Disasters can strike with little or no warning, so cooperatives need to be ready to respond quickly and recover, limiting the impact on communities. Indiana faces a wide range of natural, technological, and man-made hazards each year, any of which could seriously disrupt cooperative service. Every cooperative should stay prepared, and IEC is here to help — including managing the statewide mutual aid program, which brings in extra crews to help impacted cooperatives restore damaged infrastructure.
IEC’s resource page offers planning, training, and exercise guides, toolkits, and templates to support your operations. We also provide technical reviews and guidance on updating plans, help coordinate emergency preparedness training, and support exercise design.
For additional information, please contact Matt Fearon, mfearon@indianaec.org.
Resources
PLANNING
NRECA provides disaster preparedness and recovery resources, including references to relevant FEMA documents on damage assessment, debris management, and cost-reimbursement eligibility.
FEMA provides a preparedness toolkit that offers opportunities to better understand your community’s hazards, conduct threat, hazard, impact, and risk assessments, and conduct exercises and evaluations.
TRAINING
The Federal Emergency Management Agency utilized consortium partners to provide technical training in specific subject areas. The Texas A&M Engineering Extension Service (TEEX) offers a “Disaster Management for Electric Power Systems (MGT345)” class tailored specifically to the electric industry. There is no registration cost for this class.
Course: TEEX (MGT345)
EXERCISES
The USDHS Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency provides exercise toolkits, including an electrical substation sabotage scenario. This toolkit includes all the documentation needed to plan, complete, and evaluate the exercise.
USDHS – CISA Physical Exercise Toolkit
CISA provides cybersecurity-based exercise toolkits to assess cooperative capabilities in response to a cyberattack against organizational systems that may impact direct service provision to consumers.
