Governor Dannel P. Malloy has released the action plan created by William Hackett, director of State Emergency Management at the Department of Emergency Services and Public Protection.
The proposal came on the heels of the Witt Associates’ recommendations in December. It creates a set of goals to improve coordination and implement it by August. “The unprecedented storms that hit our state last year give us an unprecedented opportunity to design a unified response plan for dealing with an emergency,” Malloy said in a statement. “While a plan like this will always be updated to meet the needs of an ever changing world, the actions outlined in this report give us some concrete steps that we can begin to take immediately. I want to thank Bill Hackett and the hard working folks at DESPP for pulling this together. We did many things right both during and after each storm. But when it comes to responding to an emergency, the goal must always be to improve.”
Malloy said there are three goals outlined in the plan:
- Enhance the existing State Response Framework and local plans to create more comprehensive planning to identify in detail multi-agency, multi-jurisdictional response and coordination actions, roles and responsibilities;
- Improve the quality of communications between local and state governments and utilities during emergencies;
- Increase utilities’ interface with Connecticut emergency management systems.
The DESPP will convene a working group to oversee implementation of the goals and hire an outside consultant that will work with the group.
The Governor also announced that the Two Storm Panel will present its final recommendations on January 9.
“The magnitude of these storms required us to take both a short and long term view on improving both our utilities and state and local government’s response to emergencies,” said Malloy. “We’ve already taken action on some of the recommendations in the Witt Report. I look forward to seeing the comprehensive analysis of the Two Storm Panel, and to continuing to improve our response to emergency situations.”