Social Construction Emergency Response

Hurricane Pam was an exercise for responders and citizens that took place in the summer of 2004, which helped prepare for a forecasted hurricane like Hurricane Katrina. After twenty days, the administration cut FEMA’s funding for the Pam exercise before it was even completed. Therefore, planning for the response to Hurricane Pam was not completed, causing many difficulties during the actual hurricane in 2005. In addition to Hurricane Pam, Project Impact was set forth to reduce the impact of natural disasters was also cut from its budget, causing difficulties to respond to Hurricane Katrina. Projects that are being cut from funding are affecting how responders and the federal government prepare for a natural disaster.

Katrina was a crisis primarily because of its scale and the mixture of challenges that it posed, not least the failure of the levees in New Orleans. Because of the novelty of a crisis, predetermined emergency plans and response behavior that may function quite well in dealing with routine emergencies are frequently grossly inadequate or even counterproductive. That proved true in New Orleans, for example, in terms of evacuation planning, law enforcement, rescue activities, sheltering, and provisions for the elderly and infirm.

Often, the government responds to natural disasters with thorough preparation and planning. The federal, state, and local levels of government do this in an effort to help reduce injury and property damage as well as ensure the overall safety of the general population. The 2005 Atlantic hurricane season saw the costliest and one of the deadliest storms in United States history. This storm was Hurricane Katrina. Hurricane Katrina displaced of an estimated 645,000 Louisiana citizens (Cepeda, Valdez, Kaplan, & Hill, 2010). This paper will examine…

Hurricane Katrina was a catastrophic natural disaster in American history. The aftermath had substantial negative impact on New Orleans and it could have been avoided if proper disaster management practices were put in place. Therefore, it is important to determine the factors that caused the hurricane to be catastrophic. One factor that was responsible for the disaster was failure of the three levels of the government working cohesively (Thiede & Brown, 2013). The incoherent interaction between the three levels of government will be assessed. Another factor that will be examined is social and psychological refusal of Hurricane Katrina

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,

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

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,

Many Americans watching the Government response to Hurricanes Rita and Katrina as it play out in the media could not believe the finger pointing that was going on between our elected leaders as many victims struggled to get their life in order. With the National Response Framework initial responsibility remains with the local elected officials and each level of the government above that will monitor and remain ready with assistance if requested. This will allow needed resources to get where they are needed without the internal bickering of the past. The Emergency Support Function Annexes within the National Response Framework ensures multi-agency interoperability and encompasses the other components of the NRF.

The response to most issues that arise in the United states are evaluated based on the response that the parties and/or federal entities give in relativity to the problem at hand. More specifically, natural disasters amplify the public awareness and in turn put a larger importance on the responses to the destruction left behind. Hurricane Katrina was a major natural disaster in which the immediate efforts were highly criticized for the lack thereof. Particularly, the federal government was looked upon heavily to provide assistance and aid immediately after the disaster, but waited for an unprecedented amount of time to effectively help the people who were affected. This ultimately caused for precautionary measures to be taken to implement systems to efficiently provide the necessary support. Throughout the entirety of Hurricane

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”

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.

As the Disaster Coordinator for the city I am responsible for ensuring the public safety and welfare of the citizens within the city's jurisdiction. This requires me to have a full understanding on my role and responsibilities for managing disaster response and employing resources in order to save lives, protect property, the environment. Additionally I’m tasked to preserve the less tangible but equally important social, economic and political structures. My first reaction was to alert the regional Joint Terrorism Task Force to prepare them for possible activation. Next it is vital to gain situational awareness and develop a Common Operating Picture (COP). This COP is the who, what, where, when and how as it relates to the incident. Situational awareness starts at the incident site and includes continuous monitoring of reporting channels to gain

Collaboration involves various groups or groups of people working together to accomplish a desired outcome. It is a bit like teamwork. By strengthening connections during an emergency crisis, you have the ability to be more effective, faster, produce more, and have more personnel available. Collaboration offers more innovation and experience to a situation. This paper will discuss the roles of those that were involved in the collaborative efforts of FEMA. The basic reasoning for this paper is to provide knowledge and understanding the experience of emergency management and collaboration that took place during Hurricane Sandy.

Hurricane Katrina exposed huge issues in the United States disaster preparedness and response programs. In 2005, the structure for homeland security was unable to manage catastrophic events like Hurricane Katrina. Unified management of national response

On August 29, 2009, Hurricane Katrina struck the United States Gulf Coast. It was a Category 3 Hurricane, according to the Saffir Simpson Scale. Winds gusted to up to 140 miles per hour, and the hurricane was almost 400 miles wide . The storm itself did a tremendous amount of damage, but the storm’s aftermath was cataclysmic. Many claimed that the federal government was slow to meet the needs of the hundreds of thousands of people affected by the storm. This paper will examine the four elements of disaster management – preparedness, response, recovery, and mitigation – as well as an analysis on the data presented.