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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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Clinton and Bush Administration’s Homeland Defense
Policies and Emergency Management
by Jeff Miller
Abstract Although the terrorist attacks of September 11th, 2001 are seen as a unique, milestone event in U.S. history, they were not the first such events in recent history. The bombings of the World Trade Center and the Federal Building in Oklahoma City produced a series of initiatives and legislation aimed to increase our Homeland Defense capabilities. Most of these programs have also impacted the domestic Emergency Management function, providing guidance and resources. The Clinton Administration produced Presidential Decision Directive 39 (US Policy on Counter-Terrorism), the Nunn-Lugar-Domenici Act (the Defense Against Weapons of Mass Destruction Act), the Anti-terrorism Act and Presidential Decision Directive 62 (Protection Against Unconventional Threats to the Homeland and Americans Overseas). These actions established roles for the FBI and FEMA as the lead agencies for crisis management and consequence management, providing funding for response capabilities at federal, state and local levels. Realizing a need for an overall coordinator of Homeland Defense efforts, PDD-62 created the Office of the National Coordinator for Security, Infrastructure Protection and Counter-Terrorism as the executive branch overseer of all such programs. Despite these efforts, there is a perception that the Clinton Administration did not do enough for Homeland Defense. In particular, criticism sited redundancies and gaps between different agency programs and a lack of a central coordinating office with authority over other Federal Agencies. Following the events of September 11th, it appears that the Bush Administration has studied the lessons learned from their predecessor. The Department of Homeland Security shows evidence of being a studied effort to correct deficiencies in Homeland Defense and Emergency Management systems. The agency will pull all relevant offices and organizations into one single department. The director of the department will be in charge of coordinating all federal Homeland Defense and Emergency Management actions and will provide a single point of contact for state and local agencies. With the Federal Emergency Management Agency incorporated into the Department of Homeland Security, Emergency Management will formally become a function of Homeland Defense. Although controversial, including Emergency Management in Homeland Defense has the possibility to create advantages. Emergency responders should receive greater resources and access to federal programs. Qualifying all responders to act regardless of the type of disaster will protect local responders in WMD type events, and increase the pool of responders nation-wide. Using Homeland Defense type responders in natural disasters will train the responders and provide increased service to disaster victims. The effectiveness of the Department of Homeland Security is yet to be proven, and will not likely be fairly assessed for years. It does appear though, that the Department is building on past lessons learned and has a reasonable plan for the future. To Full Paper |