Emergency Preparedness Document Analysis

As Hurricanes Katrina, Rita, and Wilma successively lashed the gulf coast starting in late August 2005, nature’s fury exposed serious weaknesses in the United States’ emergency response capabilities. Not all emergencies pose this magnitude of challenge. In the United States, the initial—and usually major—responsibility for disaster response rests with local authorities. This “bottom-up” system of emergency management has a long history and continues to make sense in most circumstances. Core Challenges for Large-Scale Disaster

Editor’s Note: This Chapter is the continuation of an adaptation of a state plan for disaster preparation and response. In total, the original chapter comprises Chapters 1, 14, 16-18.

Ensuring Resilience to Disasters has more tasking’s than another mission and involves many different agencies to accomplish those tasks. The four tasks are to mitigate hazards, enhance preparedness, ensure effective emergency response, and rapidly recover. The main agency that is responsible for these tasking’s is FEMA. FEMA’s mission is to “reduce the loss of life and property and protect communities nationwide from all hazards, including natural disasters, acts of terrorism, and other man-made disasters” (FEMA, 2017, p.2). FEMA works with federal and State services to assist them in accomplishing their goals. They also assist local services by assisting in setting up emergency management agencies (LEMA) and set guidance for Emergency Operations Planning (EOP). EOP’s are “plans that provide an overview of the jurisdiction’s preparedness and response strategies. It describes expected hazards, outlines agency roles and responsibilities, and explains how the jurisdiction keeps the plan current.” (FEMA, 2010,

State and local responders formulate the concepts within the FRP around disasters and emergencies that can be handled “the Federal Government is called on to provide supplemental assistance when the consequences of a disaster exceed State and local capabilities” (p.11). If assistance is required by State, and local agencies, the Federal Government has the ability to deploy a wide range of assets to aid state and local efforts during the disaster. The Federal Government has a large contingency of support personnel, teams, operating facilities, specialized equipment, and assistance programs that allow for disaster operations. “The FRP describes the major components of the system, as well as the structure for coordinating Federal response and recovery actions necessary to address State-identified requirements and priorities”

All functions vested in the President that have been delegated or assigned to the Defense Civil Preparedness Agency, Department of Defense, are transferred or reassigned to the Director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency” ( Executive Order NO. 12,148, 1979). In this executive order, director of the FEMA had given many other authorities as he was being asked to establish Federal policies for, and coordinate, all civil defense and civil emergency planning, management and assistance of the Federal agencies. In the Homeland Security Act of 2002, Congress decided to make department of homeland security to coordinate with other federal agencies to work in any disaster or law order situation. “Carry out all functions of entities transferred to the Department, including by acting as a focal point regarding natural and manmade crises and emergency planning” PUBLIC LAW 107–296—NOV. 25,

According to Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), there are many factors that will affect the direction of emergency management in the coming years. These can be classified as global challenges, global opportunities, national challenges, national opportunities, professional challenges, and professional opportunities. Global Challenges include some issues like global climate change, increasing population and population density, increasing resource scarcities, rising income inequality, and increasing risk aversion. Global Opportunities has to do with increased scientific understanding of the hazards and societal responses, as well as revolutionary technologies. National Challenges involves increasing urbanization and hazard exposure, interdependencies in infrastructure, continued emphasis on growth, rising costs of disaster recovery, increasing population diversity, terrorist threats, low priority of emergency management, legal liability, and intergovernmental tensions. Due to these factors that will affect the direction of emergency management in the coming years, there is need for us at emergency management division to adjust operational plans to meet these challenges and especially changes emanating from constant changes expected in technology and other threats we face.

The whole world observed as the administration responders appeared incapable to provide essential protection from the effects of nature. The deprived response results from a failure to accomplish a number of risk factors (Moynihan, 2009). The dangers of a major hurricane striking New Orleans had been measured, and there was sufficient warning of the threat of Katrina that announcements of emergency were made days in advance of landfall (Moynihan, 2009). Nonetheless, the responders were unsuccessful to change this information into a level of preparation suitable with the possibility of the approaching disaster. Federal responders failed to recognize the need to more actively engage (Moynihan, 2009). These improvements include improved ability to provide support to states and tribes ahead of a disaster; developed a national disaster recovery strategy to guide recovery efforts after major disasters and emergencies; and the Establishment of Incident Management Assistance Teams in which these full time, rapid response teams are able to deploy within two hours and arrive at an incident within 12 hours to support the local incident commander (FEMA,

