Disaster Management and the Surrounding Issues (Essay Sample)

Disaster Management and the Surrounding Issues
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Institution
Disaster Management and the Surrounding Issues
Disaster preparedness and the response is important in ensuring that the deprived members of the society are relieved from the effects of the disaster as soon as possible. This calls for the development of effective public policies that are based on research in the field of disaster. This paper is going to explore various factors in disaster management. This would include discussing the federal and conservative view on disaster management and indicate how natural disaster is a social construct. The paper will also explore disaster research and policy making and determine how blaming the victim of disaster may influence societal response. Finally, the paper will discuss the interface of homeland security and emergency management and illustrate the policy implications of the issues discussed in the paper.
Conservatives and Progressives view of Federal Role in Emergency
The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) is the federal agency responsible for responding to high magnitude emergency cases. Most of the emergency cases that FEMA intervenes include disasters such as Tornado, and Hurricane that the local governments cannot handle effectively. However, the issue about the role of FEMA has been controversial with conservatives and progressives having differing ideologies concerning how it should be funded. Conservatives advocates for the cutting of federal funding for FEMA and let the state and local governments for big disasters by themselves. According to conservatives, FEMA should only intervene to help the local governments. On the other hand, progressives advocate for the continuous funding of FEMA to enable it to continue responding to disasters (Sylves, 2014).
Continuous funding of FEMA would be advantageous because the magnitude of some of the disasters is too huge for the local governments to handle effectively. This would also allow national focus on the disasters response and management. However, response to the disaster by FEMA may be too slow because the process of deploying relief teams can be complex as it is being managed at national levels. Among the advantages of having the local government be funding themselves in the case of disasters is that some disasters might overpower them and be unable to respond to them effectively due to lack of enough funding (Greenberg, et al., 2014). The local governments in states that are prone to disasters can be disadvantaged. However, this can be advantageous in that local government can be able to respond to disasters faster than FEMA. As a practitioner, one should be aware of the magnitude of the disaster to determine the kind of response that is needed and how the information should be gathered.
Natural Disaster
According to the definition given by Buckle (2005), a natural disaster refers to “an instantaneous, rapid, or profound effect of the natural environments upon a social-economic system." He further indicates that such definitions are meant to provide operational and policy procedures for practitioners to follow. However, since disaster is a social construct, natural disaster should also be considered a social construct.The concept of social perspective affects how a given disaster is labeled human-made or natural disaster. This implies that the meaning of the term "natural disaster" may vary depending on the set of values, cultures as well as on the political and economic contexts. This is because some of the natural disasters may occur as a result of human activities on the environment (Buckle, 2005). However, due to the time distance between when such activities were done and when the disaster occurs, it becomes difficult to link the disaster to human activities.
Blaming of the Victim of Disaster and its Effect on the Society’s Response to Disaster
In some cases, the victims of a disaster can be blamed for its occurrence. The individuals or the society facing disaster are held responsible for their own fate (Barton, 2005). This is what referred as "blaming the victim. Victim blaming has a profound effect on how the society respond to a disaster because people may be reluctant to offer help to people who are believed to the cause of the disaster. The information about how a given society or individuals are responsible for their fate can be spread through media and thereby compromising the societal response to the disaster (Rodríguez, Quarantelli, & Dynes, 2007). Some of the factors that influence the extent of victim blame include the distribution and the nature of the deprivation. The blaming of the victim is least when the deprivation is widely spread than when it is confined to a small locality.
Policy Makers and Disaster Research
It is important to consider the findings of research on disaster before developing public policy on disaster management. However, the policymakers have not been adopting the findings and recommendations of research when developing public policy. Instead, the mobilize researchers after a disaster have happened to investigate how the damage can be fixed (Rodríguez, Quarantelli, & Dynes, 2007). For example, after the 9/11 attack, scientists were mobilized to the field to determine the type of response required (Alexander, 2005). If the policymakers have been considering the work of researchers when designing public policy on the disaster, it will become easier to manage and prevent disasters. The cost of disaster management would be reduced as, through good preventative measures, the destructive effect of some disasters can be avoided. The cost of fixing the destructions caused by disasters would be lower than that of fixing the damages caused by a disaster (Comfort, Waugh, & Cigler, 2012). Disaster research can help in the definition of the disaster which may then help to develop an appropriate response. The concept of the routine social problem helps in understanding disaster by differentiating what constitutes a disaster and what is not. This is because non-routine nature of the disaster is what makes it cause ‘shock' to the society (Smith, 2005).
Emergency Management and Homeland Security
Although there is a close relationship between emergency management and homeland security, the latter tends to provide guidance and funding for local governments and state, and it is more strategic while the other is operationally oriented and more local. However, the two shares most aspects as most professionals in emergency department also work homeland security (Kiltz, 2011). The homeland security is the parent to the emergency management because the administrator of federal emergency management is answerable to the secretary of homeland security (Oh, 2012).
Policy Implications of the Discussions
These discussions are important in determining some of the critical issues concerning policy formulation. By understanding the nature of the natural disaster, the policy makers can design policies that clearly provide distinct response criteria for different types of disasters. This would help in developing the appropriate response for a given type of disaster. The inclusion of the work of researchers in policy design would help in developing a policy that advocates for disaster prevention and thus re...