Each year States, counties, cities, tribal communities and specialized jurisdictions throughout the United States apply to the Emergency Management Institute (EMI) to conduct an IEMC for their jurisdictions’ emergency management officials and responders. Community-specific IEMCs require a major commitment from both the community and FEMA, as well as from FEMA Regional Offices and State offices of emergency management.

The community-specific IEMC builds awareness and skills needed to develop and implement policies, plans, and procedures in an emergency operations center (EOC) to protect life and property through applications of sound emergency management principles in all phases of emergency management.

IEMCs are exercise-based courses that place individuals in a realistic crisis situation within a structured learning environment. Jurisdictions choose the type of disasters or events for their exercises and EMI exercise specialists tailor the IEMC for the jurisdiction by conducting a site visit (pre-course analysis) in the community, collecting plans, photos of critical infrastructure, and maps, and meeting with officials and agency representatives.

In addition to the IEMC: Community-specific (930) which exercises the emergency operations center (EOC), a new course, IEMC: EOC-IMT Interface (947), focuses on the coordination between a jurisdiction’s Incident Management Team (IMT) and its EOC for a selected event.

The following communities have been selected for community-specific IEMCs in Fiscal Year 2010.

Region 1: Burlington, VT
               Boston, MA

Region 2: Baltimore, MD

Region 3: Henrico County, VA

Region 4: Jackson County and Ocean Springs, MS
               Palatka and Putnam County, FL
               Beaufort County, SC

Region 5: Licking County, OH
               Washington County, MN

Region 8: Colorado Springs, CO
               Adams County and Brighton, CO

Region 9: Atascadero, CA
               El Dorado County, CA

Region 10: Snohomish County and Everett, WA

For information on how to apply for a community-specific IEMC, visit our web site at: http://www.training.fema.gov/EMIWeb/IEMC/IEMC_15.asp

For continual updates on IEMCs, please sign up for our free email subscription service at: http://training.fema.gov/EMIWeb/IEMC/