Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA)

Great post. I think having a portal like this to express it from the local level helps tremendously. Wishing you luck on the process improvement that will help the citizen and local level response network.

ADA, and now the dictate to include everyone in any general shelter. We focused our scant personal-aid assistance resources at a central location because it was the common sense thing to do. Now DOJ forces us to accept and serve effectively any functional need at any location - which will probably result in less shelters being opened - lees beds for the community. But we're politically correct.....

I agree, I understand the need for documentation but to overload the OEM Managers and take away from the hands on duties to become filing clerks. Seems to diminish the ability to preform the more needed functions of your job. There should be a easier way to accomplish what they want in the form of Documentation for incidents or whatever the situation is.

If you mean local jurisdiction that is a problem. The local jurisdiction has no accountability to FEMA or DHS that amounts to a hill of bans. Ask one question how many or much mitigation and dollars have been spent on mitigating risk factors in all categories of vulnerable populations other than infrastructure after the first five years since 2003. Which is included in preformance tasks.

You also need to hire additional personnel. Paperwork is very important don't you know that. Exercises are equally important -- why question a very important need, skill set or function? Just do it! If you don't maybe no one will. You have a good job and a highly needed position I wish I could assist you. Please keep up your good work!

I am conducting research on this very subject, specifically, the interaction and collaboration needed by the local fire departments and EMA. Your points are very valid. Planning for emergecny management in a community must be a group effort and is best decided by those who are local. We do need guidance, espacially with plans and exercises, as these activities are the basis for sucsess during real disasters. I do feel HSEEP is a great improvement, but what are we doing with the information and how are we comparing our results to others and utilizing lessons learned from other communities. We must continue to support standrds, but we must also push for funding that supoports the activities called for in the standards.

Sounds to me like you need to argue for more staff. Unfortunatly, many emergency managers in this country do a poor job of communicating the needs of their office to those who control the purse strings. In many communities, it takes a disaster for them to realize you are understaffed and underfunded, but even then, they have a short memory when the $$$$$ are staring them in the face.

And you are employed or contracted by what jurisdictional entity? 400 schools / 100 tier II sites in your community?

PS Have the nursing homes develop their own EOP and mutual aid but make sure it's workable.

Answers to these questions are exhibited by a reduction in FEMA work force numbers and directly co-relate.

1) Can FEMA define and explain suspension of civil procedure as it was a) intended by the Governor b) interpreted by the city and county c)mis-interpreted by the city and county.

2) Does martial law affect city and county government jurisdiction? If so in what ways does martial law affect city and county government during a Federally declared disaster?

3) Provide three sets of figures for the following and explain the effectiveness of monetary distribution locally:

a) Number of employees prior to disaster for each NGO awarded FEMA funds. b) Number of NGO employees during a FEMA declared disaster c) Number of NGO employees 5 years after a declared disaster.

4) What role does the Federal Government play in bank management when banks cannot provide full account information to its clients during a disaster?

5) Where do FEMA awarded HUD grants go when they are not utilized for the population intended?

Get rid of the FEMA contractors and place that responsibility on the local authorities OEM. Hiring FEMA contractors from Cuba, for example, isn't prudent and does not assist the locals.

I would LOVE for FEMA to take on more of a listening/survey/outreach role with the locals, so gathering Best Practices from the locals and share them with other locals. The new format guidance requires restructuring of old plans rather than thoughtful review/revision based on new experience-based knowledge. I would rather hear what worked/didn't work for someone else and report how I changed my plan rather than copy/pasting and rewording my own plans to fit a model created by a Federal contractor. Furthermore, these new plan formats don't have metrics to show how the plan worked in action. Metrics are based on how much grant money has been given out based on how many locals have reformated their plans.

Short and sweet Yes the locals need to have more say and FEMA attention however if you have to much work to do hire more help. OOPS! did I say that? But where will the money come from AH! the eternial question and all we say is 'do more with less' !! there is no money and to much work to do, but when has that changed. We need to talk.

To sum up, 1) Paper work for grants is extreamly "time consuming" in that the information to support the grant request, progress reports, and close out reports to FEMA and the State are burdensome; 2) There is an apparent lack of guidance by FEMA and the State on a) plan formate and ADA issues, etc.; 3) exercise money is available from grants as long as the term terrorism is used; and 4) all of the above are competing for time. Ok so how can from your perspective can the paper work burden be reduced to meet the requestors (FEMA and State)? As to guidance, what I see is a move by DHS/FEMA into an intergrgated planning process while navigating the inability to dictate formating to all state and local planners in an outright law or grant requirement. Now lets go back to the 1st issue, paperwork, imagin the amount of paper work you'll have to submit annually to support this transition under grant rules. Not that the idea of same formate same everything, but that would require all state and local governments to begin to line up in the same structure in all their governance as the federal government to occur. FEMA has recently published some congregate care ADA requirements, some have fully accepted the guidance some are looking at the impacts to what meeting this guidance will cost and if not what it will cost. However, FEMA isn't the Nation's expert on ADA and guidance should be coming from the cognizant agency the US Department of Justice (http://www.ada.gov/) perhaps in conjunction with DHS-FEMA-DOJ-DHHS should jointly provide guidance along with your state agencies in the interium. The exercise money tied to terrorism grants, that is something that our federal level elected officals have to fix as they write the laws, with input from the agencies implementing them. But exercise money come from an assortment of grants from an assortment of agencies, perhaps those agency should meet and consider how to address this and its reporting requirements. Time, there is only 24 hours a day, if a way to reduce duplicative paper work through modern technology it should be looked at and all the people looking for the same information draw it from there. That may reduce the time away from preparing your community. Just my humble thoughts.

