The Federal Emergency Management Agency - Report Example

Name Course Institution Date FEMA is an organization formed to deal with the emergency situations. Its main mission is to help reduce loss of property and life as well as to guard the nation against hazards. Federal emergency management agency is involved in the incidents because its assistance is necessary to the nation. The organization saw it is important to engage local government, non-governmental agencies and the state as a whole to help in achieving meaningful results. It also led to development of some systems such as incident command and national incident management system that clarifies incidents (FEMA 4). FEMA being the leading emergency agency, requires action plan/best practices to be able to synchronize operations at all incident levels. The actions/best practices help the organization to reduce, respond or mitigate the incident. In fact, through actions/best practices the organization can respond to incident effectively. The organization needs to implement some of actions/best practices such as preparedness, managing resistance, adopt hazards approach, promote multi-organizational participation, rely on accurate assumptions, identify and encourage appropriate actions, association emergency response to hazard mitigation and disaster recovery, conduct training on hazards, embrace regular planning process and lastly do incident management (FRERP 23-26). Preparedness Emergency response requires preparedness. Emergency preparedness is the state of being alert incase an incident that might occurs. It establishes readiness to organization to minimize hazards incident in adverse as well as protecting their health and safety at personal level. It is achieved through strategic planning, exercising emergency response and equipping organization. The organization must acquire and be equipped with the necessary materials and facilities to support emergency response in case of occurrence hazard event (FEMA 1). The organization also needs to view its preparedness strategic plan either implicitly or explicitly to be able to define its readiness. The plan involves system function description that can elaborate events operation sequentially and process job operation identification together with associated personnel positions and duties. Preparedness can also involve equipment design and workspace layout, job performance and workgroup organization. Sometimes technological systems are crucial to assist in achieving high performance in emergency response. Emergency opinion sometimes might be unique. It is true and as a result improvising earlier is much better thing to do rather than waiting to plan after the incident as occurred. Improvising is good has it attribute preparedness to meet the emergency demand. Improvising takes different dimensions such as creativity and adaptive improvisation among others. To some extent for organizational contingency preparedness, police officers are necessary in emergency response objective.Besides Adaptive improvisation is for contingency plans and normal routine modification towards achievement of set goals. On the other hand, creative improvisation helps organization to respond to unanticipated event which is achieved through course of action (FEMA 4). Adopt Hazards Approach The organization in their process of planning and managing hazards should put into considerations the causative agent of each hazard which is necessary for creation of a multi-hazard EOP. The use of community HVA’s by emergency planners helps to identify different types of hazards which include; Natural hazards such as floods, earthquakes, tornadoes and hurricanes, technological accidents like nuclear plant accidents and toxic chemical releases and deliberate accidents like terrorist attack or sabotage which involves hazardous materials. All these hazards affect the community in one way or the other (FRERP 23). After identification of the hazards, emergency planners should make a comparative analysis of the extent to which these agents of hazards affect other emergency response organization. Additionally, two hazard agents with similar characteristics make identical demands on the emergency response organization and also require similar emergency response functions. The above joint attributes helps in the simplification of the EOP through the reduction of the number of functional annexes as it provides multiple use of resources for personnel, procedures, equipment and facilities. Other advantages include the enhancement of reliability of organizational performance during training and simplification of training. Hazard-specific appendixes are also required when the hazard agents have very different characteristics and require distinct different response (FRERP 23). Promote multi-organizational participation In an organization emergency planning process should aim at developing mechanisms that show commitment, participation and a clearly defined agreement by all response organizations involved so that it can promote inter-organizational coordination. Due to that, public safety agencies such as emergency medical services, police and emergency management should be included in the planning process. As mention earlier, it is important to inclusively link organizations with potential hazard sources like hazardous materials facilities and transportation e.g. pipeline, truck, rail and barge. Besides, areas with sensitive population like hospitals, schools and nursing homes should also be protected. Emergency response teams or organizations that differ in capabilities should be coordinated to work together to achieve effective emergency responses (FEMA 1). Furthermore, each community member of an emergency response organization should be aware other member mission, styles of operation, organizational structures, communication mechanisms and systems for better allocation of scarce resources effectively and efficiently. Rely on accurate assumptions It is good for an organization to rely on accurate information and knowledge of community threats, which are likely human responses to lay the basis for any emergency planning provided by the HVAs. The emergency managers must have an in depth knowledge of the threats which may affect their communities while determining the most vulnerable geographical areas which are exposed to hazards. For instance, the organization can identify the population facilities and segment situated in area of attack. The organization also need to understand the basic attributes of various hazards which include speed of onset, breadth and period of impact, and the potential production casualties and property damage (FEMA 4). The organization should advice public officials and planners frequently to understand the limits of their proficiency in identification of casualties. However, this can be achieved through the recognition of the hidden accurate knowledge concerning the behavior of technological, meteorological or geophysical hazards based on such cases; they must contact and lease with the experts to acquire more information (FEMA 23). However, most likely some human behavior may not be accurately identified in the event of a disaster; as people says that the problem is not what they do but rather is what they know. The organization has to collect all description of myths concerning disasters that have been persistently refuting about them for long. Mainly, disaster myths and beliefs hinders the effectiveness of emergency action plan through the misdirection of information dissemination and resources allocation. A good example is that officials at times give panic expectations as a best reason for withholding some information from the public about an environmental threat. On contrary to the response to the myth of panic, people are actually more willing to comply with the given protection actions, provided that risk information is given. Therefore, the planning process should have knowledge on the biological and physical science