Emergency Management

The American Experience

Claire B. Rubin, Claire B. Rubin

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9780429756849
• Edition: 3
• Topic: Scienze sociali
• Subtopic: Studi sullo sviluppo globale

The spate of disaster events ranging from major to catastrophic that have occurred in recent years raises a lot of questions about where and why they happened. Understanding the history of emergency management policies and practice is important to an understanding of current and future policies and practice.

Continuing in the footsteps of its popular predecessors, the new edition of Emergency Management: The American Experience provides the background to understand the key political and policy underpinnings of emergency management, exploring how major "focusing events" have shaped the field of emergency management. This edition builds on the original theoretical framework and chronological approach of previous editions, while enhancing the discussions through the addition of fresh information about the effects and outcomes of older events, such as Hurricane Katrina and the BP oil spill. The final chapters offer insightful discussion of the public administration concepts of emergency management in the U.S. and of the evolving federal role in emergency management.

Like its predecessors, the third edition of Emergency Management is a trusted and required text to understand the formation and continuing improvement of the American national emergency management system.

Chapter 1
Introduction: 110 Years of Disaster Response and Emergency Management in the United States

Claire B. Rubin

“Experience is good—it allows you to recognize a mistake when you make it again.”—Anonymous

In the seven years that have passed since the second edition of this book was published in 2012, many of the disaster events and outcomes described in that edition warrant reexamination because of their significance to our knowledge about disasters and to the systems in place in the U.S. to deal with them. This third edition also discusses the changing nature of the hazards and threats, as well as the modifications and adjustments made in public sector emergency management systems for responding to them. The increasing complexity of the response, extreme vulnerabilities of frequently impacted communities in coastal states, and concerns of public sector emergency management and leadership are just some of the issues that have come to the fore in the first decade of this century. We have seen a remarkable series of disasters—major to catastrophic in their impacts in the United States.

In the first decade of the twenty-first century, the United States experienced three major-to-catastrophic disasters,¹ providing milestone events for each of the three hazard categories usually used to characterize disasters in this country:

• Human-caused deliberate. On September 11, 2001, three terrorist attacks constituted the greatest intentional disaster that has ever occurred on the U.S. mainland. These events are usually referred to as 9/11.
• Natural hazard. In September 2005, three disasters caused by natural hazards—Hurricanes Katrina, Rita, and Wilma—resulted in the most extensive and costly destruction seen to date in the United States in terms of area affected and impacts on people and property on the Gulf Coast. However, the Galveston Hurricane of 1900 still holds the record for the greatest number of deaths.
• Human-caused accidental. In April 2010, the explosion of the BP Deep-water Horizon oil rig and resultant oil spill caused the largest human-made, accidental event ever to occur in the United States, with the majority of damage affecting Louisiana and the Gulf Coast.

These events made the first decade of the twenty-first century a historic decade for disasters. Collectively, they demonstrated some unusually destructive characteristics, attracted significant international attention, and laid bare many deficiencies in the legislation, plans, systems, and processes used for all phases of emergencies and disasters at all levels of government. The 2005 hurricanes did for natural disaster response what the terrorist attacks of 9/11 did for counterterrorism. Both glaringly displayed the weaknesses and failures of certain emergency management systems, processes, and leadership. The emergency response to Hurricane Katrina, which was so inadequate that government officials at all levels were criticized at home and abroad, prompted the deepest and most sustained examination of U.S. emergency management functions and systems ever conducted. The passage of the Post-Katrina Emergency Management Reform Act in 2006 and the speed with which major changes were enacted at the national level reflect the urgency with which concerns were addressed. All of these events were massive and can be considered “focusing events” or “game changers.” Entire books have been written about each of them, and probably more will come.

The Evolution of Federal Emergency Management

During the second half of the twentieth century, the federal government’s role in emergency management gradually expanded. With virtually every new presidential administration, the organizational forms and functions of emergency management evolved. Changes have occurred not only within federal management systems and services, but also among state and local governments. In many instances, federal laws, programs, policies, and grant requirements have driven changes in state and local emergency management organizations and efforts, with both positive and negative effects.

In recent years, Americans have come to regard emergency management as the quintessential public service; and they, along with state and local officials, expect the federal government to play a greater role in responding to a disaster than it has in the past. Unfortunately, many of the public’s expectations are simply unrealistic. As a result, government at all levels has fallen short of meeting the expectations not only of those affected by the catastrophic hurricanes in 2005 and the BP oil spill in 2010, but also of many concerned citizens and public officials throughout the United States. Moreover, as Platt notes in Disasters and Democracy, “The process of federalizing disasters has changed the public’s perspective from compassion to entitlement.”² One wonders when compassionate measures enacted by the federal government on behalf of citizens and localities harmed by disasters became an entitlement for state and local governments and disaster victims.

The events of 2005 and 2010 revealed that those with reservations about emergency management capabilities in the United States had good reasons for concern. In fact, all the major disaster events experienced so far in the twenty-first century have cast doubt on the adequacy of the emergency management system and have given greater urgency and prominence to the ongoing debate about fundamental emergency management principles and practices. Among the issues raised are those dealing with the responsibilities of each level of government, along with the notable lack of smooth and effective interrelationships among all levels of government and all sectors of society after a disaster strikes. Other issues relate to the organizational as well as logistical problems inherent in responding to a catastrophic disaster and to the quantity and quality of personnel and resources needed to address such an event.

