The United States Military Operations

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.

As Hurricanes Katrina, Rita, and Wilma successively lashed the gulf coast starting in late August 2005, nature’s fury exposed serious weaknesses in the United States’ emergency response capabilities. Not all emergencies pose this magnitude of challenge. In the United States, the initial—and usually major—responsibility for disaster response rests with local authorities. This “bottom-up” system of emergency management has a long history and continues to make sense in most circumstances. Core Challenges for Large-Scale Disaster

In the Disaster in Franklin County simulation (Regents of the University of Minnesota [UMN], 2006), there were several key personnel in the incident command team. This concept is utilized in real disasters when the Public

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

Hurricane Katrina caused a great deal of destruction, death, and human suffering. Research from this event brings to light the limitations of both the National Guard and active-duty forces response capabilities, and whether changes in the roles and responsibilities of the National Guard and active-duty forces during emergencies would enable them to respond better. It is likely that the primary responsibility for national disasters will continue to be handled by local and state officials. They have the best understanding of situations, have the capability to handle the case, and can respond quickly. Hurricane Katrina generated the need to examine the federal response and to make any changes that are needed for the preparation of National Guard and active-duty Army during major domestic emergencies. Both the National Guard and active duty Army are changing to smaller modular and interoperable combat and support brigades that can provide the foundation for an expedited force that can deploy units to threats quickly. The Army

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,

Disaster relief operations are complex systems having more to them than just a response mechanism. They require a significant amount of pre-planning.

The efficient integration of Title 10 and National Guard forces during domestic operations increases the threshold of a state’s capacity to respond to disasters or security requirements. Pre-event preparation is required to achieve efficient integration. This preparation requires three critical elements, building relationships, integrated planning and exercises. To successfully incorporate federal forces during a response, states must develop positive relationships with key Title 10 partners during steady-state operations. Building upon these relationships, state and federal partners conduct deliberate planning for the integration of Title 10 forces in a state response. Finally, exercises validate plans and grow relationships. This paper describes

Mutual aid agreements are essential for allocating resources, equipment, and personnel between jurisdictions through intrastate, interstate, private organizations, and nongovernmental organizations agencies in the event of an emergency situation that exceeds the capabilities of the local agencies. Intrastate agencies mobilized by a mutual aid agreement consist of resources within the state that can provide support to the requesting department. During catastrophic events, interstate sources activated through a mutual aid agreement are comprised of resources from other states that are able to support the operations required when state resources are incapable of providing adequate aid. Private-sector organizations, nonprofit organizations, and nongovernmental organizations provide additional support in times of crisis when the organization has necessary resources to sustain operations. Emergency situations that may arise and benefit from the resources established in an existing mutual aid agreement include mass casualty incidents, fire and law enforcement situations, natural disasters such as hurricanes and tornadoes, and terrorist attacks.

The drive for dual-status commanders appeared after inadequate path and direction between state and federal forces throughout Hurricane Katrina restrict response efforts (Bucci 1). In Katrina incident, active duty and National Guard tasks, even those that were obviously same in practice, were supervised by two different series of command. The dual-status arrangement of the National Guard during Hurricane Sandy, despite, allow state and federal military responders to have the directives from the workforces and function in a more smooth approach.

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”

As one of the largest natural disasters, any responses to the effects of Hurricane Katrina by the Department of Defense (DOD) was regarded as being ineffective; regardless of any and all deployed resources, that were considered moderately acceptable. The support that the military provided in response to Hurricane Katrina is to take the necessary actions in order to identify and address the key lessons learned when coming to face with any and all challenges.

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.

* In The missing piece of NIMS: Teaching incident commanders how to function in the edge of Chaos, the author notes that first responders have to deal with a disaster situation already unfolding, and not “all the pieces fit together nicely.” The author writes about the Five Tenets of Working in Chaos.

The purpose for this Disaster Recovery Plan is to primarily maintain all of the information and material appropriate to the initiative’s ability to survive a disaster, and to document all the phases that the initiative will take if a disaster does occur. The first priority of the TC-MACT if a disaster does occur is to prevent the loss of lives. In order to move to the second step, we must guarantee all personnel and other members on the premises are safe and secure. Once we can guarantee the safety of individuals, the next objective of the TC-MACT will be to ratify the steps outlined in this DRP to bring all of the agencies, groups and departments back to business-as-usual as quickly as possible. Although CERT programs vary in some ways, they all share the potential to offer significant benefits to their sponsoring organizations, their communities and their citizens. As with any activity, there is risk.