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A Brief History and Analysis
Andrea M. Jackman • Mario G. Beruvides
• Gary S. Nestler
This book is intended as a history and survey of large-scale
emergency management policy in the United States. The field of
emergency management is relatively new, and rapidly ­changing
as new technology and technology-dependent ­societal systems
emerge. The impacts of past catastrophic events on policy

­development, and implications of older policy in new markets
are discussed.
The book also explores non-governmental policies as they
relate to for-profit emergency management and professional
associations of practitioners. For any person working in the field
of emergency management who wonders “why do we do things
the way we do?” this book is essential.
Dr. Andrea M. Jackman has her BS in meteorology and PhD in
wind science & engineering, and has worked in disaster s­ cience
since 2003. She currently works on the software ­development
team for a national disaster mitigation model distributed
­globally by the U.S. government, and conducts research on the
cost and effectiveness of federal-level disaster policy.
Dr. Mario G. Beruvides is an AT&T professor of ­
industrial
engineering at Texas Tech University, and director of the
­
Laboratory for Systems Solutions. His ongoing research
­
specializes in ­
­
industrial system behavior, cost of quality,
isomorphological ­
­
processes, and the application of systems
­engineering principles to emergency management.
Dr. Gary S. Nestler has 30 years experience in the emergency
management field. He currently maintains a license to ­practice
medicine, serves as a captain in his local fire department
­working with emergency medical services, and remains as an

active member of a local law enforcement SWAT team.
ISBN: 978-1-60650-699-8

Disaster Policy and Its Practice in the United States

• Manufacturing
Engineering
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& Chemical
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Disaster Policy and Its Practice in
the United States

JACKMAN • BERUVIDES • NESTLER

EBOOKS
FOR THE
ENGINEERING
LIBRARY

INDUSTRIAL AND SYSTEMS
ENGINEERING COLLECTION

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Disaster Policy
and Its Practice
in the United
States
A Brief History and
Analysis

Andrea M. Jackman
Mario G. Beruvides
Gary S. Nestler


DISASTER
POLICY AND ITS
PRACTICE IN THE
UNITED STATES



DISASTER
POLICY AND ITS
PRACTICE IN THE
UNITED STATES
A Brief History
and Analysis
ANDREA M. JACKMAN,
MARIO G. BERUVIDES, AND
GARY S. NESTLER

MOMENTUM PRESS, LLC, NEW YORK


Disaster Policy and Its Practice in the United States: A Brief History and
Analysis
Copyright © Momentum Press®, LLC, 2017.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored
in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—­
electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or any other—except for
brief quotations, not to exceed 400 words, without the prior permission
of the publisher.
First published by Momentum Press®, LLC
222 East 46th Street, New York, NY 10017
www.momentumpress.net
ISBN-13: 978-1-60650-699-8 (print)
ISBN-13: 978-1-60650-700-1 (e-book)
Momentum Press Industrial and Systems Engineering Collection
Collection ISSN: 2372-3564 (print)
Collection ISSN: 2372-3572 (electronic)
Cover and interior design by Exeter Premedia Services Private Ltd.,
Chennai, India
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Printed in the United States of America


Abstract
Emergency management and the study of disasters is a relatively young
industry, beginning in its current form only after the World Wars of the
previous century. Yet with the ever-increasing complexity of society in the

Digital Age, the management and recovery from disasters in recent years
have received more attention than ever. In a field traditionally belonging
to the military and social sciences, the authors of this book review existing policy and standard practices within emergency management from
an industrial and systems engineering perspective. The book explores
both the contextual history of managing disasters in the United States,
both at the national and local level, and describes how these events influenced federal policy development in the latter half of the 20th century.
Compliance with this policy, and existing challenges with 21st century
technology, is further explored, along with recommendations for future
policy directions. Practitioners of emergency management, and academic
researchers who ask the question “is our policy working?” should find the
text relevant to their endeavors.

