Professional Volunteer Disaster Survey Team (PRO-V-DST)
The Professional Volunteer Disaster Survey Team is a program that facilitates a network of professional building inspectors, structural engineers, and architects who form damage survey teams (FEMA, 2000). These teams can be employed by the local governments and state agencies to evaluate the structures and survey the extent of damage to buildings following a disaster (FEMA, 2000). This is important step that need to be carried out and often neglected or taken too much time to carry out.
The PRO-V-DST is an effective method of networking and bringing together the professionals. The program originated in the state of Texas. The participating professionals are volunteers and the expenses of their travel, lodging and meals are born by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). Thus this does seem like a nice program to adopt in our own state.
Before we take a decision on whether to set up a similar program in our county or not, there are few questions that we need to answer. First of them being that since the program has in its members a group of professionals who offer volunteer work, how effective the system can be in our state. The PRO-V-DST is a state wide state program in Texas and if it has to be implemented here, a similar scheme would have to be followed. One has to answer the question if the volunteers will be willing to travel across the state to larger distances and to our county in the event of a disaster. Since the work is voluntary, the members and participants have the right to decline travelling to locations outside their places of residence.
The PRO-V-DST is a federal program. The building inspectors, structural engineers, and architects are answerable to the federal government and not to the state or county. The expenditure of such a program is indeed borne by the federal government and puts minimum burden on the local bodies. This group of professionals are indeed an asset. However it is the authority that they are answerable to that raises a few question in my mind.
We as a county and state have our own responsibility to develop programs for prevention as well as post disaster survey and structural evaluation. From the example of California State that has its own post disaster safety assessment program called the SAP (Cal EMA, 2011), we should also try and develop models and programs that are answerable to the state and local governments. The California Emergency Management Agency has already established and put this program to use. The state is frequented by earthquakes, just like ours is frequented by tornados, and the need of structure damage surveys is equally important there as it is here. The program is simple and has minimum layers for speedy action. The post-disaster safety assessment program or SAP acts as a guide to local government and organization (Cal EMA, 2011). This would increase accountability of the professionals involved and bring reliability and surety to the system of disaster management and post disaster survey. The dependence on federal agency always has some problems due to the many layers of organizational hierarchy involved and lack of fluent communication. Also the FEMA (2009) directs the local bodies and state governments to develop their own strategies and agencies for disaster preparedness, management and recovery.
Thus as a concluding statement, I would advise to try and develop our own schemes, even though the PRO-V-DST is a nice idea. We must remember that it is federal agency and we might face implementation problems to this regard. Having our own agency shall be worth the expenses as it will be smoother, quicker and equally effective as PRO-V-DST.
References
FEMA. (2000 Jan). Partnerships In Preparedness A Compendium of Exemplary Practices in Emergency Management Volume IV. Retrieved from http://www.fema.gov/emergency/managers/partnrprep.shtm
FEMA . (2009, March). Developing And Maintaining State, Territorial, Tribal, and Local Government Emergency Plans. Comprehensive Preparedness Guide (CPG 100). Retrieved from http://www.fema.gov/about/divisions/cpg.shtm
CalEMA. (2011, Mar). Post-Disaster Safety Assessment Program: Guideline to the Activation and Utilization of Program Resources. Retrieved from www.calema.ca.gov/recovery/documents/sapguideline.pdf
