Office of Emergency Preparedness

The purpose of the University of California, Berkeley (UCB) Emergency Operations Plan (2.4 MB) (EOP) is to establish policies, procedures, and an organizational structure for response to a major emergency. The Plan incorporates operating procedures from the “Incident Command System” (ICS) for handling emergencies resulting from fires, floods, storms, earthquakes, hazardous materials incidents, and other potential disasters. The EOP utilizes the Standardized Emergency Management System (SEMS), as described by Government Code 8607(a), for managing response to multi-agency and multi-jurisdiction emergencies in California. SEMS, adopted by California in 1995, incorporates the use of the Incident Command System (ICS), the Master Mutual Aid agreement,existing mutual aid systems, and County operational area concept, and inter-agency coordination. This system, by promoting the use of common terminology and command structure, facilitates better flow of information and coordination between responding agencies. SEMS is continuously updated for compliance with the new National Incident Management System (NIMS), a nationwide standardized approach to incident management and response. Developed by the Department of Homeland Security and announced in March 2004, NIMS establishes a uniform set of processes and procedures that emergency responders at all levels of government will use to conduct response operations.

Essential response departments have Department Operations Centers (DOCs) and DOC Plans (209Kb) to coordinate the actions of their personnel and to facilitate communication to and from the EOC. Campus DOCs include:

DOCs may activate independently, in response to localized events that require extraordinary attention (e.g. power failure, Internet failure or attack, civil disturbance, etc.)

Campus staff appointed to emergency management and/or response roles under the campus plan are provided with orientation and training to ICS, SEMS and NIMS, as a component of the campus' ongoing emergency planning, training and exercise programs. Reference documentation and copies of the training material used in ICS/SEMS/NIMS presentations is available at the State of California Office of Emergency Services training resource website. ICS/SEMS/NIMS training materials are organized into 4 categories:

Please consider this resource if you would like to refresh your training or improve your understanding of emergency managment structures and strategies employed at the local, state and national levels. Additional training materials developed for campus exercises are available below:

The World Health Organization (WHO) and the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) have warned that there is a high risk that the H5N1 Avian Influenza virus could mutate further and precipitate the next human influenza pandemic. There is uncertainty about whether H5N1 will mutate into a virus capable of causing a worldwide pandemic; however, international health authorities urge enhanced preparedness activities to respond to the multiple challenges of a public health emergency of this nature.

Traditional emergency/disaster (earthquakes, etc.) response and recovery plans focus on damage to property, equipment and infrastructure. In contrast, an influenza pandemic will have its biggest impact on both personnel and resources. Colleges and universities face challenges in preparing to cope with a pandemic due to high population density in student housing and classrooms, international and domestic travel of faculty and students. Advanced planning can help ensure the continued delivery of essential services that will allow UC Berkeley to maintain its mission of instruction, research and public service. For additional information on pandemic influenza, including FAQ's, please go to the University Health Services web site.

This Influenza Pandemic Emergency Operations Plan (306Kb) forms an annex to the current UC Berkeley Emergency Operations Plan (EOP) and was designed to complement existing emergency operational plans. The goals are to minimize disruption to both personnel and resources, maintain critical functions, and return to normal operations as quickly as possible. The plan describes activities of the department operational units integral to the campus’s emergency response and recovery structure, but it recognizes that the overall campus response to, and recovery from, a pandemic flu depends on campus-wide planning that includes each academic department, research unit and administrative office.

Department Operations Center (DOC) Pandemic Plan Annexes

Concurrent with the development of the Influenza Pandemic Emergency Operations Plan, each Department Operations Center (DOC) on the UC Berkeley campus has created an internal pandemic plan to address specific issues related to its role as a critical response unit under the campus plan. Each DOC planning group was tasked with:

Individual Pandemic DOC annexes are listed in the Document section below, redacted of sensitive content.