Federal Emergency Management Agency's (FEMA)

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.

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.

In order to help the people further, FEMA absorbed other services thanks to the Executive Order 12127 in which President Carter merged many of the separate disaster-related responsibilities to FEMA such as The Federal Insurance Administration, The National Fire Prevention and Control Administration, The National Weather Service Community Preparedness Program, The Federal Preparedness Agency of the General Services Administration, The Federal Disaster Assistance Administrations activates from HUD, Civil defense responsibilities were also transferred to the new agency from the Defense Department’s Defense Civil Preparedness Agency. FEMA receiving the power and leadership to direct other operations and creating them as one was a move to give the people in need a service for whatever crisis that is affecting that said area. FEMA has a long history from being created in 1979 and since then they have grown to be stronger with more power to do things for an area such as Flint Michigan.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) would become the central point-of-contact within the national government in responding to incidents. Since formation in 1979, FEMA’s core missions were to enhance the government’s ability to survive a foreign attack, and to assist state and local authorities in disaster response (Carafano, 2005). And while the two core missions seem heterogenous in scope at times from an outside perspective, the biggest difference between the two tasks is duration. A man-made disaster may be over in a matter of minutes as compared to a hurricane lasting several days, but in both instances the road to recovery is long. In order to streamline response and recovery in either scenario, FEMA was reorganized with new directives to support comprehensive emergency management practices (CRS, 2006). Today, FEMA provides the standard approach and guidance that many local communities may not have due to funding, training, and

Emergencies and disasters happen every single day. They all vary in location and severity, but all of them have the potential to leave devastating and long term problem in the infected area if there are not proper steps in place to react quickly. For much of the United States history, there appeared to be no major go to organization in America’s greatest time of need. This paper briefly describes the history of these organizations and how FEMA came to be the USA’s primary reliance in their time of need.

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,

This program is the Department of Homeland Security’s final priority to “plan, train, and equip police, fire, and paramedics to react successfully to terrorism; and promotes recovery with the assistance of disaster specialists.” (Homeland Security, 2015) One of the examples of disaster specialists that help assist in disasters like Hurricane Katrina is the Federal Emergency Management Agency also known as FEMA. FEMA helps communities with reducing their risk, helps its different agency officials prepare for all types of hazards, and also helps people in communities get back on their

The Federal Emergency management Agency came under the helm of the Department of Homeland Security on March 1, 2013 in response to the September 11th terrorist attacks (fema.gov). FEMA’s mission as a result of the attacks changed from preparing for natural disasters and hazards to ensuring the nation’s first responders are well equipped to deal with weapons of mass destruction (fema.gov). Notably FEMA is most known for helping millions in need in times of disaster and turmoil. Unfortunately they will always be known for their lack of preparation during the Hurricane Katrina aftermath in Louisiana in 2005. The organization failed to do what it set out to do and as a result millions of people were displaced and many lost their lives.

The Department of Homeland Security was established in 2002 because of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. FEMA was integrated into the DHS so that they could ensure there are effective plans in place to quickly resolve catastrophic events. In compliance with one another, they manage at government levels bioterrorism, chemical or radiation emergencies, natural disasters, and disease outbreaks.

The Federal Response Plan implements the Stafford Act (Public Law 93-288, as amended) which verifies what qualifies to be considered a true disaster (The Disaster Hanbook- National Edition, 1998). The Stafford Act also coordinates twelve federal agencies to fulfill twelve emergency support functions: Transportation- Department of Transportation, Communication-

FEMA stands for Federal Emergency Management Agency. A state can be put into a Presidential Declaration, which is made for a disaster, and the state becomes eligible for FEMA. The government will assist the state in times of need but most of the time the state is required to match 25% of whatever the amount is that FEMA is providing. USDA Rural Development Emergency Community Water Assistance Grants are also given. The Department Of Agriculture may pay up to $500,000 to assist a rural community that has had a significant decline in quantity or quality of drinking water due to an emergency(NC Public Safety 2017). Emergency they cover include Drought, earthquake, flood, tornado, hurricane, disease or chemical

The Federal Response Plan (FRP) delivers Federal assistance to disaster areas or when an emergency is declared by state or local authorities. The Robert T. Stafford Disaster Relief act establishes the structure and process for the FRP to deliver federal assistance. The FRP establishes the policies, concepts, and planning for federal response to emergencies. The plan also provides recovery protocols and resources to aid in ensuring public health, protecting property, and saving lives. The plan also provides interagency coordination to supplement recovery efforts to rapidly and effectively deliver support and services.

The SPP funding is used for a range of services in the housing sector including, housing assistance for the private rental market, home purchase assistance and support services for the homeless. (15)

FEMA also provided grants under the Stafford Act to address other disaster related expenses or needs that could not otherwise be met through other means, such as insurance or other federal assistance. Some of these expenses included real and personal property, medical and dental expenses, funeral expenses and transportation needs.

In Phase 1, "Sort out Resources," the college is taught to make the beginning stride of distinguishing stakeholders from inside both the college and the encompassing group, and to stock the assets that are accessible to the planners. A warning panel is made out of these deliberations, after all proper gatherings have been distinguished and welcomed to join. FEMA prompts that, "Planning associations exist at numerous levels of the college, and it is vital to distinguish the greater part of the different planning panels that may impart an investment or have ward in the zone of danger relief before the planning methodology gets too far." Clearly, just by having a delegate from each of these levels and parts can a council guarantee that they