This panel consists of preparedness professionals from various agencies and areas of emergency management. Panelists will discuss how a comprehensive, well-documented emergency preparedness plan is critical for all organizations to ensure they are ready to address any potential incidents—from natural disasters to violent threats—to best protect those in their agencies and communities. This panel features Allen Clark, Tanya Bish, Vince Gildone, & Kelly Beatty.

This training will review the different types of exercises (seminars, workshops, tabletop exercises, drills, functional exercises, and full-scale exercises) with a special focus on tabletop planning and creation. Topics and information covered in this training will serve as the kick off for the NEO HCC Training and Exercise Program that the HCC work group has been working on over the past few months. Kevin Friis | Planning Manager, Cuyahoga County Office of Emergency Management

Moderator: Kevin Friis EMResource is a system that is used statewide for tracking available hospital beds, hospital and Emergency Medical Services resources, and other emergency response data. EMTrack is a tool that facilitates patient tracking from an initial encounter through the health care system that healthcare facilities, public health, emergency management, and first responders can use to track patients, receive alerts, and allocate resources in a variety of scenarios. This training will go over the basics of both platforms. Tome Nielsen | Hospital Preparedness Planner, Ohio Department of Health Nielsen is an Ohio native from Columbus. He joined the Ohio Department of Health during the COVID-19 pandemic to support public health in our hospitals. Working with partners throughout ODH, Nielsen leads the Bed Availability and Patient Tracking Platform implementations. Previously Nielsen has served as a Department Administrator for biomedical informatics (the intersection of healthcare and IT) and at Kaiser Permanente, supporting their hospital administration, finance, and regional operations. Nielsen graduated from American University (Washington, DC) with a degree in Public Communications and focus on Public Administration.

It’s Time for Emergency Managers to Prepare for the Fragility of Electric Power Grids For too long, as emergency managers we have assumed that, no matter the cause of a disruption, the electricity providers would be able to isolate the problem and quickly turn the power back on. However, the February 2021 Texas grid disruption put those assumptions to the test. In fact, once the incident began, there was nothing that could be done to stop the course of the disaster. This session will provide a basic understanding of how electric grids work and the 2021 Texas grid disruptions, give insight into the established and emerging vulnerabilities and threats to the security and resilience of grids, and provide planning and preparedness steps that emergency managers should take as a starting point. Michael Lambert | Emergency Preparedness/Homeland Security for the Houston-Galveston Area Council of Governments