By William A. Denny Abstract While the vast majority of training, education, and leader development experiences for military officers are related to operations overseas, civil support operations are conducted in a radically different environment. This article reports on an exploratory study on how senior military leaders perceive leadership during a crisis-disaster response in the U.S.…
Posts Tagged with Disaster Response
Every Community an Island: Preparing for Catastrophic Disasters
Sean Card EXECUTIVE SUMMARY In 2017, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) administrator testified on Capitol Hill that America is a nation unprepared for disasters.[1] The current American emergency management structure exhibits an overreliance on federal disaster aid and too little focus on American communities. This dynamic is problematic amid catastrophic disasters that threaten the…
Statewide Access Programs: A Key Component to Eliminating the Post-Disaster Access Challenge
George RentEria Executive summary This thesis explores the topic of access management and its relationship to U.S. incident management policies and practices. Specifically, it examines how the implementation of statewide access programs might better integrate private sector response capabilities into state and local disaster management efforts. The United States has a well-defined incident management doctrine…
The Last Responders: Approaching the Disaster after the Disaster through Community-Led Long-Term Recovery Coalitions
Alana Tornello EXECUTIVE SUMMARY Recovery is the disaster after the disaster. The claim has been whispered around the proverbial campfires of emergency management (EM) for decades.[1] Scholars, practitioners, and survivors provide evidence to support this claim, particularly for long-term recovery (LTR)—the recovery period when “restoring, rebuilding, and reshaping the physical, social, economic, and natural environment”…
Book Review: Out of the Whirlwind; Supply and Demand After Hurricane Maria by Philip J. Palin
By Kristopher Thornburg Suggested Citation Thornburg, Kristopher. Review of Out of the Whirlwind: Supply and Demand After Hurricane Maria, by Philip Palin. Homeland Security Affairs 15, Article 7. www.hsaj.org/articles/15492 The 2017 hurricane season left wide swaths of destruction across parts of the southern United States. Puerto Rico was hit the hardest, beginning with a glancing…
Building Community Capacity and Resilience through Improvements in Economic Recovery
Kevin McMahan EXECUTIVE SUMMARY Disasters in the form of weather patterns, earthquakes, and human-made catastrophes have become more frequent and severe in recent years. These events have a direct economic impact on communities. The losses incurred, in both the short and long term, can overwhelm a community long after the disaster subsides. For example, in…
Disruptive Emergent Systems in Disaster Response
Kristopher Thornburg EXECUTIVE SUMMARY The 2017 hurricanes in the southern United States provided an impetus for wider social technology use than during previous disaster responses. Hurricane survivors rapidly turned to social media for help while physically unaffected social media users crowdsourced crisis maps to generate complex and powerful emergent information systems. Volunteers unaffiliated with first…
The God Protocol: In Search of a Common Ethical Approach to Disaster Response
Eric Soucie Executive Summary Domestic disaster relief in the United States has undergone various changes in terms of public expectations, legal authorities, and operational approaches over the last several decades. Some have argued that this trend has gone too far while others argue it has not gone far enough in placing a particular burden,…
A Model of Creating Inpatient Hospital Surge Capacity through Early Discharge
William Dunne EXECUTIVE SUMMARY Disasters and catastrophic mass casualty incidents continue to occur in the United States and around the globe. These events challenge their communities to preserve life and often require responders to go to extraordinary measure and utilize austere conditions to fight injury, illness, and disease. These communities are often stressed to prioritize…
Application of the Intelligence Cycle to Prevent Impacts of Disastrous Wildland Fires
Brian Young EXECUTIVE SUMMARY The threat of wildland fires is an issue of national security, as it relates to disaster management and the protection of U.S. citizens. Numerous wildfires, burned homes, environmental consequences, and the evacuation of thousands are problems that occur nearly every fire season. Tactical considerations are the primary focus of how the…