The Department Of Hazard Mitigation (FEMA)

The assistance provided for the purpose of helping the victims of a disaster rebuild their homes to the same living conditions they had lived in before the disaster, FEMA assisted 130,000 middle income and low income families rebuild after the Northridge earthquake (Eugene, 2010). FEMA also assisted with the coordinated the response of 27 federal agencies that were involved in the recovery process. The FEMA United States Fire Administration student manual “ICS-300: Intermediate ICS for Expanding Incidents” (2013) refers to this type of command structure within the Incident Command System is defined as a “Unified Command”. The Unified Command type of management system allows for multiple agencies to work together to plan and strategize but most importantly to be able to collect resources from each agency without having to go through extra steps. This coordination was said to have had a huge benefit by being able to get the funding for repairs and to be able to decrease the time frames set to repair and rebuild the infrastructure (highways and roadways) needed to the get the city moving again. (DeBlasio et al,.

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.

The largest disaster in the middle Tennessee area was the flooding of the Cumberland River in 2010. There were disaster mitigation efforts made before and after the disaster. Disaster mitigation is the first of the four pillars of disaster preparedness (Siminovi, 2011). This is one of the most important pillars, as this is where real change can be physically made in order to possibly change the path of any future disaster.

On October 20, 1991 a large suburban conflagration swept through the hillsides of Oakland California and into the backyards of Berkley. The Oakland Hills Firestorm went down in history as one of the worst fires since the Great San Francisco Earthquake and Fire of 1906. Twenty-five people lost their lives that Sunday, one hundred and fifty others were injured, and a total of one thousand five hundred and twenty acres of land was scorched. The destruction included three thousand three hundred and fifty four single family dwellings and four hundred and thirty seven apartments. All and all, they estimated the total loss at 1.5 billion dollars.

When disasters occur suddenly, the following days makes it difficult for people to get to work due to fallen trees or destroyed cars and home or roads flooded. By evaluating a given area or even country, can reduce these negative impacts by using risk identification, risk reduction and risk transfer. This is the important job of risk manager to do these risk assessments in order to better prepare for unfortunate events that will occur sometime in the future. There are public assistance programs set in place in the event of a disaster destroying a town or city for example.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) cites several advantages of developing and updating an effective hazard mitigation plan:

The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) coordinates the federal government's position in preparing for, preventing, mitigating the effects of, responding to, and recovering from all domestic disasters, whether natural or man-made, which now including acts of terror. FEMA leads and supports the nation in a risk-based, comprehensive emergency management system of preparedness, protection, response, recovery and mitigation. A key component of community preparedness and participation is the citizen. The CERT program strives to familiarize citizens with the facts about what to expect following a major disaster in their community and to deliver the message about their responsibility for mitigation and preparedness. CERT educates individuals

The national agencies involved in pre and post-disaster management and planning are The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), in connection with The United States Department of Homeland Security (DHS), and The Ready Campaign. FEMA was first implemented during President Jimmy Carter's term in 1979. Their mission is dedicated to nationally support and protect citizens throughout the country during natural or manmade disasters (Federal Emergency Management Agency, 2017). FEMA works closely together with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security along with local and state governments to provide extensive disaster relief efforts and necessary assistance during any crisis (Department Homeland Security, 2016). FEMA offers both pre and post-disaster

FEMA response to disastrous incident have improve drastically from the beginning of time. After each incident, organizations such as FEMA learned from previous incidents in what steps to take when it comes to dealing with Natural Disasters incidents. After Hurricane Sandy incident, “Communities are building back stronger and becoming more resilient for the future through collaborative partnerships between state, local and federal agencies” (N.D., 2015). Due to past Natural Disaster the government and other organizations had learned that it is best to come together and work as a team to provide assistance to those who were victims of the Natural Disaster incident. Since there were many organizations and they all had a different obligation. A

Based upon the research results obtained regarding policy issues of how funding of grants is obtained and the policy processes that are in place. There are areas of these said policies that are being reformed after going through a process called, lessons learned. These lessons are learned from prior disasters/incidents through a hazard mitigation process that is always going on before, during, and after an incident. In past incidents some policies are not existent and need to be produced through the use of policy tools from the support of the private sector and government agencies collaborates with one another to build a new policy such as FEMA grants for use by state and local governments. The grant funding process is important to the

While talking about the Environment we need to touch briefly on FEMA before we move on. Considering all the natural disasters that have hit our country over the past few years (and escalating) I'm sure most of you are at least familiar with this agency. If not, FEMA stands for Federal Emergency Management Agency, your to-go in case of emergency in our country, forest fire, earthquake, tornado, hurricane, mudslide, volcanic eruption, they cover it all. If some act of nature has knocked over your community, they step in and help dig you out and, in theory, give you funds to help rebuild and get your life back in order.

FEMA is, however, a ‘response’ group rather than a prevention group. What we are advocating here is that a committee is formed to specifically target the poor and provide them with preventive knowledge against disasters. Thus, this committee might be formed under the funding of the local government or even under FEMA, but must be a separate and independent entity that can focus on its own function. The committee is to be composed of both educators and experts in the field of disaster preparedness and it will create a program by which people living under the poverty line can participate with very minimal cost (or ideally free of charge). The goal is not to ‘provide’ the preparedness equipment, the goal is that after engaging in the program, participants will now know what to do and what to have in order to become more resilient. In order to reach as many people as possible, the same task force shall work effectively advertising the program around the town or city they are working in. Finally, the relationship between the committee and their ‘graduated’ participants must not end with the program. Continuous updating of information and useful practices must occur in order to ensure that people had the best information at

According to the text of 15 U.S. Code 2229 – Firefighters Assistance, “an entity seeking a grant under this section shall submit to the administrator of FEMA an application therefor is such form and in such manner as the administrator of FEMA determines appropriate (Law, 2016). The funds available under this program can range from public education, to firefighting equipment.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) is the lead agency when responding to disasters from a federal perspective. In a large-scale disaster such as a strong hurricane, FEMA will oversee the response operations and assist the local, county, and state emergency management agencies as needed. FEMA will receive regular updates on the status of the hurricane and broadcast the information out to the affected states in order to provide a prompt response. In case of evacuation, previously established evacuation plans would be utilized to remove people from the impacted area. The state and local emergency management agencies will assist in disseminating the information to the affected areas. In general, plans should be implemented to call in all emergency responders to be ready for response and recovery operations.

Hazard mitigation planning is an approach aimed at ascertaining ways to reduce the effects, deaths and damage to property that might result in the occurrence of a natural of man-made hazard.