An Examination of Emergency Management Planning, Procedures, and Analysis of the 9/11 Scenario

The tragedy of 9/11 was an ultimate challenge to New York City terms of planning and responding to a constantly changing emergency situation. This paper will discuss the basic historic details of the catastrophic 9/11, to include public administrators and their decisions made during the emergency. It will also review the contingency planning done by New York City prior to 9/11. Ultimately it will review decisions, solutions and problems of the emergency.

According to Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), there are many factors that will affect the direction of emergency management in the coming years. These can be classified as global challenges, global opportunities, national challenges, national opportunities, professional challenges, and professional opportunities. Global Challenges include some issues like global climate change, increasing population and population density, increasing resource scarcities, rising income inequality, and increasing risk aversion. Global Opportunities has to do with increased scientific understanding of the hazards and societal responses, as well as revolutionary technologies. National Challenges involves increasing urbanization and hazard exposure, interdependencies in infrastructure, continued emphasis on growth, rising costs of disaster recovery, increasing population diversity, terrorist threats, low priority of emergency management, legal liability, and intergovernmental tensions. Due to these factors that will affect the direction of emergency management in the coming years, there is need for us at emergency management division to adjust operational plans to meet these challenges and especially changes emanating from constant changes expected in technology and other threats we face.

Having these plans in place give the Disaster Recovery team the instructions they need when disaster strikes

The four phases of a disaster plan will consist of Preparedness Efforts, Mitigation Measures, Response Phase, and the Recovery Function. This is where I will describe each part in its own section of this essay.

Sixth the executive management team must define the procedures that all employees and essential vendors will use during emergency situations. Seventh, the employee training team must define and execute an awareness campaign that properly informs each employee of their role within the DRP/ECP plan and confirm that employee's understanding of their role. Last, the emergency management team’s members must maintain documentation of the DRP/ECP plan including updating when needed, changing the plan to meet organization changes, and recording of observations post plan execution.

September 11, 2001 is commonly thought of as the next major disaster in the United States. So I prefer to choose this real incident. The event that shook the world like a thunderstorm, thousands of people died in the terrorist attacks they did not resemble the catastrophic disasters previously discussed. Unlike all of the natural disasters previously detailed, the attacks in New York City and Washington, DC did not completely overwhelm the emergency response capabilities of entire regions. The attacks caused brief mass confusion and overwhelmed individual emergency response agencies but did not paralyze the entire emergency response network. The primary first responders were the Fire Department of New York (FDNY), the New York Police Department (NYPD) and the Port Authority Police Department (PAPD. While federal officials participated in rescue operations and helped provide security after the attacks, the immediate rescue efforts were orchestrated by local responders. The local response networks were overwhelmed and resources were strained, but there was no system-wide breakdown in organization or authority. Nonetheless, emergency responders encountered many of the same problems that responders experience during catastrophic disasters. Communication systems

The four phases of the emergency management cycle are Mitigation, Preparedness, Response, and Recovery. Mitigation is the process of reducing the occurrence, minimizing impact of the event, and preventing an event from occurring. Mitigation steps can happen before and after an event.

Editor’s Note: This Chapter is the continuation of an adaptation of a state plan for disaster preparation and response. In total, the original chapter comprises Chapters 1, 14, 16-18.

Perhaps the most recognized terrorist attack on the United States was the World Trade Center attacks of September 11, 2011. The horrific events that unfolded as a result of these attacks will never be forgotten as well as the lessons learned by first responders. Tens of thousands of people were involved in rescue, recovery and clean-up work following the 9/11 World Trade Center (WTC) terrorist attacks. The diverse group of people who responded to this disaster included traditional first responders such as police officers, firefighters and emergency medical technicians, along with non-traditional responders such as construction workers, operating engineers and other volunteers, most of whom had no prior training in

Emergency Management preparation involve planning, resources, and training that initialize, bolster, and fine tune operational capabilities before a hazard approaches. This is done by identifying what will be necessary to face a possible hazard and developing plans for delivering those resources when they would be needed. Being prepared necessitates a constant state of readiness and vigilance. Examples of preparedness include the posting of emergency contact numbers, conducting emergency drills, and posting and practicing evacuation

Additionally, the preparation phase covers all fundamentals of an incident response plan, reports interaction among basics, and increases to emergency response planning at some point in the life of an incident in order to develop the necessary trust relationships that will be fully exercised during the stress of a real crisis. According to Whitman (2012) “The Disaster Recovery Plan Similar in structure to the IR plan, the DR plan provides detailed guidance in the event of a disaster. It is organized by the type or nature of the disaster, and specifies recovery procedures during and after each type of disaster. It also provides details on the roles and responsibilities of the people involved in the disaster recovery effort, and identifies the personnel and agencies that must be notified. Just as the IR plan must be tested, so must the DR plan, using the same testing mechanisms.” (P. 231). Many of the same principles of incident response apply to disaster recovery such as fundamentals must be clearly established, roles and responsibilities must be visibly outlined, someone must initiate the alert schedule and notify key personnel, someone must have the responsibility of the documentation of the disaster and only if it is possible, attempts must be made to moderate the impact of the disaster on the operations of the organization.

PREPARDNESS: “Typical preparedness measures include recruiting personnel for the emergency services and for community volunteer groups, emergency planning, development of mutual aid agreements and memorandums of understanding, training for both response personnel and concerned citizens, threat based public education, budgeting for and acquiring vehicles and equipment, maintaining emergency supplies, construction of an emergency operations center, development of communications systems, and conducting disaster exercises to train personnel and test

The burden of emergency management has grown great deal in the last few decades. We have seen an increase in natural disasters, a new threat of terrorism on our front door and an increase in manmade disasters. All of these have tested emergency management in a number of cities and towns across the nation. It is not always disasters that present problems for emergency managers. We have to look beyond our traditional view of emergency management of helping us during times of disasters and view what issues they consider may affect their emergency response. Issues that emergency management see that are moving into the critical area are issues of urbanization and hazard exposure, the rising costs of disaster recovery, and low priority of emergency management.

The next measure in establishing an effective EOP is preparedness, preparedness is the continuous cycle of planning, organizing, training, equipping, exercising, evaluating, and taking corrective action. Training and exercising plans is the cornerstone of preparedness which focuses on readiness to respond to all-hazards incidents and emergencies (FEMA, n.d.). An example of preparedness in relation to a disaster would be evacuation plans implemented after the bombings of the World Trade Center in 1993. This type of training was instrumental in saving the lives of countless people during the terrorists’ attacks on 9/11.

Specific measures taken before disasters strike, to ensure effective response constitute preparation. This phase may include specific contingency planning, emergency exercises, training, installation and use of warning systems.