**Chapter 10**

**Future Trends and Issues**

**Introduction**

As of this writing in February 2006, the future of emergency management
in the Untied States is uncertain. In the aftermath of Hurricane
Katrina, a series of wide ranging investigations are being conducted by
Congress, the General Accounting Office (GAO) and the White House as to
what went wrong in the Federal government's response. The results of
these investigations and the ongoing reorganization of the Federal
Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and the Department of Homeland
Security (DHS) will influence future trends and issues in emergency
management.

Internationally, the trend continues to build capacity in government
disaster management capabilities and functions in developing nations and
to promote community-based hazard mitigation planning and programs. The
World Bank, the Asian Development Bank and the Inter-American
Development Bank are all funding efforts in both capacity building and
community-based hazard mitigation planning and action. A consortium of
Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) is funding community-based
preparedness planning and programming in pilot communities in Indonesia,
Ethiopia and Central America. All parties continue to promote hazard
mitigation and disaster management practices as part of their
development strategies for their client countries.

The purpose of this chapter is to identify current and future trends in
emergency management in the United States and internationally and to
identify and to discuss pressing issues in emergency management that
need to be addressed.

**Future Trends and Issues**

*Federal Government*

In the United States, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS)
continues

to dominate emergency management practices and programs. DHS Secretary
has completed an initial reorganization of the department that resulted
in FEMA's preparedness functions and programs being transferred to the
newly established Preparedness Directorate within DHS. This action
continues the trend started when FEMA was first incorporated into DHS of
disbursing FEMA functions and programs to other areas of DHS and to
other Federal agencies.

As a result, FEMA, and as importantly the FEMA Director, have lost a
measure of its authority and stature within the Federal government
bureaucracy. Nowhere was the loss of authority more evident then in the
Federal government's response to Hurricane Katrina. Over the course of
the first week of the Katrina response it became evident that the
Director of FEMA no longer had the authority to direct other Federal
agencies such as the Department of Defense to provide needed services
and resources to support State and local response efforts. This loss of
authority severely hampered the effectiveness of the National Response
Plan (NRP) in supporting State and local response efforts. The result
was chaos in the streets of New Orleans and delayed assistance to hard
hit communities along the Mississippi Gulf Coast.

The final reorganization has not been completed at DHS and FEMA.
However, the trend appears to be to continue to deconstruct FEMA's
authorities and capabilities and to transfer its functions to other
parts of DHS or to other Federal agencies. In 1979, the National
Governor's Association (NGA) pressured then President Jimmy Carter into
creating FEMA so that there would be one organization in the Federal
government in charge of Federal emergency management programs and
functions. FEMA no longer manages a comprehensive emergency management
program of mitigation, preparedness, response and recovery and the
agency function that President Carter and the Governors envisioned in
1979 no longer exists.

*State and Local Emergency Management*

The trend since September 11, 2001 at the State and local level has been
driven primarily by a near exclusive focus on terrorism. The mission of
DHS is to prevent a terrorist attack from happening on American soil. To
this end, DHS has implemented a series of funding programs for State and
local emergency managers that focuses exclusively on terrorism issues.
The all-hazards approach of the 1990s has been abandoned.

For the past five years, the trend has been to impose a homeland
security focus and hierarchy on existing States and local emergency
management operations. For example, the emergency management function in
New Orleans prior to Hurricane Katrina was located in the City's Office
of Homeland Security & Public Safety. The City's emergency manager
reported to the Director of this Office who was a former military
officer with limited if any emergency management experience.

The number of certificate, undergraduate and graduate programs in
emergency management continues to grow reflecting a very positive trend
in the training and education of a new generation of emergency managers.
This trend has been matched by the growth of similar programs
concentrating on homeland security in junior colleges, colleges and
universities around the country.

*Business Community*

Hurricane Katrina and the Asian Tsunami have activated an ongoing
discussion in the business community as to role of the nation's
businesses in emergency management. One area of concern is structuring a
relationship with governments at home and abroad on how best to manage
donations of goods and services from the business community. This issue
was highlighted by problems arising from the response to Hurricane
Katrina. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the Business Roundtable and their
members' corporations are looking at ways to improve the flow of
donations after a disaster strikes.

One future trend to consider is the greater involvement in disaster
response and recovery efforts of businesses that contract with
government to provide goods and services. The Federal government has
historically contracted for debris removal services in major disasters.
The Federal government is now considering contracting with businesses to
provide logistical support, products such as ice, roof tarps, house
trailers, etc. and other services. This trend could result in the
business community finally becoming involved in government disaster
planning and operations. Already, some states like Florida have
established an Emergency Support Function (ESF) for business and
industry in their state response plan and representatives from the
business community sit in the State's emergency operations center (EOC)
during a major disaster.

