EDMG 220 APUS Smith Hill Emergency Management Practices Response Discussion

In need of a 125 response/discussion to EACH of the following forum posts. There are (2) different Forum posts. Agreement/disagreement/and/or continuing the discussion. The two interactive posts should each be substantial, relevant, and engaging. Replies to classmates should include direct questions. In-text citations and references may be in APA format. Original forums discussion/topic post is as follows: (Use/Cite references to support your ideas)

Effective Emergency Management

Using the concepts you have learned thus far, discuss the emergency management planning of Smith Hill at the end of Chapter 3 in your Fundamentals of Emergency Management text. What are the problems with the Smith Hill Emergency Management organization? How can emergency planning be improved in this town?

Please start a new thread when creating your initial post and write any responses to others within their existing discussion threads.

To receive full credit, be sure to respond to at least two of your classmates’ postings. Choose classmates who do not have any responses. If all classmates have at least one response, then you may respond to any two.

FORUM POST 1

Good morning class,

The initial problems I see with Smith Hill is the lack ofleadership as well as responsibility. I can almost tell that when emergencymanagement practices became mandated within the city, no leaders or officialswanted to be bothered by creating the EOP’s, creating a funding plan, or layingout the foundation for a constructive EM team. I see this type of attitude alot within the military as well. An extra step is added into an existingprocess and people always throw out the good old “we’ve been doing it likethis forever” mindset. A large issue with Smith Hill has to do with thelack of implementation. The city officials just signed letters of appointmentto prove on paper that they had an emergency management team. When in reality,there were barely any funds allocated, no planning or exercises completed andno inter-organizational relationships established. People are resistant tochange. An experienced emergency manager needs to be introduced to the team,set expectations and establish EOP’s that people can carry out effectively. Tobe realistic, not every town is going to have enough resources to have theirown independent management team and some officials may be pulling these ascollateral duties. With an experienced emergency manager spending some timewith the officials and assisting in the layout of an effective emergencymanagement plan, resulting in ultimately handing the responsibility back to thelocal EM team, the town can be better off than it is now. I enjoyed ourreading this week and hope everyone is doing well!

FORUM POST 2

This week we learned basics structure and emergencymanagement planning for emergencies, disasters and catastrophes.

In this week forum, I will discuss the planning of theSmith Hill Emergency and identify problems of the Management Organization, aswell as how can emergency planning better improve the town.

First let me help outline the events of the Smith Hillincident. The town in 1993 had a population of less than 10,000. Being arelatively small City it’s revenue generated via taxes was low. With all goodand well throughout emergency preparedness plans, adequate funding is anecessity. With the tight budget of the city emergency preparedness was not apriority of elected officials. The emergency planning of the city was run bythe police department and followed FEMA guidelines.

Although the planning started off in the right directionit basically stopped in the first stages of emergency planning. It was not wellthought out and in better terms can be described as unprofessional. There planshad not been updated for years, they were hand drawn and roles andresponsibilities were not clearly assigned and explained if something were tohappen.

Amongst the biggest problems were the lack of personnelavailable and members being tasked with too many responsibilities and positionsin the emergency plan.

We learned in this last week the different levels that anemergency can be run by. The three being local, state, and federal. During theSmith Hill emergency, there was a lack of pre-determined trigger points andmutual aid agreements. The city officials just expected to borrow neighboringjurisdictions if something happened.

For a city to have an effective emergency plan it is vitalthat all of the stakeholders work together. The stakeholder of a typical cityin America are, police, EMS, and public works. For emergency planning toimprove in this town the officials need to direct more of their budget towardemergency planning. Work better with neighboring agencies and develop mutualaid plans as well as work establish an emergency operations committee to leadthe planning process for a detailed emergency plan and organization chart thathas clear designated roles and command structure.