**November 22, 2006 FEMA Emergency Management Higher Education Project
Activity Report**

\(1\) DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY:

Alpert, Bruce. \"Katrina Problem Still Unfixed, Senators Say -
Communications Failed After Storm.\" New Orleans Times-Picayune,
November 22, 2006. Accessed at:

<http://www.nola.com/news/t-p/frontpage/index.ssf?/base/news-7/1164178645133930.xml&coll=1>

\[Excerpt: \"The Department of Homeland Security still hasn\'t resolved
a major deficiency in the response to Hurricane Katrina \-- a lack of
\'situational awareness\' that prevents key federal officials from
quickly learning about the needs of first responders during a major
disaster, say the heads of the Senate Homeland Security and Government
Affairs Committee. Sens. Susan Collins, R-Maine, and Joseph Lieberman,
D-Conn., said a key component of post-Katrina reform efforts, creation
of a Common Operating Picture database, hasn\'t come close to being
fully utilized. The database is supposed to enable first responders to
quickly give\...{DHS} up-to-the minute information about conditions on
the ground\...but the agency hasn\'t done enough to inform first
responders about the program or train them how to use it.\"

\(2\) KATRINA CLEAN-UP & RECOVERY:

Looney, Aaron E. \"Smith: Katrina Clean-Up Could Take \'Well Over A
Decade\'.\" The Ascension Citizen (LA), 21Nov2006. At:

[[http://www.ascensioncitizen.com/articles/2006/11/21/news/news07.txt]{.underline}](http://www.ascensioncitizen.com/articles/2006/11/21/news/news07.txt)

\[Excerpt: \"The man in charge of Louisiana\'s Office of Homeland
Security and Emergency Preparedness (Col. Jeff Smith) told members of
The Ascension Chamber Nov. 9 that clean-up efforts after Hurricane
Katrina\'s impact on Louisiana last year could take more than a decade
to fully complete.\"\]

\(3\) PANDEMIC:

Washington Post. \"Another 1918? - Despite Preparations, A Flu Pandemic
Could Still Kill Millions of Americans.\" November 22, 2006. Accessed
at:
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/11/21/AR2006112101442.html?referrer=email>

\[Excerpt: \"\...if a pandemic flu began spreading tomorrow, the
government\'s most effective strategies for saving lives could be
old-fashioned quarantine and public education, techniques akin to those
used during the great flu pandemic of 1918. It is not surprising, then,
that the federal government currently estimates that as many as 2
million people could die if a virulent and contagious strain of flu hit
the United States.\"\]

\(4\) WHAT IS EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT?, EM DOCTRINE?, EM PRINCIPLES &
PRACTICE COURSE?, EM 101?:

Had a long conversation this morning with Mike Selves, Emergency
Management Director, Johnson County Kansas and IAEM President as of last
week \-- concerning an email he sent me this summer in response to an
email from me asking about thoughts in preparation for an EMI meeting on
the future of EMI and emergency management training and education. With
Mike\'s permission I am excerpting a chunk of his email here:

\[\"Wayne, I don\'t know how receptive the \"powers that be\" in
DHS/FEMA would be to this, but it seems to me that the single most
helpful thing EMI could do in conjunction with the academic and
practitioner E.M. communities would be to revive the concept of
emergency management principles (integrated, comprehensive, all-hazard,
coordination, linked to research, etc.). This should be developed, not
by a \"beltway bandit\" contractor, but by a task force of academics and
practitioners. The purpose of this exercise would be to set forth the
basic underpinnings upon which all courses (EMI, collegiate, etc.) in
E.M. theory and practice would be based. Our current problems with FEMA
and the role of emergency management in the federal structure stems, in
my humble opinion, almost entirely from the lack of any general
understanding or acceptance of these basics. One use of this concept
would be the creation of a short course on emergency management for all
DHS and FEMA employees. We are requiring NIMS training of virtually
everyone in the country, what good is NIMS training if you don\'t
understand the context within which NIMS must operate. The current screw
up of preparedness and response concepts at the Federal level is due to
this problem of defining everything using an \"emergency services\"
first responder framework. Our efforts on Capitol Hill have only born
any fruit at all because we are finally getting some key members and
staffers to understand this bigger picture. The system is not failing
because first responders need more attention, it is failing because the
coordinators and decision-makers need more attention\....\"\]

Neither Mike nor I believe that an adequate basic EM 101 or EM USA
course exists today. And, of course, I believe that such a course is
very much needed, not just in the awareness and training domain, but in
the collegiate educational domain as well.

So, I recently shared Mike\'s email with the new EMI Superintendent, Dr.
Cortez Lawrence, and he tasked me to investigate what we might do in
furtherance of Mike\'s recommendation. Thus, today, Mike and I discussed
the development of a symposium or seminar here at EMI, composed of a
small working group of people, to discuss the way forward. In that Mike
will be in this area for a NEMA meeting, February 10-14, and back again
for a NACO meeting, March 1-5, we will first investigate something in
the neighborhood of a two-day meeting here immediately before or after
one of those two meetings. We also began a discussion of potential
invitees and limiting the size of the group to about one dozen people so
that it would be workable.

B.Wayne Blanchard, Ph.D., CEM

Higher Education Project Manager

Emergency Management Institute

National Emergency Training Center

Federal Emergency Management Agency

Department of Homeland Security

16825 S. Seton, K-011

Emmitsburg, MD 21727

\(301\) 447-1262, voice

\(301\) 447-1598, fax

wayne.blanchard@dhs.gov

[[http://training.fema.gov/EMIWeb/edu]{.underline}](http://training.fema.gov/EMIWeb/edu)

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