More and more opportunities are being created for business continuity
planners and the demand for their services continues to trend upward.
Certifications and training conducted by DRI International continue to
grow both domestically and internationally. This is a growth area in the
field of emergency management.

*NVOADs and NGOs*

There is evidence that the voluntary community is becoming more involved
in domestic disasters in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. The
National Voluntary Organizations Active in Disasters (NVOAD) reports
that participation in conference calls over the three months after
Katrina struck rose from the usual 40 participants to nearly 120
participants representing a slew of non-governmental organizations
(NGOs) that had not historically been involved in domestic disasters.
NGOs such as Save the Children, Oxfam, CARE and others sent response
teams to the Gulf Coast and are actively pursuing becoming involved in
future domestic disasters.

*International Disaster Management*

The international financial institutions and the non-government
organizations (NGOs) have traditionally been the key providers of
disaster management funding and services internationally. The banks have
historically provided the bulk of the funding for disaster relief and
the NGOs have been responsible for distributing disaster relief in
developing countries. Funding and programs for mitigation and
preparedness were few and far between.

The trend now is for the banks and the NGOs to get more involved in
capacity building for government-based disaster management programs and
to invest resources and staff in developing community-based hazard
mitigation and preparedness programs. Efforts are under way across the
globe to assist national, provincial and municipal governments to
develop and fund full disaster management programs. Disaster management
capacity building and hazard mitigation strategies are more and more
being incorporated in country development strategies.

The United States government, as evidenced by its response to the Asian
tsunami, is also a major player in international disaster relief. The US
government's primary focus in this area remains on providing
humanitarian assistance in the aftermath of major disasters but there
appears to be at least some interest at the U.S. Agency for
International Development (USAID) in helping countries to build
government capacity and in advancing hazard mitigation or preparedness.

**Pressing Issues**

Emergency management today faces many critical issues, such as an
imbalance of focus between homeland security and natural disaster
management, the challenge of involving the public in preparedness
planning, the lack of an effective partnership with the business
community, cuts to EM funding, and questions surrounding the evolving
organizational structure of the nation's emergency management system.
Such issues need to be addressed if emergency management activities are
to be successful in the years ahead.

*A History of Imbalance Repeated*

Since the September 11 terrorist attacks, the focus of government
emergency management planners, especially at the Federal level, has been
on terrorism and the hazards presented by this new threat. This is not
the first time that emergency management planners have focused on
national security risks.

In the 1950s, the nation's Civil Defense system was developed to address
the threat of nuclear attack by the Soviet Union. The government
officials who staffed the Civil Defense programs at all levels of
government were the nation's first emergency managers. In the 1980s, the
newly formed Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), reflecting the
priorities of the Reagan Administration, focused its programs and
resources almost exclusively on nuclear attack and continuity of
government planning.

A series of major natural disasters in the late 1980s and early 1990s
(Hurricane Hugo, Loma Prieta Earthquake, and Hurricane Andrew) exposed
the inability of FEMA and the federal government to provide adequate
support to state and local emergency managers in responding to large
natural disasters.

In the 1990s, FEMA adopted an all-hazards approach to disaster
management that resulted in increased resources for natural hazards
preparedness and mitigation programs and the development and
implementation of the Federal Response Plan that coordinated the efforts
of 27 federal agencies and the Red Cross in support of state and local
emergency managers.

With the failure of the Federal government response to Hurricane
Katrina, it appears that history is repeating itself. In spite of the
destructive hurricane seasons in 2004 and 2005, evidence of the impacts
of global warming, and the forecast for continued severe weather, most
of the resources for emergency management planning are currently devoted
to terrorism, much the way they were to nuclear attack planning in the
1980s. In the coming years, emergency management planners at the federal
level, at FEMA, and within the Department of Homeland Security (DHS)
must consider how to balance their focus on the terrorist threat with an
all-hazards approach to disaster management.

*More Public Involvement Needed*

Historically, the general public has played a limited role, if any, in
the development of emergency management preparedness and mitigation
plans. The principal focus of public outreach efforts by the early Civil
Defense programs, FEMA's National Flood Insurance Program, and the Red
Cross family preparedness programs was to inform and to educate the
public. Rarely has the public been included in the actual planning
process.

