The Challenges of Emergency Management Planning in 2005

By George Haddow|2022-03-29T18:57:14+00:00January 10th, 2006|0 Comments

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 [email protected]

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About the Author: George Haddow

Jane Bullock is the former FEMA Chief of Staff and the President of Bullock & Haddow LLC.  George Haddow is former FEMA Deputy Chief of Staff and a Principal in Bullock & Haddow LLC.

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