World has witnessed a number of disasters that devastated places and people in a substantial manner. Disasters are unpredictable and neither any individual nor any country is invulnerable to the devastating impacts of disasters but the devastating impacts of these disasters can be reduced by the mechanisms that have been developed by the humans. The mechanism, that reduces or manages the devastating impacts of disasters, is known as emergency management. This paper intends to discuss the federal legislation and provisions that deal with emergency management and several other related aspects of the subject matter.
Emergency management has been defined as “a discipline that deals with risk and risk avoidance” (Haddow et al., 2011). Risks refer to a wide range of uncalled situations that may cause severe damage to any individual society or country. Emergency management is an indispensable duty of the government and constitution directs the government to take care of public safety, health and life. This is primarily the duty of state governments but federal government cannot be a spectator and it has to act in accordance with the state governments in case of any disastrous situation (Haddow et al., 2011).
In the United States of America, emergency management is decentralized and involves a number of agencies to deal with any uncalled situation but the role of federal government is the most significant. The history of planned emergency management in the United States is more than two hundred years old. The first case of emergency management was witnessed in the year 1803 when a Hampshire town was devastated by the fire and congress passed an act to provide economic aid the affected people (Haddow et al., 2011).
Next step was the programs of civil defense that emerged during 1950s and a support was extended to such programs in form of federal civil defense administration (FCDA). FDCA proved its importance as this decade was full of natural disasters. Congress in 1968 created another agency, national flood insurance program (NFIP) to look after natural disasters. Finally in the year 1978, federal emergency management agency (FEMA) was created to look after emergency management in a more planned way and at national level.
FEMA was bestowed with a huge number of rights as well as duties. Almost all programs of emergency management were brought under FEMA and its director used to report to president of America. Role of FEMA attracted wide criticism in several natural disastrous and people started questioning its functions and duties. FEMA was criticized during hurricane Hugo banged Puerto Rico, virgin islands, north and south Carolina in the year1989. FEMA was neither well prepared for such disasters nor it could handle these situations. Again in the year 1992, hurricane Andrew slammed Florida and Louisiana which caused major loss of property and human lives. FEMA again failed to handle the situation. FEMA was so unlucky that after few weeks only hurricane Iniki struck Hawaii. FEMA response to these disasters was not effective and it angered the people. Expectation from FEMA was defied and the body was criticized all over the nation for its response (McCarthy & Keegan, 2009).
Congress kept expanding the jurisdiction of FEMA in coming years and FEMA, apart from taking care of several disasters of different types, also engaged in countering the terrorist activities. After the attack of September 2011, the requirement of another agency was sensed and congress introduced and passed homeland security act in the year 2002 (Haddow et al., 2011). A new and more empowered body, Department of homeland security, came into existence and FEMA was made a part of the new body.
DHS has lodged its presence in an effective manner and the agency has substantially improved the situation in a number of sectors. DHS has successfully controlled several gangs that used to be a pain for the civilians. DHS also got wide criticism for failing in controlling the crimes related to cyber crime, illegal migration, and illegal drug trafficking. DHS is also criticized for excessive expenses and aristocratic attitude of its bureaucrats (Haddow et al., 2011).
After having observed the above mentioned analysis of the subject, it is good to conclude that there are several federal bodies in the United States of America that effectively deal with various disasters. These agencies have proved their significance at several occasions but certain amount of improvement is required to make them more effective. Disasters are uninvited events and very devastative in nature but their effects can be reduced by a prearranged and planned emergency management.
References
F. X. McCarthy & N. Keegan. (2009). FEMA's Pre-Disaster Mitigation Program: Overview and Issues. Washington, D.C.: DIANE Publishing.
G. Haddow, J. Bullock & D. P. Coppola. (2011). Introduction to Emergency Management. Burlington, USA: Butterworth-Heinemann.
Skinner, R. L. (2010). Department of Homeland Securityżs (DHS) Progress in Federal Incident Management Planning. Washington, D.C.: DIANE Publishing.
