The Ministry Of Disaster Management Program

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.

Disaster is anything that can occur causing damages, an ecological disruption and deterioration of health and the health services. Disaster can be manmade or natural disasters such as floods. When disasters like flooding or tornadoes that may be accompanied by floods occur, the public health personnel and public health nurses are normally the first people who respond to the emergency, given that they are the people who understand and know the available resources used in providing first aids to the affected victims.

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.

Every year, there are approximately 150,000 deaths and 200 million people affected by natural disasters and humanitarian crises (Thomas, 2003). Natural disasters alone, which include various occurrences, cause substantial disruptions such as the temporary displacement of more than five million people. According to the Fritz institute, statistics show that uprooted people from humanitarian crises such as civil conflict and war is greater, with an average of 13 million refugees and 20 million internally displaced people each year. As the biggest worldwide participants in the relief effort in the global community, disaster relief organizations are the forerunners of the help supplied to people affected by catastrophic events.

Organizations over the past few decades have come to realize two things, there are a limited number of people in the government that are able to respond to natural disasters or large scale disaster effectively and that the government only has so many available resources to offer during a time of crisis. Another fact is, that private sector companies and non-profit entities, such as the Red Cross, have the ability to be more prepared due to their vast network of stores and distribution centers and their leisure, they indeed do have a unique responsibility

Effective disaster management is highly important when it comes to assisting in rescue and relief to affected. This does not only include post disaster rescue efforts but these disaster management activities should be proactive. They start right from taking preventive measures before the disaster actually occurs and goes on till the effected people are resettled back in their lives. This disaster management pertaining to human life is not only associated with physical well being but also focuses on psychological, emotional, and spiritual rehabilitation.

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,

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

According to Jack Herrmann is Asst. Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Rochester School of Medicine “Disaster management is the preparation for, response to, and recovery from disaster. While there are different understandings of Disaster Management, it is generally viewed as a cycle with the following five key phases:

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.,

Government at all levels plays an important role during disaster management. Actions and roles of each government agencies are spelled out in the National Incident Management System (NIMS) and the National Response Framework (NRF). But before we go into details on the roles of governments, let me first of all explain what constitute emergency and emergency management, just to give clearer understanding some of these terms. Then I will examine the roles of governments at all level including first responder actions, mutual support, lead and support roles.

Disasters weather man-made, natural, or technological are ineluctable. Community stakeholders, leaders, and citizens are ultimately culpable for ensuring that a sound disaster preparedness and recovery plan is in place should a calamity materialize. Failure to enact such a plan comes with immeasurable consequences. Over the discourse of this paper, the Banqiao Dam disaster will be examined as a case analysis, to render what preparedness and recovery plans were sanctioned, as well as the scope of the response effort.

Actions taken to minimize adverse impact of disasters. These including structural measures like building of flood defences and non-structural measures like training etcetera. Public awareness related to disaster risk reduction, contribute in promoting a "culture of prevention" by changing attitudes. It revolves around civil institutions responsible to prevent disasters.

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.