Planning for Disasters, National

Types of National Response Institutions

National disaster plans are a function of the way in which emergency response is organized at the national level. In synthesis, there are two end members of a broad spectrum of permutations: civil defense is a centralized, top-down system, in which command is vested in national government, which directs local operations; and civil protection is a decentralized, bottom-up system, in which the role of the national government is to provide support and harmonization for locally- and regionally-organized efforts. In practice, the distinction is not quite so simple. Even a fully decentralized system may be overridden by central government in the national interest, while a fully centralized system is unlikely to function without strong local and regional support. Nevertheless, over the past half century there has been a long-term trend toward collaboration.

The nature of the institutions that a country uses to manage its largest emergencies depends on several factors, including the form of the state (for example, federal republic, unitary state, island state, kingdom, devolved state); the nature of its legal system; and the role attributed to civil society organizations, particularly voluntary societies such as the national Red Cross or Red Crescent Society and other rescue and relief agencies. Under most circumstances, the U.S. government cannot override the interests of the states and local authorities; [Page 484]hence, it tends to concentrate on providing assistance. Such is the division of powers between states and the federal level that the U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and its umbrella organization, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), have had only limited success in encouraging states to prepare for disaster and harmonize their emergency plans.

A National Park Service helicopter hovers over the destruction of the Pentagon, where a hijacked American Airlines flight crashed on September 11, 2001. National emergency planning soon shifted to emphasize counterterrorism and centralized emergency responses

However, since March 2008, the United States has had a National Response Framework (NRF), which provides guidelines for homogenizing the response to disasters that involve states, communities, and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs).

...