Contra Costa County, California

Contra Costa County is home to the second largest industrial base in California, and it is also one of the most populous counties in the state. As such, it is imperative that the county have an integrated plan for emergency response, risk management, and contingency programs.

Tetra Tech worked with the county’s Homeland Security Working Group and Operational Area Grant Approval Authority to:

• Evaluate how prepared the Operational Area needs to be
• Determine the current state of preparedness of the Operational Area
• Develop a plan to prioritize efforts to close the gaps between where they are and where they need to be

Tetra Tech used its experience in developing disaster response and contingency plans for other multi-jurisdictional entities and based the initial risk assessment on the 15 national planning scenarios. We established discipline-based work groups (such as public health, health care, fire, law enforcement, communications, and emergency management) from all regional and local first responder agencies to focus on federal requirements for capabilities-based preparedness assessment and reporting systems.

The assessment and plans outline priorities for grant requests, establish a unified plan for interoperable communications, improve threat recognition and information collection, facilitate information sharing and collaboration, evaluate capabilities to restore lifelines, provide streamlined coordination for Emergency Medical Services (EMS) and public health needs (including mass prophylaxis or mass care and shelter), improve firefighting and law enforcement response, and reduce overall risk exposure by establishing contingency planning for tactical response.