Prior to September 11, 2001, the federal government’s role in supporting emergency preparedness and management was limited primarily to providing resources before large-scale disasters like floods, hurricanes, and earthquakes, and response and recovery assistance after such disasters. Historically, FEMA developed mitigation programs designed to minimize risk to property or individuals from natural or manmade hazards. These mitigation programs included the post-disaster Hazard Mitigation Grant Program and the pre-disaster Project Impact program. In addition, the Robert T. Stafford Disaster Relief and Emergency Assistance Act, as amended, established the process for states to request a presidential disaster declaration in order to respond and recover from a large-scale emergency event. However, in response to the events of September 11, 2001, the federal government has provided billions of dollars to state and local governments for planning, equipment, and training to enhance the capabilities of first responders to respond to terrorist attacks and, to a lesser extent, natural and accidental disasters. These extensive resources reflect a growing federal role in promoting emergency preparedness. The nation’s first responders have the lead responsibilities for carrying out emergency management efforts. The role of first responders is to prevent, protect against, respond to, and assist in the recovery from emergency events. Traditionally, first responders have been trained and equipped, in the event of an emergency—natural or accidental disasters and terrorist attacks—to arrive on the scene and take action immediately. In the first hours of an event, first responders from various disciplines, which could include police, fire, emergency medical personnel and public works, must attempt to enter the scene, set up a command center, establish a safe and secure perimeter around the site in order to save lives and protect property, evacuate those within or near the site, tend to the injured and dead and transport them to care centers or morgues, restrict and redirect traffic and pedestrians, reroute and restore public utilities, remove debris, and begin the process of recovery. Since September 11, 2001, the roles and responsibilities for first responders to prevent emergency events and protect the public and property have expanded. In July 2002, prior to the creation of DHS, the President developed a National Strategy for Homeland Security which recommended steps that federal, state and local governments, private companies and organizations, and individual Americans should take to improve homeland security. The National Strategy identified the need to improve tactical counterterrorist capabilities of the various federal, state, and local response assets that can intercede and prevent terrorists from carrying out attacks. These assets include state and local law enforcement and emergency response personnel which the National Strategy considers crucial to preemption of terrorists, no matter if they are part of the local SWAT team or the FBI’s Hostage Rescue Team. First responder organizations across the county are to various degrees, trained, staffed, and equipped to prepare for and respond to various events. These organizations may differ in governmental role, size, structure, and capabilities. For example, activities of local law enforcement departments in smaller communities may be limited to day- to-day law enforcement while, in larger communities, departments may include specialized teams such as bomb squads or special weapons and tactics units. Likewise, local fire departments may be volunteer operations with basic firefighting capabilities or, in larger communities, may include teams specializing in hazardous materials response, search and rescue, or structural collapse. The local public health system can consist of public or private emergency medical services that provide immediate victim care and transport victims to the area’s public or private hospitals to receive patient care, along with the state and local medical staff that monitor and detect disease outbreaks. Supporting the response and recovery efforts of first responders are other state and local officials who provide preparedness planning, administration, and the communications systems needed to command and control activities on the scene. Natural and accidental disasters have provided all levels of government in many locations with experience in preparing for different types of emergency events. However, terrorist attacks potentially impose a relatively new level of fiscal, economic, and social disruption within this nation’s boundaries. Today’s threat environment includes not only the traditional spectrum of large-scale manmade and natural hazards— wilderness and urban fires, floods, oil spills, hazardous materials releases, transportation accidents, earthquakes, hurricanes, tornadoes, pandemics, and accidental or natural disruptions to the nation’s energy and information technology infrastructure—but also the deadly and devastating arsenal of chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear, and high- yield explosive weapons as exemplified by the attacks on New York City and Oklahoma City. These attacks have resulted in greater public and governmental focus on the role of first responders and their capabilities to respond to large-scale emergency events. Two DHS organizational units have the primary responsibilities for leading national emergency preparedness efforts—the Emergency Preparedness and Response Directorate and the Office of State and Local Government Coordination and Preparedness. The Homeland Security Act assigned responsibility to the