Emergency Preparedness and Management in Florida

Disaster Preparedness and Emergency Response for Natural Disasters or Terrorists Attacks in Florida

Emergency management has been described regarding the phases by using words such as prepare. Mitigate, respond and recover. For this paper, we are going to examine the underlying concepts, variation, limitations, and implications of emergency management phases. Moreover, we are going to look at the various preparedness and response strategies applied by the State of Florida when dealing with natural disasters and terrorist attacks among others. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to show the preparedness and response put in place for these crises for both researchers and practitioners. The paper will also try to give definitions and descriptions of two components, preparedness and response, of emergency management, the temporal versus functional distinctions. Moreover, it is important to understand the interrelationships and responsibilities for each of the phases (mitigation, preparedness, response, and recovery) and the diversity of research perspectives concerning new terms used such as sustainability, disaster resistance, business continuity, resilience, and risk management among others. The confusion that arose with approaching all hazards to emergency management as adequate for homeland security hence we are going to give contextual definitions.

Introduction

The capacity to predict precisely when and where the next terrorist attack and natural disaster will strike is limited because it is constrained naturally by the limits of physical and natural science hence, people only trade in probabilities. We also trade in probabilities when dealing with other risks, but some other educated guesses that improve predictability can be made. Each year, from June 1 to December 1 is when hurricane season is and strikes the U.S. East and Gulf coasts including Florida State. Worldwide, the natural disaster trends continue to grow due to increasing in human populations into vulnerable areas, and urbanization has created and exacerbated vulnerability. Moreover, the September 11 attacks made the threat of terrorism to become visible and served as a major event that generated unprecedented terrorism interests as a problem facing U.S. national borders. Therefore, this significantly changed the mass perception of the public of terrorism risks.

However, the State of Florida has cooperated with municipal representatives with established and maintained comprehensive programs that prepare them for terrorist attacks. Therefore, the plans help them manage the impacts of such events and enhance the assessment of the state's vulnerabilities, training and planning to handle such events. The response action has two phases: the actions intended to prevent or end the act of terrorism, crisis management; and those that deal with the impacts of the event, consequence management. Mass casualty attacks and disasters have generated a domestic political pressure of the most advanced industrialized nation in the globe to respond to natural disaster. President Bush created the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) due to political pressure and six years after its birth for many critics, it has remained as a bureaucratic morass and a problem. Such are the problems that have significantly influenced FEMA and therefore, this paper looks at the various preparedness and response measures applied by the state of Florida for natural disasters and terrorist attacks among other events (Edwards & Steinhausler, 2007). However, we shall also look at the geographical location of Florida to give the reader a view of how the natural disasters become prevalent in such states.

Geographical location of Florida

Florida is a constituent state of the United States of America and on March 3, 1845, it was admitted as the 27th state. Tallahassee is the capital of Florida. Its location in the northwestern panhandle earned it the nickname Sunshine State. After Texas, Florida is considered the second most populous Southern state hence, is the most populous state of the Southern states with over 20,270, 000 people in 2015. The Governor of the state is a Republican by the name Rick Scott. Florida has enjoyed a long and colorful development due to its geographic location that has helped it explain the states are striking new character. For the greater part of Florida, it lays on a peninsula protruding southeastward from North American continent hence separates the Atlantic Ocean from the Gulf of Mexico waters and points towards Cuba and the Caribbean Sea beyond. Along Florida's northern boundary, it shares a land border with Georgia and Alabama states and the nearest foreign territory is Bimini island in the Bahamas that is located 50 miles east of the state's southern tip. The marine shoreline of Florida totals to more than 8,400 miles, and this includes some 5,100 miles of the gulf. As such, it is home to 45 terrestrial ecosystems ranging from small islands of subtropical hammocks and Rocklands to vast dry prairies, scrubs, sandhills, floodplain forests, and Flatwoods. By having little change in elevation by a difference of few feet on its peninsula yields major landscape variations and within Flatwoods, for example, nearly slight elevation drops creates a mosaic of depression marshes, wet prairies, and swamps. For the Panhandle, the topographical changes are more dramatic where high bluffs and steep ravine systems flank the Apalachicola River and its tributaries.

