Preparing for Terrorism Tools for Evaluating the Metropolitan Medical Response System Program (2002) / Chapter Skim
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2 Community Emergency Management and Available Federal Assistance
2 Community Emergency Management and Available Federal Assistance
Pages 31-51
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From page 31... ...
pointed out that despite the justifiable emphasis on the novel aspects of a possible terrorist attack with a chemical or biological agent, frameworks for responding to incidents of both types already exist. An attack with a chemical agent would be similar to the hazardous materials incidents that metropolitan safety personnel confront regularly; a major mission of public health departments is the prompt identification and suppression of infectious disease outbreaks; and poison control centers deal with poisonings from both chemical and biological sources on a daily basis.
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From page 32... ...
A hazard, in its simplest definition, is a condition or event with the potential to cause harm to the community or environment (Federal Emergency Management Agency, 1997b)
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From page 33... ...
Mitigation activities are designed to alleviate the effects of a major disaster or emergency or to minimize the potentially adverse effects of those that are unavoidable (Federal Emergency Management Agency, 1996a, 2000b)
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From page 34... ...
, prepare for, respond to, and recover from the effects of all hazards. The goal of emergency management is to save lives, prevent injuries, and protect property and the environment if an emergency occurs" (Federal Emergency Management Agency, 1995, p.
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From page 35... ...
Federal emergency management primarily provides aid through the states. This assistance is not intended to supersede or replace activities at lower levels but is instead intended to supplement these activities.
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From page 36... ...
At the outset of an incident, emergency managers are directly involved in coordinating personnel and resources for response, usually from an emergency operations center, where multiple city departments work together. It is the local public safety organizations (police and fire departments, emergency medical services [EMS]
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From page 37... ...
Fire, police, EMS, and other resources from surrounding jurisdictions responded through preestablished mutual-aid agreements to assist at the scene and to cover public safety functions in areas of Oklahoma City unaffected by the bombing (Marrs, 1995~. The OCFD incident commander attributed much of the success of the response to the emergency training that personnel of all city departments received and to an effective incident management structure.
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From page 38... ...
The disaster was complex because the responders were combating a mixture of multiple hazardous materials; in addition, the fire was located in a confined space, but smoke and liquid runoff affected a wide area (Kiehl and Niedowski, 2001~. To protect public health and safety, Baltimore police shut down area roads, including interstate highways and the U.S.
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From page 39... ...
Four weeks after the recognition of the outbreak in humans a flavivirus later identified as West Nile virus was isolated from tissue of crows and a flamingo in a local zoo and subsequently determined to be the common cause of both the avian and human disease outbreaks. West Nile virus is transmitted by Culex mosquitos, just as SLE is,
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From page 40... ...
reported that 22 states have emergency management functions within the department of military affairs and that 12 others have such functions within departments of public safety. The remainder of states structure emergency management functions within combined public safety-military affairs agencies, within community or local affairs departments, or within the state police department.
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From page 41... ...
The Emergency Management Assistance Compact provides a framework for coordinating interstate assistance (Emergency Management Assistance Compact, 2002) , whereas the federal response plan's concept of operations details the framework for requesting and managing federal assets (Federal Emergency Management Agency, 1992~.
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From page 42... ...
FEMA has been given responsibility for coordinating, planning, and managing this assistance, a task that it carries out in accordance with the Federal Response Plan (FRP) (Federal Emergency Management Agency, 1992~.
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From page 43... ...
, and FEMA; and · specific nonfederal sources such as major pharmaceutical suppliers, hospital supply vendors, the National Foundation for Mortuary Care, certain international disaster response organizations, and international health organizations. ESF 8 describes 15 specific functional areas of federal health and medical assistance, as follows: 1.
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From page 44... ...
OEP provides health and medical care equipment and supplies, including pharmaceuticals, biological products, and blood and blood products, in support of DMAT operations and for the restocking of health and medical care facilities in an area affected by a major disaster or emergency.
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From page 45... ...
CDC assists with assessing the threat of vectorborne diseases after a major disaster or emergency; conducts field investigations, including the collection and laboratory analysis of relevant samples; provides vector control equipment and supplies; and provides technical assistance and consultation on protective actions regarding vector-borne diseases and the medical treatment of victims of vector-borne diseases.
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From page 46... ...
The annex defines two phases of the response to terrorism that may overlap: crisis management and consequence management. As described in the FRP Terrorism Incident Annex, crisis management "refers to measures to identify, acquire, and plan the use of resources needed to anticipate, prevent, and/or resolve a threat or act of terrorism" (Federal Emergency Management Agency, l999b, p.
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From page 47... ...
This support plan identifies 20 specific, specialized, and time-sensitive health and medical services functions, in addition to the 15 identified in ESF 8 proper; assigns responsibility for the response to each of those 20 functions to federal departments, agencies, and offices; and describes some of the assets available for the responses required. It carefully notes that any or all of the plan may be activated before a presidentially declared disaster to save lives and that the need for rapid action demands that some elements of the plan be organized and propositioned ahead of any terrorist event.
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From page 48... ...
. The Federal Radiological Emergency Response Plan provides the framework for the federal response to peacetime radiological emergencies (Federal Emergency Management Agency, 2002c)
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From page 50... ...
Bush reinforced the position of FEMA as the coordinator of federal responses to acts of domestic terrorism by establishing the Office of National Preparedness in that agency and charging it with coordinating and implementing all federal programs providing relief or support to local governments responding to acts of terrorism. Under this plan, the FBI remained the leader of criminal investigations of acts of terrorism, but in October 2001 President Bush signed an executive order establishing the Office of Homeland Security within the Executive Office of the President (Bush, 2001)
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From page 51... ...
COMMUNITY EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT 51 specialized federal resources. The next chapter reviews the much smaller number of federal programs aimed specifically at helping state and local authorities better adapt their systems to respond to the specific threats posed by CBR weapons.
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