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Emergency Management

Emergency management is an all-concerted effort that requires the input of public, private and non-profit organizations and agencies to navigate. These agencies work at the federal, regional and local levels to help communities recover and rebuild from disasters that would otherwise be threats to their everyday social and economic lives. This paper identifies some of the agencies and organizations instrumental in emergency response of all kinds in the country, assesses some conceptual frameworks that have been used to coordinate their efforts and discusses a number of factors that contribute to their success in emergency operations.

Emergency Management Organizations and Agencies

The public, private and non-profit sectors have within them several emergency management organizations that coordinate and carry out emergency and rescue programs every time. Some of these public organizations and agencies include American College of Emergency Physicians (ACEP), Association of State and Territorial Health Officials (ASTHO), Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and Institute for Rural Emergency Management (IREM). Other agencies include National Association of County and City Health Officials (NACCHO), National Association of EMS Physicians (NAEMSP), Office of the Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response (ASPR), Rural Domestic Preparedness Consortium (RDPC) SAMHSA Disaster Technical Assistance Center (DTAC) and US Fire Administration (USFA). The American Red Cross is a private, voluntary organization mandated by the Federal Government to provide disaster relief like food, shelter and health services to victims of natural and manmade disasters. During disasters of any kind, be they health, water, biological, chemical or disasters of any kind, these organizations coordinate to a greater or lesser degree depending on the nature of the disaster and the places within which they occur (Haddow et al. 2017). The federal organizations coordinate with rural and state organizations to make these efforts come to fruition.

Conceptual Frameworks for Emergency Management Coordination

The first concept in the frameworks for disaster and emergency management is preparedness. Preparedness is about all the activities that are completed in the short term to help organizations like the ones listed above and communities within which they operate effectively respond to disasters (Trainor & Subbio, 2014). They shorten the time that these organizations and communities need to respond and recover within the shortest time possible. At this point, the hazards that a community faces can be identified and plans to address response and recovery efforts developed. In many disasters, plans may be developed by individual agencies. However, the reality when disaster strikes may be that response and recovery efforts need the participation of multiple agencies for full recovery (Jerolleman, 2019). This then calls for the different agencies to perform drills and educate community members on how they can protect themselves in case disaster strikes.

Secondly, the response activities in the wake of any disaster have often been done by the various disaster management organizations. Response may come in the form of providing emergency assistance to the victims. The immediate concern of response that organizations like FEMA or The Red Cross perform begins with the onset of the disaster and is aimed at lowering the life threatening conditions, provision of life-threatening aid and averting excessive damage of property (Haddow et al. 2017: Jerolleman, 2019). In case of wild fires for example, the immediate concern would be the evacuation of those in line of danger before efforts can be made to put the fires out. When there is a hurricane, the ones who are in the line of the storms, the injured and others at risk would be helped by the concerted efforts of the emergency and disaster response agencies. The response would also include search and rescue of those trapped under debris, in buildings, on roofs and amidst the disaster. The response also includes distributing life-saving provisions, temporary power and shelter and using geospatial information to locate survivors (McEntire, 2015).

Recovery and mitigation are also conceptual frameworks that organizations have used in disaster and emergency management. Recovery efforts are hose intended to return survivors to a semblance of pre-disaster normalcy (Phillips, 2015). Recovery efforts include the provision of temporary shelter, food and financial aid by the first responders. It also involves the coordination by the disaster management agencies to offer long-term reconstruction in terms of the physical, economic and social infrastructure (Haddow et al. 2017: Phillips, 2015). Most organizations also have as part of their recovery processes the capturing and archiving collected data with the aim of seeing what has been learnt from a given disaster. An example is oil spillage. The organizations coordinating recovery efforts may document the perceived causes and impacts on biodiversity with the aim of averting such a disaster and consequences in future. Mitigation efforts are those measures taken in the long term after a disaster but before another similar disaster strikes to reduce the damage that may result from such a disaster. They are sustained efforts aimed at reducing the impacts of future disasters (McEntire, 2015). In the wake of an earthquake for example, there may be the installation of warning systems that make use of the latest geospatial technologies to predict future earthquakes. Dykes and other blockage systems may be used to prevent the impact of overflowing water following damaging floods and hurricanes.

Emergency Managers and Responders in all of the identified organizations have a responsibility of dealing with the overall catastrophic nature of disasters. Because disasters are mostly intensely felt at the local levels, meaningful coordination for the response and recovery have to start among the communities within which these disasters happen (Phillips, 2015). The disaster and emergency organizations thus focus on restoring the health of the communities within which disasters occur. In a bid to coordinate the response and recovery efforts, the framework of response demands that the discretion and authority for management is in the affected jurisdictions, and it is these jurisdictions that determine the impact of the disaster and request for federal help until enough resources are received to stabilize the people involved (Jerolleman, 2019). It is the local responders who provide the initial response to save lives. Neighbouring jurisdictions may help when locals are overwhelmed. Often, nongovernmental, private and non-profit organizations supplement such response and recovery efforts too. This response framework of a bottom-up approach eases the organization and implementation of rescue and recovery strategies.

Factors contributing to successful emergency management outcomes

One of the factors critical to success in emergency management and response is improvisation, adaptability and creativity of the local communities and disaster management agencies (Haddow et al. 2017: McEntire, 2015). Even while it is prudent that a raft of mitigation measures be put in place to help in protecting communities from future disasters, the realization that no two disasters can be similar is vital in helping shape the response to the disaster. The community members, in coordination with the other responders, have to find adaptable ways of creatively dealing with the after-effects of disasters. This would better start by them learning to find technologically sound ways of locating and treating survivors. The geospatial technology that has been applied by search rescue responders is a case in point.

The second factor is the coordination of response. It does not matter how many responders are present during a disaster or emergency. If there is minimal coordination among them, then their efforts may well just be in vain. All the first responders, from local, regional to federal agencies, must be managed and coordinated well. While some agencies concentrate on saving lives in danger, others would be focused on locating the missing, others on salvaging property while others on organizing the post-disaster recovery, all these organizations and agencies have to coordinate to ensure that no roles are duplicated and some forgotten or ignored (Jerolleman, 2019). It is this coordination that would bring eventual total reintegration of these people into society.

Collaboration and communication are also factors that cause success in management of emergency and disaster response operations (McEntire, 2015). It has been noted that disasters are most often local in nature. What this means is that communities all across the country have to be prepared enough in case the hazards they face become disasters. In case of disasters, the risk assessment and damage estimation have to be done swiftly and aptly communicated to neighbouring jurisdictions, private and non-profit organizations and the federal agencies so that the needed help is availed as swift as possible. The communication also involves developing reliable means of telling people about impending disasters, backing disaster preparedness with vital mitigation measures and making people know that disasters can be met and overcome.

In conclusion, there are a number of organizations and agencies that are at the forefront in emergency management in the country. Most of these organizations help communities to bear the brunt of disasters of all nature from the local, regional and federal levels. The public, private and non-profit entities that collaborate in efforts to have communities prepare, respond to, recover from and mitigate against disasters must prioritize creativity,  adaptability, coordination, collaboration and communication to make the work of emergency management a success.