Howard County On Call Emergency Manager and Emergency Operations Center Manager Training Program

About the Program

Category: Risk and Emergency Management (Best in Category)

Year: 2022

Howard County has had an eventful past 10 years as it relates to large scale emergencies and disasters including but not limited to, the Columbia Mall shooting, Ellicott City train derailment, multiple hurricanes, winter weather events, tornadoes, presidentially declared disasters: 2014 and 2016 Blizzard, 2016 Ellicott City flash flooding, 2018 Ellicott City flash flooding, and the COVID-19 pandemic. The Howard County Office of Emergency Management (OEM) is responsible for planning and mitigating for, responding to, and recovering from disasters in the County. Emergency management requires significant behind the scenes work, coordination, and planning during non-disaster times. When disasters occur, quick decisions and thorough understanding of policies, procedures, and knowledge of agency contacts is vitally important to keeping the public safe and to the overall success of the operation. As such, OEM leadership needed a way to prepare new staff who had not been a part of previous disaster responses, in a way that would help them succeed and be empowered to respond quickly in emergency situations without the benefit of institutional knowledge. Subsequently, OEM leadership developed and merged the On Call Emergency Manager (OCEM) and Emergency Operations Center (EOC) Manager Training Program.