There are many potential challenges to be faced by the field of emergency management in the ever changing and growing world we live in today. Haddow, Bullock, and Coppola share their top five challenges for emergency management as leadership, funding, federal recovery assistance programs, partnerships, and communications and information management (2013). All of these areas are vitally important to the current field and future of emergency management, and must continue to be improved upon whenever possible. However, I think a more appropriate order of importance of these issues would be leadership, funding, partnerships, communication and information management, and federal recovery assistance programs. Leaderships is easily the most important
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Funding is the next most important issue faced by emergency management as everything revolves around money. The federal government supplies millions or billions of dollars in federal disaster relief money to disaster victims every year and this money must be available to provide this support. Also, as suggested in our reading, not all funding should be supplied by the federal government. State and local government, non-governmental organizations and local businesses also need to assist in the organizing and raising funding for emergency management operations (Haddow, Bullock, and Coppola, 2013). This is why I placed partnerships as the third most important challenge for emergency management. The coordination and cooperation of all levels of government and voluntary, nonprofit, and non-government organizations provides the best outcomes for emergency management. However, with the ever growing small and privately own business world emerging, a unique opportunity is presented in organizing small, local communities. Business leaders, community-based organizations, church groups, nonprofits and volunteer organizations are vital to the growth and sustainability of most communities. Therefore, community leaders must utilize these partnerships as opportunities to grow all …show more content…
Every person has an opinion of what the is correct or best way to accomplish different tasks. This makes strong leaderships with clear communication skills essential in emergency management. The best personal example I have that demonstrates this importance is with our local, volunteer fire departments. Our county operate solely on volunteer departments, so typically, members from three or more departments end up responding to a call. On occasion, there are no chiefs available to make the response and it becomes unclear who is in command. This leads to mass confusion and inefficient use of time and skills available. Hurricane Andrew, that struck the gulf coast in the 90s, is another example of how leadership can affect emergency management either negatively or positively. As mentioned in our previous reading, FEMA was criticized on its response to this hurricane, much like Katrina (Haddow, et. al., 2013). However, the state of Florida made up for this in it 's quick and effective response to the disaster areas. The state and local leaders of Florida were effective in implementing the hurricane management plans and protocols. This is a great example of how local leadership and partnerships can, on occasion, provide more than the federal
Funding is the next most important issue faced by emergency management as everything revolves around money. The federal government supplies millions or billions of dollars in federal disaster relief money to disaster victims every year and this money must be available to provide this support. Also, as suggested in our reading, not all funding should be supplied by the federal government. State and local government, non-governmental organizations and local businesses also need to assist in the organizing and raising funding for emergency management operations (Haddow, Bullock, and Coppola, 2013). This is why I placed partnerships as the third most important challenge for emergency management. The coordination and cooperation of all levels of government and voluntary, nonprofit, and non-government organizations provides the best outcomes for emergency management. However, with the ever growing small and privately own business world emerging, a unique opportunity is presented in organizing small, local communities. Business leaders, community-based organizations, church groups, nonprofits and volunteer organizations are vital to the growth and sustainability of most communities. Therefore, community leaders must utilize these partnerships as opportunities to grow all …show more content…
Every person has an opinion of what the is correct or best way to accomplish different tasks. This makes strong leaderships with clear communication skills essential in emergency management. The best personal example I have that demonstrates this importance is with our local, volunteer fire departments. Our county operate solely on volunteer departments, so typically, members from three or more departments end up responding to a call. On occasion, there are no chiefs available to make the response and it becomes unclear who is in command. This leads to mass confusion and inefficient use of time and skills available. Hurricane Andrew, that struck the gulf coast in the 90s, is another example of how leadership can affect emergency management either negatively or positively. As mentioned in our previous reading, FEMA was criticized on its response to this hurricane, much like Katrina (Haddow, et. al., 2013). However, the state of Florida made up for this in it 's quick and effective response to the disaster areas. The state and local leaders of Florida were effective in implementing the hurricane management plans and protocols. This is a great example of how local leadership and partnerships can, on occasion, provide more than the federal