Apart from the federal government, the states are authorized to use the services of National Guard in case of disaster situations. The state Governor deploys the National Guard in response to natural disasters like floods, cyclones, earthquakes, etc. (Lowenberg 2). The Governor can also call for the National Guard’s help in case of man-made emergency situations like those of civil unrest situations and terrorist activities.
The role of first responders during a local emergency is to first make people safe from the area under threat and then secure the specific area from any traffic and onlookers. Thus, their main role is in terms of evacuating the area followed by crowd control measures for the area.
The actions of the first responders are driven by an emergency situation in which a particular community or an area has possible threat to people and properties. Further, depending upon the nature of disaster, affected entities, and scope of operations, the first responders accentuate their further actions for an emergency.
A detailed description of the roles and responsibilities of first responders for a community can be accessed at the incident command system related management centers at the fire, police and medical emergency agencies. These documents describe the community oriented roles for the first responders.
The community emergency plan for a community is developed individually by each of the first response related agencies like the police department, firemen, and the community health services. The federal government uses a decentralized system for managing the community level emergency level incident management.
The Emergency management office generally resides at the location of state level emergency management agencies, typically police centers, medical care, or the office for the homeland security headquarters within a state. For example, in Virginia the state department of Emergency management is located at State police headquarters in Richmond.
The source of funds for state run emergency agencies is generally a state managed disaster emergency fund which is generally appropriated via state’s revenue sources (US Department of Transportation 1). In case of a national emergency declaration by the president, the states are also eligible for FEMA’s cost sharing grants up to 25% of entire budget (US Department of Transportation 1).
The volunteer organizations provide all sorts of things for the victims of any disaster incident in a state. These things range from food, clothing, medicines, to all the articles of daily use that can be helpful to the disaster struck people.
The Incident Command System was originally developed in 1970 to represent a series of best management practices that need to be implemented in case of a disaster management related emergency (ICS Review Material 2). It is a key feature through which the National Incident Management System operates in the country.
The ICS is an emergency management system developed from the integration of the five key managerial systems of Facility (resource) management, Equipment (safety resource) management, Personnel (responders) management, Procedure (best practices training) management, and the Communications management during an emergency (ICS Review Material 3).
The roles of an Incident Commander are ensuring strict authority and compliance to agency policy, developing incident command post, developing priorities, objectives, action plan, and coordinating the activities from all of the reporting staff. Primarily, the Incident Commander ensures that all the compliance and standard protocols related to emergency management are thoroughly implemented during a disaster response.
The Stafford Act vests the President with a power of declaring a disaster related emergency for a state on the basis of request raised from the respective Governor of that state (FEMA 1). This request is routed via the regional FEMA office for emergency management.
The National Response Framework was developed in 2008 as a guiding principle for all the partners to response during an emergency management situation and it defines the key operational protocols, roles and responsibilities to be implement during any sort of disaster (Haddow, Bullock and Coppola 196).
The Federal Response Plan was made to have a coordinated federal-government related emergency management structure and it involved participation from the 27 federal departments, but it never called for state level participation. Similarly, the National Response Plan also worked towards integrating the federal resources and disciplines into a common emergency management framework (Haddow, Bullock and Coppola 196). In stark contrast to the above two plans, the NRF focused on involving all the elements of state and nation to have a common code of adherence for emergency management.
Communication among the responding agencies is extremely crucial because of following reasons. Firstly, it ensures an update of various efforts and their status in rendering relief to the victims. Secondly, the communication among teams improves the coordination levels during the response. Finally, the responders have a direct link with the command and control centre for efficient operations.
Works Cited
FEMA. "The Declaration Process".2015.Web. March 13, 2016.
Haddow, Bullock and Coppola. "Introduction to Emergency Management". Fifth Edition. Elsevier Publications: 2014. Print
ICS Review Material."Incident Command System".2008. Web. March 13, 2016.
Lowenberg, Timothy. "The Role of the National Guard in National Defense and Homeland Security".2008.Web. March 13, 2016.
US Department of Transportation . "State & Local Funding Resources".2015.Web. March 13, 2016.
