of an emergency or disaster is tracking of the information.

Um we I hate using it as an example, but um, we had a pandemic that lasted for a long period of time.

And tracking all that information was a nightmare, but we had to track it because we did receive uh federal funds to deal with that emergency.

The 2023, uh, we're still literally closing out that disaster.

We're still in the presidential declared disaster from the the runoff spring flooding.

Um, and here we are a couple years later.

So these disasters take a long time to play out because you have all your recovery aspects, your debris basins, and all these things take a long time, and you have to track your information from the beginning to end.

We had an emergency where we had a lot of donated goods, and what's important is when the when the the federal monies come in, you have a responsibility.

Usually it's a 75-25% matching grant, and so they'll say you fund it all, and we'll reimburse you 75%.

Um it's important for you to track that 25%, or you need to track it all, but you need to be able to document that 25%, and that can be a lot of times in kind.

So you have a lot of volunteers giving you their time.

There's a rate you can associate with that.

That rate equals a dollar amount that you can put on a sheet, track it, and you can build that 25%.

If it's a 20 million dollar grant, you you have a lot of money you have to come up with.

And so if you can document donated goods, volunteer time, all that stuff, it's it's less funding that you guys have to provide in an actual emergency.

So it's just and it's super important to document that from the beginning.

Um other questions on that.

Again, we go to class after class, after class, after class, and all that stuff, and it's really hard to get all this information to an hour, hour and a half.

And um, but the important thing is to talk to your individuals that know all this stuff.

Uh it's important to train uh credential exercise that I talked about, exercising.

Um that's important, and continually improve.

Take a lot of people think in an exercise that they don't want to fail because they don't want to seem deficient in whatever it is.

That's the time to fail.

You when you go after funding, you want to you want to identify a gap, a capability gap.

You identify that capability gap, then you put an easy way to think of it, you put money toward it, or you put resources toward it to fill that gap, then you exercise and make sure that gap is full.

It's been filled, and then you constantly exercise, evaluate, and you constantly change and improve things, and you always uh all these things are your post incident analysis, your corrective action reports, your after action reports, they're all so important because it tells you where your deficiencies were and where some of the ideas where you can where you can become better.

Um this is just a summary of the course we already went through.

I I don't think I need to do that.

Uh you have the books.

Uh I have about a minute and a half.

Do you have any general questions I can help answer?

You had a hand up back there.

Did you have?

No, I was just saying you got five minutes left.

But that was okay.

Sorry, I saw your hand go up.

Are there any other questions I can answer?

I I don't have all the answers, but I can find the answers from somebody.

You have a lot of well-trained people here, you have a lot of people that this is their their careers doing this.

Um give them the stewardship to be good at what they do, what I would say.

But that's if there's no other questions.

Thank you.

I don't know.

No, I think we have great people, Scott and the Chiefs, and I've only been involved in these scenarios as like mass casualty or like some after from a nurse perspective, to sort of see it from this perspective.

Is it yeah?

I it would be good to run through.

It's good to things.

Awesome.

Well, I will I will get out of your hair.

I don't know if you guys have a lot more stuff.

I'll just grab my stuff and go.

But but um I I do have if if there are some resources that we have, even though you don't do it now, if there's something you guys want to see, you want more information on something, you can reach out to through your emergency managers, they can get a hold of me.

Let us know what we can do to help you to help support you.

Um remember we live in the same community, and uh I literally I we all care about the communities we live in.

That's what it boils down to.

Thank you.

Thank you for your presentation.

We appreciate it.

Looks like we get some practice to do, so this is good.

Okay, we'll go to uh item three consideration of holding a closed meeting in the council conference room.

Uh close the meeting maybe for item one.

So I'm looking for a motion on that.

Do you want to?

Okay.

I move that we um hold a closed meeting in the council conference room.

Number one is only to discuss character, professional competence, or physical or mental health of an individual.

So I have a motion from council member stallings.

Do I have a second?

Second, second from council member Lockhart, Councilmember Noole on a vote, yes.

Councilmember Freeman, yes, council member Stallings, yes, council member Lockhart, yes, Council Member Harrison.

Yes, okay, we will go to a closed session.