KEYWORDS
cost of policy, cost of quality, disaster management, emergency manage­
ment, federal government, industrial engineering, systems engineering,
legislation, mitigation, planning, policy design, policy, preparedness,
quality measures, recovery, response, workforce professionals



Contents
List of Figures

xi

List of Tables

xiii

1  Introduction: Why We Need to Analyze Policy

in Emergency Management

1

1.1 Why Emergency Management? An Introduction
by Andrea Jackman

1

1.2  About This Book

4

2   Emergency Management in the United States: 1800–1969

7

2.1  Nineteenth-Century Beginnings

7

2.2 U.S. Disasters in the Early 20th Century

8

2.3 Duck and Cover! Military Influence and the Cold War

12

Websites of Interest

14

3   The 1970s: Four Phases and FEMA

15

3.1 Shifting Government Priorities and Agencies

15

3.2 Our Four-Phase Cycle: The Industry Standard

17

3.3 The New Federal Emergency Management Agency

23

Websites of Interest

24

4   The Stafford Act of 1988—Then and Now

27

4.1  The Stafford Act

27

4.2 Updates to Federal Disaster Management

28

4.3  The Stafford Act in the 21st Century

31

Websites of Interest

34


viii  •   Contents

5  DMA 2000 and September 11, 2001: A Shift from
Responding to Preparing

35

5.1  Mitigation Gets Its Own Law

35

5.2  How to Comply with DMA 2000

37

5.3 Implementation Challenges for DMA 2000

39

5.4  Industry Impacts of Terrorism

44

5.5 The National Incident Management System

44

Websites of Interest

45

6  Hurricane Katrina and PKEMRA: New Challenges
in a New Millennium

47

6.1 Hurricane Katrina, a Disaster of Perception

47

6.2 The Post-Katrina Emergency Management Reform
Act of 2006

51

Websites of Interest

54

7  Certifications, Societies, and Self-Assessments:
A Look at Industry Policy

57

7.1 Process Quality in Emergency Management

58

7.2 The International Association of Emergency Managers

59

7.3  Certified Emergency Managers

59

7.4 The National Emergency Management Association
and Programs

61

Websites of Interest

63

8   The Business of Disaster

65

8.1  Background and Challenges

65

8.2  Risk–Reward Ratio

66

8.3 System Constraints and Expectations

68

8.4 Expectations

69

8.5 Return on Investment—A Case in Point—Georgia

76

8.6  Analytics and Business Intelligence

80

9  Emergency Management 2020: The Current State of
Research and Policy Recommendations for the Future

83

9.1  The Next Five Years

83

9.2 Future Policy and Research Directions

84


Contents  •   ix

Appendixes

87

Appendix A: Glossary of Terms

87

Appendix B: Additional Reading Materials

95

Bibliography
Index

99
105

List of Figures
Figure 3.1.  The cycle of the four phases.

23

Figure 3.2. Four phases of emergency management at all levels
of government.

24

Figure 4.1.  Stafford Act declaration process Renken (2016).

31

Figure 4.2. Number of declared major disasters in the United States
Renken (2016).
32
Figure 5.1. HMP completion percentages for the continental
United States, 2007.

40

Figure 6.1. National response structure prior to 2007 as
self-reported by FEMA.

53

Figure 6.2. National response structure following PKEMRA-driven
changes in 2012 as self-reported by FEMA.
53
Figure 8.1. Capabilities needed for effective incident, event
or emergency management.

68

Figure 8.2.  Situational awareness functional model.

72



List of Tables
Table 3.1.  The four phases of emergency management

18

Table 6.1.  PKEMRA legislation breakdown

52

Table 8.1.  The use case challenge

70

Table 8.2.  Situational awareness functionality

72

Table A.1. Definitions of natural hazards. Source: NOAA-NWS
Glossary; as referenced by glossaries of the National
Climatic Data Center and incorporated into SHELDUS 87
Table A.2.  Required actions for multi-jurisdictional HMPs

89

Table A.3. Summary of literature defining the response, recovery,
and mitigation phases of emergency management

