“While each year the hurricane season comes to an end on November 30, the lessons from the response and recovery operations that we are performing this year, under incredibly difficult circumstances, will transform the field of emergency management forever.” – FEMA Administrator Brock Long, November 30, 2017. Building a culture of emergency preparedness is now…
Building a culture of preparedness in America President Trump released his National Security Strategy on December 18, 2017. On page 14 is a section entitled: “Promote American Resilience” (see below) which broadly addresses disaster response and resilience. We have already heard FEMA Director Brock Long discuss the need to build a true culture of preparedness…
“We have to do more pre-disaster mitigation. Pre-disaster mitigation is the key to becoming more resilient and reducing disaster impact.” – FEMA Administrator Brock Long FEMA says pre-disaster mitigation has to be a whole community effort In last week’s blog post, I discussed Brock Long’s comments to the House Appropriations Committee on November 30,…
FEMA Administrator Brock Long has it right FEMA Administrator Brock Long testified before the House Appropriations Committee on November 30, 2017 and what he said was a game changer. Here are some key points he made: “While each year the hurricane season comes to an end on November 30, the lessons from the response and recovery…
We all want resilient and prepared communities This week, I was in touch with a group of citizens who started a non-profit civil defense organization, Civil Defense Virginia. They are approaching emergency managers in their area to talk about the benefits of a grassroots civil defense organization. I was also in touch with an emergency…
Former FEMA Administrator Craig Fugate discusses “the 7 Deadly Sins of Emergency Management” in Stockholm, Sweden on November 28, 2017. This really hits home. To see more on emergency management click here.
Bipartisan agreement about threats to the electric grid There has been little bipartisan agreement in Congress about anything in the last decade. Healthcare, taxes, the budget – you name it, they disagree on it. There is one glaring exception: The threats to the electric grid from a variety of man-made and natural threats. They all…
GridEx bottom line upfront GridEx is a biennial exercise run by North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC). The latest iteration, GridEx IV, was held on November 15-16, 2017. Most Americans have never heard of GridEx and didn’t even know it was taking place. If fact, most people don’t really have a clear understanding of what…
Civil defense gradually morphed into emergency management. There are several good documents that give us the history of civil defense in the United States. Here is one from FEMA and here is an interesting manual (FEMA 107) from 1986. (Thank you to the Civil Defense Museum for making this available to us!) It can be hard to parse…
We have always had hurricanes. We always will. In one very important way, Hurricane Katrina and Hurricane Maria were both best case scenarios. Prior to Hurricane Katrina hitting New Orleans in 2005, we knew that the levy system was only built to handle a category 3 hurricane. And prior to Hurricane Maria hitting Puerto Rico,…