Emergency Preparedness and Response Directorate, which includes the Federal Emergency Management Agency, for building a comprehensive national incident management system that defines the roles and responsibilities of federal, state, and local governments, and the various first responder disciplines at each level during an emergency event. The Act also charged the directorate with consolidating existing federal government emergency response plans into a single, coordinated national response plan, as called for by HSPD-5. DHS assigned responsibility for developing a national preparedness goal to its Office of State and Local Government Coordination and Preparedness, which includes the Office for Domestic Preparedness. The Office of State and Local Government Coordination and Preparedness also awards and administers the majority of DHS’s first responder preparedness federal grant programs. In large part these grants are directed to the governor of each state, who in turn makes these funds available to local jurisdictions within the state. To comply with HSPD-5 and HSPD-8, DHS has established a national plan for emergency event response, a national management system to be used during emergency events, and an interim national preparedness goal. DHS also plans to develop national strategies for assessing and reporting the status of first responders’ capabilities, prioritizing federal, state, and local resource investments to enhance these capabilities, and standardizing training and exercise programs for first responders to practice and improve emergency response capabilities. The presidential directives on which these efforts are based correspond to the major initiatives first developed in the National Strategy for Homeland Security. Our analysis of the documents resulting from, and plans for, these efforts showed that DHS has taken an all-hazards approach to promote first responders’ emergency management capabilities. Figure 2 illustrates the timeline of DHS’s efforts to develop these national initiatives and identifies the anticipated results. To comply with the initiatives of the National Strategy and the timeframes and requirements established in HSPD-5, DHS implemented an integrated all-hazards approach to emergency event management by establishing the National Incident Management System (NIMS) and the National Response Plan (NRP). NIMS is a policy document that defines roles and responsibilities of federal, state and local first responders during emergency events. The intent of this system described in the document is to establish a core set of concepts, principles, terminology and organizational processes to enable effective, efficient, and collaborative emergency event management at all levels. These concepts, principles, and processes are designed to improve the ability of different jurisdictions and first-responder disciplines (e.g., fire and police) to work together in various areas—command, resource management, training, and communications. The NRP is designed to integrate federal government domestic prevention, protection, response, and recovery plans into a single operational plan for all hazards and all emergency response disciplines. Using the framework provided by NIMS, the NRP describes operational procedures for federal support to state, local, and tribal emergency managers and defines situations where the federal authorities are to provide support and situations where the federal authorities are to assume control. The NRP organizes capabilities and staffing and equipment resources in terms of functions that are most likely to be needed during emergency events, describes common processes and specific administrative requirements (e.g., public affairs, financial management, public health, etc. ), and outlines core procedures. The NRP also augments NIMS by defining roles and responsibilities for specific types of emergencies. To develop NIMS and NRP, DHS assembled a variety of stakeholders from federal, state, and local levels such as national professional associations, and state and local responders representing the full range of response disciplines. During the development of NIMS, stakeholder groups reacted to initial drafts developed by DHS. The final draft of NIMS incorporated, in part, key elements of a widely-used, interdisciplinary system of command—first used in conjunction with wildfires in California during the 1960s—into a standardized, national system that would apply across all emergency response disciplines and levels of government. Similarly, the NRP was based on a consensus among stakeholders of best practices to apply in integrating prevention, protection, response, and recovery plans into one all-discipline, all-hazards plan. HSPD-5 requires all federal departments and agencies to adopt and use NIMS in their individual preparedness efforts, as well as in support of all actions taken to assist state and local governments. Further, the directive requires federal departments and agencies to make adoption of NIMS by states a condition, to the extent permitted by law, of federal preparedness assistance beginning in fiscal year 2005. For fiscal year 2005 DHS required states and other jurisdictions that receive direct funding to incorporate NIMS into existing training programs and exercises, emergency operations plans, and intrastate mutual aid agreements; to institutionalize the use of the Incident Command System; and will require states and other jurisdictions to certify as part of their fiscal year 2006 grant applications that they have met the fiscal year 2005 NIMS requirements. However, final requirements for fiscal year 2006 self certification have not been formulated, according to DHS officials.