Emergency Planning Guide For Utilities Second Edition

An increase in major natural disasters—and the growing number of damaging events involving gas, electric, water, and other utilities—has led to heightened concerns about utility operations and public safety. Due to today's complex, compliance-based environment, utility managers and planners often find it difficult to plan for the action needed to help ensure organization-wide resilience and meet consumer expectations during these incidents. Emergency Planning Guide for Utilities, Second Edition offers a working guide that presents new and field-tested approaches to plan development, training, exercising, and emergency program management. The book will help utility planners, trainers, and responders—as well as their vendors and suppliers—to more effectively prepare for damaging events and improve the level of the utility’s resilience. It also focuses on planning needed in the National Incident Management System and ICS environment that many utilities are embracing going forward. In doing so, utilities will be able to improve the customer experience while reducing the impact that damaging events have on the utility’s infrastructure, people, and resources.

This manual presents principles, practices, and guidelines which deal with natural disasters, accidents, or intentional acts that have the potential to disrupt water services. Discussions include applications of knowledge and experience about specific systems, determination of vulnerable components of the system, and offers of strategies for improvement of the deficiencies, including alternate policies.

Water and wastewater utilities must be prepared for any type of emergency. Public health must be protected and service must be maintained or quickly restored. Manual M19 presents techniques for developing contingency plans for a variety of emergencies from natural disasters to human-caused crises. The manual explains how to develop an emergency preparedness plan, how to identify vulnerabilities in your water system, and how to determine how a disruption would likely impact service. The manual includes a separate, 20-page booklet "Security Analysis & Response for Water Utilities," which provides guidance in hazard assessment, vulnerability assessment, mitigation, development of a response plan, and crisis communications for a utility security breach.

A thoroughly updated introduction to the current issues and challenges facing managers and administrators in the investor and publicly owned utility industry, this engaging volume addresses management concerns in five sectors of the utility industry: electric power, natural gas, water, wastewater systems and public transit.

Water and wastewater utility managers will find expert guidance on all issues regarding security and emergency preparedness and response in this book. The terrorist attacks on the US of Sept. 11, 2001, as well as destruction caused by Hurricane Katrina in 2005, brought heightened concern over the security and emergency preparedness of America's water supply infrastructure--concerns which remain high to this day.

Annotation This manual presents principles, practices, and guidelines which deal with natural disasters, accidents, or intentional acts that have the potential to disrupt water services. Discussions include applications of knowledge and experience about specific systems, determination of vulnerable components of the system, and offers of strategies for improvement of the deficiencies, including alternate policies.

This guide gives valuable information on how to develop a public works annex that ensures that public works activities are incorporated into a jurisdiction's emergency operating plan (EOP). Each chapter is updated or expanded, and a new chapter has been added on the National Incident Management System (NIMS) and incident command for public works/utility/water-wastewater systems.