The Threat Of Emergency Response Operations

I wavered back and forth a bit on which approach was better suited for society’s well-being. Early on in our modern Government it appears that most of the Emergency Management was piece mailed as events occurred. Although, as new events occurred, new programs seemed to be established to ease the post emergency recovery. This way of business reminds me of duct taping a hole in a pipe; at some point you need to replace the pipe with something more suited for the application. While the all hazards approach, and the emphasis on catastrophic events both have advantages, I believe that the all hazards approach provides us with a clearer path for emergency management recovery and preparedness.

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.

At this time last week, before beginning the graduate program, my understanding of homeland security was largely informed by the media and popular culture. After reading the assignments and the lecture this week, I can certainly say that my initial ideas have been challenged and expanded upon. Right away the most important idea I learned is that homeland security deals with much more than just terrorism. Prior to this class I never would have considered something like Hurricane Harvey an issue of homeland security. My initial views on homeland security were similar to the Department of Homeland Security’s in the early 2000s as noted by Bullock:

By understanding the steps to prepare for countering and responding to a terrorist, the well-being of US national security interests can be promoted and the exposure to risk and susceptibility to experiencing harm can be efficiently managed for communities, families and individuals in the event of a terrorist incident. The welfare of US national security, citizens and property can be effectively safeguarded through the understanding of protection strategies administered collectively by local communities, families and individuals. Local emergency operations planning, family disaster planning, as well as self-protection planning each represent important protective measures, which serve to educate the nation and its citizens how to

The Homeland Security in the all-hazards helps with the coordination and transitioning between the agencies on the federal, state and local government. The purpose of have affect Homeland Security has to be establish and to be prepared in all critical hazards necessity. The preparation is at the utmost for homeland security for the variety of ranges man made or natural incidents. A natural disaster on Homeland Security has ready to handle any kind of threat to citizens ranging from first responder providing and specialty resource to reach hard areas. Hurricane Katrina in 2005 had except hard criticism for inadequate response and care for the individual that where in need. This storm was relentless causing major destruction up and down the Gulf Coast Region. The lessons we learned the positive and negative in this tragedy for the lack response and preparedness in this catastrophes. I hope America could see the serious of mistakes that are handle different in or society. The Federal government studies what specific hazardous and vital mistakes to improve in the overall action of Homeland Security. The National Response Plan helps the agencies to improve the ability and strengths individual to be in the right at the place at the right time in handling disasters. In Hurricane Katrina has help society to realize the

Later, the federal, state, and local government responses to disasters such as Hurricane Katrina expanded the concept of homeland security to include significant disasters, major public health emergencies, and other events that threaten the United States, its economy, the rule of law, and government operations (2). Homeland security is the combination of law enforcement, immigration, disaster relief, and terrorist activities within the United States’ borders. This would be based on the local agencies and civilian departments to safeguard the people from any threat within while being assisted by the government. In some aspects of terror attacks, there will be a combination of both homeland security and homeland defense. 9/11 is the perfect example as homeland security was responding to the local disasters and threats while the homeland defense, military, was deploying to get to the root of the threats. This is essential to the way homeland security operates because this will stop the attack on the nation’s soil before it reaches the borders and local government agencies are required. The biggest issue with the homeland security aspect is that the

The National Response Framework is a guide designed to assist local, State, and Federal governments in developing functional capabilities and identifying resources based on hazard identification and risk assessment. It outlines the operating structure and identifies key roles and responsibilities. It established a framework to identify capabilities based on resources and the current situation no matter the size or scale. It integrates organizational structures and standardizes how the Nation at all levels plans to react to incidents. The suspected terrorist attack will have health, economic, social, environment and political long-term effects for my community. This is why it is essential that local government’s

Handling and preparing for terror attack is crucial and sensitive matter that needs not to be taken for granted. It's a huge task and I would take it with the seriousness it deserves because failure to carry out my obligations effectively will entail putting the lives of many innocent Americans on the line. Furthermore, terrorist attacks are well planned, well coordinated and well executed. With this understanding, I would begin by ensuring tight security measures at all American border points with the help of Homeland security agents.

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 risk management plays an important role within the Homeland Security enterprise, because can help to organize the tasks and prepare better each organization to respond effectively in the event of terrorist attack or natural disaster (CRS 2007). Since the 9/11 terror attacks, preparation and response to terrorist attacks has changed thanks to the federal government’s attitude to distributing funds to states and local governments (CRS 2007). To better comprehend the current approach to each phase of the grant program development, it’s important to understand its origin (CRS 2007). While the nation was begin to understand the importance of homeland security, the development of the grant program and the risk management methodologies was happening at the same time (CRS

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.

Protecting the public’s health historically has been a state and local responsibility. However, the growing threat of bioterrorism has highlighted the importance of a strong public health infrastructure to the nation’s homeland security and has focused increased attention on the preparedness of the public health system (Frist, 2011). Since the 2001 anthrax attacks Congress has passed new legislation to increase the strength of the nation’s public health system thus the funding has also rapidly increased to meet the potential demand. There is an ongoing debate however, as to what level of contribution local, state, and federal agency’s feel is an appropriate level of ongoing public health investments.

Emergency Response planning should target to address the worst case scenarios (Ernst, Oct 4, 2006). As mentioned earlier, the first step in developing an emergency response plan is to conduct a risk assessment and identifying all the potential emergency scenarios (Department of Homeland Security, Emergency Response Plan). Scenarios must be site-specific, credible and be able to have the ability to test the responsiveness to the incidents (Developing Credible Scenarios for Emergency Response Planning). There are three main types of scenario exercises; Discussion based, Table top and Live. Refer to the web article: “Table Top Planning Scenarios” (A Preservation Planning Tool: Table Top Planning Scenarios, Level of Collections Emergency, Webpage)

The Department of Homeland Security released the 2014 Quadrennial Homeland Security Review on June 18, 2014 as required by the Homeland Security Act of 2002 and its amendments. This review outlined the current state of preparedness, as well as the future areas of concentration. It also determined six strategic challenges facing the nation: terrorist threat; growing cyber threats; biological concerns as a whole; nuclear terrorism; transnational criminal organizations; and natural hazards. The basic building block of emergency management in the U.S. is the local community. Each step begins here. Threat assessments are completed on the local level. Planning, mitigation, and response are all responsibilities of the local community to support the state and Federal practice using the guidance provided by both.

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