Mitigation involves many elements including risk assessment and mitigation efforts, but
prevention should come even before mitigation. Preparedness is another one of the four
key emergency management functions. Preplanning is part of preparedness as well as
response.
You have just been appointed the new emergency manager for your agency. Before
you, no one did anything in this area. Your boss calls you in and wants to know where to
start and what to do regarding these functional areas. (He or she is concerned with the
agency itself, not so much the community or customers you serve at this point.)
Tell us what you would tell your boss and how would you go about this task. Be specific
and detailed.
Your boss is going to move forward based on what you tell him or her. This includes
many things such as planning, resources, and budgeting. You only get one chance to
get it right with your boss to start all of this off correctly. Be detailed. (For this post, you
do not need to cover response and recovery functions.) What does the Bible say about
mitigation and preparedness?
Emergency Managers play an important role in creating, planning, and implementing policies or
procedures that focus on the “What-If” scenarios. Developing strategies that reduce losses in property
and casualties is essential. As an agency, we cannot wait for something to occur and then decide that we
should have planned for it. We need to be proactive in prevention or we set ourselves up for liability if
there was something we could have done that would have saved lives. “The tasks of EMs can be
understood as either administrative or operational. Both administrative and operational tasks could be
carried out in any of the four phases of disaster management (mitigation/prevention, preparedness,
response, and recovery), with a greater emphasis on operational tasks during the response and recovery
phases” (Oostlander, 2020, p. 2).
As a new Emergency Manager, I must evaluate what our agency risks are. “Risk constitutes what might
happen or what is likely to happen given a certain set of circumstances. Risk is what can go wrong”
(Nemeth, 2016, p. 137). Dividing out the path for starting deals with administrative tasks and then
operational tasks. The administrative tasks must begin with mitigation or prevention. This involves the
development of risk management plans. Understanding what our agency faces and writing a plan of
action for any of those risks. If our agency currently has plans, they would need to be reviewed for
improvements or changes based on the last time they were created. Consultation with a legal
department would be made to ensure we are not in violation of any standards. The next implementation
would deal with preparedness of the agency. Meetings will need to be conducted with supervisors and
staff to ensure knowledge of the plan along with conducting training. The training would be internal as
to functionality for internal processes and external with local emergency response to ensure the
jurisdiction has knowledge of our facilities.
There would need to be plans for different types of scenarios including active shooters, natural disasters,
terroristic threats, or any other conceivable plan that supervisors would think necessitated a plan of
action. There would need to be a creation of a training budget in efforts to provide materials or expenses
incurred from running trainings. Learning from previous disasters that have occurred is the best manual
to start with. However, we often work our way through disasters and fail at the after-action reports to
actually listen and implement what we need to change before it occurs again. As in the instance of
Hurricane Sandy, “It is a familiar story—a superstorm comes ashore, infrastructure is overwhelmed, and
health care facilities evacuate patients, with major delays in returning to normal functioning. Afterwards,
policy makers evaluate lessons learned for the next disaster, but similar missteps are often repeated”
(Powell, 2012, p. 2569). The hospitals in the northeast were warned and should have taken examples
from what occurred in the effects of Hurricane Katrina. However, they stated they would be prepared
and were not. If you are learning from disasters, then the same problems occurring should not be. That
was not the effect with Hurricane Sandy and the devastating effects on health care facilities. “Facilities
will require additional resources—financial, material, and intellectual—to meet the challenges of
disaster response. Investments should help ensure the operation of health care services during and after
a disaster. Communities cannot avoid natural and man-made disasters, and the next event could be still
more catastrophic. Federal, state, and municipal authorities can better prepare for the next disaster and
have a duty to do so” (Powell, 2012, p. 2570).
