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By George Haddow
Emergency management planning today faces many critical
obstacles, such as an imbalance of focus between homeland security and
natural disaster management, the challenge of involving the public in
preparedness planning, the lack of an effective partnership with the business
community, cuts to EM funding, and questions surrounding the evolving
organizational structure of the nation's emergency management system.
Such obstacles need to be overcome if emergency management activities
are to be successful in the years ahead.
A History of Imbalance Repeated
Since the September 11 terrorist attacks, the focus of government emergency
management planners, especially at the federal level, has been on terrorism
and the hazards presented by this new threat. This is not the first time
that emergency management planners have focused on national security risks.
In the 1950s, the nation's Civil Defense system was developed
to address the threat of nuclear attack by the Soviet Union. The government
officials who staffed the Civil Defense programs at all levels of government
were the nation's first emergency managers. In the 1980s, the newly formed
Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), reflecting the priorities
of the Reagan Administration, focused its programs and resources almost
exclusively on nuclear attack and continuity of government planning.
A series of major natural disasters in the late 1980s and
early 1990s (Hurricane Hugo, Loma Prieta Earthquake, and Hurricane Andrew)
exposed the inability of FEMA and the federal government to provide adequate
support to state and local emergency managers in responding to large natural
disasters.
In the 1990s, FEMA adopted an all-hazards approach to disaster
management that resulted in increased resources for natural hazards preparedness
and mitigation programs and the development and implementation of the
Federal Response Plan that coordinated the efforts of 27 federal agencies
and the Red Cross in support of state and local emergency managers.
It appears in the 2000s that history is repeating itself.
In spite of a dramatic hurricane season in 2004, evidence of the impacts
of global warming, and the forecast for continued severe weather, most
of the resources for emergency management planning are currently devoted
to terrorism, much the way they were to nuclear attack planning in the
1980s. In 2005, emergency management planners at the federal level, at
FEMA, and within the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) must consider
how to balance their focus on the terrorist threat with an all-hazards
approach to disaster management.
More Public Involvement Needed
Historically, the general public has played a limited role, if any, in
the development of emergency management preparedness and mitigation plans.
The principal focus of public outreach efforts by the early Civil Defense
programs, FEMA's National Flood Insurance Program, and the Red Cross family
preparedness programs was to inform and to educate the public. Rarely
has the public been included in the actual planning process.
This began to change in the late 1990s when FEMA launched
its national mitigation initiative, Project Impact, which called for the
full involvement of all members of the community in developing a community
hazard mitigation strategy. Communities such as Tulsa, Oklahoma, and Napa,
California, successfully developed and implemented flood mitigation projects
with comprehensive public involvement in the planning process.
Recent research conducted by the New York Academy of Medicine
indicates that the public is ready to take a more active role in preparedness
planning for terrorism events. This research indicates that the current
plans will fail because the assumptions about public behavior in the event
of a terrorist incident are false. The research found that emergency management
planners must engage the public in the planning process in order to fully
understand the public's needs and concerns and that the public is vitally
interested in getting involved in this process.
Public-Private Partnership Efforts
Failing
The DHS and numerous business groups, such as The Business Roundtable,
acknowledge that an effective partnership between government and business
must be established as part of the nation's homeland security efforts.
This makes sense since almost 85 percent of the infrastructure in this
country is privately held.
However, in the four years since the September 11 attacks,
no such partnership has been established. There has been some progress
and cooperation, but there is no overall strategy in place to incorporate
the business sector into the government's emergency management planning
for homeland security.
There are numerous issues that must be resolved before such
a strategy can be designed and implemented. A significant issue that must
be addressed is how the government will protect and use confidential information
it is asking the business community to provide. The business community
must be included in the planning process not only for terrorism planning
but also for natural disaster management.
Emergency Management Funding Cuts
The struggle for funding for emergency management programs and activities
has only intensified since September 11. At the federal level, funding
for traditional natural and technological hazard programs at FEMA have
been cut significantly, and funding for hazard mitigation programs such
as Project Impact have been cut completely. There have been efforts to
cut funding to state and local emergency management organizations for
personnel and to limit the funds available for post-disaster mitigation
projects. On the positive side, there has been increased funding for first
responders and the development of community homeland security plans.
At the state and local levels, the struggle to fund emergency
management programs and activities continues. Each state has established
a homeland security office and in most cases this office is headed by
someone other than the State Director for emergency management. Numerous
large cities have also established homeland security offices that function
in parallel to the emergency management office.
The question facing emergency management planners today
is how long resources will be available to sustain two discrete functions:
one for homeland security and one for emergency management. How the federal,
state, and local governments prioritize and allocate their resources will
likely make this decision for them.
Organizational Uncertainty
Prior to September 11, the nation's emergency management system was comprised
of a partnership between federal, state, and local government and a collection
of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) such as the Red Cross and the
Salvation Army. The federal government through FEMA provided funding,
technical assistance, and support to the states and through the states
to the local governments.
With the inclusion of FEMA in the DHS and the focus being
placed squarely on terrorism, the structure of the national emergency
management system has changed. The director of FEMA no longer reports
directly to the president, and DHS/FEMA has assumed a more active role
in leading the government-wide response to all disasters - terrorism or
natural.
At the same time, DHS continues to struggle as an organization
and in 2005 will undergo its first change in leadership. It took FEMA
nearly 15 years to become a functioning federal agency; how long it will
take DHS to become fully functional remains to be seen.
For emergency management planners, this uncertainty in the
organizational structure of the system will impact what they do as priorities
shift, resources become tighter, and leadership at the top changes. This
uncertainty is something they will have to deal with in 2005 and most
likely in the years to follow.
About the Author
George Haddow serves on the Adjunct Faculty at the
Institute for Crisis, Disaster and Risk Management at George Washington
University in Washington, D.C. He is a co-author of two disaster management
textbooks titled Introduction to Emergency Management (July 2003) and
Introduction to Homeland Security (September 2004). He is a founding partner
of Bullock & Haddow LLC, a disaster management consulting firm, and he
served as the Deputy Chief of Staff to the Director of the Federal Emergency
Management Agency (FEMA) during the Clinton Administration. The author
may be reached by telephone at (202) 994-3929 or by email at ghaddow@gwu.edu
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