Chapter 3. Phase 2: Incident Notification

3.1 Introduction

An emergency evacuation would only be issued when an incident occurs that is deemed detrimental to the welfare of the general public within the impact area. It is assumed that a no-notice evacuation would occur for an incident with little or no warning. During this phase, the incident has already occurred and been detected, and an evacuation order is being evaluated. Thus, notification of the need to evacuate the public must be established and quickly communicated to all affected agencies. It is assumed that this phase involves notification only to those affected agencies first. Once those agencies have been informed, and first responders have been dispatched, the decision as to when to inform the public of an emergency evacuation should be made. This is when the Incident Command System (ICS) is initialized to coordinate all agencies involved in the evacuation process.

This chapter briefly outlines the agencies involved in the incident notification phase, their roles and responsibilities, resources and equipment used during this phase, and the sharing and coordination of information.

June 26, 2006
Publication #FHWA-HOP-08-020