Where do specific plans fit within emergency management?
You will recall that in Topic 3 we discussed the context of emergency plans, and said that individual plans do not exist in isolation. This is true for hazard-specific and function-specific plans. They are related to both the general emergency management plan for a community, industry or activity, and the plans and procedures of individual organisations. This may be shown diagrammatically as follows:
Figure 11.2: Context of function-specific and hazard-specific plans
The hazard-specific and function-specific plans must be compatible with the general emergency management plan—there must be no clash of responsibilities or management structure, and they should be specifically mentioned in the general emergency management plan to ensure that all relevant people and organisations are aware of their existence.
Likewise the specific plans must be compatible with those plans for individual organisations. You will rarely find that a hazard-specific or function-specific plan involves only one organisation, therefore they need to take into account the actions and functions specified in the individual organisation plans.
