Emergency Operations vs. Emergency Coordination Centre
Mark Gillan 🇨🇦
Deputy Fire Chief (Ret.) at Saint John Fire Department, Director Emergency Solutions International
Don't worry I'm not asking you to choose...perhaps I will later. What an exciting time to examine a number of our emergency management conventions. Across North America our community leaders have been logging more time working together to manage one of the most complex crises in history, while oh yes hurricanes, violent protests, flood and fires on the side of our desks!
While we are organizing or supporting our own response and ensuring that we are horizontally interoperable with our community stakeholders and joint responders, we have a responsibility to examine our own effectiveness and continuously improve our organization's practices.
Our team is currently working with leadership from Defence Research and Development Canada and Public Safety Canada to examine best practices in Emergency Operations and Emergency Coordination Centres at all levels...from the Government Operations Centre in Ottawa, to Ministries, Provinces and private sector critical infrastructure. This is a tough job currently considering just about every leader and organization has been activated and red lined for 5 months...some longer.
Some interesting observations have been made by leaders at all levels who have been running hard for months: the long duration event COVID is illustrating areas of opportunity around standardization of training, operations and depth of personnel available to participate as a team to manage complex events in high pressure Emergency Centres.
In this article I would like to focus on our naming convention. The Emergency Operations Centre (EOC)and Emergency Coordination Centre (ECC) are at times used interchangeably or in some cases specially laid out by Regulation ie. Airports for the use of ECC.
A few leaders are very passionate about arguing their's is the "right" terminology, this is the exception and a very old school style. Most leaders seem to take the approach that this is an example of poor definition of the lexicon of language are representative of a deeper problem of not having a standardized training stream and credentialing, that helps leaders to staff and manage their Emergency Centres. Leaders have also expressed that in a future vision they would like to be able to "share" their human resources to other Centres, much the way at an Incident Command Post Command might staff a Planning Chief or Liaison Officer. based on credential. Currently in Canada there is not an accepted standard educational and mentoring path for a young person interested in being a future Emergency Centre leader. This gap is starting to show itself as we challenge our old war horses shift back into 5th gear as the second wave is forming. In speaking with one EOC leader, she stated "I wish I could go to the Emergency Management Store and buy some young leaders". Another stated that often times her newer team members were getting burned out and lack of training and experience were some of the reasons why.
At the micro level in the discussion about comparing EOC vs. ECC the Fire Chief in Moncton New Brunswick, Conrad Landry cut right to the chase. Paraphrasing, "...we are beyond the argument, we use both terms: when we have an Incident Command Post running tactical operations in the field or when we are supporting a functional operations centre ie. health or immigration in the case of the Syrian immigration, we are an Emergency Coordination Centre. When we are directly managing community response with no intermediary in the vertical we are an Emergency Operations Centre".
Beyond bringing clarity to what could be a confusing non-standardized naming convention Chief Landry's approach of getting beyond entrenched arguments between Emergency Management professionals is a great example of how we need to shift our paradigm and stop wasting our time. Lets put behind us arguments about regional specificity, siloed approach and kingdom building. As an outcome to this new Post 9/11 age, as professionals lets work together at a higher level, collaborating and compromising when necessary on small items, to get to a more strategic, interoperable and sustainable Emergency Management model.
It definitely should be Emergency Coordination Centre or I'm not discussing anything else with any of you! Just Kidding
Mark Gillan BBA, CFO, MIFireE
Emergency Solutions International
107 Charlotte St. Saint John, N.B. E2L 2J2, Canada
(613) 809-0332
@ESIMARK (Twitter)
EY Canada Human Services Lead
4yHi Mark If you are looking for some jurisdictional comparisons EMA (Emergency Management Australia) and EMV (Emergency Management Victoria) make public National and State Frameworks and Guidelines. From a state perspective we have State, Regional and Municipal Emergency Plans with clear escalation protocols and JSOPs to better control and coordinate in responding and providing relief during an emergency. The creation of BRV has been a significant investment in the states recovery capacity and capability. The Royal Commission into National Disaster Arrangements has made some interesting observations and the Independent Inspector General Emergency Management in Victoria has some great observations on improvement opportunities in the sector here in Victoria. Other key features include national resource sharing agreement and disaster recovery financial arrangements (funding agreements with Commonwealth) - the RC is looking at common data sharing arrangements as well.
Scout 5 Consulting
4yI would be curious of how you came to the conclusion of red lining at the Provincial EOC?
Retired at U.S. Forest Service
4yAfter more then 30 years of public service (20 in dispatch) I am retiring. The name has to be tied to the duties and authority of the people working at the location. Do they command (make decisions) or just communicate. On the federal side over the last few years I saw a swing back from being a command center to a communication center. This was due to the lack of qualified leaders in dispatch and the loss of trust of management for our people to make those decisions. Good luck and thank you for your service sir.
Leader | Writer ✍ | Artist 🎨 |
4yHaving worked under both constructs I think it comes down to the decision making capacity of the centre itself. The coord center had less ability to make a command decisions without collaboration from the higher authority. Now that was in a security centric event (Olympics, G8/20 Summits) but I've seen similar in municipal settings. Regardless of the title, coordination could be the 2nd C in any operation. Nice pic of Ian, Mark.
Disaster & Emergency Management Specialist - Educator - CLO - Speaker - CEM(R) - iAEM Certification Commissioner
4yA nice discussion topic Mark. I would argue that there is another level and that is an EMC (Emergency Management Centre) to add to the confusion. An EMC sits above the ECC and looks at the requests coming in from the ECC and is responsible for securing the necessary resources for any given event. Within the US this would most likely be at the State level, but could slide down to a regional level. A similar argument occurs with the term Incident Controller. I am of the opinion that unless you can see the event and see your personnel, you cannot "Control" them. You could have a number of different and/or similar incidents in a close proximity, yet not impacting each other, and each will have an Incident Controller. They can see their incident. If one is in command of a number of incidents, they are not controlling those incidents but they can coordinate resources and wider strategies, but they cannot "Control" what happens at the front line. Then at the State level (EMC), all you can do is manage resources and assets to requests of the coordinator, who then distributes according to the greatest need for the leader at the front line who receives the asset or resource to control how it is deployed to the greatest effect.