Having, a coastline of 1200 miles, the state includes seagrass beds, estuaries, coral reefs, and swamps plus thousands of rivers, inland freshwater, springs, and streams that support numerous aquatic communities. The state's current and historic coastlines continue to influence its geology. Over thousands of years, the rising and receding seas have deposited vast quantities of limestone, and this has resulted in an abundance of karst features such as caves, sinkholes, limestone outcrops, depressions, and more than 300 large artesian springs. In the central peninsula, a series of sand ridges that once were islands surrounded by vast seas, animals, and isolating plants evolved into unique species. Moreover, the state's peninsular geography spans subtropical zones and temperature, and combined with excellent climate and geology has contributed to the diversity of habitat and an incredible array of species. Such a description of Florida shows the geography categories found in the state; that is general categories such as corridors, watersheds, and ecoregions that help conserve planning and priority setting (LandScope America, 2016).

For watersheds in Florida, they appear to be complicated by the presence of drainage systems that are disjointed and are evident in the northern parts of the state that have karst topography, geologic sponge. The water found in the watershed can flow into a sinkhole and flows underground before it emerges elsewhere in spring. The estimated number of springs found in Florida is 700 freshwater springs, and the largest is located near the capital Tallahassee known as the Wakulla Springs. It is among the largest freshwater springs globally that discharge over 400,000 gallons of water per minute (LandScope America, 2016).

The ecological corridors found in Florida serve the purpose of dispersal pathways, exchange, and migration of genes that are necessary for maintaining viable populations of animals and plants. Moreover, the corridors also facilitate the processes of the ecosystems such as the hydrological regimes and natural fires. Songbirds enjoy Florida's corridor when global migration occurs, and this helps in linking breeding sites in North America with the wintering areas in South and Central America, plus the Caribbean (LandScope America, 2016).

Ecoregions have been used as frameworks that assess the distribution and species status and ecosystems that make biological sense as compared to using politically derived lines like national boundaries, state, or county. They also provide an ecological basis for state partitioning into subunits for purposes of conservation planning. From the Nature Conservancy, Florida has portions of five ecoregions such as the East Gulf Coastal Plain, South Atlantic Coastal Plain Ecoregion, and Florida Peninsula among others (LandScope America, 2016).

Disaster preparedness and emergency response to natural disasters or terrorist attacks

In 1960, the west coast of Florida was hit by Hurricane Donna, and this led to President Kennedy creating the Office of Emergency Preparedness in 1961 that was entitled to deal with natural disasters. Subsequent calamities tested the office's activities of executive preparedness that included an earthquake. In 1992, Florida was again slammed by Hurricane Andrew and during this time, the Federal and State emergency systems were not equipped to handle a disaster of this magnitude. Hurricane Andrew caused close to $40 billion damages; 28,000 homes were destroyed, and 100,000 homes were severely damaged. In the same disaster, 250,000 people were left homeless, and 80,000 local businesses were damaged, killing 61 people. Electricity knocked out of 1.5 million inhabitants, and this disrupted phone services to people close to 150,000. During this time, FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency) was nowhere to be found though they deployed a small task force to the region. Nonetheless, the situation overwhelmed the local and state governments, which resulted in delayed relief efforts due to the nonresponse of the agency (Adamski, Kline & Tyrrell, 2006, p. 8). Therefore, the systems failed on the agency, and since the telephone lines were all down, it became difficult to communicate the needs of the people to the state and federal officials.

From an editorial by the Elders Affairs (2013), the Secretary asserts that living in a coastal state means that they are faced with certain risks for natural disasters and other emergencies, and hence, they need to be prepared. As such, Florida State has an emergency plan in place because the different disaster types can force people to evacuate their homes. Therefore, proper and timely evacuation needs to create a difference between life and death for the people of Florida. Florida laws state that individuals with special needs are eligible for evacuation assistance if a need arises. As such, the locals need to register with local emergency management agencies before the strike of a disaster (Haddow & Bullock, 2005).

