Oak Harbor revises emergency plan to meet state, FEMA guidance and adds cybersecurity annex

Fire Chief Travis Anderson told the council the city has a new draft comprehensive emergency management plan for 202692030 aimed at meeting state requirements and FEMA guidance. He said the plan was rewritten to clarify roles, incorporate community lifelines and add a cybersecurity annex.

"If we train people on ICS and Island County trains people on a support model, we're teaching two different ways to do something and there's going to be conflict in the EOC," Chief Anderson said, describing a specific organizational mismatch between Oak Harbor's incident-command-style structure and Island County's support-model structure.

Anderson recommended establishing a multi-agency coordination (MAC) group so jurisdictions could decide on a single EOC manager for joint incidents and suggested the city and county staff explore shared staffing or alternating shifts for continuous EOC management. He also described revised activation levels, an annual exercise requirement and the need for more EOC and ICS training.

In response to a council question about unpredictable or novel incidents, Anderson said the plan emphasizes process and decision-making over prescriptive operational scripts: "What we want to do is teach process. How does the policy group work? What are your roles?" he said.

The council asked staff to review the draft and return for adoption at the Feb. 3 meeting; Anderson said he will continue discussions with Island County about EOC alignment and joint training.