FACT SHEET: Obama Administration Announces New Efforts to Increase National Preparedness by...

I am a certified Emergency Manager and act as a volunteer emergency management coordinator back up for four Counties in Michigan. The problem with this proposal and almost all Federal Programs for Emergency Management is that they come up with a lot of "gee whiz neato" classes that talk about how to talk to each other.

We need a common language and terminology, which we have. We need to know who are the key players (government, NGO, and private) in our region, surrounding regions, the state, and federal government, that have assets to bear, which we have. That is all that s really needed, talk to each other. There is an entire industry that provides "training" of questionable value so we can get CEU's and get our ticket punched. Most of this is because the Feds don't want to look like they didn't do something.

We need to exercise our Emergency Management Muscles. Almost every Emergency preparedness exercise focuses on the actions of the first responders in the first few hours THEY KNOW WHAT TO DO. They "ride to the sound of the guns". They train weekly and carry out their tasks FOR REAL frequently. Where Emergency Management fails is in the efforts to rebuild the community after the smoke has cleared and the bleeding is done. Virtually no one creates training exercises for the actions that aren't as "sexy". The ones that need to take place weeks, months and years after the bad thing is "over". This is where ad hoc teams of local, county, and state emergency management teams need to go to on-going disaster sites and help where real disasters and real red tape exist.

Mr. Obama is a lame duck President. After tomorrow we (maybe?) will have a new President Elect. Any initiatives that are attempted will not meet with much success. Look what happened when he tried to appoint a Supreme Court Justice in March of this year. So regardless of whether it is a good idea or a bad idea, it is a DOA idea.