92



CHAPTER 1

Introduction: Why We
Need to Analyze Policy in
Emergency Management
1.1 WHY EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT? AN
INTRODUCTION BY ANDREA JACKMAN
A hundred years ago, the field of emergency management did not exist.
The same can be said for many other disciplines that arose in the 20th
century, as well as technological advances and products of the rapid modernization and eventual digitization of our society. Yet, our field becomes
more critical with each of the advancements in both society and technology. The more advanced systems we have to support our daily lives, the
more tightly these systems become interwoven, and the more our dependence on them grows. What might have been an unreported non-incident a
hundred years ago—a minor flood or loss of telephone lines—could today
cause significant disruption and be broadcast globally through online
media. Studying our management of such disruptions is essential, and a

policy provides a measuring stick by which to do just that. As this book
will show, the implementation of an existing policy provides a chance to
measure our progress, and the development of a new policy provides an
opportunity to shape our reactions.
When I was eight years old, my family lived in Hiroshima, Japan. My
parents and I lived in a fifth floor apartment in a residential neighborhood
of one of the safest and most orderly countries in the world. One weekend
in the fall, my mother and her friend planned to take a trip to another city
to do some shopping. The weather forecast called for a miserable, windy,
and rainy fall day—a mild typhoon was near the coast—so she planned to
be on the train and indoors while my father and I stayed home.


2  •   DISASTER POLICY AND ITS PRACTICE IN THE UNITED STATES

As the end of the weekend got closer, the forecast changed. The
typhoon had strengthened, and was likely to come ashore. Dad and I
kept an eye on the sky from our apartment as clouds darkened, the wind
picked up, and a steady rain started to fall. Nobody seemed particularly
alarmed, although this was years before the Internet and 24-hour news
cycle that surrounds hurricanes and typhoons today. My father had some
fluency in Japanese and tried to pick up bits and pieces of information
from television and radio, as well as the police officer with a megaphone
driving down the street giving instructions for staying safe. My mom,
who had already boarded her return train, found that it was not moving
as quickly as usual and she thought they might be late getting back to
Hiroshima station—something very unusual on the high-precision bullet
trains.
The sun went down as the storm picked up, and Dad and I watched
sheets of rain, and occasional pieces of corrugated roofing, blow sideways

down the street. The wind rattled our windows and blew the screens back
and forth, making loud banging noises. Never a fan of startling noises
or severe weather to begin with, I was getting more and more uneasy as
the evening went on. The husband of my mom’s friend phoned us to say
he was going to try to get to the train station, just down the hill from
their house, to try to get some information about the trains and see about
picking up his wife and my mom on what was clearly going to be a late
arrival. My mom and her friend, meanwhile, were experiencing intermittent power outages on the train, which had stopped moving. They were
able to piece together bits of announcements from the train conductor to
figure out that they were parking in a tunnel for the night until the train
could proceed safely. Years later, the two women enjoy telling the story of
how they found the last bit of food available on board and shared it: a stale
tray of noodle salad and a warm beer.
Back in Hiroshima, it was getting close to midnight, and there was
nothing left for us to do but try and get some sleep. Dad brought me into
his room and tucked me in bed while he sat up watching the weather outside. I woke up a few hours later in pitch darkness, with no memory of
having fallen asleep. My dad was gone. Not just gone to sit in the living
room, but gone from the apartment. I looked for him and realized the
power was out. Trying to calm myself down, I thought perhaps he had
gone to get my mom. My mom! Where was she? Was she safe? Had my
dad tried to get her and something happened? I picked up the phone and
started to dial our friends’ house to see if they were there, but the phones
were out along with the power. Feeling helpless and terrified, I thought the
best thing I could do was stay locked in the apartment and wait, under the


INTRODUCTION  •   3

safety of a few blankets, and hope none of the larger bits of flying debris
smashed through the window.

