The deadline for applying to EMI for a community-specific IEMC in FY2010 is January 15, 2009.

Each year States, counties, cities, tribal communities and specialized jurisdictions throughout the United States apply to EMI to conduct an IEMC for their jurisdictions.  IEMCs are exercise-based courses that place jurisdictions’ emergency operations center (EOC) personnel in realistic crisis situations within a structured learning environment.  The jurisdiction selects the scenario it wants to exercise, for example, a special event, hurricane, or terrorist incident—the exercises are then developed to reflect the hazards or events facing the jurisdiction, the type of EOC used by the jurisdiction, and the organizations included in the jurisdictional emergency plans. 

A community-specific IEMC builds awareness and skills needed to develop and implement a jurisdiction’s policies, plans, procedures, and mutual aid agreements in an EOC environment.  Skilled EMI exercise specialists conduct a pre-course analysis in the jurisdiction in order to collect local information, identify critical infrastructure, study transportation systems, and analyze current response plans.  From this information, exercises are built to test the jurisdiction’s planned approach to specific hazards and to surface issues for which the IEMC participants may need to re-evaluate and develop corrective action plans. 

Recent IEMCs have included Daytona Beach, Florida and NASCAR in preparation for the Daytona 500, Dallas-Ft. Worth International Airport for a terrorism incident, Denver (city and county) for the Democratic National Convention, and hurricane recovery and mitigation for Horry County, SC.

IEMCs are designed for personnel who fill specific emergency support positions within their community - officials from local, regional, state and federal emergency management agencies, senior level personnel from response agencies and organizations (e.g., law enforcement, fire, emergency medical services, public health), managers from volunteer organizations active in disasters (VOADs), and representatives from private organizations which participate in local, regional, and state responses.  Each participant is assigned a role similar to their real-life position.  To view a list of positions of appropriate attendees, please go to the IEMC website at: http://www.training.fema.gov/EMIWeb/IEMC/iemcpos.asp

Emergency personnel can attain readiness either through managing emergencies or through participating in exercises - clearly, exercises are the preferred method of gaining the necessary expertise.  IEMC participants are challenged to use new ideas, skills, and abilities in addition to their own knowledge and experience. In this way, the IEMC allows individuals to rehearse their real-life roles in a realistic emergency situation, while at the same time identifying additional planning needs.

For information on how to prepare an application for a community-specific IEMC, for continual updates on IEMCs, and to sign up for our free email subscription service, click on the link: Sign up via our free e-mail subscription service at our web site:  http://www.training.fema.gov/EMIWeb/IEMC/IEMC_15.asp.