The University Made An Emergency Management Planning

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.

Having these plans in place give the Disaster Recovery team the instructions they need when disaster strikes

The plan continues into outlining what individual citizens need to do to prepare for a disaster. This

The presentation will cover several areas dealing with the university’s ability to prepare for an emergency or catastrophic event. The areas covered include:

Planning ties with one of the National Preparedness Goal’s mission area, that is prevention. The 9/11 events made DHS to aggressively change its focus to an “all hazards” approach. Prevention is a core component to accomplish this objective. However, for an effective prevention requires thorough planning. The private sector provides this type of service and DHS may hire a private sector entity to develop a prevention plan for them. In planning, all levels of government and private sector entities must coordinate with one another in developing and executing courses of action to prevent or reduce the impact of natural disasters or terrorist attack (Homeland Security, 2011). According to the National Preparedness Goal, planning is one of the mission are capabilities and preliminary targets of prevention (Homeland Security, 2011, p. 5). The private sector’s impact in planning with the DHS is essential for an effective prevention in support of the National Preparedness

The template utilized was obtained from FEMA’s EOP Basic Plan template and modified accordingly for this

In January of 2008, Homeland Security gave UNC a multi-million dollar grant to study natural disasters in coastal areas (Homeland security, 2008). Due to this grant, and the efforts made on Carolina’s behalf, emergency managers were able to have the latest scientific information to protect our coastlines and citizens. Carolina also used the grant to collaborate with other universities and agencies to conduct research. The outline of the grant was to provide UNC with about $2.5 million per year for six years, with the possibility for more, as the research developed. “[The grant] will help protect our homes, our businesses, our environment and

Security councils are designed so that a group of people that usually include city, county, or state offices can gather information and decide what and where the biggest threats to the jurisdictional area are. Some of the departments that would most likely be included in a council would be emergency services, the finance department for the area, and local leadership. These councils may also elect to work with private sector companies if the security review incorporates cyber security. I the case of the State of Oklahoma, two documents have been formed to attempt to identify hazards for their communities. The first is the Standard Hazard Mitigation Plan. This committee consists of members from the Oklahoma Department of Emergency Management, Oklahoma Climatological Survey, Conservation Commission, Department of Commerce, Department of Health, and many others (State of Oklahoma, 2014). This group of people developed this document that outlines every major environmental threat to the State. They even went as far as to set a level of prioritization that has a scale from 1 to 4. They rated the natural hazards in order to triage which events were most likely to happen and which ones would cause the biggest impact to the state. A lot of emphasis is placed on

The Emergency Response Plan was revised with newly created position of Director of Emergency Management as well as department, incorporation of emergency support functions and newly added emergency notification system protocols (VT, 2010). Modifications was made to the University-wide Safety and Security Policies. Major changes was made to the umbrella safety and security policy which was renamed from the Campus Security to University Safety and Security which provides oversight and coordination for all campus policies and committees responsible for safety and physical security (VT, 2010).

Editor’s Note: This Chapter is the continuation of an adaptation of a state plan for disaster preparation and response. In total, the original chapter comprises Chapters 1, 14, 16-18.

Planning also takes into consideration the level of state and local demand for outside help. “The most devastating disasters may require the full range of Federal response and recovery assistance. Less damaging disasters may require only partial Federal response and recovery assistance, and some disasters may require only Federal recovery assistance” (p.10).

As a part of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) group during the tabletop exercise I was afforded the opportunity to take a closer look at segments of FEMA’s emergency response in crisis situations, specifically an earthquake affecting 35,000 people.

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

Additionally, specific responsibilities expected of each stakeholder is clearly defined in accordance with Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), Emergency Planning and Community Right-To-Know Act (EPCRA), the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) Superfund Amendments and Reauthorization Act (SARA Title III), the Chemical Stockpile Emergency Preparedness Program (CSEPP), the National Response Team (NRT), and the National Incident Management System (NIMS).

The purpose of the Emergency Preparedness Plan is to save lives and prevent injuries in case of emergencies such as nuclear attack, fire, natural disaster, civil disorder or other, and provide the necessary best practices to ensure all possible and relevant forms of communicating with our faculty, staff, students, and parents. Mrs. Patricia Harris of the International Studies Elementary Charter School was interviewed about the International Studies Elementary Charter School’s Emergency Management Plan and the role of the school counselor during emergencies. Surprisingly, the school counselor does not play as important of a role than one would have thought. Although, the counselor does serve as one of the Designated School Emergency Team Members, some the tasks that would seem likely the counselor would perform, are performed by other administrators. Tasks such as talking to parents or being there for the students are performed by the principal while the school counselor is delegated to direct traffic. Based on the Emergency Management Plan, it would seem that the school counselor’s role is still not clearly understood. With all the expertise that counselors can bring to a crisis situation, it’s disappointing that counselors are assigned such a miniscule task as delegating traffic. Counselor Harris did discuss the Dougherty County School System’s Crisis Team. That team is