Shock Events In Emergency Management

Tragic events that cause damage to property and life may destroy the social, cultural and economic life of a community. Communities must be engaged in the various phases from prevention to recovery to build disaster resilient communities. In order to do this, there must be a disaster preparedness plan in place that involves multiple people in various roles.

Communities, according to Kapucu and Özerdem (2011) have a drastic effect on the recovery process. In the end, by having a recovery place in plan within the community, it will ensure economic and resident resiliency for when a crisis is to occur. In order to ensure such a plan is in place, it is up to the American Red Cross to partner with and focus on the citizen involvement in decision making, from the beginning stages of planning all through mitigation; increase the buy in within the community; and provide for the community in an effective manner after a disaster has occurred Kapucu and Özerdem

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

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.

These layers further expand on Mitchell's awareness, information, and action components. The inner layer is composed of the local community networks and their ability to self organize, learn, adapt, and recover to disasters. Disaster preparedness, prevention, response, and recovery is influenced by the local economy, government, education, social development, infrastructure, and ecosystems. The middle layer is the consideration of climate change when implementing recovery, response, and prevention efforts. The outer layer is composed of the willingness of the governing bodies to adapt (Djalante, Holley, Thomalla, & Carnegie, 2013). Flexibility and innovation support learning, collaboration, and self organization. All of which contribute to better manage disasters (Djalante et al.,

The terrorist strikes in New York City on September 11, 2001 resulted in one of the largest disaster recovery and cleanup trials in United States history. The recovery efforts hit an expected 91,500 workers which included aides operating in and throughout ground zero. (Ekenga, Scheu, Cone, Stellman & Farfel pg. one yr. 2011). This paper analyzes the many types of items recovery organizations were facing at that time. Many recovery issues that had happened were designed and prepared for "on paper". However, due to the research, there was a lack in multiple groups after the 9/11 attacks that had even showed little improvement towards their recovery plans. Also, the incident presented many un-known issues that had created tremendous difficulties

The differing needs of a vulnerable population have to be addressed in order to alleviate issues that were noted after Katrina. In particular, the needs which are known prior to a disaster, such as evacuation for the infirmed, elderly, impoverished, and those who lack the means to evacuate. The Department of Homeland Security represented a solution to addressing these needs via a three phase response: “pre-event planning and preparation, the event, and recovery” (Dept. Homeland Security, 2008). It has been widely studied that residents of a vulnerable community may be impacted more severely and are disproportionately affected than those with means following a disaster. Assessing how to prepare for each of the phases represents an issue for emergency managers especially when it comes to those who lack the means to prepare for themselves. Quickly rebuilding homes in a devastated area won’t help a community when a disaster strikes again. Platt stated that “disasters offer a window of opportunity to strengthen communities”, via “construction and change land uses to prevent a recurrence of a disaster”. (Platt, 1998) It also can be argued that following a disastrous event, this is when a true opportunity arises, by providing an opportunity to work through solving the societal issues that are the basis for a vulnerable populous via comprehensive political reforms and

The ability to rebuild after a natural disaster depends on the population strength and the government timely response to the disaster. The government’s response to natural

The disaster which hit the Maricopa County in the State of Arizona in September 2014 was a major disaster that necessitated the community preparedness for leading successful response and a prompt recovery. Besides emergency managers, many officials and the private are involved in the processes. Some of these stakeholders are public health, public safety, and municipal officials. Collaboration is needed for getting all those involved in the processes to interact accordingly. This paper addresses the major collaboration strengths between emergency responders, public health, public safety, and municipal officials to deliver accurate response and recovery during the event, the main weaknesses of the collaboration among all those that were involved in the efforts, and recommendations for improving the collaboration between the stakeholders.

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.

The purpose of this research paper is to identify a community that is recovering from a disaster, and has decided to build and use community resilience as part of the recovery process. The community I have chosen to write about is New Orleans, as they suffered from one of the largest Hurricanes in history known as Katrina. In addition, other areas such as Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama, where even affected. However New Orleans took a significant hit in regards to total destruction, death toll, and last but not least displacement of individuals forced out because of Katrina. Furthermore, I will also discuss reasons as to why some citizens of New Orleans did not build or use community resilience prior to Katrina. Plus how did the

Data obtained by assessing social vulnerability must be implemented within each phase of the emergency management process; mitigation, response, and recovery. First, to effectively respond and recover from incidents emergency management agencies must concentrate on the mitigation phase to prevent incidents from happening in the first place. This is achieved through a thorough hazard/vulnerability analysis (HVA). This type of analysis assesses the risk of physical, economic, and social vulnerability within all communities of a given jurisdiction (Lindell et al., 2006, p. 165). Additionally, the basis of the HVA allows emergency managers to effectively plan for disaster by creating pre-planned responses to disasters (rather than improvised response) and staging resources to locations with the highest probability of risk; ultimately contributing to the mitigation and response phases.

This paper has demonstrated and examines how series of social and political procedure affects resilience at various spatial scales. Resilience is defined as the ability of individuals or communities to withstand and rebound from sudden natural disaster [earthquake, flood or hurricane] that accounts for the loss of life and properties. However, the definition of resilience is broad as resilience thinkers [Charles Holling and Neil Adger] have argued differently. For example, Holling defines resilience as “the ability of a system to absorb change of state variable, driving variables, and parameters, and still persist”(Holling, 1973), while Adger, defines resilience as “the ability of groups or communities to cope with external stresses and disturbances as a result of social, political and environmental change”(Adger, 2000). Understandably, thinker like Adger and Holling as Climate Change thinkers within the academic space have a different opinion to what constitutes the impact of climate change and best possible approaches needed towards building resilience within social and political frameworks.

Every emergency or disaster, from a small house fire to a hurricane that devastates entire communities, have a distinct cycle. This is

Risk for disasters is a part of life; emergency situations occur more frequently than many people believe. A wise person plans for the worse, and hopes for the best. After a disaster, how well a community can recover will depend largely on how well they prepared in advance. Risk management includes identifying any potential risks to a community and proactively planning to minimize the threat. Proactive organization of resources and people to respond to emergencies can mean the difference between a community’s ability to regroup and recover, and the loss of life. To better