When to Activate in Support?

When do you as a county or state, or perhaps a city, activate your Emergency Operations Center (EOC) in support of another agency or jurisdiction? Reading a recent report, it appears that the answer to the question is not always clear to some.

I'd like to provide the following as advice to those who might still be debating when to activate their EOC.

There is one overriding principle that is my guidepost on the issue. You can never activate an EOC too early, only too late. Once the situation gets ahead of you, catching up is very difficult to do. I'll use the example of a county supporting a city, but it applies to a state supporting a county, or a city supporting an agency.

1. When a lower entity activates their EOC, you should do a sympathetic activation at your lowest level.
2. You are not sending any resources, only monitoring the situation. Notify your EOC team of the activation so they know something is cooking —but, they don't have to respond at the moment.
3. Dispatcha liaison to the agency or jurisdiction that is experiencing an issue. This allows you to have someone physically present to understand the situation as it is developing.
4. Be prepared to offer assistance, once you have determined that it is physically possible for your jurisdiction to provide it. Under promise — over deliver.
5. When assistance is offered, be prepared, I'd say even expect it, to be rejected by the party responding to the incident. People and organizations are reluctant to ask for help or accept unsolicited help — especially larger ones, since they are not used to needing assistance from anyone. I describe this as, "Throwing a rope to a drowning man, and they think it is a snake."
6. Expect that when the jurisdiction needing help is totally overwhelmed, they will ask for help — and want it immediately, as in NOW! Thus, the reason for you to have your EOC activated and monitoring the situation, having a liaison present at their location so that you can anticipate what they might need. You can have issued warning orders to others to be sure that assistance can be rendered and how long it will take to have that assistance actually on site and helping. 
7. And, you can have had the conversation with your superiors about the situation and looped them in, getting authority to provide the assistance needed and avoid the time-consuming process of finding them, bringing them up to speed and getting their approval.
8. When assistance is requested, you have someone present in your EOC. All systems have been activated. There is a current situation description in place and people as they report to the EOC are immediately able to begin working without trying to figure out what is going on.

If you do all of the above, you will have a leg-up on being able to respond promptly and will represent your jurisdiction and elected officials in an outstanding manner. Your reputation in the local/regional emergency management community will be enhanced, and when it comes time to do planning and exercises, you will have broader and more willing participation. Trust will have been earned!