Mitigation

In the 19th century, mitigation has been seen as an essential stage when it comes to natural disasters and terrorist attacks as it decreases the time taken to rebuild and recover from the disasters. For Floridians, mitigation has allowed individuals and communities to minimize the threat and help prevent serious damages in future. The mitigation stage has helped the affected people to rebuild more quickly. Advisors from FEMA explain to the people the benefits associated with home strengthening through proper strapping and anchorage. Moreover, it is essential for Floridians to understand how to build safe rooms in their homes by following the stipulated standards that qualify a room to be safe. Therefore, the mitigation stage is all about people "Getting a Plan" and or rebuilding after disasters.

This stage entails the following points: Floridians need to get informed about the hazards and emergencies that may affect individuals and their family thereby, developing an emergency plan for their loved ones. Secondly, they will need to collect and assemble disaster supplies kits and ensure they learn where to seek shelter from all the types of hazards. Moreover, they need to practice and maintain their plans, clean up flood-damaged homes that have been affected by mildew and mold. Thirdly, they should prepare for disasters for people with special needs and disabilities and children faced with disasters should be helped to cope. Lastly, saving lives is important especially when tornadoes strike. Florida always issues an emergency alert weather on radio and other media stations when the area is served with threatening weather reports. Moreover, during the broadcast, FEMA specialists ensure that the program has no frequency interference to help the locals assert that gravity of the weather. During this stage, people will be given fact sheets, pamphlets, and brochures and a program demonstration will be provided to show how an approved weather radio issued by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) is programmed.

Florida has been threatened by flooding, hurricanes, wildfires, and tornadoes and the potential risks of these impacts to the State are mitigated to large degrees by projects that have been developed and designed to strengthen businesses, homes, and the infrastructure. The mitigation activities implemented are simple and relatively inexpensive ways for the community to be more4 resistant to these types of events. For business and home mitigation techniques, they include the installation of hurricane shutters or impact-resistant glass to windows, raising both home and business infrastructure to above flood level, using impact-resistant roof coverings and the creation of defensible space around the home or business by ensuring that all debris is cleared. The projects geared to providing the community with mitigation activities include flood proofing of the roads, drainage and wastewater management, utilities and public facilities and wind retrofitting for critical structures.

Preparedness

Preparedness in emergency management is defined as a state of readiness to respond to the crisis, disaster and other types of emergencies and is built through planning, exercising, and training. FEMA became the start of a modern discipline of emergency management, and preparedness has continued to advance its role significantly as building blocks of emergency management (Roberts, 2006). As such, all organizations, public, private, and government sectors have become susceptible to the consequences of a disaster must adopt preparedness strategies. Preparedness has been seen to focus on getting essential government services such as emergency services and utility function at pre-disaster levels and assist businesses to reopen quickly to the public members. Having such preparedness key helps minimize required time for populations affected to return to pre-disaster life.

In preparations for hurricanes, the state ensures that the basic steps of preparation are in place for the disaster watches and warnings. It is important for people to learn about their community's emergency plans, evacuation roues, warning signals, and locations of emergency shelters. Secondly, identification of potential home hazards is important because it gives them knowledge of how to protect or secure their people before the strike of the hurricane. Thirdly, people are advised to buy fire extinguishers and ensure that family members are aware of how it operates. Next, locating and securing important papers like licenses, insurance policies and wills is vital and posting emergency phone numbers at every phone is vital. Additionally, they need to prepare to evacuate after the National Weather Service issues a hurricane watch people will need to take the required steps to evacuate the elderly people to safety (Elder Affairs, 2013).

Florida Health Care Association (FHCA) is a national leader when it comes to strengthening emergency preparedness for long-term care community, and the initiatives include developing comprehensive tools and resources that will help nursing homes and assisted living facility staff to create plans for emergency preparedness, organizing training activities for long-term care and residential facilities. Moreover, they bring together key stakeholders that will address the issues that influence resident's ability to have the same access to long-term services care when faced with emergencies. Under FHCA (2012), the council that deals with emergency preparedness comprises of volunteer FCHA members from across Florida State, who give support to the Association's emergency preparedness initiatives. Therefore, they are available to mobilize the efforts that provide support to local nursing homes when struck by natural disasters. The project has partners that encompass John A. Hartford Foundation, the Department of Health and the University of South Florida.

