In the grand scheme of things, contemporary emergency management is still a relatively new discipline, having only recently evolved from the civil defense era within the last 40 years or so. Many of those working within emergency management began their careers in civil defense agencies, and some of those agencies carry the civil defense moniker even today.
The tragic events of 9/11 and recent high-profile natural disasters have served to raise the profile of emergency management, and federal grant dollars and doctrine have further helped to define and shape the discipline. Today, emergency management professional certifications and academic degrees are becoming commonplace, and emergency managers are taking on new and expanded roles as the threat profile continues to evolve.
The maturation of the emergency management discipline also includes more focus on pre-disaster mitigation planning and community resilience. As such, emergency managers are not just coordinating their activities with local, state and federal public safety officials but with community planners, developers, engineers, architects and economic development experts as well.
Despite the increasing responsibilities, not all localities have a full-time emergency manager. Even in the case of full-time emergency management agencies, they are often only staffed by one or two full-time employees and rely heavily on volunteers to meet their (growing) mission. Yet every jurisdiction has some degree of risk and the same responsibility to be prepared, and the mandates associated with the grant funds are placing the same requirements on the grant recipients regardless of the size of their jurisdiction.
But beyond the grant funding and bureaucratic necessities, emergency managers must ensure their jurisdictions are prepared to respond to the myriad threats and hazards facing their communities. Emergency management is often most visible during a crisis, but it is the behind-the-scenes planning and preparation that can make the difference when disasters strike.
Emergency management is not a part-time job and should not be treated as such. Local governments need to make emergency management a priority and ensure emergency managers have the resources and executive support necessary to do their jobs. It may be unrealistic to expect all local governments to have full-time emergency managers, but larger jurisdictions (counties, cities) certainly need to, or they must be willing to live with the consequences of a part-time investment in a full-time job.
Finally, when it comes to making that investment, local jurisdictions need to be willing to pay emergency managers what they are worth. It is hard to recruit, train, develop and leverage great and professional emergency managers when the pay scales are often closer to bank tellers than to bank managers. No one goes into emergency management to become wealthy; many do it in an almost volunteer capacity. That said, if jurisdictions want strong capabilities to be developed (and to not lose their existing professionals to private-sector business continuity and risk-management positions) they need to re-evaluate their current pay scales and offer these professionals the compensation they deserve. The return on this investment is an increase in preparedness that will pay dividends when an untoward incident occurs, and proactive emergency managers can help their jurisdictions mitigate or even prevent a disaster. Now that’s money well spent.
Terry Hastings is a senior policy adviser for the New York State Division of Homeland Security and Emergency Services (DHSES) and former deputy director of the DHSES Office of Emergency Management.
