Narrative Effective emergency management is achieved when three key elements of the emergency management system are executed. These elements are preparedness, mitigation, and response to natural and man-made emergencies. Furthermore, there are several critical events that must occur to deliver effective emergency management. The material discussed in week six of this course highlighted the most important aspects to the delivery of effective emergency management before and after a disaster event.
Successful emergency management practices begin with emergency preparedness. Regardless of the level of government or the type of disaster that a community is impacted by, preparation and planning are paramount. Emergency managers and government
…show more content…
The steps in order are: form a collaborative planning team, understand the situation, determine the goals and objectives, plan development, plan preparation/review/approval, and plan implementation/maintenance (FEMA). Step one focuses on identifying the planning team and engaging the community in planning (FEMA). Step two identifies threats and hazards while assessing the risks associated with them (FEMA). Step three determines the operational priorities and sets forth concrete objectives and goals (FEMA). Step four analyzes courses of actions and identifies resources, information, and intelligence needs (FEMA). Step five is the formal creation of a written plan that will be presented for approval (FEMA). Finally, step six is carrying out the final plans and monitoring their effectiveness and improving them when necessary (FEMA). The reoccurring theme in disaster preparedness is communication. FEMA’s planning process is exhaustive and is meant to have a reaction to every possible issue that may arise in the aftermath of any disaster. This preparation is entirely dependent upon how well communities and government officials communicate with one another before an emergency ever …show more content…
Government officials at all levels should have continuity of operations (COOP) plans in place that can be activated immediately following a disaster event. COOP plans are defined as an effort with businesses and government agencies that ensures the continued performance of essential functions during a wide range of potential emergencies (PublicResourceOrg). Incident response under COOP should provide plans for alternative facilities, additional personnel, resource allocation, interoperable communication, and vital records collection (PublicResourceOrg). Moreover, COOP is designed to ensure safety of all those involved, continue operational functionality, protect assets, minimize damage, survival of leadership positions, and administer response and recovery to those impacted by a disaster (PublicResourceOrg). Overall, response planning when comparing natural disasters and attacks using weapons of mass destruction (WMD) are similar. Notwithstanding, WMD’s elicit a heavier law enforcement response, especially from a federal level, because these attacks are deemed federal crimes (PublicResourceOrg). Additionally, natural disasters provide some level of warning compared to the use of WMD’s which are labeled no-notice events. However, similar response action plans are initiated in response to natural and man-made disaster
The National response plan outlines four key actions the disaster coordinator should take. They are gaining and maintaining situational awareness, activate and deploy key resources and capabilities, coordinating response actions and demobilizing. Throughout the response it is essential that responders have access to critical information. During the initial response effort the situation is will change rapidly. Situational awareness starts at the incident site. For this reason it is essential that decision makers have access to the right information at the right time. By establishing an Emergency Operations Center (EOC) all key responders are brought ...
Both man-made and natural disasters are often devastating, resource draining and disruptive. Having a basic plan ready for these types of disaster events is key to the success of executing and implementing, as well as assessing the aftermath. There are many different ways to create an emergency operations plan (EOP) to encompass a natural and/or man-made disaster, including following the six stage planning process, collection of information, and identification of threats and hazards. The most important aspect of the US emergency management system in preparing for, mitigating, and responding to man-made and natural disasters is the creation, implementation and assessment of a community’s EOP.
According the the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), an emergency operations plan (EOP) dictates “who will do what, as well as when, with what resources, and by what authority--before, during, and immediately after an emergency” (FEMA, 1996). An effective EOP should contain a plan for all the potential disasters for a given region. These disasters would include natural disasters, man-man disasters including terrorist attacks, chemical weapon attacks and even nuclear war. The intent of the EOP is to publish a document intended to minimize the impact of the disaster, save lives while offering a path to recovery. In simple terms, an EOP “is the playbook by...
The Florida Catastrophic Planning (FLCP) Initiative was conducted under the auspices of the National Catastrophic Planning Process (CPP), as mandated by the Homeland Security Act of 2002, which was amended by the Department of Homeland Security Appropriations Act of 2007. The Act of 2007 expanded the roles and responsibilities of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) in preparing for catastrophes as a result of the dismal response to Hurricane Katrina (Ruback et al., 2010). FEMA was given specific requirements to better prepare for catastrophic disasters and the FLCP planning process embodies one the first major tests of the CCP.
Bissell, R. (2010). Catastrophic Readiness and Response Course, Session 6 – Social and Economic Issues. Accessed at http://training.fema.gov/EMIWeb/edu/crr.asp
Mancock, I., Tristan, C. & Lunn, J., 2004, Introduction to Emergency Management, CD ROM, Charles Sturt University, Australia.
