Presidential Election Means Emergency Management Funding Changes

During the last seven years, we've lived through dramatic changes in the field of emergency management. Homeland security has emerged as a peer organization, a subset of emergency management, and in some places even replaced emergency management in name and purpose.

There have been significant changes to terminology, programs, plans and funding. Are we truly entering a new era of long-term civil defense, or will the pendulum soon swing in another direction?

In recent years, the emergency management field has exploded to near-cosmic proportions due to mega-disasters - and mega-funding that far exceeded anything we've seen before.

The 9/11 terrorist attacks, the Indian Ocean Tsunami and Hurricane Katrina have changed America's perspective on disasters, and focused media attention like never before on the discipline of emergency management and how government responds to disasters.

As a local emergency manager in 2001, I was used to scraping by with what little discretionary funds we could manage from our internal operating budget, and grants were mostly limited to Emergency Management Performance Grants (EMPG). When we were selected to be a Project Impact community - an initiative FEMA launched in 1997 to reduce risk and prevent potential damage from disasters - the $300,000 provided was an unprecedented opportunity.

But the creation of the Department of Homeland Security and the ensuing federal grant funds changed all that.

Between 2003 and 2007 in King County, Wash., my Office of Emergency Management team administered more than $34 million in Homeland Security grants. The alphabet soup of grant programs - EMPG, SHSP, UASI, HRSA, CDC, Port and Transit, and Public Health - can make even the experienced emergency manager's head spin.

When you look at the national-level documents created, you can sense the extent of the changes. A new National Response Plan replaced the Federal Response Plan, and has in turn been replaced by the National Response Framework. We now have the Target Capabilities List (TCL), the Universal Task List (UTL), a National Incident Management System (NIMS) and the National Infrastructure Plan, to name just a few.

What's next?

This is what we should ask one another. One year from now, a new federal administration will be in place, new people will be appointed, and undoubtedly, new programs will be launched. The "not invented here" mentality of new administrations guarantees that old programs will fall out of favor and new ones will be created.

Unfortunately our future may not be planned; it may be totally reactive based on the next catastrophic disaster we witness on TV. Since we live in a knee-jerk, grant creation society, we seem to react to the event and funding by adjusting our programs. And the event need not be catastrophic in nature. For example, a series of isolated terrorist attacks against U.S. mass transit systems would drastically change all of our personal and professional worlds.

Though everyone across the public safety spectrum works daily to mitigate such an event, there's no telling what's in store. I won't hazard a guess at what's next in the way of disasters, programs or funding. But if the recent past is any indication, hold on to your hats - it's going to be quite a ride.

Eric Holdeman is the former director for the King County, Wash., Office of Emergency Management and now blogs at www.disaster-zone.com.