Event Case

Explain the origin of emergency management and the historical factors that helped lay the foundation for the profession of emergency management. Compare and contrast aspects of emergency management relating to Hurricane Agnes of 1972 and Superstorm Sandy of 2012.

The development of the Emergency Management field has been influenced by several specific events. For the purpose of defending my perspective, we must understand the field's origins and how it evolved. To start with, the Federal government did not get involved in emergency management unless specifically required by law. Local and state governments handled all disaster management matters. As an example, providing specific funding to a community would be accomplished by the U.S. Congress (Phillips, Neal, & Webb, 2017). The Disaster Relief Act of 1974 was created in response to natural disasters like the floods in the upper Midwest in 1950. The act permitted Congress to act without Congressional consent on appropriations for disaster relief.

Eventually, the Disaster Relief Act of 1974 was amended by the Stafford Act of 1988, allowing the federal government to offer state & local governments technical, financial, logistical, and other assistance during declared major disasters and emergencies (CDC, 2009). State-federal planning for disasters was encouraged through this, so that the two can work together during a crisis. Additionally, it would provide the foundation for establishing the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). FEMA was intended to strengthen emergency management in the United States by consolidating a number of federal agencies under one federal agency for centralized management (Phillip et al., 2017). Through specific events and legislation, or through a joint effort between federal and state governments, we can see how emergency management has evolved throughout the years. Although we now have many professionals who specialize in disaster preparedness as a career, it is vital that we continue moving forward and collaborating to manage any disaster we find ourselves in, whether it be natural or terrorist.

Mid-June of 1972 saw the arrival of Hurricane Agnes. There was a brief period when the circulation reached hurricane intensity in the Gulf of Mexico. During its passage across Florida's Panhandle ridge on June 19, the storm combined with an extratropical system to bring rains to New York from the Carolinas. After a particularly wet May, torrential rain swept through the Middle States and contributed to the subsequent floods. Agnes is known as the most destructive storm in U.S. history due to the devastating flooding it caused. It claimed 117 lives and caused $3.1 billion in damage in 12 States. In New York, Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Virginia, the damage was particularly severe (Bailey & Patterson, 1972). The incident occurred in 1972, before FEMA existed, and is recognizably marked by a lack of preparedness. Citizens were able to receive emergency management services from the state, and weather forecasts determined how prepared they were. As a result of the failure by emergency management to prepare at the state and local levels throughout the Mid-Atlantic region, Hurricane Agnes caused considerable devastation.

In comparison, a tropical depression formed in the Caribbean Sea on October 22, 2012, off the coast of Nicaragua. In two days, as it moved northeast, it strengthened and officially became a Category 1 hurricane. Eventually, this hurricane became known as Sandy. More than 600,000 homes were destroyed in New Jersey and New York, and New York City alone has suffered $19 billion in damage. Hurricane Sandy is considered the fourth most costly storm in U.S. history. The New Jersey Department of Housing and Community Development reports that more than 1,000 residents have not yet been able to return home five years after Sandy (Gibbens, 2019). While the hurricane was expected to be much more destructive, emergency management officials were able to get ahead of the problem after lessons learned from Hurricane Katrina. Michael Byrnes, a federal coordinating officer for FEMA in New York responding to Hurricane Sandy stated: The Post-Katrina Reform Act now allows us to declare an emergency before the storm, allowing us to preposition people and supplies. We were leaning forward to be in position to assist our local and state partners responding to the largest storm to hit the nation’s biggest metropolitan area (Byrne, 2013). This contrast is a powerful reminder that it is important to grow from our past experiences and learn from them as well. With the passage of time, and after several disasters, the emergency management team has grown and will continue to grow as we undertake new challenges in the future.

How does modernization make us more vulnerable not only for common types of disasters, but also new and emerging hazards? What are some examples? Is there anything we can do to prepare for, or mitigate, new and emerging hazards?

We need to be able to accommodate any changes that may arise as time goes by when we work in the emergency management field. The potential impact of cybercrime has not been considered a threat or a vulnerability in the past, however, but there are potential implications that can be extremely detrimental. Imagine, for instance, if the government of another country penetrated computers and caused weapons to fire or the electrical grid to fail. An outage of the power grid can have potentially catastrophic effects on institutions such as hospitals and nursing homes, since they rely on electricity to provide care and respond to emergencies (Phillip, Neal, & Webb, 2017). A more recent example of cybercrime is the Colonial Pipeline hack that was claimed by the Russian group Darkside. Customers and airlines suffered during the shutdown on the East Coast. Since the pipeline transports oil from refineries to industry markets, the hack was deemed a national security threat. Attackers got into the Colonial Pipeline network through an exposed password for a VPN account, said Charles Carmakal, senior vice president and CTO at cybersecurity firm Mandiant, during a hearing before a House Committee on Homeland Security on June 8 (Kerner, 2021). Cyber-security currently consists of several layers of defense. Firewalls, anti-malware, security policies, first-response teams, layered security measures, training in cyber-security, and administrative account security are considered among these. Managers of emergency operations should develop a layered defense for every attack so that we can control it before it causes more damage.

The National Security Agency came out with their top 10 Mitigation strategies. The mitigations also build upon the NIST Cybersecurity Framework functions to manage cybersecurity risk and promote a defense-in-depth security posture (NSA, 2018). Those 10 mitigations are as follows: Update and Upgrade Software immediately, Defend Privileges and Accounts, Enforce Signed Software Execution Policies, Exercise a System Recovery Plan, Actively Manage System and Configurations, Continuously Hunt for Network Intrusions, Leverage Modern Hardware Security Features, Segregate Networks Using Application-Aware Defenses, Integrate Threat Reputation, and Transition to Multi-Factor Authentication. With these mitigations in place emergency management professionals will be able to prepare and defend against new and emerging threats. Emergency managers must collaborate with partners across various sectors to ensure public safety, regardless of the threat.

References:

Bailey, J & Patterson, J. (1972). Geological Survey. National Weather Service and Atmospheric

Administration Retrieved from: https://www.weather.gov/bgm/pastFloodJune1972.

Byrne, M. (2013). Sandy Response in New York Shoes How FEMA has Changed. Recovery.

Retrieved from: https://www.govtech.com/em/disaster sandy-response-shows -how-

fema-has-changed.html

CDC. (2009). Public Health Law Program. Selected Federal Legal Authorities Pertinent to Public

Health Emergencies. Retrieved from: https://www.hsdl.org/?view&did=783820.

Gibbens, S. (2019). Hurricane Sandy, explained. National Geographic. Retrieved from:

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/article/hurricane-sandy.

NSA. (2018). NSA’s Top Ten Cybersecurity Mitigation Strategies. National Security Agency

Cybersecurity Information. Retrieved from: https://www.nsa.gov/Portals /70/ documents/

what-we- do/ cybersecurity/professional-resources/csi-nop10-cybersecurity-

mitigationstrategies.pdf.

Phillips, B. D., Neal, D.M., & Webb, G.R. (2017). Introduction to emergency management, 2nd

edition. Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press.