Wendy Only

Identifying the Challenge 2

The earth has an ever-changing ecosystem and with that comes natural disasters that affect our day to day lives. Imagine being in any form of a natural disaster without knowing the procedures to ensure your safety and not knowing what to do in this instance, therefore policies and procedures were created. Natural disasters that have occurred have allowed us as a society to create emergency management policies and procedures for future disasters. There are many procedures in place for emergency management such as the Emergency Management cycle which has four phases after the event has occurred: Respond, Recover, Mitigate, Prepare/Prevent further disasters, “We are the agency responsible for coordinating the State’s efforts throughout the emergency management cycle to prepare for, prevent where possible, respond to, recover from and mitigate against to lessen the effects of man-made or natural disasters…” (ABOUT). Although this seems like a fool proof procedure there are many challenges that come with it, but the biggest challenge for these natural disasters is recovering. Recovering includes sending supplies to the areas in need, finding shelter and food, and making sure they have the bare necessities to live. These needs have not even met for the natural disasters that have occurred in the last year.

The recovery problem we have needs to be addressed because natural disasters are not preventable, we are only able to evacuate people as early from the area and hope there isn’t much damage to the homes and businesses, but the government needs to allocate more money to a recovery relief program that allows for these people to be rehomed and have money and supplies to survive, but it just doesn’t seem to be the case. Looking back on one of the biggest natural disasters, Hurricane Sandy, years later people still haven’t been able to return to their homes, “Government-assistance programs can go a long way in helping the displaced, but they’re sometimes structured such that the neediest groups have a difficult time receiving help, or are left out…Others were unaware of what type of aid was available, or if they qualified. On top of all that, the information about relief programs that did exist, wasn’t immediately available in other languages” (White 2015). The fact that most of the public are uniformed of the recovery relief aids that are available to them is a problem enough but it’s even harder for those with a language barrier when there isn’t any info on the aid in their language. If the government can find the demographics froth e affected area they can surely have the information survivors need in multiple languages to ensure that every person is being helped and thought of.

The people affected by this are the survivors of the natural disasters and are affected both internally and externally. They are affected internally because they just survived a natural disaster and it could have an impact on their mental state of mind, they are also affected externally because they could have been injured, lost all belongs including a home and have even lost family members or died themselves. Natural disasters do not discriminate, they come full force and destroy everything in their path whether it’s a forest or a friendly neighborhood in a town. In recent years, many people must completely relocate and leave behind a home a town and sometimes even family because they aren’t able to rebuild and recover from the disaster.

I do not feel like the problem of recovery and relief has been solved because seeing from the recent natural disasters that have occurred in Puerto Rico and not having the government step in and help the ailing island who has just survived a category five hurricane that has demolished most of the island and has taken the lives of over five hundred people. There is more the government can and should do, but private funding is being put into rebuilding the island and that is showing how the system is failing these people by not allowing more help in their time of need. A solution for the recovery problem we have is to allocate more money to natural disasters and a way that the government can ensure that is to not allow any other non-disaster funding if the requirements and needs aren’t met by the local government during the recovery of the disaster. There is a policy that has been put in place but has not been put into action and that is one way to solve the problem also, “The Federal Emergency Management Administration (FEMA) implemented the 2010 Hazard Mitigation Assistance (HMA) grant program to provide funding for eligible mitigation activities that reduce disaster losses and protect life and property from future disaster damages. In addition, FEMA now requires state and local governments to develop hazard mitigation plans as a condition for receiving certain types of non-emergency disaster assistance, including funding for mitigation projects…” (E. 2017). No one should have to get up and start a completely new life because their government failed them in helping them rebuild in a tie of need and most importantly when there wasn’t anything they could do to prevent the destruction of their belongings.

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