disaster zone podcast: Emergency Management's Role in Civil Defense

You have to go back to around 1989 to when state and local jurisdictions administered portions of the civil defense program that were within the scope of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). Those included the Civil Defense Shelter and Supplies along with the Radiological Instrument Program (I administered both of these for the State of Washington). As I recall, funding for both of these were eliminated around 1991. The beginning of the end of that program started with the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989.

Are we going back to a period of “civil defense” here in the United States? The President recently told the senior military commanders for the United States Armed Forces that the greatest risk can come from within our borders. What role should emergency management play?

However, in this podcast the guest proposes that the FEMA should play no role in civil defense and that elements of that program still remaining should be transferred to other organizations within the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). What do you think is appropriate?

Disaster Zone Podcast: Emergency Management's Role in Civil Defense

The profession of emergency management has been in flux since its inception.
Currently the Trump Administration is looking how to organize the Federal Emergency
Management Agency (FEMA) to fit with the President’s political and policy agendas.
Everything is perhaps up for grabs. In this podcast we look at one proposal to have the
Department of Homeland Security (DHS) take over all aspects of what we might call
“civil defense” to have those functions taken out of FEMA and aligned more directly
within other elements of DHS.

Michael Prasad is the executive director of the Center for Emergency Management
Intelligence Research (www.cemir.org). CEMIR (www.cemir.org) has its own Substack,
which can be subscribe to at https://thecemir.substack.com/ He leads research
projects and writes professionally on emergency management policies and
procedures, from a pracademic perspective. Prasad holds a Bachelor of Business
Administration degree in management information systems from Ohio University, and a
Master of Arts degree in emergency and disaster management from American Public
University.