EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT

Emergency Management

Emergency Management

Introduction

The process of preparing, preventing, responding to, and recovering from natural and man-made disasters and emergencies. Throughout the 19th century, the U.S. Congress enacted more than 100 separate acts to provide local assistance in response to various natural disasters. In the first half of the 20th century, federal disaster assistance remained scattered among various federal agencies, such as the Bureau of Public Roads and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. It was not until a series of disasters in the 1960s and 1970s—including several severe hurricanes and a number of devastating earthquakes—that Congress enacted legislation to expand the role of the federal government in disaster aid (Ball, 2003).

The challenge produced by Katrina is a matter of national interest not only because of the sheer catastrophic scale of its immediate and short-range effects but also because, like no other previous disaster, it illustrated the failure of the current public administration to manage emergencies and the lingering effect and power of social stratification and cultural practices in increasing the risks of disasters. It also mocked the often-repeated mantra heard after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, that the newly created U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) had improved the security of the country. Katrina and its aftermath generated a great deal of soul searching. Most of it reflected a technical, tactical approach to the enormous problems that Katrina uncovered rather than a strategic assessment of what needs to change in the society and culture of the United States to mitigate the effects of hazards and to increase the resilience of the institutions of the society (Horne J., 2006).

There is a growing need that household family members should be aware of the principles of Emergency Management and how they can be of assistance. Local jurisdictions should also be more proactive to promote Emergency Management and steps that can be taken in the home and at school. However, recent incident has shown that household families are not familiar with the principles of Emergency Management and need to be to remain prepared.

Post-Katrina Reports and Commissions

Four after-action government reports have been published, each with its own set of recommendations and emphases. The White House Report examined how future events of this kind will be handled. It concluded that the current system of homeland security failed to handle catastrophic events appropriately, the unified management of the national response was inadequate, command-and-control in the federal government was defective, there is a need to train organizations in the incident command system, and there was widespread ignorance of the plans and insufficient regional planning and coordination.

The House of Representatives Report offered criticisms of the response to Hurricane Katrina, identifying ten major failures in the response. The Senate Report analyzed the response in New Orleans and the problems that need to be corrected in the future. It identified factors that contributed to the failure of the response effort, including that long-term recurrent warnings about New Orleans's vulnerability to floods were ignored and government officials were unable ...