According to emergency managers, terrorism is a concern that has long been looked at even before the attacks on World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Terrorism threat has been addressed by emergency managers as an internal and not a state or local problem (Roberts, 2006). However, recent debates have escalated the war on terror as a disaster that needs people to be prepared and respond to them in ways that are going to help them reduce the number of people losing their lives and other body parts. The preparedness activities are necessary to the extent where measures of mitigation have or cannot, prevent the occurrence of disasters. In this phase, government, individuals, and organizations develop plans that save lives and minimize the damage of disasters (Terrorism Annex, 2010). For example, the compilation of state resource inventories and even installing warning systems has helped Florida to be prepared. The measure of preparedness seeks to enhance operations of disaster response such as stockpiling medical supplies and vital food.

For Hurricane Katrina, minimal damage was caused, but every weather station reported about the crisis. The basics when it comes to preparedness includes listing each person, their supplies, and equipment, identifying any health conditions or disability-related needs, and making copies of insurance, financial and medical records. Moreover, they should ensure that the children know and understand the emergency plan. Later, effective steps of evacuation are put in place to determine where people will go during an evacuation process among other issues. The project also entails maintaining a supplies and equipment registry that will ensure that they do not lack any provisions during the period they will be in before recovery process is established or started. Pets are also considered and included during the preparedness process and hence, the owner needs to state clearly the number of pets he owns to help the agency cater for their needs when it comes to evacuating people (McConnell & Drennan, 2006).

Many countries are preparing for the aftermath of events such as natural disasters and terrorist attack and societies have not managed to find the correct level of emergency preparedness. The much-needed high levels of emergency preparedness are costly, and countries have found it difficult to maintain over extended periods for reasons such as financial constraints and political unwillingness to invest in such countermeasures due to the unknown probability of the events. The investments are seen to compete with the acknowledged needs for investing in strengthening the emergency preparedness of society in cases where large natural disasters like hurricanes, floods, earthquakes, or even tsunamis. Many aspects of preparation have landed themselves to all hazard approaches where planning, exercising, and training benefits the first responders' capabilities across catastrophic disasters (McConnell & Drennan, 2006). As such development of individual residents' and community emergency response capabilities, Incident Command System, and an Emergency Operations Center at neighborhood level have resulted in saving lives in a disaster scenario. Ideally, the level of emergency preparedness is based on scientifically, realistic derived risk assessment plans for threats arising from terrorism versus those due to natural disasters (Durmaz, 2007).

Response

Disaster responses enable local police, emergency medical, and fire personnel are to respond to disaster events like earthquake, flood, and hurricane. As such, the responders are given the task of rescuing and attending to injured people, secure and police the disaster, suppress fires and begin the process of restoring order in the society or community. It is the responsibility of the local emergency management personnel and government officials present in the community to support the response teams. For disaster events that are extreme, it becomes the duty of the Mayor or County Executive to turn to the Governor and State Government for assistance. The Governor will then turn to the State's emergency management agency and even the State National Guard among other State resources to provide the required assistance to stricken communities (McConnell & Drennan, 2006). The first responders to terrorist events are county and or municipal emergency personnel and the leaders of these units implement control and command of the crisis and consequence operations of management through unified command structures established near or at the scene (Terrorism Annex, 2010).

In the 19th and early 20th century, disaster response was being handled by the federal government based on case-by-case having no simply defined systems. Therefore, for the vast majority if incidents, they were being controlled by state and local authorities which are independent of federal involvement. National disaster management was then taken up by the military personnel who gave central coordination and were a source of the major workforce. In 1972, United States declared Florida and other states disaster zones.

