FEMA Releases Guide on Evacuation and Shelter-in-Place Planning

FEMA has released Planning Considerations: Evacuation and Shelter-in-Place: Guidance for State, Local, Tribal, and Territorial Partners, a resource containing concepts, principals, and guidance for emergency managers and planners. Evacuation and shelter-in-place protective actions are prompted by a variety of threats and hazards. Incident-specific circumstances drive the relevant protective actions based on a community’s demographics, infrastructure, resources, authorities, and decision-making process. Determining that an evacuation needs to take place is not an all-or-nothing approach. Lessons learned from recent disasters, to include hurricanes, wildfires, and floods, have highlighted the value of enacting a zone-phased approach to evacuation and shelter-in-place, enabling jurisdictions to move as few people as necessary. Sheltering-in-place populations that are not directly in harm’s way, rather than having them evacuate, can help jurisdictions reduce costs and resource requirements, and limit the negative impacts of evacuations, while promoting improved response and quicker re-entry and recovery.

FEMA will host a series of three 60-minute minute webinars in August 2019 to discuss the document, related efforts, and answer participants’ questions. Advance registration is required.

To register, click on your preferred webinar session from the list below:

Webinar 1: Thursday, Aug. 15, 2019 at 2 p.m. EDT
Register: https://fema.connectsolutions.com/evac-web1/event/login.html

Webinar 2: Tuesday, Aug. 20, 2019 at 10 a.m. EDT
Register: https://fema.connectsolutions.com/evac-web2/event/login.html

Webinar 3: Thursday, Aug. 22, 2019 at 4 p.m. EDT
Register: https://fema.connectsolutions.com/evac-web3/event/login.html