An Insurance Planning Guide for Emergency Service Organizations

Emergency service organizations (ESO), as a whole, are efficient planners. We plan for disasters that may happen in our community. We plan to replace apparatus. We even go so far as to preplan our response, strategy and tactics for major incidents in our response area. But how well do we plan for an emergency or a disaster that might happen to us? The honest answer is that we don’t plan to take care of ourselves very well at all.

This document discusses the basics of continuity of operations planning, includes an introduction to risk management and has a primary focus on understanding insurance issues so chief officers can make informed decisions to protect their organizations. The appendices include key definitions and checklists that are critical to a comprehensive understanding of what kind of insurance protection you are actually buying.

There is currently no other guide that we are aware of that prepares chief officers in the fire and emergency service for this kind of analysis and decision-making. As part of the VCOS' continuing mission to educate our peers and colleagues, we're confident this document will be valuable as you make well-reasoned preparations for an eventuality we hope will never occur.