The editor of this book is at work on another book that will focus on the major and catastrophic events that occurred from 2011 through 2018—The U.S. Emergency Management System in the Twenty-first Century: From Disaster to Catastrophe (Routledge, 2019). This new title uses a different framing mechanism that includes not only consideration of response-phase actions but also issues of short-term recovery and resilience.

Characteristics of Focusing Events

The hypothesis of both books is that changes in emergency management laws, policies, processes, and authority are event-driven. Therefore, major focusing events provide an opportunity to explore their effects on emergency management principles and practices. Focusing events have some, but not necessarily all, of the following characteristics:³

• Magnitude. Focusing events often affect a large geographic area or a large number of people. Natural disasters, such as catastrophic earthquakes, hurricanes, and tsunamis, tend to affect a broader area than do human-made accidents or terrorist events although a successful terrorist attack may ultimately affect a greater number of people. Hurricane Katrina became a focusing event in terms of the extent of the damage—the number of homes destroyed or damaged as well as the number of vulnerable people who were displaced or lost their lives.
• High visibility. An obvious example of high visibility is the 9/11 attacks targeting the World Trade Center in the heart of New York City’s financial district and the Pentagon headquarters of the U.S. Department of Defense and an iconic symbol of U.S. power.
• Unusual location. Some locations are less prepared than others for high-impact events, resulting in a greater likelihood of poorly managed, ad hoc response and recovery. For example, Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans (2005).
• High impact. If the duration and impacts of the event are widespread and damaging to physical, economic, environmental, social, and political structures, the disaster is more likely to become a focusing event. Hurricane Katrina is also an example of a high-impact event, particularly for the city of New Orleans, as well as the rest of the Gulf Coast.
• A unique threat agent. The use of an unusual threat agent—for example, commercial aircraft or common materials such as garden fertilizer—to inflict devastation increases the likelihood that an incident will become a focusing event. Similarly, the low-probability but high-impact BP oil spill, which stemmed from a commercial deepwater drilling operation that exploded, gave way to a major oil spill in which almost 5 million barrels of oil contaminated the Gulf Coast and its wildlife and seriously impacted businesses and residents.
• Surprise. Surprise was the use of commercial airliners in the 9/11 attacks on an office building in New York City and the unknown destination of the plane that crashed in Somerset County, PA. In the context of emergency management, surprise is often defined as unprecedented.⁴
• Eligibility for disaster declaration. A Presidential Disaster Declaration, which relies on the federal government’s threshold for determining which events warrant federal assistance, is used as a measure of the magnitude and impact of a disaster event.

There is great disagreement among authorities identifying the worst disasters in U.S. history, in part because of the lack of quantitative criteria for what makes one disaster worse than another in terms of lives lost, damage inflicted, area affected, or costs. Moreover, there are also often discrepancies in the reports regarding the number of lives lost or the severity of damage. The disasters discussed in this book are cited primarily because of their significance, their impact on our national emergency management system, and their lasting impression on the nation.

In 2005, Hurricane Katrina devastated much of the Gulf Coast, drawing attention to gaps in the emergency management system. Shown here is destruction to New Orleans’s Lower Ninth Ward. Photo courtesy of the Federal Emergency Management Agency/Andrea Booher.

Although disaster researchers continue to lead the way in analyzing significant historical events, a few nonfiction writers have ably brought major disasters to life. Erik Larson’s account of the 1900 Galveston Hurricane, Isaac’s Storm: A Man, a Time, and the Deadliest Hurricane in History, and John Barry’s Rising Tide: The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 and How It Changed America are but two examples of popular books that not only capture the attention of a general readership, but also offer important insights into disaster response and recovery.⁵ In addition, the body of scholarship developed by disaster researchers during the past several decades offers keen insight into the impact of disasters and depicts the reactive nature of emergency management.⁶ Another contribution to the knowledge base about disasters is the Time Line Charts of key disaster events in the United States,⁷ which provide a conceptual model for selective focusing events and identify subsequent developments and changes that have typically followed them.⁸ You can find these time lines at disaster-timeline.com.

The Impact of Disasters on Emergency Management

As can be seen from the Time Line Charts, certain focusing events have driven changes in laws, regulations, plans, systems, and practices.⁹ In fact, virtually all major federal laws, executive directives, programs, policies, organizational changes, and response systems have resulted from major and catastrophic disasters. Some of these changes, such as the reorganization and creation of new federal agencies that occurred following 9/11, were instituted fairly quickly, but many others have taken decades to implement.

A surprising number of misconceptions persist about the advent of emergency management. For example, many people believe that emergency management did not develop until the 1950s, arising in conjunction with civil defense programs. In fact, emergency management as a profession has evolved gradually over the past century, with the most notable changes occurring since 1950. The Time Line Charts demonstrate these incremental steps.

A Brief Review of History

For many decades, emergency management functions were performed primarily at the local level. The main national organization involved in providing humanitarian assistance to disaster victims prior to 1950 was the American Red Cross although some federal government and military agencies (such as the U.S. Coast Guard) have been involved with disaster responses for more than a century. For example, the National Weather Service predicted the 1900 hurricane in Galveston, Texas, and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers was active in the response efforts during the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927. However, federal government involvement by and large was ad hoc and reactive until the latter half of the twentieth century.¹⁰

The descriptive accounts of some of the major disasters that occurred in the early 1900s reveal several chronic issues that plagued response efforts, including:

• Centralized versus decentralized decision making by the federal government and/or military agencies
• The equitable distribution of relief to victims
• Confusion about the role of the American Red Cross vis-à-vis federal agencies
• Ad hoc disaster response and assistance plans
• Domination of powerful local business interests and civic leaders over local elected officials with respect to local mitigat...