This course teaches you to run a structured lifeline sweep, translate what you find into a Community SITREP, and transmit that report through the channels that feed the Emergency Operations Center. By the time you finish the assessment scenarios, you will be producing intelligence your EOC can act on.
The PLN-01 Student Companion Guide is your offline reference for the entire course—the complete Community SITREP template, the eight-question sweep card, lifeline quick-reference tables, six blank assessment scenario worksheets, doctrinal sources, and a full glossary. Download it before Lesson 01. Print the sweep card and scenario worksheets before Lesson 07.
↓ Digital PDF — free for Patreon subscribers:
Download PLN-01 Companion Guide (PDF)
🛒 Printed & spiral-bound version:
Order the PLN-01 Printed Workbook →
Printed on durable stock. Ships from the FFTP store.
Recommended upstream: INT-03: SALUTE & SPOT Report Training and INT-08: Pattern of Life Analysis — the observation and baseline skills that PLN-01 builds on. Neither is required; all concepts are introduced from first principles here.
Suggested pre-course: Personal Preparedness Assessment Workbook — household-level lifeline gap analysis and damage assessment worksheet (Table 9) that this course extends to the community level.
Suggested post-course: FEMA IS-2901 Introduction to Community Lifelines (free at training.fema.gov) — the EOC-side view of the same framework. Takes you where your SITREP goes once it leaves your hands.
Course Overview
FEMA’s Community Lifelines framework organizes every disaster impact into eight categories: the eight services that have to keep working, or be restored, for a community to survive. Emergency managers at local, state, and federal level use these eight categories to assess damage, set priorities, and allocate resources. They measure outcomes, not activity.
PLN-01 adapts that framework for MAG-level operations. Lessons 01–06 build the knowledge and skill; Lesson 07 applies them to six realistic post-disaster scenarios where you complete a full Community SITREP before the graded answer is revealed.