What has Carmel done to protect its infrastructure against potential EMP attacks?
First, some background. Extreme electromagnetic incidents caused by an intentional electromagnetic pulse (EMP) attack or a naturally occurring geomagnetic disturbance (GMD), caused by severe space weather, could damage significant portions of the Nation’s critical infrastructure, including the electrical grid, communications equipment, water and wastewater systems, and transportation modes. The impacts are likely to cascade, initially compromising one or more critical infrastructure sectors, spilling over into additional sectors, and expanding beyond the initial geographic regions adversely impacting millions of households and businesses.
The impacts are likely to cascade, initially compromising one or more critical infrastructure sectors…
We turned to our Carmel Fire Department and its Emergency Operations Center for an update:
The City of Carmel has gone to great lengths to ensure our critical infrastructure is capable of operating in the event of any widespread outages, which may include an EMP. Specifically, each our public safety buildings, IT sites, and most city buildings are backed up with generators to ensure continuous operations during any outages.
Our City ICS/IT maintains our own data network, and we work closely with Duke Energy, and Midcontinent Independent Systems Operator (MISO) to maintain awareness of any outages locally and how they may impact our area.
Each city department works closely with the city IT/ICS department to discuss response plans in the event of an outage. These discussions are unique to each department as each of us has varying IT needs and infrastructure, however, the city IT/ICS department is often our first line of awareness and support in the event of an outage.
Authored by Council Members Tony Green, Adam Aasen, Rich Taylor, Matt Snyder, Jeff Worrell, Teresa Ayers, Shannon Minnaar, Ryan Locke and Anita Joshi.