IAEM Disaster Zone Column, March 2021
Interview with Linda Mastandrea, Director of FEMA’s Office of Disability Integration and Coordination
As people and organizations in the public and private sector work to prepare disaster plans, trainings and exercises, they need to remember to include a focus on people with disabilities in all facets of their emergency management and business continuity programs. The following is an interview with Linda Mastandrea, Director of the Office of Disability Integration and Coordination at the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) headquarters in Washington, D.C. She responded to a series of questions about how organizations can work to integrate the consideration of people with disabilities into all aspects of their emergency management and business continuity programs.
1. Can you give a brief overview of exactly what your office does?
The Office of Disability Integration and Coordination was created to advise FEMA and our state, local, tribal and territorial partners on integrating the needs of people with disabilities into the whole spectrum of emergency and disaster preparedness, response and recovery programs and services. We provide guidance, resources and technical assistance to FEMA leadership and FEMA programs to facilitate integrating the needs of people with disabilities into those programs and services; and, we help them proactively design programs, services, policies and procedures to be responsive to the needs of people with disabilities from the start.
2. There are many different types of physical and mental disabilities, do you try to address all of them?
FEMA works to make sure that people with a whole range of disabilities can access and benefit from our programs and services, and we work to help our state, local, tribal and territorial and partners do the same.
According to the CDC, there are somewhere around 61 million adults with disabilities in the United States today. And disability is much broader than visible physical disabilities like someone using a wheelchair or walker. There are people with sensory disabilities who are deaf or blind. There are people with developmental disabilities like autism, or intellectual disabilities. People with cognitive disabilities like a brain injury or Alzheimer’s disease. People who have speech disabilities. There are also people with mental or psychological disabilities. And, people with hidden disabilities like heart disease and diabetes. FEMA works to make sure that the needs of all these individuals are addressed in the programs and services we offer.
3. Do you have staff counterparts in the regions?
Each of FEMA’s 10 regional offices has a regional disability integration specialist working with state, local, tribal and territorial partners doing education and outreach throughout the year as well as providing advice and guidance to FEMA regional and field leadership on the needs of people with disabilities impacted by a particular disaster.
We also have Disability Integration Advisors who deploy to active disasters. They work with field leadership to make sure the needs of people with disabilities impacted by a disaster are being met.
4. Do the states have disability coordinators?
Each state has someone responsible for serving those with disabilities in their area. They may be an Access and Functional Needs Coordinator or a Disability Coordinator or someone tasked with those responsibilities. There are at present only a few states that have someone specifically tasked in their emergency management operation with serving people with disabilities. Our Regional disability integration specialists work closely with whomever has the primary responsibility in the state to ensure the needs of people with disabilities are being met before, during and after disasters.
5. Is there any integration from your office into the various grant programs offered by FEMA?
While there are no specific grants that address providing assistance to people with disabilities directly, we encourage organizations that serve people with disabilities to work with their states to include projects to improve services to people with disabilities before, during and after disasters into their grant applications.
6. What are the challenges that you see in integrating the needs of people with disabilities into planning, training, and exercises?
Part of the challenge is simply improving the awareness and understanding of the emergency management community on what can be done and more importantly, how to do it. Emergency managers recognize they should be including people with disabilities into preparedness efforts, but don’t always know where to start.
Our job is to help them build their capacity to serve people with disabilities, increasing their knowledge base, and creating connections with disability organizations in their communities so they have readily available resources to draw on. Building relationships with those organizations as well as with our regional disability integration specialists is critical to create the groundwork that will lead to inclusion of people with disabilities in training, exercises and planning.
7. What are some of the do’s and don’ts that you recommend emergency managers follow or avoid?
Let’s just call them all “do’s,” because there are many things that communities can do to help people with disabilities before, during and after disasters.
DO start integrating the needs of people with disabilities prior to disaster. Connect with disability organizations in your communities to identify and address the needs of people with disabilities proactively. And, engage those organizations to assist you in your planning efforts.
DO ensure that all of your communications are accessible for people with disabilities. Whether you’re communicating emergency information during an active disaster or preparedness information throughout the year, you should ensure people with disabilities can access that information. This includes providing closed captioning on video messages on your website or social media; ensuring your entire website is 508-compliant and able to be read and understood by screen reader technology for individuals with visual disabilities; and that you have American Sign Language (ASL) interpreters for meetings, broadcasts, press conferences, and other community gatherings. It’s also important to partner with your local media organizations to ensure they have closed captioning in emergency-related broadcasts, and that when ASL interpreters are present they are included in the broadcast.
DO get information in advance about accessible resources in your communities, such as accessible transit and sheltering for people with disabilities and include information on these resources in your communications.
Finally, DO take advantage of FEMA resources that are available to assist emergency managers, including:
- The Mass Care/Emergency Assistance Pandemic Planning Considerations Guide
- This guide provides emergency managers with important information on how to evacuate, shelter and feed their communities during disasters that occur while we’re experiencing a pandemic, like COVID-19. Additionally, there’s an important addendum to that guide--the Personal Assistance Services Addendum which provides information on how emergency managers can provide disaster survivors with disabilities the assistance they need to help with activities of daily living, such as grooming, eating, bathing, dressing, taking medication and communicating.
- If an organization wants to begin somewhere with helping integrate people with disabilities into their programs, where should they start?
Note: People may be interested in hearing Linda Mastandrea talk about these issues via a Disaster Zone Podcast: Disasters and People with Disabilities
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by Eric E. Holdeman, Senior Fellow, Emergency Management Magazine
He blogs at www.disaster-zone.com and his podcast is at Disaster Zone
