Emergency Management Is Not Broken- The Investment Is.

This post is from Justin Graney, a public safety professional with over 23 years of experience in firefighting, emergency medical care, and emergency management. This post does not represent any agency or organization.

In this season of seemingly constant disaster that we find ourselves within, there is a growing chorus of people calling for the dismantling of FEMA and calling for the placement of blame for response and recovery challenges to be directed at state and local emergency management agencies. No emergency response or disaster recovery goes perfect. It is impossible. Emergencies and disasters are unpredictable, and each event varies in impact scope. Emergency Managers work closely with the entirety of communities to learn from each disaster, to prepare for the next incident, and to build partnerships to engage the right resources at the right time. This is often done with little financial support from government appropriations.

After 9/11 and Katrina, emergency management practices and procedures were reviewed, clarified, and rewritten. The same should occur following Helene in 2024. Helene tested all facets of emergency response and graciously provided us with impacts that mirrored the unthinkable and seemingly fictious impacts that would frequent FEMA exercises that emergency managers have laughed at for years. Disasters are not fun. They hurt people. They change communities. Disasters are not going anywhere, and we must adjust to better prepare and to build capabilities locally to best build resilient communities.

The doctrine and lessons that teach hundreds of emergency managers annually are still relevant and informed. The National Disaster and Emergency Management University and National Fire Academy in Emmitsburg, MD is still very equipped with the best research, instructors, and collaborators, though it remains closed as the new administration reviews FEMA’s financial practices and procedures. There are still thousands of dedicated and skilled emergency managers across the country that are ready to put their lives on hold once again to respond to a disaster situation. Emergency Management as a discipline is as strong as it has ever been. The main gap? Money. You might have the best surgeon in the world, but if that surgeon doesn’t have the tools needed to do surgery, well you get the drift.

Emergency management has a brand identity issue. People don’t understand what the profession does and doesn't do for communities. The expectations don’t seem to match reality and the constant stream of misunderstandings on social media doesn’t help the situation. Public information and engagement, in a direct, digestible, and “normal people talk” kind of way is more important now than ever. Emergency managers must be reachable, transparent, overly communicative at this point, as it’s the only way to stay ahead of the social media disinformation war. Public information officers must stay tuned into public perception, understanding, and aware of external persons that insert disinformation into the conversation. While reading comments on social media is far from fun or uplifting, it is important to help guide future communications to make sure members of the community have up-to-date and accurate information.

Emergency management’s focus must now be on building resilience locally. Local and state elected officials should be focused on funding local emergency management programs. All incidents start and end locally, yet most local emergency management programs are severely underfunded, they lack personnel and equipment, and they rely on others, including the state to adequately respond to the incident. We have the right people for the job, the right doctrine and procedures for the job, the right national level disaster education consortium to educate those that do the job, yet we find ourselves stepping on our own feet every time there is a disaster. We aren’t investing in local emergency management programs, and it shows.

Now that the problem is stated, what is the solution? It’s simple. State and local elected officials need to talk to emergency managers and each other in a very focused and results driven way. This is a non-partisan issue. Public safety is in everyone’s interest. State legislators must:

-          Provide significant investment in local emergency management programs through directed grants with mandatory deliverables to guide the spending of those funds with a resiliency focus.

-          Local elected officials must provide investment in local emergency management programs as much as possible, understanding the many competing financial priorities in county and municipal government.

-          Local officials must embrace the whole-of-community model for disaster management in their community. Everyone has a role and a responsibility in a disaster. From the dog catcher to the church on Main Street, everyone must be engaged and included in disaster planning. Communities need to focus on being self-sufficient for 3-days after a disaster at a minimum.  

-          State legislators must invest in state emergency management agencies, who provide specialized resources, equipment, provisions, personnel, and additional support that helps to guide and “fill in the gaps” of the locally led response. This includes investing in personnel, shareable equipment and programs, and implementing an overall reduction in reliance for federal grant funding.

-          Repurpose community-based programs like the Community Emergency Response Team (CERT) Program to a disaster preparedness focus with the mission to ensure that every household in their area has a disaster kit. This can be done through private sector and non-profit partnerships, fundraising, and community outreach.

If states can adopt and execute the five points above, overall reliance on the federal government for personnel, resources, and funding would decrease and most importantly, resilience at home would increase. This is a funding issue. Not a structural issue.

Many states and local jurisdictions are deeply dependent on federal grant funding. Here in North Carolina, where state emergency management is approximately 82% federally funded, the Emergency Management Performance Grant and the Homeland Security Grant Program are critical to state and local emergency management operations annually. The recently canceled Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities (BRIC) Grant was set to provide a $185M investment in North Carolina into projects that would build resilient local communities across the state- funding that wasn’t coming from the state or local governments. These projects would have hardened water treatment facilities, addressed storm water runoff, and helped to fix beach erosion among other things. In the grants that have passed from the federal government down to the states since 9/11, we have been able to purchase specialized equipment, rewrite and exercise plans, and hire personnel. We also used these funds to supplant state funding instead of continuing to invest. Now we find ourselves completely reliant on federal money that is changing. If left unaddressed, communities will suffer the consequences as soon as this hurricane season.

The bottom line here is we can move emergency management agencies under new leadership, lay off employees, blame the selfless public safety personnel that respond to help communities, and argue about spending. None of those things will fix disaster preparedness, response, and recovery. Getting serious about investing in those things at the local level will.