literature concerning hazards effects on human safety, property, and health as well as individual or organization behavior in time of emergency (FRERP 23). Identify and encourage appropriate actions An organization should ensure a balance between improvisation and planning. The use of EOP to establish the organizations broad strategies and basic structure in emergency response helps in times of disaster strikes, by documenting the specific organization responsible for each response function and how they will be performed. Also, per-disaster training must outline the process of carrying out different operational procedures and tactics which are best for response operations. Emergency managers cannot fully ascertain the location and magnitude of disaster demands although they can forecast the type of disaster that is likely to come up. An example, in hurricane probe areas, emergency manager can develop mass evacuation procedures but cannot be fully certain about the population response in each neighborhood. Since the response of people where reasonably understood, it is not a wise move to improvise an evacuation plan when a hurricane is approaching (FEMA 1). Nevertheless, the organization should create a rigid evacuation plan with no provision for modification on an unfolding incident because it is not a wise move, taking into consideration the uncertainty of the point in time when different households in each neighborhood will begin evacuation. Emphasizing on details specificity is problematic due to the following reasons; (1) It’s impossible to anticipate all possibilities. (2) Specific details demand constant updating of written products as they get out of date very quickly. (3) The ambiguity of response priorities when there are very specific plans with many details which appear to be of equal importance in emergency functions. (4) Written planning documents become large and complex when they are too detailed. Therefore, it is difficult to rely on planning as the training device on personnel in understanding the way their roles fit into the emergency response at large, and hence implementation of the plan effectively in the event of an emergency becomes more difficult (FEMA 4). Association emergency response to hazard mitigation and disaster recovery An overlap emerges between disaster recovery and emergency response when some of the community portions engage in one or the other. Also, senior elected officials must be able to plan for recovery while being overwhelmed by the implementation of policy decisions in emergency response. Consequently, a link between pre-impact disaster recovery and emergency response planning should be created by emergency managers. The integration can hasten the disaster recovery process while at the same time facilitate hazard reduction in disaster recovery. The establishment of organizational contacts and overlapping membership of the committees responsible for pre-impact disaster recovery and emergency response planning can bring about coordination in hazard mitigation (FEMA 23). Conduct training on hazards Organization disaster planner should also provide a component of training and evaluation. In the training process, the first part involves giving an explanation of the plan provisions to the departments personnel and administrators involved in the emergency response. Secondly, training should be done on all those who have emergency response roles on how to carry out their duties. The training should be done to police and emergency medical personnel in nursing homes, schools, hospitals and other facilities that might need protective action. Finally, the planning process must involve the population at risk so that they can be aware of the community planning threats taking place, and also be aware of what is expected of them in the plans. The population needs to have a prior knowledge of what is likely to happen in the disaster and the capabilities of the emergency organizations towards them (FEMA 4). According to FEMA, the training should also include proposed response operations tests, which may include exercises and emergency drills which provide a setting for the testing of operational procedures (7). Through facilitating inter-organizational contact, individual members must be in a position to understand each other personal attributes and professional capabilities. Lastly, multifunctional exercise provides publicity for the whole emergency management process informing the community officials of the disaster planning processes going on and hence improving preparedness. Embrace regular planning process Besides other action/best practices, organization effective emergency planning is a prolonged process which needs to be adopted and planned continuously. Due to the changing nature of the organizational structure and staffing, hazard vulnerability and emergency facilities, the emergency planning process must be able to detect changes and respond immediately. Regrettably, emergency officials tend to see the disaster planning process as a product and not a process as it should be confusing the tangible products with the actions that produce them (FEMA 23). Even though effective planning is composed of elements that cannot be documented on paper or realized in hardware, it requires some written documents. For example, the public and private organizations should provide the emergency responders with adequate knowledge about the resources available, the provision of knowledge about the demands of the emergency and the capabilities of other agencies and establishment of cooperation in relationships across organizational boundaries. A sufficient representation of the outcomes of the process of emergency planning cannot be provided by tangible documents and hardware. In addition, by using written plans as final products, one may create an illusion of false preparedness for an emergency. With the passing time, development of emergency responders' knowledge about resources available from governmental and private organizations, should establish collaborative relationships among organizational boundaries (FEMA 7). In short, emergency plans and procedures should be reviewed annually or periodically due to the potential changes in staffing and organizations resources of emergency response, population susceptibility to attack and the changing nature of hazard exposure. Managing resistance Resistance is a critical thing faced most by emergency response firm because some people do not like to reason that they are exposed to disasters. Thus, the organization should be ready to face resistance from people. In the organization action plan, they should ask for support from administrative offices to be able to carry out the task effectively (FEMA 23). In conclusion, FEMA being among the emergency response organization should embrace some actions/best practices such as preparedness, managing resistance, adopt hazards approach, promote multi-organizational participation, rely on accurate assumptions, identify and encourage appropriate actions, association emergency response to hazard mitigation and disaster recovery, conduct training on hazards, embrace regular planning process and lastly do incident management in order to perform better in their activities (FRERP 23). Works cited Federal Radiological Emergency Response Plan (FRERP). Operational plan; correction, Federal Register, Vol. 61, No. 109, June 5, 1996. Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). Preparedness for hazardous materials emergencies in rail yards: guidance for railroads and adjacent communities, FEMA-218. Washington, DC: FEMA, 1991. Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). Life support operations in shelters, CPG 2-20. Washington, DC: FEMA, 1988. Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). Criteria for preparation and evaluation of radiological emergency plans and preparedness in support of nuclear power plants, NUREG-0654/FEMA REP-1, Rev. 1. Washington, DC: FEMA, 1987. Read More