Application of deconfliction concepts. A basic expectation of citizens in developed countries is that their governmental agencies employed in the event of massive emergency situations or natural disasters are able to respond rapidly and effectively. The policy stance for building capacity to manage massive destruction threats and their aftermath rests on three pillars: Establish a common language (definitions), delineate and deconflict interagency functioning (plans, roles, and responsibilities), and establish a clearly defined and streamlined response channel. Not surprisingly, interagency response capabilities are not always sufficiently efficient or effective. The national experience with regard to Hurricane Katrina illustrates the difficulty of proving swift, comprehensive responses.

Prior to the creation of FEMA, the response to disasters was unorganized and faced several issues which federal agency actually was the lead responder. On June 19, 1978, President Carter transmitted to Congress the Reorganization Plan Number 3 (CFR 1978, 5 US Code 903). The intent of plan was to consolidate emergency preparedness, mitigation, and response activities into one federal emergency management organization (Haddow , Bullock, & Coppola, 2010, p. 6). The creation of FEMA gave the director the ability to report directly to the president in the event of a disaster. During an emergency the dependability and reliability of the Federal, state, local, tribal, and territorial (SLTT) can be the difference between life, death or destruction

In this paper we will discuss the history of Emergency Management and the political influence shrouding this field for the past two hundred years. Political influence has been steadily increasing and this can be attributed in part to the rise in social media and the increased involvement by local leaders during disaster recovery and response. To support this theory we will also analyze Hurricane Sandy and looking at three politically charged components of the disaster. Finally, we will discuss disaster policy and the future of emergency management.

In its current form, the federal emergency management agency, commonly known as FEMA, represents a sizable federal agency employing approximately 7500 people located throughout the country, and among 10 regional field offices. Such extensions include national emergency training centers, and a domestic preparedness-training center. FEMA has associations with partnerships consisting of local, state, tribal, and other relevant federal agencies. FEMA associations can extend to private and

Throughout its history, FEMA has had two main missions. First, FEMA’s mission is to enhance the federal government 's capacity to deal with and survive foreign attacks. The main types of foreign attacks that FEMA is tasked to respond to relate to terrorist attacks and nuclear war. The second mission of FEMA is to assist state and local authori¬ties to respond to man-made and natural disasters that are to enormous for the local and state resources to respond to efficiently. While national security focuses more on civil defense, state and local authorities are more focused on natural disasters such as hurricanes, storms, floods and potential nuclear power accidents. These divergent focuses really presents FEMA with huge challenges since federal security authorities’ main objective is quite different from state or local authorities’ focus. Considering that FEMA designed the Federal Response Plan, the agency has the challenge of balancing these interests while working on its two key missions.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) was created in 1979 from a series of disasters, which occurred in the 1960s and 1970s. FEMA is a federal agency that coordinates the response to a disaster in the United States. In 2005, Hurricane Katrina made landfall affecting many citizens in New Orleans, activating the response from the Federal Emergency Management Agency. The common obstacles that the federal system of government encounters with are communications and funding.

The burden of emergency management has grown great deal in the last few decades. We have seen an increase in natural disasters, a new threat of terrorism on our front door and an increase in manmade disasters. All of these have tested emergency management in a number of cities and towns across the nation. It is not always disasters that present problems for emergency managers. We have to look beyond our traditional view of emergency management of helping us during times of disasters and view what issues they consider may affect their emergency response. Issues that emergency management see that are moving into the critical area are issues of urbanization and hazard exposure, the rising costs of disaster recovery, and low priority of emergency management.

When a disaster has taken place, first responders who provide fire and medical services will not be equipped to meet the demands for many services. Several issues such as the number of victims, communication failures and road blockages will stop people from accessing emergency services they have come to expect at a moment 's notice through 911 emergency services. Individuals will have to rely on others for help in order to meet their immediate lifesaving and life sustaining needs. If access is blocked or the agency’s capacity is exceeded, it may be hours or days before trained help arrives. There is a four-phase model that organizes the events of emergency managers. This model is known as the “life cycle” which includes dour