This began to change in the late 1990s when FEMA launched its national
mitigation initiative, Project Impact, which called for the full
involvement of all members of the community in developing a community
hazard mitigation strategy. Communities such as Tulsa, Oklahoma, and
Napa, California, successfully developed and implemented flood
mitigation projects with comprehensive public involvement in the
planning process.

Recent research conducted by the New York Academy of Medicine indicates
that the public is ready to take a more active role in preparedness
planning for terrorism events. This research indicates that the current
plans will fail because the assumptions about public behavior in the
event of a terrorist incident are false. The research found that
emergency management planners must engage the public in the planning
process in order to fully understand the public's needs and concerns and
that the public is vitally interested in getting involved in this
process.

*Public-Private Partnership Efforts Failing*

The DHS and numerous business groups, such as The Business Roundtable,
acknowledge that an effective partnership between government and
business must be established as part of the nation's homeland security
efforts. This makes sense since almost 85 percent of the infrastructure
in this country is privately held.

However, in the almost four years since the September 11 attacks, no
such partnership has been established. There has been some progress and
cooperation, but there is no overall strategy in place to incorporate
the business sector into the government's emergency management planning
for homeland security.

There are numerous issues that must be resolved before such a strategy
can be designed and implemented. A significant issue that must be
addressed is how the government will protect and use confidential
information it is asking the business community to provide. The business
community must be included in the planning process not only for
terrorism planning but also for natural disaster management.

*Emergency Management Funding Cuts*

The struggle for funding for emergency management programs and
activities has only intensified since September 11. At the federal
level, funding for traditional natural and technological hazard programs
at FEMA have been cut significantly, and funding for hazard mitigation
programs such as Project Impact have been cut completely. There have
been efforts to cut funding to state and local emergency management
organizations for personnel and to limit the funds available for
post-disaster mitigation projects. On the positive side, there has been
increased funding for first responders and the development of community
homeland security plans.

At the state and local levels, the struggle to fund emergency management
programs and activities continues. Each state has established a homeland
security office and in most cases this office is headed by someone other
than the State Director for emergency management. Numerous large cities
have also established homeland security offices that function in
parallel to the emergency management office.

The question facing emergency management planners today is how long
resources will be available to sustain two discrete functions: one for
homeland security and one for emergency management. How the federal,
state and local governments prioritize and allocate their resources will
likely make this decision for them.

*Organizational Uncertainty*

Prior to September 11, the nation's emergency management system was
comprised of a partnership between federal, state, and local government
and a collection of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) such as the
Red Cross and the Salvation Army. The federal government through FEMA
provided funding, technical assistance, and support to the states and
through the states to the local governments.

With the inclusion of FEMA in the DHS and the focus being placed
squarely on terrorism, the structure of the national emergency
management system has changed. The director of FEMA no longer reports
directly to the President of the United States, and DHS/FEMA has assumed
a more active role in leading the government-wide response to all
disasters --- terrorism or natural.

At the same time, DHS continues to struggle as an organization and in
2005 experienced its first change in leadership. It took FEMA nearly 15
years to become a functioning federal agency; how long will it take DHS
to become fully functional remains to be seen.

For emergency management planners, this uncertainty in the
organizational structure of the system will impact what they do as
priorities shift, resources become tighter, and leadership at the top
changes. This uncertainty is something they will have to deal with in
the years to follow.

**Conclusion**

As stated earlier, the future of emergency management is uncertain. If
emergency management has a future at all, it must concentrate and
rebuild its constituency at the community level. The time has come for
communities to incorporate disaster management and hazard mitigation
into its everyday operations, planning and decision-making. It is also
time for communities to establish a local funding source for emergency
management.

A new breed of government official will need to be hired to manage this
new aspect of community government. This new official should be trained
in public policy, public administration and hazard management. This new
official should be responsible for integrating hazard mitigation and
disaster management policies and practices in all phases of local
government and community life. This new official would report directly
to the City or County Manager and work closely and on the same level of
other major department heads in the local government. This new official
would also be responsible for creating a community partnership for
disaster management that includes the business community and all other
community stakeholders.

This new official would guide the community through a consensus building
process to determine all the risks to the community, to identify what
can be done to mitigate these risks, to develop a prioritized plan for
mitigating these risks and to work with government and business leaders,
community leaders and the general public to generate the financial,
political and public resources needed to implement and maintain this
plan.

It will be at the community level that local government officials with
support from the business community and other elements of the community
will begin the process of reshaping the emergency management system in
this country accounting for all-hazards including terrorism.