In August, our organizational leadership told us to set aside November 12-17 for an important FEMA training experience. We’d been accepted for a grant-funded trip to the National Emergency Training Center in Emmitsburg, Maryland, to spend a week participating in an Integrated Emergency Management Course (IEMC).
I had no idea what to expect.
We flew in on Sunday (travel reimbursed by FEMA) and had an evening to settle in and prepare for classwork beginning the next day. Participants included many in city leadership (City Manager’s office, department directors and key public safety and management team members) along with County leadership, City Council, school district and public utilities. Altogether there were nearly 75 of us taking part in the class.
The NETC campus itself is located on site of the former St. Joseph Academy, a free parochial school for girls. After it closed, it was acquired by the government and repurposed for a training center and home to the National Fire Academy. The campus is beautiful and you can see its history in the buildings.
Several memorials are located on site. The Civil Defense Memorial:
The National Fallen Firefighters Memorial, with engraved brick pavers throughout campus commemorating fallen firefighters by name.
The Memorial Chapel houses a permanent memorial to fallen firefighters:
The 9/11 Memorial was striking – I captured this photo after an early morning run.
The campus itself is set in the countryside. Deer were abundant, as the northeast was firmly in the fall with crisply cold mornings and evenings.
The campus included dorm-style housing and a cafeteria, where we ate most of our meals. There was also gym, a 1.2-mile walk/run loop and a clubroom for after-hours socializing.
Classes began promptly at 8 a.m. and ran until just after 4 p.m. Some of our work was hands-on.
But a majority was in-class lectures, familiarizing everyone with the basics of managing an emergency and the requirements of the federal government for reimbursement of local expenses.
Steve and I taught one of the classes, providing an overview of the importance of public information during a crisis and how we perform this function in Plano.
The classwork culminated in a functional drill. We were given a significant emergency situation to manage and had to work through a response. Functionals are always chaotic and time passes quickly. After having worked several emergencies (though not of the type we practiced with) I can attest that chaos and the fast passage of time are accurate in real life.
The purpose of the course was to develop shared understanding of emergency management, sharpen our response skills and build relationships with key individuals inside and outside the city who will have to work together to respond to an emergency.
Because I’d just finished the last of my (MANY) hours of required FEMA training the week before, there was little “new” information for me in the training. However, there were a lot of new and valuable things gained through the experience. I built deeper friendships with long-time colleagues and created new relationships with individuals I have little interaction with in our organization. It was also terrific to walk away with a shared framework of how Plano responds, as well as a working list of new questions we need to answer before the next emergency happens.
