**Future of Emergency Management and Homeland Security**

**Dennis Mileti, Ph.D.**

**8^th^ Annual Emergency Management Higher Education Conference**

**National Emergency Training Center**

**Emmitsburg, Maryland**

**June 7-9, 2005**

There are 6.5 million people on this planet and each and every one of
them has an opinion. I am going to share one of mine with you. I don't
like PowerPoint. I don't use PowerPoint. I don't know how to use
PowerPoint. Finally, I can't imagine how I could possibly speak to human
beings who were looking somewhere else. So I invite you to look at me
for the next fifteen minutes.

I was asked to speak about the evolution of emergency management in our
nation. I found preparing my remarks for this talk confronting, because
I have lots of things to say that put emergency management in its
historical context. I was confronted because I realized you have to be
an old fellow to be able to do this.

It was my privilege to direct to Natural Hazards Center for ten years. I
retired from the University of Colorado last year. I now live in
southern California, right at the epicenter of the next great southern
California earthquake which illustrates that most people manage risks
irrationally.

There are three categories of topics in the domain of emergency
management that I will speak on today. First, there are changes in the
content of the profession. Second, there are changes in the content of
the profession. Third, there surely are are changes in the viewpoint or
paradigm that guides the profession.

Regarding the future of emergency management is created like all futures
are created. Futures just don't happen. Human beings create futures, it
is what we do. It is what we do when we teach, and I recommend that
those of you have programs in this nation regarding emergency management
create the future of emergency management using some of the ideas I'd
like to share with you this morning.

**[Non-Rational Risk Management]{.underline}**

First, we do not manage risks in our nation rationally. We never have. I
know we teach the disciplines of risk assessment and risk analysis, but
we really aren't able to use them to manage risk in this nation. So I
recommend you teach people to use it. Here is an example, and I am going
to pick an example from my own state of California that is quite
colorful, but true. In 1931, there was an earthquake in Long Beach and
some schools fell down, and the state made it illegal for schools to
fall in earthquakes. It passed an law requiring strong seismic
resistance in public schools. Then in 1971 there was an earthquake in
San Fernandina and a hospital fell down, and the state moved quickly to
make it illegal for hospitals to fall in earthquakes. In 1989 there was
an earthquake in the Bay Area and part of the Bay Bridge collapsed. Now
guess what the state did, it moved swiftly to make it illegal for
bridges to fall in earthquakes. That is not rationale risk management.
You might say that it is reactive management of risk. And this example
is from the State of California. It doesn't get any better for risk
perception of earthquakes in our nation than is the case in California.

Here is another example of not managing risk rationally. In the 1980's
we abandoned an operational nuclear power plant on Long Island called
Shoreham. The result of this is that we've had a \$5,000,000,000 "paper
weight" in Suffolk County, Long Island for twenty years. People in that
area of the country simply did not want to accept the risk of a breach
of containment in the reactor. The probability of a breach of
containment out of the reactor vessel was 1 times 10 to the minus 7. I
called up the U.S. Geological Survey in the 80's and asked "what is the
probability of an earthquake large enough to level Manhattan?" The
answer they gave me was 1 times 10 to the minus 7, the same probability
as a breach of containment at Shoreham. We shut Shoreham down because we
feared the risks. Yet, do any of you know any Manhattan residents
concerned with the earthquake hazard? One can now fairly ask, what is
really going on regarding risk management in our country, since it is
certainly not rationale risk management.

More examples of non-rational risk management exist. For example, on
September 11^th^ lunatics flew two airliners into the World Trade Center
Towers. How many of you have noticed that getting on an airplane in this
country has never been the same? What we are doing is protecting
ourselves from the risk of terrorist attacks in airplanes. But have any
of you noticed anybody protecting us from the risks of terrorist opening
up bottles of poisons by air intakes for high rises on sidewalks? You
haven't, and do you know why? A high rise air intake disaster hasn't
happen yet.

I would like to propose that how we manage risks in this nation for all
hazards is to not manage it. In fact what we do with risk management is
more like a political knee jerk response to what's on television and in
pictures on the front pages of newspapers. This approach to risk
management is not based on reason, it is not based on science, it is not
based on knowledge, it is political. My request to the attendees of this
conference, the people who operate higher education program for hazards
management and emergency preparedness, is that you train the next
generation of emergency managers to management risk rationally, and to
hold political leaders accountable when they seek to management risk in
non-rational ways.

**[Command and Control]{.underline}**

Second, I've noticed that the 1950s command and control approach to
responding to events is back regarding how our nation seeks to manages
emergencies. Traditionally, command and control approaches to emergency
management has been based on the assumption that public is a problem in
emergencies and organizations are the solution. Yet research into
emergencies since the 1950's clearly suggests that any emergency
response system that is based on a command and control model doesn't
work. I want to say that again. We've known since the 1950's that if
emergency response organization looks like the organizational structure
of the United States Army, it doesn't work.