I woke up early in the morning to find both my parents returned. My
mom’s bullet train had limped into Hiroshima station around 4 a.m. as the
storm was dying down. My dad had gone to get her, but failed to wake me
up or leave a note explaining his absence, much to my mom’s and my own
horror. We were safe and unharmed, but were soon evacuated to a hotel
when it was discovered our neighborhood would be without water, power,
or phone service for the next few days.
I maintained an interest in weather and the natural sciences through
school, and in college, decided to major in meteorology. It seemed if
I understood what was happening in the atmosphere around me, I would
be less likely to find myself alone and completely in the dark—literally
and figuratively—in the middle of a raging storm. One afternoon during
a junior-year internship with the National Weather Service in Indiana,
I felt a familiar uneasiness. Conditions were ripe for severe weather and
my bosses were issuing tornado watches. I tried to stay out of the way
as storms began popping up and I expected mayhem. Surely, forecasters would be running around, making urgent and animated phone calls,
shouting over each other and the howling wind. But, instead of a chaotic,
panicked forecast room, I watched seasoned professionals talk to each
other as though it was a pleasant sunny day. They quietly issued warnings
after measured discussion on whether or not radar signals were strong
enough to indicate possible tornadoes, took calls from trained spotters and
answered questions from sheriffs, and calmly made recommendations for
ensuring citizen safety. No alarm bells went off, no lightning struck our
building, and not a single person raised their voice. I did the only thing I
could think of to make myself useful and brought everyone lunch, all the
while thinking that if this was how professionals conducted themselves in
life-threatening situations, maybe there was a place for me in emergency
management.
People across many disciplines come to emergency management in
their own ways, including my co-authors from industrial engineering and

holistic medicine. What I learned from my typhoon experience and my
day at the National Weather Service, then later a career in studying natural
disasters and their management, was that, often in our society, disasters
are what we make of them. Many times, they are just afterthoughts; blips
on an otherwise smooth road of business-as-usual. They do not happen a
lot. We do not like to think about them happening. We have little natural
inclination to prepare for them, or try to mitigate what we cannot see (and
might go a lifetime without ever seeing). Humans much prefer to react, to


4  •   DISASTER POLICY AND ITS PRACTICE IN THE UNITED STATES

embrace panic, to watch dramatic news coverage, or convince ourselves
that nothing worse has ever happened to anyone. We wait for that low
probability even to come along, assuming it never will. On a national and
industry-wide scale, our policy is not only a reflection of that, but in turn,
drives our decisions, keeping us right where we feel comfortable in a constant state of reaction. On top of that, we love to make our lives as simple
and comfortable as possible, which means tight dependency on technology and services. The more complex our society becomes, the more vulnerable we are to a disaster wiping everything out.
Emergency management is a young and under-researched field, but an
important one. It is critical that we understand ourselves in this environment and stop designing ourselves into vulnerable systems. Policy is one
way to drive the practice you want to see, which makes understanding it
essential to understanding emergency management now and in the future.

1.2  ABOUT THIS BOOK
This book seeks to provide a comprehensive background and discussion
of all major national policies in emergency management, from a practitioner’s perspective. Academic references are also provided for recommended further reading, if you are interested in the implementation
of emergency management and its policy from a research perspective.
­Chapters 2, 3, and 4 discuss the history of emergency management and
its policy in the United States, from the earliest days of our country to
the birth of modern emergency management practices at the end of the

last century. Chapter 5 discusses an important shift in thinking toward
preparation and mitigation, and Chapter 6 discusses the recent impact of
new mobile and digital technology and how it gives far more visibility
into disasters than previously known. Chapters 7 and 8 step away from the
government perspective that dominates policy and discusses emergency
management policy found within the industry and commercial sectors.
Chapter 9 discusses the future of emergency management and recommendations for future considerations and research in the practice.
The authors of this book come from diverse backgrounds, as is proving critical in new, cross-disciplinary fields such as emergency management. Dr. Andrea Jackman earned her degrees in meteorology and wind
engineering and continues to work with special emphasis on natural hazards and their impacts on the built environment. Dr. Mario Beruvides
comes from a background of industrial engineering, with special interest


INTRODUCTION  •   5

in ­system design and the interactions of humans and systems. Dr. Gary
Nestler has 30 years experience in the emergency management field. He
currently maintains a license to practice medicine, serves as a Captain in
his local fire department working with emergency medical services, and
remains as an active member of a local law enforcement SWAT team.



