Military Partnerships
The National Response Framework (NRF) "provides context for how the whole community works together and how response efforts relate to other parts of national preparedness" (FEMA, 2014). The NRF notes that normally, the Department of Defense has a critical role to play in national defense, and therefore its resources are only committed to disaster relief at the discretion of the President, or on approval of the Secretary of Defense.
According to the NRF, the National Guard contributes in a number of ways to disaster response: emergency medical response, communications, logistics, search & rescue, civil engineering, decontamination and response to chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear attacks (FEMA, 2014). The governor has the ability to activate the National Guard as a means of supporting state activities, and the state adjutant general "may assign members of the Guard to assist with state, regional, and Federal civil support plans."
Under normal circumstances, the National Guard are under the control of the governor, but if the President calls in the National Guard under Title 10, in case of invasion by a foreign nation, then the DoD will assume full control of the National Guard (FEMA, 2014).
The National Guard is therefore called out in any number of different situations. They are not typically called out first, as there are...
The National Guard may be called out first if there is an invasion, but simultaneous with other branches of the armed forces. The National Guard would usually only be called out if there is a serious disaster that the local authorities and charitable groups cannot handle.
For most types of disasters, the armed forces would not necessarily be called upon. The National Guard plays this role, and is one of the first bodies that will be brought into duty, usually by the governor (Gambino, 2014). The Army can be called upon for disaster relief in foreign countries, for example in Haiti following the earthquake there (Southcom, 2014). There have been similar efforts in Japan after the tsunami and the Philippines after Typhoon Haiyan hit that country (Tritten, 2013).
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The research does not turn up much involvement in domestic disaster relief other than from the National Guard. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers does make contributions, especially with respect to key infrastructure projects, where it contributes repair, security and emergency infrastructure services (FEMA, 2014). But otherwise the Army is not used much for disaster relief, and this is not its primary purpose (Schrader, 1992). Resources deployed in disaster relief only to the extent that those resources are not needed in the execution…