A necessary evil if you want their funds and a part of the job of an EM. FWIW, FEMA has been working to simplify some things. Not always appreciated but it is being done.

FEMA and other agencies need to do more to simplify and consolidate reporting ... while reducing the paperwork requirements for grants and emergency planning. On the local level, you can be more effective by recruiting retired seniors as office volunteers ... and bringing students into your program as interns receiving minimal wage. You should be able to lobby for funds to pay interns, or write your grants to include interns. If you form and train a local, volunteer Citizens Corps (to assist with emergency preparedness exercises) you can do far more with less. In the case of such local volunteers, they should do much of the thinking and planning related to improving local emergency preparedness.

One thing everyone seems to forget about is that FEMA grant money is the public's money! Accountability is key. I do agree that there is somethings that can be done to reduce the paperwork. However you can not sacrifice accountabilty. I can not count how many times I have seen "grant" money find its way into some family members pocket!

If you think the paperwork is too much, don't accept the grant money!

The suggestion of using interns, seniors and other volunteers is a very sound suggestion. Because of the budget crises this country is facing, weather with grant money or not the OEMs will never have enough money to fufill the needs to manage a proper program.

Also may I suggest we look to large companies in the local area to help offset the financial and man power needs of the local OEM program. It seems to me that they have a invested intrest in getting their local community back to operational status, in order for them to get back to business as usual.

I think the thought of using college interns and other vol-

unteers is a great idea ! I know from 1st hand expierence,

this past summer about forms because our 2 states were flooded ! Man-hole covers came off in streets, and flooded the streets causing to cars to flow towards the river ! Some even went in !!

Seems to me you lack the personnel you are 1 person if you had the personnel you could issue and utilize the needed training and funds and exercises and you could be present at the most high value ones put in a requisition for more personnel on your analysis.

best regards:

Patrick Owen Barnett

You might consider doing either/all:

1. Hire more personnel.

2. Reduce your workload.

3. Find a way to work more efficiently, i.e., visit with school administrators/teachers via an emergency management conference rather than visiting 400 individual schools.

Well if FEMA is supposed to be streamlining their paper work, and we get more help from people like CERT , EMER-

GENCY RESPONSE, and you CITIZENS PATROLS to form a task force that would make plans for the area. They also could get help with the paper work.

You can thank Congress of all the mandates. If you want to get rid of the mandates, then try and get Congress to pass less 1,000+ page laws. Each law has 5X - 10X larger regulations to manage the law. Each new regulation has 5X - 10X larger guidance to implement the regulation. All that adds up to more red tape and more mandates. Our Founding Fathers didn't write nearly as many or as large laws to accomplish what they needed to when establishing our great nation.

I wish we had our Founding Fathers still! Maybe congress

would make some sense then!! We wouldn't have all the regulations that we have today !!

Sounds like a good idea.Listen to the local leaders,reduce the amount of redtape to get the resources needed for immediate relief from a disaster.

Speed up the process.

And why do we need a law to do that,because it's just common sense.

Locals know what they need and if they have it. Going to the state can get complicated, and going federal is worse.

Anyone remember the community block grants? My city used the Senior citizen block grant to build sidewalks on the premiss that senior citizens use the sidewalks. You want to know were all of the regulations come from look at the New Orleans Levee Board. Everyone in Louisiana knows that the Levee Board is the employment of first resort for the politicians ne'er-do-well cousins, brother in laws, and nephews. The only thing that they have to do is spend as little money as possible. So when the Army Corps of Engineers wanted to install flood gates, at federal expense, on the ship canal were the wall failed and flooded the city, the Levee Board refused because they would have had to come up with the money to maintain the flood gates. So what happened? The Canal wall was over topped by the excess water flowing into the canal and everyone blamed the Corps of Engineers for designing a faulty installation. Well surprise, the Corps design was completely adequate but the Levee Board's refusal caused the water to rise over the top of the canal wall which was then undermined by the water flow and failed. So that is the federal governments fault of course, in that NOT SORT OF WAY! Many of the regulations that we complain about are a direct result of abuses of federal funds by State and Local Officials. They want the money with no strings attached so that they can use it as a slush fund to hire their ne'er-do-well cousins, brother in laws, and nephews. When local government puts their own house in order then they can pay for all this stuff at the local level or do without it. Addressing local needs should be done with local effort. I didn't get to participate in a plebiscite were I got to vote on whether my money would be used to make it possible for an incompetently governed State, Parrish (County), or City to build in a salt marsh that is in fact a flood plain. Did the people complaining about federal regulations get to vote on this? Did I miss a national plebiscite? No? I didn't think so.

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Tom Horne

I don't remember community block grants nor have I ever heard of them till now . I know last summer we got flooded,and we had no control!! It was coming from North Dakota, and they are planning to do the same thing over again this year. I just pray they haven't had as much rain and snow this year. We're still cleaning up !! Diane

Great article

Belive me,and i am more then 10 years in field of EMA,not in USA county,but our problems and concepts are so same.

Locals must have more chance to be creative and fully responsible for EM Activities,becuase their must know better of all (their area,in any concept's).

Finally,I strongly belive ,in case when the central governement support FULL ,Local responsible authorities,,Prevention,preparedness and action and recovery.

Governement level,must be ready for coordination function (before must have update daily info from locals).

Thank you in advise ,from all of you hows contribute for our small world (in era of globalisation)

nehat koqinaj

EMA ,Kosovo

I believe that FEMA and State are guidance, and ultimately locals must respond first. But I believe that the HSEEP although a lengthy document is a form of standardization. In this area FEMA and State would have to lead, since local response will vary due to many variables of the respective community.