Montana Disaster & Emergency Services — SECC Familiarization Series
Module 4: Activation Levels in Practice
What actually changes when the SECC moves up — or down — a level.
Module 1 introduced the four activation levels. This module goes deeper: what actually changes at each level, who decides, and what happens in the first 60 minutes after a change.
About 6–8 minutes. This module draws directly from the SECC Operations Manual's Activation section and its Appendix D decision-support tools — the Manager Quick Decision Guide and the First 60 Minutes Checklists.
Staffing, hours, and products all scale together as activation increases:
The SECC Manager makes the activation-level call. It's a judgment call, but not an unguided one — the SECC Manager Quick Decision Guide gives a short list of escalation cues to check.
The same guide poses direct manager checks: Is complexity outpacing staffing? Are information demands exceeding collection capacity? Are resource requests climbing across jurisdictions? If several answers are yes, moving up a level is likely warranted.
When activation changes, the manual's First 60 Minutes Checklists give the SECC Manager and initial staff a short, practical set of actions to take immediately — tailored to the level being entered.
Each level — Enhanced Monitoring, Partial, and Full — has its own version of this checklist in Appendix D-5 of the manual.
A handful of products act as visible markers of where the SECC sits on the activation scale:
Drafting may begin at Enhanced Monitoring; it may go to the Governor for signature at Partial Activation.
Development begins at Partial Activation and continues through Full Activation.
Becomes a live consideration as activation approaches Full, when incident scale may exceed state capacity alone.
Activation isn't one-directional. Tap each to see how the concept applies to de-escalation.
Before the knowledge check:
Staffing, hours, and products all increase together as activation rises.
The SECC Manager decides, guided by defined escalation cues — not an unstructured judgment call.
Each level has its own short, practical checklist for the first hour after a change.
No score, no pressure — just a quick way to reinforce the key ideas.
1. Who makes the call on the SECC's activation level?
2. At which activation level does Incident Support Plan development typically begin?
3. What is the purpose of the First 60 Minutes Checklists?
4. Can the SECC move down an activation level as conditions ease?
Content in this module is drawn from the Montana DES SECC Operations Manual (2026), including Appendix D-4 (Manager Quick Decision Guide) and Appendix D-5 (First 60 Minutes Checklists). This is a familiarization course; it is not a substitute for position-specific training or the manual itself.