Emergency Support Functions

Concept and Evolution

The emergency support function concept was developed in response to the need to coordinate complex response activities by multiple federal agencies responding to earthquakes in California. As part of its earthquake planning responsibilities, Region IX of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) conceived the idea of identifying the federal resources and services most likely to be needed following an earthquake and grouping them into functional categories. Each of these functional categories was assigned to a primary federal agency that had responsibility for developing plans to implement the function and for coordinating field activities related to the function during disasters. Other agencies that could contribute resources were identified as support agencies and agreed to provide planning assistance to the primary agency and to accept the primary agency's coordination role in implementation. This concept was incorporated into the National Plan for Federal Response to a Catastrophic Earthquake in 1985.

Following passage of the Stafford Act in 1988, the director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency was authorized to develop a plan to coordinate all federal response to disasters. The initial product of this planning effort was the Natural Disaster Response Plan in 1989, followed by the Federal Response Plan in April 1992. Both plans incorporated the emergency support function concept, solidifying its role as the principal federal response coordination mechanism.

The Federal Response Plan and the emergency support function concept were implemented almost immediately in Hurricane Andrew in Florida in August 1992 and in Hurricane Iniki in Hawaii in September 1992. Although the response to Hurricane Andrew was considered inadequate, the after-action report by the National Academy of Public Administration noted that the Federal Response Plan was an important step in coordinating federal disaster relief. The response to Hurricane Iniki went smoother as the federal staff adapted a number of mechanisms from the Incident Command System to coordinate activities among the emergency support functions.

With the formation of the Department of Homeland Security following the terrorist attacks in 2001, senior officials determined that the Federal Response Plan needed to be revised. The result was the National Response Plan issued in 2002. The new plan was not well received because of limited input from state and local governments during its development and was revised in 2006 to address problems identified during the response to Hurricane Katrina in 2005. The National Response Plan was quickly superseded by the National Response Framework, issued in 2008. Although there were changes made to the number and composition of the emergency support functions, each of these plans retained the emergency support function concept as the principal coordinating mechanism for federal response.

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