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NOTICE:
TIEMS Transportation Safety and Security Workshop January 28-29th 2003
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Welcome to
the
Institute for Crisis, Disaster, and Risk Management Crisis and Emergency Management
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| January 2003
Volume 3 - Number
4 |
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Links:
Current events
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Organization of Emergency Management: Then, Now
and Soon To Be
By Scott Burnotes
Abstract
Emergency management in the United States has always been
organized around what is perceived as the greatest threat to its existence.
Over the years the focus has flip-flopped between civil defense and natural
disasters. This report examines the organizational roots of emergency management
after World War II. It documents the government's past ideas whether a single
organization or multiple organizations should focus on civil defense and
natural disasters together or separately.The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) was the emergency management system the United States used before the events of 9/11. The agency has evolved since its creation in 1979. FEMA was an end result from the pressure to create a single agency that dealt with all aspects of emergencies. The idea was strongly supported at state government levels. The report scrutinizes FEMA's change in mission as a result from varying perceived threats and who presided in the office of the President at that time. It looks at FEMA's current organizational structure with an all-hazards approach to emergency management. The report recognizes how FEMA became the model system for emergency management worldwide. The events of 9/11 once again changed how the US Government believes emergency management should be structured. First came the comforting, but powerless Office of Homeland Security with its impossible mission. Now, the United States has the overwhelming Department of Homeland Security and its consolidation of 22 different agencies. This report questions the appropriateness of the new department and its structure. The report makes suggestions on how the new department's organizational structure needs to be changed to incorporate the lessons learned from the past flip-flop in focus between civil defense and natural disasters. The report also recommends that the US government needs to make changes to the Department of Homeland Security's name and lack of intelligence gathering capabilities to make it successful. To Full Paper |