This is not a retrospective back to the days of civil defense, but more a summary from 9/11 forward and what the future may hold for those working in the emergency management profession.
Check out this from
Homeland Security Today: “
State of Emergency Management: What Needs to Change for Better Preparedness and Response.” Both authors are well-respected leaders in our profession.
I don’t disagree with anything that they have written. It is just a challenging time for many emergency managers. The COVID-19 pandemic has caused most EM organizations to focus on response for months on end, to the detriment of other aspects of their programs, especially mitigation.
The availability of federal funding is called out in the article, as well as the bureaucracy that surrounds applying for funding and administering it so as not to run crosswise with a future audit. This is one of the major challenges I see for smaller jurisdictions with severely limited staff.
Eric Holdeman is a contributing writer for Emergency Management magazine and is the former director of the King County, Wash., Office of Emergency Management.
