My brother in Los Angeles called the other day to wish me a happy birthday. After the usual pleasantries and catching up on family, our talk turned to the current situation in the United States. Oddly, for two siblings who were raised in the same environment, we are on opposite sides of the political spectrum. Fortunately, we have sufficient affection for each other to be able to discuss issues amicably with the understanding that we won’t be able to change each other’s minds.
My brother said that he thought returning emergency management responsibilities to the states was not a bad idea. He also felt that FEMA wasn’t really needed. As we talked, I realized that all he really knew about emergency management and FEMA’s role was what he was hearing on the news and most of that was the misinformation spouted by the current administration. It made me wonder what it is we’re not telling the public.
The only thing the public hears is FEMA’s recovery mission. I say “recovery” because little mention is made of FEMA’s role in coordinating the response of multiple federal agencies. FEMA not only distributes disaster relief funds from programs under its control, but also coordinates funding provided through the programs of other agencies such as the Small Business Administration. All these programs were created by Congress and have different regulations imposed by their implementing legislation. Most of the public don’t realize that many of the programs FEMA disburses directly were originally administered by other federal agencies. FEMA was created to consolidate these various programs into a single agency and to serve as the primary source of disaster relief funding.
FEMA also coordinates direct federal assistance provided by responding agencies through a system of mission assignments. This allows FEMA to tap any needed resources available in the federal system. This might be specialized teams such as a Disaster Medical Assistance Team (DMAT) or an Urban Search and Rescue Team (USAR), teams that are drawn from local governments but trained, equipped, and funded by FEMA. Direct federal assistance might include resources such as emergency power generation provided by the Corps of Engineers or technical assistance in determining increased fire load provided by the US Forest Service. There have been times where FEMA tasked the US Navy to provide hospital ships to support relief operations or the Air Force and Coast Guard for aerial assets for transportation and reconnaissance.
Sometimes FEMA is called on to solve unusual problems directly. Following the Northridge earthquake, we were tasked on short notice to find a circus tent to support local merchants. In the Pacific we had to purchase and deploy desalination units for remote islands that had contaminated water lenses and worked with GSA to locate and airlift a critical part to keep a local government vessel operational. During the recovery from Hurricane Iniki, we worked with the Corps of Engineers to transport ice from Oahu to Kauai until local companies could regain operations using FEMA supplied generators. In Puerto Rico after Hurricane Marylyn, we found ourselves having to assemble portable toilets for distribution across the island.
Like many, my brother believes FEMA is a bloated, inefficient agency. However, FEMA is an extremely small agency, having less than 5,000 permanent full and part-time employees distributed over ten regional offices and the Washington DC headquarters. During disaster response, the agency can call on approximately 7,800 Reservists who fill disaster management roles and 8,900 Cadre On Call Recovery/Recovery Employees (CORE), temporary employees on 2-to-4-year appointments who support disaster related activities. FEMA can also hire locally when deployed to a disaster area.
However, not all these employees are deployable assets. Only about 10,000 are assigned to incident management. Others provide incident support, ancillary support, and mission essential support services to deployed incident management staff, as well as to FEMA more generally. According to a May 2023 GAO report, FEMA Disaster Workforce: Actions Needed to Improve Hiring Data and Address Staffing Gaps, in 2022 FEMA had a staffing gap of 35% across all categories. Hardly a bloated agency considering the increase in frequency and ferocity of disasters.
So, what do the remainder of FEMA employees do? Almost a third of FEMA’s budget is devoted grants intended to increase local communities’ ability to respond to disasters. These include mitigation programs such as the National Flood Insurance Program and national security programs such as the Urban Areas Security Initiative and Port Security Grants. One critical grant is the Emergency Management Performance Grant (EMPG) that provides funding to local emergency management offices to enhance emergency planning. Grants are also provided for specific threats such as dam safety and firefighting. FEMA funds numerous training and education programs such as the US Fire Administration, the Emergency Management Institute (now The National Disaster & Emergency Management University), and the Center for Homeland Defence and Security. FEMA also provides funds to help local governments deal with homelessness and hunger, the Emergency Food and Shelter Program (EFSP). FEMA even plays a role in supporting the US NATO mission by advocating for national preparedness and resilience. FEMA hosted "The Resilience Dialogue: Strengthening our Communities to Meet the Future," at the 2024 NATO Summit which focused on these key areas
But it is in advancing the professionalization of emergency management that I believe FEMA has made its biggest contribution. By developing doctrine, we have moved towards a standardized system of emergency planning and response that allows us to share resources and provide mutual aid. The development of the National Incident Management System and adoption of the Incident Command System was a major step forward, Concepts such as Whole Community and Lifelines have improved our ability to involve communities in emergency planning.
FEMA has further supported professionalization through the Emergency Management Institute. Not only has FEMA provide onsite and remote training for practitioners, but its Higher Education Program has helped develop the curricula that is shaping the next generation of emergency managers. More importantly, its ability and willingness to fund working groups devoted to professional development has given us the long-needed definition of emergency management, the Principles of Emergency Management, and our Code of Ethics and Professional Standards of Conduct.
The Secretary for Homeland Security announced at a recent cabinet meeting that she intends to eliminate FEMA, fueling speculation that the review council directed by the President in January will be cancelled. This suggests that changes to the agency will be made without consultation with the emergency management community. We need to focus the discussion away from just the failures of relief operations and ensure that the pre-disaster mission of FEMA is given equal weight. We all agree that FEMA needs review and improvement but not at the expense of turning the clock back almost a hundred years.
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