Two days after the storm, the landfall people were still stranded without shelter, food, and other necessities. However, Hurricane Andrew made the nation focus on FEMA and the media also followed the crisis and hence, Americans across the country witnessed FEMA's failure to respond. As such, this made people doubt the efficacy of FEMA as national emergency response agency, and this lack of action prompted heavy criticism from people. President George W. Bush managed to intervene and circumvented FEMA and the then dispatching Secretary of Transportation Andrew Card to over the operation response and sent the military. Critics asserted that the delay was due to bureaucracy as the agency's biggest problem and a misdirected mission of the organization. In the first instance, FEMA continued to spend half its budget on preparation against WWII and nuclear attack. Secondly, the mission of the agency concerning response to the natural disaster was muddled. For FEMA, they saw their sole responsibility as being to distribute federal loans and grants that would help rebuild the areas after disaster struck, taking a reactionary rather than the role of mitigating. Therefore, established systems and processes of the agency failed in response to the natural disaster in Florida and through this, a need arose to apply all resources to response efforts by using national security assets (Adamski, Kline & Tyrrell, 2006).

Floods in Florida come in two ways storm surge and tide and before the flood, the elderly people are advised to review their emergency plan, know whether they are in a flood zone, and lastly, they should be able to locate their supply kit and ready to take action. When flash-flood watch is issued, then they need to refer to their emergency plan's evacuation steps, monitor events by television, radio or the internet, be prepared to evacuate immediately, if the need arises and they are also advised not to walk or drive through standing water. The types of shelters available are for the general population and one for the special needs people. The general population shelters have stock of basic needs such as food and water and offer people a temporary place to sleep during the emergency. Moreover, basic first aid is given in this shelter, but not medical care, and people bring with them supplies that include clothing, bed linens, hygiene items, blankets, toiletries, personal medications, and hygiene items.

The resources available in these shelters vary and therefore, those with medical conditions that require daily assistance will need to pre-register for special needs shelter. On the other hand, special needs shelters are those that offer daily medical assistance such as routine nursing care, oxygen therapy, help with medication, and electricity for life-supporting medical equipment among others. For this shelter, medical care and supervision are provided. They guarantee a safe location for the basic medical care accorded to individuals until the emergency passes. Therefore, people need to carry with them their medical supplies and current medications and if one has a caregiver hey are encouraged to accompany their patients. Service animals are also encouraged to come to the individual (Roberts, 2006).

USA is a member of NATO and thus, is increasingly protected against all risks whether natural or fabricated. Since every society has finite resources that help it address risk reduction strategies from threats, it is then easy for states to minimize the terror event but not reducing it to zero. Emergency planners have the sole function to minimize the number of victims; the damage to infrastructure needs minimization, and it influences the environment. The limited experience with national governments in regaining control of the aftermath of large-scale catastrophes is a challenge for state governments. For the case of Florida, resources and programs made available have been minimized and in other cases, they have been eliminated. This has posed as a problem to the state because many lives have been lost in the occurrence of natural disasters. Technology has also been developed to help in curbing the occurrence of terrorist activities, and they have collaborated with other social organizations that promote the well-being of people in the society. The inability of FEMA to address the major natural disasters has made the federal government provide adequate support to state and local emergency managers to respond to the large disasters happening along the coastlines of Florida.

Recovery

Terrorism attack is an event that has seen many people lose they live because of the lack of preparedness measures. Having these measures put in place has helped in saving the lives of many people and therefore, people have been advised on the measures they need to take to reduce the chances of such attacks from happening. It is important for people to know each other and understand the nature of their work to help them determine their safety in such environments. Moreover, scrutiny and security checkpoints have also been placed in places such as restaurants, hotels, schools, health care institutions and other social gatherings prone to attack by terrorists (Durmaz, 2007). The extensive measures that have been placed by the State of Florida concerning terrorist attacks include the introduction of perceptive technology equipment that scrutinizes the documents of people especially those entering the state. Such measures have reduced the number of people impersonating others and hence, have ensured that all databases are updated with current information of visitors and residents of Florida (McConnell & Drennan, 2006).