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6.5 Coordination

1. Conduct Interagency Planning and Rehearsals – “The Mountain Area Safety Task Force organization had conducted significant planning and tabletop rehearsals for the mountain communities in San Bernardino and Riverside counties. Because of this interagency preparation, the evacuations in these areas were reported as timely and without major incident.”
   Southern California Firestorm 2003: Report for the Wildland Fire Lessons Learned Center

2. Co-Locate Entities Responsible for Evacuations – “As soon as firefighters recognized the potential for evacuation, the need to coordinate with law enforcement became paramount. Leaders said the most effective method was to have a sheriff’s representative co-located in the Incident Command Post to facilitate decisions to get routes cleared into the upper ends of wildland-urban interface neighborhoods. It was extremely difficult for fire resources to maneuver around evacuees, and early support from law enforcement allowed fire resources to get on scene as soon as possible.”
   Southern California Firestorm 2003: Report for the Wildland Fire Lessons Learned Center

3. Coordinate with Others in Evacuation Planning – “Federal, state, and local transportation, emergency, and law enforcement agencies can be involved in evacuation planning, depending on the scale of the disaster and the evacuation. The evacuation plan may evacuate the affected population in shifts, use more than one evacuation route, maximize use of transit, and include several evacuation destinations to spread demand and thereby expedite the evacuation, where possible. All affected jurisdictions (e.g., states and counties) at the evacuation origin, evacuation destination, or along the evacuation route must be informed of the plan.”
   Disaster Response and Evacuation User Service: An Addendum to the ITS Program Plan

4. Coordinate with Others Regarding Evacuation or Sheltering – “Coordinate with other entities regarding emergencies and the need for evacuation and/or sheltering.”
   State and Local Response Actions

5. Have a Pre-Established Internal Coordination Plan and System for External Coordination – “Each agency needs to have a pre-established internal coordination plan as well as a system for external coordination with other agencies, the press, and the public. Transportation agencies typically have staff at multiple locations with multitudes of varying responsibilities. The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, for example, operates bridges, tunnels, transit lines, airports, and water ports within the metropolitan area. The California Department of Transportation (Caltrans) oversees a highway system of 25,000 kilometers in length and a staff of over 23,000.”
   Effects of Catastrophic Events on Transportation System Management and Operations: Cross-Cutting Study

6. Integrate Emergency Service Centers with Various Functions – “To date in most cases, regions have developed separate, basically independent, emergency service centers to coordinate public safety activities, and separate transportation centers to coordinate and manage traffic. These have proved effective in their individual domains. Currently, a handful of regions are integrating these centers into joint facilities, resulting in the further improvement of transportation management.”
   Vision 2010: Enhanced National Capabilities for Emergency Transportation Operations

7. Use an Incident Command System – “A requirement for ensuring this institutional coordination is to have an established chain of command through a pre-existing command system. The Incident Command System (ICS), developed in California during the 1970s, is one example of a structure that a region can adopt to help ensure a coordinated response among the various agencies.”
   Effects of Catastrophic Events on Transportation System Management and Operations: Cross-Cutting Study

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February 7, 2006
Publication #FHWA–HOP-08-015