Integrated Emergency Management Course

IEMC: Community-specific

Community-specific Integrated Emergency Management Courses provide an in-depth exercise for participants from a single jurisdiction.  Community-specific IEMCs are written to reflect the hazards or events facing the jurisdiction, the type of EOC used by the jurisdiction, and the organizations included in the jurisdiction emergency plans.  Skilled EMI exercise specialists conduct a pre-course analysis with the jurisdiction in order to collect location 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.   In many cases, jurisdictions that completed a Community-specific IEMC returned home to a real life crisis.  In all cases, jurisdictions report that the Community-specific IEMC established teams and procedures that would not have been created elsewhere.

AUG 2007 article “FEMA Course Aided Quick Response, Officials Say 

“The swift response to the deadly collapse of an eight-lane bridge in Minneapolis (2007) last week is partially attributed to two Federal Emergency Management Agency courses emergency-responders took in the past five years.” 

This article is in reference to a Minneapolis Community-specific IEMC conducted in 2005.

Each year various States, counties, cities, and communities throughout the United States express an interest in FEMA/EMI conducting an IEMC for their jurisdictions. Community-specific IEMCs require a major commitment from both the community and FEMA, as well as from the FEMA Regional Office and State Office of Emergency Management. 

Because the demand for Community-specific IEMCs exceeds EMI's resources; application criteria and a formal selection process have been established. Both the selection process and information that will be reviewed to determine acceptance of a request are outlined below.

Questions regarding the community-specific IEMCs can be directed to your State emergency management agency, your FEMA Regional Office, or directly to EMI in Emmitsburg, Maryland at  Ray.Chevalier@fema.dhs.gov.

Applications Process

• Steps in the Application/Selection Process
• Types of Community-specific Programs
• Past Community-specific Programs
• Sample Application for a Community-specific IEMC