Turning the Pyramid Upside Down: From Incidents to Community Outcomes

Ericka Huston, Emergency Manager, City of Chandler, Arizona

Mike Stover is Corporate Director of Talent and Culture at PCH Hotels & Resorts, leading talent acquisition and culture strategy. He oversees distributed recruiting teams, vendor partnerships, workforce development collaborations, and delivers companywide management development programs focused on emotional intelligence.

From the moment I entered emergency management, I was taught to plan for capabilities, not catastrophes, as one of the cornerstones of an all-hazards approach. Yet every time I sat down to review or build an Emergency Operations Plan (EOP), I kept running into the same contradiction. If we truly believe in all-hazards planning, why are so many EOPs structured around incident-specific annexes?

Excessive heat annex. Pandemic annex. Mass fatality annex. Cyber annex.

The list goes on.

That disconnect always bothered me. Hazards change. Impacts don’t.

The same tension existed with Emergency Support Functions (ESF). While ESFs are familiar to emergency management professionals, they are far less intuitive to the departments we rely on during real-world emergencies. Most people in an organization, whether in the public or private sector, do not speak the ‘emergency management language.’ Acronyms like ESF, RSF, or even COOP can confuse or intimidate staff who are otherwise highly skilled at what they do. I kept asking myself, why are we making this harder than it needs to be?

That question flipped the planning model on its head. Instead of asking what incident might happen next, the focus became on what must be stabilized to keep a community functioning, no matter what the cause.

I wanted a plan written in plain language—one that focused on solving the problem, not decoding FEMA terminology.

That search led me to Community Lifelines.

When the Focus Shifts, Everything Changes

The first time I seriously applied the Community Lifelines framework to emergency operations planning, it felt like a light bulb turned on. Instead of organizing the plan around hazards or functional silos, the focus shifted to a much simpler question:

What broke, and what does it take to stabilize it?

Community Lifelines force a discipline of outcome-based thinking. They don’t ask what happened; they ask what is failing and what must be restored for the community to function. Power. Transportation. Communications. Health and medical. Safety and security. Food, water, shelter.

Suddenly, the EOP wasn’t about who ‘owns’ a problem, but rather it was about who contributes to stabilizing a lifeline.

"Instead of asking what incident might happen next, the focus became on what must be stabilized to keep a community functioning, no matter what the cause."

In practical terms, this fundamentally changed the structure of the plan I developed. What would traditionally have been a Basic Plan, 15 ESF annexes, multiple Recovery Support Functions and a stack of incident-specific annexes was reduced to a Basic Plan and eight annexes—one for each Community Lifeline.

At first, I was skeptical. Could it really be this simple? Was I missing something?

As of writing this, my answer is no.

Planning Built Around How an Organization Actually Works

The EOP I developed is intentionally strategic. It identifies what must be stabilized, who is responsible for stabilizing it, and what their responsibilities are during disruption. That clarity didn’t come from templates. It came from people.

The plan was built through a deliberate series of seminars, workshops and discussion-based exercises. The goal wasn’t to force departments into predefined emergency management boxes but to understand how they already operate and apply those skill sets to the appropriate lifelines. Departments validated their own roles, identified dependencies and stress-tested assumptions through facilitated discussion.

Workshops were iterative. Information was gathered, documented, refined and sent back to departments for ground truthing before being finalized. This process ensured the plan reflected real capabilities and not just aspirational ones.

Plans are only as effective as the information and the intent behind them. I was deliberate about avoiding a generic, one-size-fits-all template. Instead, I grounded the plan in how the organization operates on a normal day and aligned those real-world functions to stabilize each Community Lifeline on a bad one. Hazards that once dominated incident-specific annexes were reframed into a supporting role within the Base Plan’s Hazard and Threat Analysis. They still matter, and they’re acknowledged where appropriate, but they no longer drive the structure of the plan. Instead, hazards are intentionally woven into lifeline-specific roles and responsibilities, reinforcing outcomes over scenarios.

The resulting plan is still comprehensive—and yes, still long. I know most people will never read it cover to cover. That’s okay. The layout is designed for quick access, allowing users to find just-in-time information about strategic responsibilities when it matters most.

Supporting the Incident, Not Competing with It

Another deliberate shift in the plan was moving away from an Incident Command mindset inside the Emergency Operations Center and toward an Incident Support Model (ISM).

Over the years, I’ve watched EOC roles blur into quasi– incident command positions. Titles get muddy. Authority gets assumed. Egos sometimes creep in. Ok, maybe all the time. However, the EOC is not the incident commander, nor should it try to be.

By adopting an ISM approach, roles are clearly defined as supportive, not directive. Responsibilities are aligned to assisting the Incident Management Team (IMT) in the field. The EOC exists to provide resources, coordination and communication when field operations are overwhelmed.

I often describe the EOC as a glorified logistics and public affairs engine. We exist to get people, equipment, information and coordination where they’re needed most. Sometimes that ‘stuff’ is tangible. Sometimes it’s operational messaging, interagency coordination, or political interface. Either way, the objective is the same: support the IMT so they can stabilize the incident.

This supportive approach keeps the focus where it belongs.

Planning for What Matters Most

By combining Community Lifeline–based annexes with an Incident Support Model, the EOP becomes less about structure for structure’s sake and more about outcomes. It aligns strategy with reality. It speaks in a language that all EOC responders understand. Heck, that might even sound like a whole community approach while we’re at it. Most importantly, it keeps everyone focused on what truly matters during an emergency:

Stabilizing the community.

In the end, that’s the real measure of a successful EOP. It’s not about how many annexes it has, but how effectively it helps people do their jobs when everything else is falling apart.

Logistics

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