You are the emergency manager for Plainsville, Colorado. (Draw details from the previously outlined scenario.) You have served as part of the mayor’s commission to consider the vulnerabilities of the rail line that runs through your community. The commission had just started considering the risks associated with poor track maintenance, plus the enormous potential consequences of a train derailment, when your state fusion center notified your office of the plans for terrorists to target rail lines where chemicals are routinely transported and where derailment could result in mass casualties (injury or death) and a sensational event designed to inspire fear. Because of the nature of the line in your city and what important manufacturing processes the chemicals in transit support, both state and national intelligence authorities have advised Plainsville’s leadership to create an annex to the community’s emergency operations plan (EOP) that specifically outlines a response to a train derailment involving a chemical spill.
Previous Scenerio: Consider, hypothetically, a small community called Plainsville, Colorado, which has a critical rail line running through it. On this line, hazardous chemicals are routinely transported en route to a neighboring community (Southtown) where they are crucial for industrial use in manufacturing a certain type of nuclear defect x-ray material that is made nowhere else in the world. The rail line was first laid in the late 1800s and has been patchily maintained over its life.
Given new priorities through Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Grant Programs and state mandates, both the Plainsville community leaders and operators of the railway are concerned with increasing vulnerabilities associated with rail transport because there is evidence of structural decline due to its age and uneven maintenance. Serious damage to, or degradation of, the line in the vicinity of Plainsville might be catastrophic with worst-case consequences including: irreparable destruction of the rail; a train derailment; a chemical spill; the creation of a hazardous environment for people, livestock, and agriculture; disruption of the industrial manufacturing in Southland; and the possible economic crippling of the entire area. Any of these components alone could result in a crisis; yet a combination of these, or if combined in totality, would be a scenario considered unimaginable by Plainsville’s leadership and emergency management personnel.
Requirements (4-5 pages)
Your community is small, and the number of planners, their experience levels, and their expertise are all limited. Given this crucial task, you have decided to craft the annex yourself.
- You are responsible for producing all components of the annex, which includes the following:
- Name the annex.
- Ensure that it is well organized and consistently formatted.
- It should be properly referenced where appropriate, and its content should be all-inclusive.
- Include a description of, and expectations for, the roles of all relevant partners (at least 10).
- Describe in writing the interagency collaboration process, network, relationships, and/or procedures that all responding partners should participate in during the prevent, respond, mitigate, and consequence management stages.
- Consult the National Incident Management System (NIMS), and reference it as appropriate when designing your annex. Your final product will likely be 7–10 pages.
Templates
Because no single source for templates is prescribed, you should consult NIMS, available at the following link for guidance and assistance on creating your annex:
FEMA Templates: http://www.fema.gov/national-incident-management-system
Also, because this assignment involves a fictional city and EOP, you have several options for locating a sample EOP: 1) construct an annex drawing on NIMS guidance alone; 2) contact an emergency management office in a community near where you attend school or live and request their EOP or an annex excerpt to use as a sample; or 3) search online for a sample or an actual annex or EOP to serve as a template.
