Years before 1979, the United States Disaster
management was a patchwork of volunteer groups and on another state, local and
federal agencies on the spot legislations. Some issues of disaster mitigation
were controlled by the U.S Army Corps of Engineers while other agencies of the
government were in charge of giving emergencies in cases of damages from a
disaster. Eventually, there were more than hundred agencies that were in charge
of dealing with disasters in which most of them duplicated the roles and
efforts of other agencies.
FederalEmergency Management Agency (FEMA) came into being under the executive orders
of President Jimmy Carter to become a new agency that would absorb many other
agencies. Thus, FEMA was responsible for a wide range of issues including civil
defense Plans at the times of war and natural disaster preparedness. Later,
there was FEMA's incorporation to become part of the Department of Homeland
Security in 2003 (Oliver, Marion, and Hill, 2014).
FEMA
is currently among the agencies of the Department of Homeland Security of the
United States. The mission of FEMA is to support all American citizens by being
the first responders in times of emergency. FEMA ensures that its creates a
nation that works together to sustain, improve and build our capacity to
protect against, prepare for, recover from, mitigate and respond to all forms
of hazards. The agency has coordinated roles and activities as expected by the
Homeland Security Office. FEMA’s National Preparedness Office has the
responsibility of providing assistances in ensuring that they are the first
responders of the nation. Thus, they are equipped and trained with handling
weapons of mass destruction. The Sept 11th attack made FEMA focus on matters of
homeland security and national preparedness, and it was a time that put to the
test the agency is all forms of unprecedented ways. FEMA received funds in
Billions of dollars to assist communities that face terrorism threats. Since
then FEMA has been involved in directing its approach on “all-hazards” to
disaster as part of the homeland security matters. FEMA is responsible for
handling matters in natural disasters such as earthquakes, hurricanes, and
floods. It is also responsible for dealing with the man-made disasters such as
war, bombings, and hazardous substance spills. Though most people assume that
FEMA only deals with disaster Responses, the agency is also involved in a wide
range of disaster preparation strategies. FEMA’S numerous disaster preparation
efforts include assisting cities in retrofitting buildings to make them much
safer in cases of an earthquake event and also helping homes by
hurricane-proofing structures. For example, FEMA’s Impact Project assists many
buildings in Washington State from destruction by the Nisqually earthquake of
2001 (Oliver, Marion, and Hill, 2014).
FEMA also has a task of providing information
to business wonders and homes that can assist them to take the necessary steps
of disaster preparedness. FEMA provides tips such as ways of improving and
upgrading homes to withstand earthquakes or storm damage, driving tips during
winter and grant programs that assist individuals in paying for their homes
upgrade. FEMA’s effort during the cold war was to prepare for any nuclear
attack, however, today its role is to mitigate damages of terrorism as part of
the duties of FEMA.
When
disaster strikes, FEMA provides all the affected people with assistance such as
helping the injured and finding the dead or missing loved ones. It coordinates
with other volunteer organizations such as the Red Cross in setting up care
centers to provide victims with all their basic requirements such as medical,
shelter, water and food.
FEMA also works closely with other agencies
under the Homeland Security department before, during and after a disaster.
Some of these agencies are the National Communications System, National
Domestic Preparedness Office, Office for Domestic Preparedness, and
Transportation Security Administration
In cases of disaster mitigation, preparedness
and response, FEMA works closely with the National Communications Systems that
comprises of local, tribal, state and federal partners. FEMA is among them in
facilitating and establishing consistent disaster emergency communication
plans, capabilities, and standards. In its leadership role, FEMA works in
forging a link with an integrated operational aspect during, before and after
an event. It advocates for disaster emergency communications at a national
level on behalf of the victims. FEMA also works with the National Domestic
Preparedness Office NDPC in addressing the urgent need of addressing the need
for counter- terrorism preparedness as being among the emergency first
responders of the nation. They work in all forms of disaster preparedness and
all hazard contexts such as biological, chemical, explosive and radiological
weapons of mass destruction. NDPC
sponsorship is through FEMA’s National Preparedness doctorate. The
doctorate operates under the principle that test identifies, delivers and
develops training to local and state emergency responders (Bullock, Haddow, and
Coppola 2012).
FEMA
works in collaboration with, Office for Domestic Preparedness in deterring all
potential terrorism from nodding any attacks on the American soil since they
are committed to defeating terrorism. FEMA and office of domestic preparedness
are also involved in detecting terrorists early before they strike. They
prevent terrorists and their equipment from getting into American borders.
FEMA
and the ODP take decisive actions of eliminating the threat that the terrorists
pose. They also work in establishing jurisdiction as the locus of control and
are actively are responsibility. FEMA provides transport assistance through the
help of Transportation Security Administration in ensuring security through
regulation, cooperation, and oversight. They work collaboratively to ensure the
right security posture employment. The effective surface transport security
management involves partnership and collaborative efforts with other members of
DHS as part of the dynamics that need continuing interface, coordination, and
outreach. In the case of transportation grant programs, FEMA provides the
administrative mechanisms that are needed to manage and implement grant
program. TSA role is to provide expertise in the subject matters on issues of
transportation security and other programmatic updates. Thus, the two agencies
assist one another in coordinating the wide range of vulnerability/risk
assessments and intelligence information those results to rating and ranking
surface transportation assets all across the nation against threats of
terrorist attacks.
They also work in defining the right
parameters for protecting, identifying, responding, recovering and deterring
such incident. The two agencies through their cooperation and additional
assistances of the Federal Transit Administration for mass transit systems and
rail determine the top priorities of security architecture on matters of
transport security programs. FEMA has also implemented the 21st-century
procurement and logistics systems to assist effective and efficient planning of
tracking, identifying, and distributing supplies needed by emergency
responders, disaster victims and other users on the ground. Working with an
array of private and public strategic donors, agencies, partners, and
contractors, FEMA provides customer support and logistics integration (Whitman,
Mattord, and Green, 2013).
Reference
Bullock J., Haddow, G., and Coppola D., (2012)
Introduction to Homeland Security:
Principles of All-Hazards Risk Management. Elsevier, p 518
Oliver, W., Marion, N., and Hill, J. (2014) Introduction to Homeland Security. Jones
& Bartlett Publishers, p 126
Whitman, M., Mattord H., and Green A., (2013) Principles of Incident Response and Disaster
Recovery. Cengage Learning, p 499
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