You are a recent college graduate with a degree in emergency management and homeland security. You move
to another state for your first professional position in this field, which is with a county emergency management
office, serving a population of 50,000 citizens. When you arrive on your first day, you ask to see the existing
emergency operations plan (EOP). Other personnel tell you that your county employs a County Emergency
Management Plan or CEMP, the design of which is determined by the state legislature. This is unexpected
because you studied the National Response Framework (NRF) and National Incident Management System
(NIMS) and other DHS-provided guidance and you assumed that these would be the basis for plans and
strategies wherever you went.
You also discover that although the county’s CEMP is dated within the last year, it probably has not been truly
revised in many years. There is little indication that any national-level guidance or resources were considered
in its development, and it does not appear to have much, if any, stakeholder buy-in. Additionally, there are no
county-level strategies to draw upon, though you know from your educational program that this is not
uncommon. Lastly, while your colleagues are clearly bright and motivated folks with diverse professional and
educational backgrounds, none of them has a degree in EM or HS.
Sample Solution