The bible speaks to us in several ways about being prepared. Exekiel 38:7 “Be thou prepared, and
prepare for thyself, thou, and all thy company that are assembled unto thee, and be thou a guard unto
them”. We must prepare for everything in an effort to protect ourselves and our neighbors. It is a priority
to Emergency managers to create safeguards and proper planning for the “What-If”. We as an agency
have to plan for the future and that future involves safeguarding ourselves from any threat to our staff
and facility. “Since 9/11, governmental agencies have urged the participation of not only state and local
governments but also the active input and involvement of the general citizenry.53 On top of this, there
has been a continuous push for private business and commercial entities to be involved and an
expectation that much of the American economy would need to be active players in the fight against
terrorism” (Nemeth, 2016, p. 191).
Oostlander, Samantha A., Bournival, Vanessa, O’Sullivan, Tracey L. (2020). The roles of emergency
managers and emergency social services directors to support disaster risk reduction in Canada,
International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction, Volume 51, ISSN 2212-4209.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijdrr.2020.101925
Nemeth, C.P. P. (2016). Homeland Security (3rd Edition). Taylor &
Francis. https://mbsdirect.vitalsource.com/books/9781498749121
Powell. (2012). Emergency Preparedness and Public Health. JAMA., 308(24).
https://doi.org/10.1001/jama.2012.108940
,
Looking at the Emergency management side of Mitigation requires a lot of roles to be fulfilled. Some of
those roles are thinking of new and innovative ways to prepare for or reduce the ways that disasters can
affect us. A positive I took from your post was the underground wiring in an effort to prevent massive
damage with electrical systems. For years I have not understood why the simplest of things like moving
power lines underground during ice storms would not save us in the long run. Instead we constantly
have to evolve plans during ice storms to restore power quickly in affected areas due to ice bringing
down trees or power lines with the weight itself. “Risk constitutes what might happen or what is likely to
happen given a certain set of circumstances. Risk is what can go wrong” (Nemeth, 2016, p. 137). In this
instance we know that risk is going to occur, but we still fail to be proactive in implementing strategies to
minimize this risk. As I looked further into your post, I saw the non-structured approach for residential
neighborhoods. I understand the function of this, however I think the feasibility would be extremely
small. The costs of homes and the affordability of homes for some families would prevent this from
occurring. If this is instituted, I feel this would drive low-income housing back to a forefront because
neighborhoods would then be higher end houses with storm basements. The transportation side to get
everyone to one place in order to minimize staffing efforts and maximize response staff is a good point. It
is a priority to Emergency managers to create safeguards and proper planning for the “What-If”. We as
an agency have to plan for the future and that future involves safeguarding ourselves from any threat to
our staff and facility.
Nemeth, C.P. P. (2016). Homeland Security (3rd Edition). Taylor &
Francis. https://mbsdirect.vitalsource.com/books/9781498749121
,
I agree that the risk assessments, contingency plans, and emergency preparedness need to be
implemented in order to limit the risks. Emergency Managers play an important role in creating,
planning, and implementing policies or procedures that focus on the “What-If” scenarios. Developing
strategies that reduce losses in property and casualties is essential. I found it interesting to learn more of
the CARVER tool. This was something I lacked talking in reference to in my post. You showed the CARVER
tool as using six attributes to evaluate how attractive a target is for an attack. Learning about the CARVER
tool is something I looked into after reading your post. Looking at various types of incidents, it would do
well to use the CARVER tool for those types. There would need to be plans for different types of
scenarios including active shooters, natural disasters, terroristic threats, or any other conceivable plan
that supervisors would think necessitated a plan of action.
The last part where you referenced all we needing to do is seek “him” and follow his guidance to make
the right choices. Making the right choices is correct, but we need to plan in an effort for us to protect
one another as well. The bible speaks to us in several ways about being prepared. Exekiel 38:7 “Be thou
prepared, and prepare for thyself, thou, and all thy company that are assembled unto thee, and be thou
a guard unto them”. We must prepare for everything in an effort to protect ourselves and our neighbors.
It is a priority to Emergency managers to create safeguards and proper planning for the “What-If”.
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