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Institute for Crisis, Disaster, and Risk Management

Crisis and Emergency Management

April 2004 Volume 6 - Number 3

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Perspectives...

Can mitigation be “mainstreamed” into local strategies through

inserting it into non-emergency management disciplines?

By Andrew McBride

According to Webster’s Dictionary a hazard is a source of danger or a chance event, while to mitigate is to cause to become less harsh or hostile or to make less severe or painful. Hazard mitigation can therefore be defined as a sustained action to reduce or eliminate risk to people and property from hazards and their effects.

Emergency management, especially at state and local levels, is often seen as a response and recovery operation, with a little preparation thrown in at the beginning of each hurricane (or other repetitive disaster) season to show that the public can be protected from the potential threat. Mitigation unfortunately lacks the sex appeal of response and recovery. If mitigation is to become a day to day part of the operations of a government, then it must be combined with the normal activities of the various government departments.

There are three strategies for emergency managers to employee to bring mitigation into the daily view of the various departments within a government, develop public/private partnerships, education and shared responsibility.

Public/Private Partnerships are probably the strongest tool available. Bringing in new blood can open the eyes of participants to the variety of solutions available to solve the problems posed by mitigation. Within the private sector, mitigation can easily be defined as a combination of strategic planning and risk management. As companies have flattened their corporate structures the disciplines of finance, planning, risk management, etc. have combined allowing companies to use a multi-disciplined approach to business risk mitigation. This approach has allowed the private sector to see the profitability inherent in the sharing of ideas and systems across departments and locations. Public organizations, be they local, state or federal, have historically operated in a stovepipe system, where information is power and sharing information, even at the highest levels, is seen as weakness. We simply have to look at the Department of Homeland Security’s efforts to share intelligence information among accredited stakeholders to see how tightly organizations continue to compartmentalize information. By bringing private industry to the table when discussing hazard mitigation, emergency managers can point to champions of shared ideals and to the ability to achieve long term goals while operating within short time frame cycles. Companies must perform under the scrutiny of “Wall Street”, where success is measured in quarters rather than two year election cycles.

Education requirements are both for the emergency manager and for the other managers within his or her sphere of influence. Many local emergency managers are former police officers or fire department officials with little formal training in the emergency management field. It is vital that they become well educated professionals with the depth and breathe of knowledge that allows them to convey the complexities of emergency management to the uninitiated. Education also allows emergency managers to meet with accountants and planners on an even level. Education of government officials into how hazard mitigation fits into the daily activities of their departments will allow mitigation efforts to become a part of the normal activities of those departments.

Emergency managers should be the cheerleaders of mitigation efforts, not the taskmaster forcing responsibility onto reluctant “troops”. By allowing the responsibility for and the success of mitigation efforts to be shared by as many people as possible within the government, a greater buy-in can occur and the possibility of triumph can be turned into the both the immediate short term successes, as well as long term benefits, that mitigation efforts require.