Emergency Services

Background

Emergency Management, in essence, is the organization, coordination and management of available resources and responsibilities for dealing with all aspects of emergencies, in particular, preparedness, planning, response, mitigation and recovery.

Emergency management involves plans, structures and operational arrangements established to engage the normal endeavors of government, voluntary and private agencies in a comprehensive, coordinated means to respond to the public’s needs in the event of an emergency or disaster.

In the United States, our lead federal agency for emergency management is the Federal Emergency Management Agency or FEMA. Each state also has an emergency management office, and most other levels of government, such as counties and cities have a similar office as well. In California, the California Governor's Office of Emergency Services or CalOES is responsible for statewide emergency management and provides support and resources to local emergency management offices.

The Sacramento County Office of Emergency Services coordinates the overall County response to disasters and also works with other municipalities in the region as well as state and federal agencies, community based and private organizations. SacOES is responsible for:

• Alerting and notifying appropriate agencies when disaster strikes
• Coordinating response recovery activities among multiple participating agencies and jurisdictions
• Constantly monitoring incident status and maintaining situational awareness
• Responding to complex incidents
• Coordinating available resources to be mobilized in times of disaster
• Developing plans and procedures in response to and recovery from disasters
• Developing and providing preparedness materials and presentations to the public and business community
• Administering and coordinating the Homeland Security grants for the county of Sacramento.