How Government-based Emergency Management Works and Evolves — Perspectives from a former FEMA Emergency Manager
Note: these are personal opinions, not DHS, FEMA, or Boilerplate.
I spent over 12 years as a FEMA Emergency Management Specialist and Technical Assistance Contractor. Here’s some background on how emergency management works in the US, and what we could expect to change.
My FEMA journey started in Louisiana, five weeks after Hurricane Katrina in 2005, and lasted through Superstorm Sandy in New York and New Jersey. I worked with critical infrastructure operators, police, fire, school districts, and dozens of federal, state, and local leaders, facilitating billions in loans and grants to help communities stabilize their finances, rebuild, and mitigate against natural hazards. Being so deeply involved in the recovery provided great insight on prevention, mitigation, and improvements for handling future events.
We were all considered emergency managers and trained accordingly.
I participated in monthly readiness drills and tabletop exercises for things like a hazmat event near a packed sports arena, or a tornado that set free zoo animals into the public (think Tiger King meets Wizard of Oz). I still remember my boss asking for clarification in the scenario if there were tigers eating children, or just a bunch of monkeys running around on the streets.
Following incidents, after-action sessions would share lessons learned. I participated in these for 2014 Ebola outbreak, the Fukushima earthquake, and the 2015 Amtrak derailment in Philadelphia. I learned from many people who were on the ground for 9/11 in New York, and personally served as a technical consultant for Tom Clancy’s The Division videogame series, about the fallout of a pandemic striking New York and Washington.
I wanted to share some lessons and perspective on the current COVID outbreak.
The Shift in US Emergency Management
The earliest US nationwide emergency management planning started in the 1950s, with Civil Defense preparedness for a nuclear war with the Soviet Union.
Americans were instructed to stockpile food and water in a corner of their basement, or a backyard fallout shelter. School children practiced monthly drills sheltering with their heads under their desks. While futile for anyone in the epicenter of an atomic blast, it could reduce hospitalizations amongst survivors from flying glass and shrapnel. It also had a psychological boost of giving them some element of control. You’ll still find fallout shelter signs on buildings from that era.
Despite the best efforts the government and military, nuclear war would have been catastrophic and a potential end to humanity.
Meanwhile, FEMA officially started as a small office in the White House during the Carter Administration. A dozen years later, the Iron Curtain fell and with it the threat of a global nuclear war. Large scale civil defense efforts faded, and concern focused toward rogue terrorists with an illicit Russian nuclear weapon.
The 9/11 terrorist attacks in 2001 placed a newfound emphasis on localized events, anti-terrorism measures, interoperability of communications between agencies, and air travel safety. Emergency Manager started to become a standalone job title in state and local governments, as opposed to just an extra duty of the police or fire chief.
The shortcomings in the 2005 Hurricane Katrina response spurred drastic shifts in planning for regional events. Combined with its learnings from 9/11, New York largely avoided repeating the humanitarian issues of Katrina during its Superstorm Sandy response in 2012. Despite few casualties, the city experienced flooding and power outages during Sandy, as the storm made landfall at high tide on a full moon, and much of the city is at or near sea level, with much of its utility infrastructure underground. Most of the after-action conversation that I heard focused on potential impacts of climate change (note: this is not meant to be a political article).
The subsequent Puerto Rico hurricanes presented unique challenging of logistics to an island and a focus on proper maintenance to electrical grids. Recent California wildfires have brought similar focus on the maintenance side.
That said, it’s been a while since the US had to deal with planning for a truly nationwide event like COVID. This will change.
The Federal Government is a Last Resort
Emergency management starts at the local level, with municipal government leadership, police, fire, and paramedics. If they’re overwhelmed by a situation, or expect to be, they call on neighboring entities. For example, a four-alarm fire means four fire companies have been called to help with an incident.
When local resources are tapped out, they move to the county level (or parish in Louisiana, where they still operate under Napoleonic Code). When the county exhausts its resources, they turn to neighboring counties, and then the State. The State utilizes their resources, like supplies or the state-level National Guard. If needed, the Governor then initiates an aid request to the federal government through FEMA.
FEMA then serves as an air traffic controller of sorts, tapping their own resources, as well as activating help through the U.S. military, other federal agencies (HUD, HHS), private sector support, and voluntary agencies. Involvement is based on the various Emergency Support Functions required by an event, like #1 Communications, #6 Mass Care, and #7 Logistics. If you’re curious, the federal incident management handbook can be found here. It has been refined over decades, and provides a framework for managing events.
Strong planning and communication at all levels is required for effective emergency response and preparedness.
Governments at all levels are getting Overwhelmed by COVID
Incident types are assigned severity levels based on their impact. They range from level 1 (handled locally) up to Level 5 (most extreme). For perspective, Hurricane Katrina, which killed 1,836 people, flooded the entire city of New Orleans, and wiped coastal towns in Mississippi nearly off the map, was considered a level 3.
