Disaster Management & Emergency Planning

Short-term emergency response and long-term disaster planning are both essential for building resilient communities and a robust built environment. There are key differences, though, in how the two aspects are managed. And it can be tricky managing both aspects, often because of budget competition.

Intent

• Both emergency planning and disaster management are intended to help people respond to and recover from a disaster. Saving lives and mitigating property damage are the core goals of both practices, and neither should be considered more important than the other.

Emergency Planning

• Responding effectively to an emergency means being quick and assessing damages with a clear head. Oftentimes, snap decisions must be made to save lives and prevent structural failure. Training and scenario practice help emergency responders to act fast when a real catastrophe unfolds, and to avoid making mistakes caused by confusion and stress. Managing a major disaster as it happens is a difficult task, especially with saving lives being the primary focus.

Disaster Managment

• Long-term planning for possible disasters is often accomplished by reducing risks before a hazard manifests as a full scale disaster. One way in which emergency planning and risk reduction differ is the aspect of mitigation. Many disaster planning specialists would rather spend the bulk of a local or state budget on structural modifications to existing buildings and updates to building codes in order to make a built environment more resilient to damages caused by disasters.

Balance

• When considering emergency management and disaster services, there are many routes to success. Some of the soundest planning requires dialog between those handling the short-term response and the long-term planning facets, so that each knows the limitations of the other party, and there are fewer surprises to deal with during emergencies. For instance, if an emergency management department knows that disaster planners have used zoning laws to move housing away from one portion of a floodplain, they can concentrate resources in more at-risk areas.

Budgeting

• Deciding where money will be spent often causes the biggest schism between emergency managers and disaster planners. Disaster planners make the job of emergency managers easier when catastrophe strikes by eliminating certain hazards, but even the best plans can be exceeded and response teams are there to save lives during disasters. Despite the importance of both, budgeting constraints mean that not everyone gets the funds they want. But allocation of money generally follows the opinions of city councils, county supervisors and budget offices, rather than recommendations of emergency managers or disaster service specialists. If a city has a long-term plan for development and budgeting, departments can better deal with financial constraints by predicting what's coming down the line.