Description
Topic: Emergency Management Doctrine
Which phase of emergency management do you find most important and why: mitigation, preparedness, response, or recovery? Where should the emergency manager and his or her staff be housed within local government and why there? It is often found in various places such as a stand-alone agency, part of fire or police. What might it tell you based on where it is and the staffing level and resources allocated to the emergency management function? Next, where does an emergency operations center (EOC) and Fusion Center fit into the overall process. Finally, apply at least 1 biblical passage to the concept or practice of emergency management. Explain why you picked the passage and what it means to you.
Peer Response #1
Emergency management is made up of four phases which make up the core of its function to respond to disasters. The four phases of emergency management are mitigation, preparedness, response, and recovery. Mitigation is what to do where a risk to society has been identified and devising a risk reduction program. Preparedness involves developing a response plan and training first responders to save lives and reduce disaster damage, among many other tasks. Response entails providing emergency aid and assistance, reducing the probability of secondary damage, and minimizing problems for recovery operations. Lastly, recovery involves providing the immediate support during the early post-disaster period necessary to return vital life-support systems to at least minimum operational levels and continuing to provide support until the community returns to normal. Of the four phases, preparedness becomes the most important as it is what sets the tone for how an office of emergency management(OEM) responds and recovers from a disaster. Wolf-Fordham stated, the critical element of successful disaster recovery is a close relationship with emergency management developed prior to the event (Wolf-Fordham, 2020). If an office prepares well, developing strategies and tactics for specific areas of the community that may fall victim to a disaster, while training members of the OEM team to carry out those strategies, the response will be quicker and handled more smoothly. After carrying out a well-prepared response plan, the prepared recovery plan can begin resulting in restoring the community to minimum function as quickly as possible. Without being prepared, each of the phases become negatively impacted.
The emergency management officer and their staff should be housed in an OEM building if the locality budget and service area allow it. State and larger counties should be able to give the OEM Director the available building to have an area to conduct preparation planning meetings, as well as small level training for response and recovery. If in a local municipality where the budget and service area do not allow it, the OEM director should either be a member of the Police, or Fire Department so that they can have access to radios and interagency communication between fire, police and EMS in the event of a disaster. Being that funds are not readily available in smaller local municipalities; it is important for the first responders to be all on the same page until they can request help from county and state agencies.
Often times in small towns and cities where the population is dense, like in New Jersey for example, emergency management cannot be conducted solely by the county because the population would be too much for one county agency to handle, but also a small city cannot provide an OEM office on its own due to budget restrictions. In this case, either the fire department or police department will house the OEM director and at times it may be the chief of either agency. This shows that a generic OEM plan will not work because a city like Los Angeles may be able to have an entire Emergency Management agency, like a small scale FEMA, whereas a smaller city like Long Branch, NJ (population 30,000) houses their OEM within the fire department. In a more rural area, such as southeastern Kentucky, disaster response has been an issue since 2002, according to Oppizzi and Speraw (2016) where they stated:
Disproportionate shares of responsibility for community well-being fall on rural hospitals and health centers, despite the reality that these entities have fewer resources, a greater geographic area to serve, and far less