Back in 2009, I worked on the tail end of the GAP analysis program. It compared state-level needs versus resources for different event scenario types. States would enter into mutual aid agreements with states in various geographies. The logic was that a hurricane hitting the Gulf Coast wouldn’t impact states like Minnesota or Colorado, who could then share their resources with Louisiana and Mississippi.
After Katrina, states across the countries provided resources along with US military efforts led by the U.S. Coast Guard and significant private sector help from companies like FedEx and UPS. Dozens of countries helped Japan after the Fukushima earthquake. Urban Search and Rescue teams are constantly on call for global deployment if a major earthquake or natural disaster hits.
COVID is different. All states — and countries for that matter — are competing for the same resources. Right now, the biggest shortages are tests, personal protective equipment for front line workers, and ventilators. While these entities are sharing what they can, it’s not shocking that they are looking out for the needs of their own people first. This is just like an airplane safety warning, where they tell you to put on your own oxygen mask before helping others.
That said, the federal government’s role is to allocate available resources in real-time. When a supply shortage exists, there are two primary actions: 1. Increase the supply, and 2. Ensure resources in the field are actually needed and being used, not just held for just in case scenarios. They’ve stepped up to the plate and appear to be delivering on these needs as fast as possible through emergency production and global airlifts.
While lots of U.S. manufacturing has transitioned overseas, all the stops are being removed to allow production to ramp up in the U.S. However, it will take a little time to transition production lines and acquire necessary raw materials, but they appear to be holding nothing back in meeting these needs.
None of this is to say those on the front lines who are short on critical supplies should standby quietly, but also understand that governments at all levels are doing their best to meet unmet needs across the nation and world. This will be an opportunity for future improvement, just like the 9/11 and Katrina effects.
What are the Takeaways?
Managing an emergency is hard. Many of us have been through some form of this on a personal level, whether it’s an unexpected illness while traveling abroad, being the first person on an accident scene, or dealing with a family member who needs serious medical help. It’s also impossible to plan for every scenario, but you do your best. We trust our leaders and public servants at all levels of government to do this for us on a larger scale.
Emergency planners build on frameworks and lessons from past experiences, combined with models and exercises to account for possible future scenarios. This is similar to how a law student is not educated on every possible scenario that could be encountered in a courtroom, but how to logically respond to and address those situations. This goes for most things with a multitude of variables involved.
Much of the focus during these drills is on things like communications and quickly setting up scalable organizational structures so that resources can be managed and deployed effectively across agencies.
Responsibility, credit, and blame are generally shared across all levels of government, although not necessarily proportionally. I generally believe our leaders are doing their best with the information available and putting a focus on saving as many human lives as reasonably possible. Each day managing a pandemic like this is likely amongst the worst of that leader’s career, and they’re aiming to help people going through possibly the worst days of their life.
While everyone appears to be trying their best, I’m sure they all wish they had done more planning beforehand. A close analysis of what went well and what didn’t will be the focus of after-action reports, along with future planning and improvement sessions at all levels.
What Can I Do?
Listen to directions. Keep social distancing. Avoid unnecessary travel and stay home. There’s usually a reason you’re being told to do something, even if it’s not fully explained. In this case, there’s been very clear messaging that staying home slows the spread of the virus. You’re helping everyone involved by simply staying home and not spreading the disease. Pay attention to the news, but don’t obsess over it.
Don’t cause unnecessary hospital trips. Use the “Well that was stupid in hindsight” test to envision potential injuries from your actions and avoid preventable emergency room visits. For example, I saw someone riding a hoverboard without a helmet, against the flow of traffic, in the middle of a major road. An injury resulting from this would fail the “Well that was stupid in hindsight” test. Healthcare systems are at or near capacity, all available resources should be placed toward treating and stopping COVID.
Do some planning yourself. Ready.gov has a lot of good checklists that can be applied across different scenarios. Think through things like loss of utilities, shortages of food, or lack of access to in-person medical treatment for non-life-threatening emergencies. Talk through a communication plan with your family, and have places you can go if you need to leave your home quickly. Think through these things for your business as well.
Be kind. These are tough times for everyone, especially for those on the front lines, leading the response operations, fighting off the virus personally, or dealing with financial stresses. Hindsight will always be 20–20, and there will always be things that could be done better. Let’s appreciate the hard work and progress being made, but also think about what we can do better moving forward.
Together, we’ll get through this and learn from it.
What I’m Doing Now
After a dozen years living out of a suitcase doing disaster relief, I’m now running Boilerplate, a document management CRM that provides turn-key file collection portals. Please reach out through our site to explore helping your public or private-sector organization automate file collection.
Be safe.
Note: these are opinions of the author, not Boilerplate, DHS, or FEMA. Use at your own discretion.