CHAPTER 2

Emergency Management
in the United States:
1800–1969
2.1 NINETEENTH-CENTURY BEGINNINGS
Like so many of the industries and disciplines we know in modern society, emergency management was nearly unrecognizable, if non-existent,
during the 19th century. For the United States, a new country still establishing itself in many regions, it was impossible to list all of the factors that

might have made disaster response a completely different entity in those
days. Governmental practices in their infancy, an independence-minded
society, a lack of predictive technology for natural events, a lack of sanitation and health practices for response and relief, and the near-total use
of military forces in minor, yet ongoing conflicts only scratch the surface
of differences between then and now regarding emergency management.
A largely informal system was put into place around 18031 where
federal assistance could be obtained, quite literally, through special acts of
Congress only. This was to be used only as an absolute last resort, after all
other possible resources had been exhausted. In addition to the difficulty
of even obtaining such assistance, past studies have noted that, because the
system was so reactive and administered solely by the massive yet brand
new federal government, it was plagued by delays and complications in
actually delivering the money to the affected area. To make matters worse,
the funding was frequently designated by Congress only for specific purposes. While this may still remain the case in modern emergency management, there are at least mechanisms and industry standards in place
1

Kreps (1990).


8  •   DISASTER POLICY AND ITS PRACTICE IN THE UNITED STATES

today, such that federal funds can be apportioned with little confusion or
disagreement about how they are to be used, such as recovery funds being
used exclusively for long-term temporary housing. In the 1800s, no such
mechanisms existed.
However, overall, the government during the 19th century was not
concerned with matters of civil assistance; even in military conflicts, locals
who were not killed, captured, or forced to flee were expected to handle
the cleanup and move on. Of course, some separate assistance was available from “private, voluntary agencies,” such as the American Red Cross,
the Salvation Army, YMCA, convents, churches, immigrant brotherhoods,

and other social groups, but this was largely provided at the discretion of
the individual groups and certainly without any legal governance or cooperative management processes in place.

2.2 U.S. DISASTERS IN THE EARLY
20TH CENTURY
Inevitably, the United States did experience some major disasters during
this time period. Two of the most notable are the Galveston, TX, hurricane
of 1900 and the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927. As with all disasters,
cultural considerations and context are also critical for understanding the
actions of those responding. The unfortunate reality of both the Galveston
hurricane and the Mississippi Flood were that they took place in the southern United States, amidst culture and government that not only accepted,
but also actively practiced racism to a point of unthinkable cruelty as presented later in this chapter. These historic events must be viewed within
this regrettable cultural context to fully understand the actions of those
involved.
Believed by modern meteorologists to have been a Category 4 hurricane, the storm that hit Galveston in 1900 remains the deadliest natural
disaster in U.S. history. The island of Galveston was completely submerged
by storm surge, destroying any and all construction at the time and claiming at least 6,000 lives. On the 100th anniversary of the event, the Houston
Chronicle published a narrative of the days before, during, and after the
storm, which included numerous notable items from a policy perspective.2
First, the city of Galveston tried for three days to manage the carnage on
its own. Some residents of Houston and other nearby areas volunteered
www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/special/1900storm/644889.html(retrieved June
16, 2015).
2


Emergency Management in the United States: 1800–1969   •   9

their time, but by far, the removal of debris and especially the excessive
amount of corpses was done by African-Americans forced at gunpoint, a