One can ask, why did our nation throw out our bottom up approach and
replace it with a top down approach won't work? And why are we, since we
know such an approach won't work, letting our nation get away with it?
Must we wait for a world-class catastrophe in which emergency response
fails to learn this lesson yet one more time? We've moved backwards a
half a century, and stepped over and ignored all the research done by
all the social scientist who have investigated this issue. Let me give
you one example of why a command and control approach to emergency
management response doesn't work.

Once again, I will pick on my own state of California. Imagine that
you've moved to southern California, and that you are having a BBQ in
your backyard. Mom is in the kitchen cutting watermelon. And then the
big one hits and your house collapses. Are you going to wait for an
urban search and rescue crew from Fairfax County, Virginia to come dig
mom out? Or are you going to start searching for mom on your own? Now do
you get what I mean when I say effective emergency response must be
organized from the bottom up? Moreover, the public is actually a
resource in an emergency. I request that you train the next generation
to make full use of that resource.

**[A Holistic Approach]{.underline}**

Next, we need a holistical approach to emergency management. We need an
approach that has local emergency managers address all the hazards that
they face, rather than an approach based on local response to programs
that the feds come up with one at a time. What I mean is that local
plans are needed for response and recovery that covers all the hazards
that those locals face, not different response and recovery plans for
different hazards one at a time. A plan to warn American citizens when
they need to be warned not a different warning plan for dozens of
different hazards. A plan for preparedness that includes all hazards,
that has appendices specific to specific hazards. Our current national
emphasis on the hazrds of terrorism, although warranted, should not
assume that the laws of nature were repealed on September 11^th^. I
recommend that you train the next generation to do emergency planning
holistically.

**[National Leadership]{.underline}**

Next, we need profoundly useful national leadership. We had it once, but
we didn't have it long. We have hardly ever had it in our nation's
history and we need it again. We need leadership to help locals if we
are concerned with terrorism, make good decisions about how they spend
the money they have on the technology for terrorism that they are buying
rather than waste it. We need to help locals understand how to design an
integrated warning system for all hazards that really works. An
integrated warning system is more than a buzzer or siren or picking a
new buzzing devise. Do you know that its been a quarter century since
the Federal Emergency Management Agency has ever given anybody any
technical guidance on warning systems. We need leadership, and we need
an emergency management community populated by those who would demand it
of the people we elect to run our nation.

**[Shifting Goals]{.underline}**

Also, the general goals of emergency management have shifted, in fact
the goals have shifted many times. Years ago emergency management was
all about shelter, food, and medical care. A decade ago it was about
customer satisfaction largely begun after public outcry in Hurricane
Andrew. And for a brief time we had the goals of emergency management
located exactly where they need to be. Emergency management was seen as
a small of the general goal of creating sustainable human communities
that can survive both what people and nature throw at them. We must work
again to make sure that the boarder goal of achieving disaster resilient
communities re-emerges. We must integrate natural hazards sustainability
and other hazards sustainability and terrorism all together.

Regarding whatever accomplishments we may achieve in the domain of
protecting ourselves from Mother Nature, terrorist acts, or other
hazards. Of what good are safe communities if no one can breathe the
air? If people don't have jobs, if the economy is spirally downward, if
too many of our citizens have to low standard of living and if the city
is being submerged under rising seas. Making disaster resilient
communities a national goal has fallen by the wayside and needs to be
resurrected and made indigenous to our culture.

**[Who Emergency Managers Are]{.underline}**

Last, there have been and will continue to be changes in who emergency
managers are. Half a century ago, emergency managers were people who had
retired from the United States Army. A decade ago, emergency managers
were people who were civil servants and one day found a better paying
job called "Emergency Manager" on a bulletin board where they worked and
applied for it. Tomorrow emergency managers will be trained by you and
will be armed with all the skills they did to practice their crafts. So
I liked to say to all of you that have programs and faculty to foster
and teach the next generation in emergency management: thank you for
taking this on, thank you for the programs that you have created, thank
you for all you have done, and all you will do that I don't even know
about to shape and mold the future of emergency management in the United
States.

**[Final Comment]{.underline}**

I want to especially single out one person in our nation to thank.
Wayne, thank you for being who you are and thank you for doing what
you've done all these years.

Okay, I may well embarrass Wayne, but it is okay to be embarrassed. Many
years ago I got invited to serve on the Emergency Managements
Institute's Board of Visitors by Kay Goss, and I spent four years on
that board. The higher education project had just begun; it was hardly
more than a glimmer Wayne's eyes. Wayne created it.

Last, thank each and every one of you being here. It has been my
privilege to address you this morning.