Emergency Management has always been an important role in government, communities, and some organizations when dealing with planning and response to emergencies and disasters. However, since the September 11th attacks and other terrorist attacks on United States soil such as the Oklahoma City bombing, or the Boston terror attack, emergency management now has a more active and upfront role. Planning for terrorist attacks is no longer if but when.
Having a basic understanding of community or national emergency plans can assist families in disaster. This is especially true during the response phase. The National Response Framework (NRF) is a great example of a national community reference. According to FEMA’s publication, “The National Response Framework,” from 2013, the NRF is a guide which describes the basis of national response to any form of disaster. The NRF was developed from a long line of response guidance plans. The first was the Federal Response plan which was replaced by the National Response Plan. Then in 2008, the NRF was developed to make national response guidance more efficient as well as to include practices created after Hurricane Katrina. The NRF is comprised of 4 sections. These are the foundation document, the Emergency Support Functions (ESF) Annexes, the Support Annexes, and the Incident Annexes. These annexes describe how the NRF can be implemented. It is important to note that the NRF and the National Incident Management System (NIMS) are meant to work in conjunction with each other, while NIMS and its component the Incident Command System (ICS) supply the NRF with an incident management function (Federal Emergency Management Agency, 2013c, pp. 2-3). The NRF is based on several guiding principles. These are engaged partnership, tiered response, scalable operations, unity of effort/unified command, and readiness to act (Federal Emergency Management Agency, 2013c, pp. 5-6).
Bibliography Kutner, M. (1999). Disaster Recovery Journal. The Contingency Planner, <http://www.drj.com/drworld/content/w4_002.htm> Lerbinger, O. (1997). The Crisis Manager. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Haddow, G. D., Bullock, J. A., & Coppola, D. P. (2010).Introduction to emergency management. (4th ed., pp. 1-26). Burlington, MA: Butterworth-Heinemann.
Background Emergency management, also known as EM, is the function of government charged with creating the framework to cope with disasters and reduce the vulnerability of hazards . To accomplish this mission, DHS has created an emergency management cycle – a series of pillars used as an outline to handle disaster scenarios. The cycle is as follows: preparation, prevention, response, recovery and mitigation. Hypothetical Disaster A strong, category five hurricane is headed toward the gulf coast of Alabama and Florida.
In this week’s Disaster Management lecture and seminar course we discussed mainly the two phases of Response and Recovery. In these phases they cover what is vital and crucial to individuals, towns, communities, cities, states, all who have been affected by a disaster. These two phases come in hand when and after a disaster strikes an overpopulated area. In class Professor Urby introduced the class to a guest speaker Adrian Dominguez the University Safety and Risk Manager of Texas A&M International University and Jessica Perez the University Environmental Health and Safety officer in Texas A&M International University.. Dominguez explained his credentials as of working in the TAMIU safety and emergency management department. He discussed his involvement in the National Incident Management System (NIMS) and how his involvement with that organization influenced his own process of risk management in TAMIU. Dominguez was able to implement the five phases of emergency management, prevention, preparedness, mitigation, response and recovery into his experience into the field of
With the advent of the electronic age of the Twenty First century, emergency risk communication faces new and ever-evolving challenges. Broad societal developments, biomedical revolution, the increased movement of people and goods, and varying levels of public trust in government are all associated with the increasing challenges emergency communicators have to overcome. Emergency Risk Communications is listed as one of the eight core capacities by the World Health Organization needed for detecting and responding to public health threats (Savoia, Lin, & Gamgewage, 2017). Risk communication focuses on communicating disaster preparedness information and mitigation strategies to the public before an event occurs to help minimize the damage and effects. Proper communication involves truthfulness, dealing with the news media, planning, and evaluation.
Sometimes one phase of the emergency management tends to overlap of adjacent phase. The concept of “phases” has been used since the 1930’s to help describe, examine, and understand disasters and to help organize the practice of emergency management. In an article titled Reconsidering the Phases of Disaster, David Neal cites different examples of different researchers using five, six, seven, and up to eight phases long before the four phases became the standard. (Neal 1997) This acknowledges that critical activities frequently cover more than one phase, and the boundaries between phases are seldom precise. Most sources also emphasize that important interrelationships exist among all the ph...
Of the four phases of emergency management, mitigation, preparedness, response and recovery, perhaps the place that individuals can make the biggest difference in their own state of resiliency and survival of a disaster is in the preparedness phase. Being prepared before a disaster strikes makes sense yet many people fail to take even simple, precautionary steps to reduce the consequences of destruction and mayhem produced by natural events such as earthquakes, volcanos and tornados (see Paton et al, 2001, Mileti and Peek, 2002; Tierney, 1993, Tierney et al, 2001).