tragic and regrettable indication of the prevailing cultural mindset of the
time. After the initial three-day period, Mayor Walter C. Jones “made an
appeal to the people of the United States...for immediate aid.” But, communication lines in and around Galveston had also been destroyed by the
storm. When a ship finally was able to dislodge itself from wreckage and
sail to Texas City, a telegram was immediately sent to Washington, D.C.,
to notify President McKinley that “Galveston is in ruins” and nearly 500
people were thought to be dead.3 McKinley’s response is not documented,
but numerous narrative sources indicate that most people in D.C. thought
Mayor Jones was exaggerating. Fortunately, the mayor’s earlier appeal to
the general population was taken more seriously and informal assistance
began to arrive. An online version of the Texas Almanac4 notes in detail
the donations received by Galveston from the American public and even
some international leaders, although none specifically from the Texas state
government or U.S. federal government. The almanac, among numerous
other sources, goes on to note that Galveston’s local government largely
took control of relief and reconstruction efforts, personally directing Clara
Barton and the American Red Cross in distribution of supplies, and later,
embarking on the construction of a massive seawall, which remains part
of the island today.
In today’s society, the reaction (or inaction) of the state and federal
governments might be viewed as a callous oversight, a shameful lack of
regard for responsibility or humanitarian concern. Given the current role
and mission statement of the Federal Emergency Management Agency
(FEMA) FEMA’s , there may be some truth to that view. However, any ill
feelings toward these governments are conspicuously absent from many
accounts of the hurricane. With a different era, came different expectations.
In the spring of 1927, disaster struck again. This time, it was a
slow-building flood of the Mississippi River caused by an unusually high
volume of rain. Rivers from California to Tennessee overran their banks,
and many areas recorded monthly precipitation totals in feet rather than

inches. With drainage funneling toward the Mississippi, it was only a matter of time before the levees and dams—whose quality of construction was
varied at best—began to fail along the entire length of the river, sometimes gushing at rates higher than Niagara Falls. Similar to Galveston,
Green, N.C. 1900. Story Of The Galveston Flood. Baltimore: R. H. Woodward
Company. p.126. Retrieved July 15, 2009.
4
/>3


10  •   DISASTER POLICY AND ITS PRACTICE IN THE UNITED STATES

African-Americans were unfortunately brought in at gunpoint to attempt
fortifications. While not officially as deadly as the Galveston hurricane,
the losses to property and livelihoods are difficult to overstate.
On April 22, 1927, a levee burst 12 miles upriver of Greenville,
­Mississippi. The entire town, formerly a prosperous farming community,
was covered in 10 feet of churning flood waters. Greenville was only one
of the many towns in trouble. A PBS American Experience timeline of
the event states that “for 60 miles to the east and 90 miles to the south” of
Greenville, people were left stranded on rooftops and in trees.5
Like Galveston, a local government committee was set up to direct
relief efforts; however, the socio-political climate in Mississippi created
numerous problems. Relief efforts were largely overseen by the wealthy,
white plantation owners who controlled the town and region, while the
majority of the flood victims were poor African-Americans. Boats were
arranged by one committee member to move African-American refugees to dry ground, but another committee member—unbeknownst to his
­colleague—limited the use of the boats to white women and children only.
The Red Cross similarly provided relief supplies, but African-Americans
were again ordered to act as labor for distributing supplies to white families first. The Flood Relief Committee further set up refugee camps on
a narrow strip of dry levee space for the black families who were denied
boat access, however, soon requested assistance from the National Guard,

who in turn, began robbing and assaulting camp residents. Once again,
while tragic, the racial elements of governmental response cannot be separated from a historical analysis of the events. It is likely that because the
Mississippi Flood predates the modern emergency management practice
of conducting after-action reviews, our only information on the events are
those that emphasize the most sensational or tragic aspects of the disaster. It is reasonable to assume that not every government entity or even
individual responded with cruelty or racism, yet these are the stories that
survive through historians to best illustrate the mindset of the time.
Clearly, expectations for federal involvement were still low compared to today’s standards. However, President Calvin Coolidge had
a new resource on hand in 1927: his trusted Secretary of Commerce,
Herbert Hoover. In an excellent and detailed popular history of the year
1927, author Bill Bryson describes not only Hoover’s involvement with
the Mississippi Flood, but much about the man behind the work as well.6
www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/timeline/flood/.
Bryson, B. 2013. One Summer: America, 1927. New York, NY: Doubleday. See
Chapter 3.
5
6