Emergency Management; Today and Yesterday - a Comparison

Emergency Management; Today and yesterday – a comparison

Saint Leo University

CRJ-582

Claudia Burnett

Prof.

Author Note

Claudia Burnett, Department of Criminal Justice, St. Leo University.

Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Claudia Burnett,

Department of Criminal Justice, St. Leo University, St. Leo, FL 33525.

E-mail: Claudia.Burnett@email.saintleo.edu

Abstract

Emergencies have been happening since the beginning of time. As humans and technology evolved, emergency management and disaster preparedness evolved. The most recent large disasters in the American mind are the attacks of 9/11 in New York City, Hurricane Katrina, the Boston Bomber, the Oklahoma attack on a Federal building, and Hurricane Sandy, affecting the entire North Eastern Region. This paper will reflect on the changes in mitigation, response, and recovery programs. The lessons which were learned during each event and which mitigation programs were changed or cancelled after analyzing new after-action reports.

Keywords: future of emergency management, lessons learned, abandoned mitigation programs, impacts on mitigation policies.

Introduction

The attacks in New York City from September 11, 2001 mark a spot on a timeline in changes for Emergency Management. It led to the restructuring of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and the establishment of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). In the past Emergency Management was merely reactionary. The Robert T. Stafford Act allowed local authorities to declare a state of emergency to receive state funded assistance. If the state could not resolve the lack of resources, they could call upon the federal government to step in for assistance, if the governor of a state declared a state of emergency.  

Background Information to 9/11

During the attack at the WTC on 9/11 first responders were doing a phenomenal job. There were some concerns and the need to establish some ground rules during operations. Many are not aware that within the next days, search and rescue personnel (further named as SAR) were streaming into the city and the operational site. There was no accountability of the resources available, as well as there was no ability to check the training and credibility of these personnel. This is especially important for specialized assets, like K9 handlers and urban SAR personnel. There is a difference if one is searching for a lost person in the woods, versus in rubble of a collapsed building after an earthquake or disaster like 9/11. During the recovery operations and search for possible survivors, several self-proclaimed K9 handlers showed up at the site and wasted valuable time. This led to the development of standardized field tests and certification program for specialized and general SAR personnel.

The issues at hand

With the development of the National Incident Management System (NIMS) many believed it would solve some of the problems encountered during response to disasters. NIMS supposed to provide a framework how incidents should be handled on all levels; local, state, federal, private sector, nongovernmental organizations, and tribal. It was developed as a result of the Homeland Security Presidential Directive 5 (HSPD-5). State and local jurisdictions would only receive federal grants, if they were NIMS compliant (NIMS Training Guidelines, 2009).  This leads to the question; does that make sense and will NIMS fit really all possible disasters?

Fire Battalion Chief Charles Bailey discussed in an article in 2009 the daily application of NIMS in an incident with the concern of span of control. He points out that with breaking incidents in smaller functional units, the responsibility and accountability of all personnel has just been delegated, but the Incident Commander has no real accountability of who is where at any given time (Bailey, 2009).

Others complain that NIMS does not work for rural areas, because of the unique structure and the longer response ways. Also, resources and capabilities are far less than in developed urban areas. Many rural fire and ems services are manned by volunteers, who do this for community service, family tradition, and for fun. It is a different mindset and the fire chief or local sheriff sets the tone for NIMS compliance. Connecting the NIMS compliance to the ability to receive funding lead to game playing, using several “grey zones” in the qualification process. Another complaint was that the training exercises focus mainly on suburban and urban responses. It does not leave room to develop exercises for the rural community, given on given circumstances (NIMS, 2008).

Lessons learned from Hurricane Katrina

One of FEMA’s training scenarios for worst-case disaster was the hypothetical situation of a hurricane Category 5 impacting the New Orleans region. The exercises Response 95 and Hurricane Pam were never fully funded and completed, leaving with more questions, but no adequate developed solutions (Haddow, Bullock & Coppola, 2014). With hurricane Katrina this situation became reality.  

During hurricane Katrina several issues emerged and were added to the lessons learned. One major issue was the responsibility shuffling between local, state and federal government in the onset of the imminent landfall of the storm. The National Response Plan (NRP) has actually a section for this type of scenario; it is called the Catastrophic Incident Annex (Strohm, 2005). The annex allows to by-pass state government, if they are overwhelmed with the incident. DHS spokesperson R. Knocke demented this statement with the argument that it would have not applied to the situation in New Orleans. His argument was that it was intended to be used when there was no awareness of an incident, but the FEMA director was days prior to the landfall on scene to coordinate preparations, resources, and responses (Strohm, 2005).  

Another issue was that the advisor to the White House, in this case the Secretary of Homeland Security Mr. Chertoff, had no experience with hurricane’s and the possible disasters. Emergency management is just one of the several tasks he is responsible for. The Homeland Security Operations Center was unclear of its role and responsibility. Much important information was not completely or in a timely manner passed on to the President’s advisor. Besides the confusion of responsibilities, lack of acknowledging the scale of the arising disaster,   Principal Federal Official (PFO) M. Brown did not completed the required training assignment for this position and was therefore ill prepared (A failure of Initiative).