Emergency Management Agency Disaster Assistance: Fill & Download for Free

The Federal Emergency Management Agency exists to assist people who have been displaced by terrorism or natural disasters. Anybody who tells you otherwise is a liar.The United States only ever declares martial law in regions where civil administration has broken down and the military has to supply the missing authority. It is not used to establish concentration camps.Stop being so paranoid, and don’t read the works of morons.

Federal law gives latitude for the President to direct such functions through any applicable government agency and/or to establish separate task forces. The natural Federal agency for coordinating efforts during an emergency is the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and its authorities for doing such work are defined in the Stafford Act.[1] Within that document it does provide limits that require coordination with other entities such as the State Department (if other countries are involved) and DoD.The idea that the Federal government does not have a role here, is uninformed. Federal law explicitly provides such a role:42 U.S. Code § 5170b.Essential assistance(a) In general Federal agencies may on the direction of the President, provide assistance essential to meeting immediate threats to life and property resulting from a major disaster, as follows:(1) Federal resources, generallyUtilizing, lending, or donating to State and local governments Federal equipment, supplies, facilities, personnel, and other resources, other than the extension of credit, for use or distribution by such governments in accordance with the purposes of this chapter.(2) Medicine, food, and other consumablesDistributing or rendering through State and local governments, the American National Red Cross, the Salvation Army, the Mennonite Disaster Service, and other relief and disaster assistance organizations medicine durable medical equipment, food, and other consumable supplies, and other services and assistance to disaster victims.Footnotes[1] https://www.fema.gov/media-library-data/1582133514823-be4368438bd042e3b60f5cec6b377d17/Stafford_June_2019_508.pdf

At the beginning of the Stafford Act, is the following text:“The Congress hereby finds and declares that because disasters often cause loss of life, human suffering, loss of income, and property loss and damage; and because disasters often disrupt the normal functioning of governments and communities, and adversely affect individuals and families with great severity; special measures, designed to assist the efforts of the affected States in expediting the rendering of aid, assistance, and emergency services, and the reconstruction and rehabilitation of devastated areas, are necessary.”It then defines the term emergency as:“Emergency means any occasion or instance for which, in the determination of the President, Federal assistance is needed to supplement State and local efforts and capabilities to save lives and to protect property and public health and safety, or to lessen or avert the threat of a catastrophe in any part of the United States.”The Stafford Act then, over 181 pages, describes how the President can use the many resources available to the federal government to provide that assistance. It also includes a list of other federal laws that define the role of the federal government in disasters and emergencies. For example:42 U.S. Code § 5170b.Essential assistance(a) In general Federal agencies may on the direction of the President, provide assistance essential to meeting immediate threats to life and property resulting from a major disaster, as follows:(1) Federal resources, generallyUtilizing, lending, or donating to State and local governments Federal equipment, supplies, facilities, personnel, and other resources, other than the extension of credit, for use or distribution by such governments in accordance with the purposes of this chapter.(2) Medicine, food, and other consumablesDistributing or rendering through State and local governments, the American National Red Cross, the Salvation Army, the Mennonite Disaster Service, and other relief and disaster assistance organizations medicine durable medical equipment, food, and other consumable supplies, and other services and assistance to disaster victims.There is, without doubt, a role for the federal government in assisting with emergencies and disasters and the law clearly states that the President is responsible for leading that effort. As head of the Executive Branch, the President is responsible for the operations of bodies like FEMA (The Federal Emergency Management Agency), Homeland Security, and the Department of Health and Human Services, which includes agencies such as the CDC (Center for Disease Control).There is a reason the country is called the United States of America and not just the States of America. There is a reason there is a federal government and not just 50 state governments. There are challenges and problems that are too large for any state to handle by themselves and there are things that are much better accomplished when the efforts are coordinated instead of individually handled by the states.Supply CoordinationWe have seen many examples of that in 2020. We saw states competing against each other for Personal Protective Equipment (PPE), medical equipment such as ventilators, and medical supplies such as testing kits. This competition allowed businesses and individuals to hoard equipment and engage in price gouging that resulted in suffering across the states. It is senseless that what was clearly a national need wasn’t coordinated at the national level. The Stafford Act explicitly says that the President can use agencies like FEMA and the State Department (for negotiating with international suppliers) to coordinate and facilitate supplies needed to attend to the disaster.What did this President do? He went to Jared(TM).MessagingAny leader of an organization will tell you that consistent messaging is key to accomplishing an objective. Our news is national. We cannot achieve consistent messaging when 50 different states are individually providing that message. We cannot achieve consistency messaging when different federal agencies are communicating different messages. We cannot achieve consistent messaging when the President contradicts his own cabinet members and agency heads. We cannot achieve consistent messaging when the President contradicts the medical and scientific experts. We cannot achieve consistent messaging when the President repeatedly contradicts his own messaging.The President is the “Communicator in Chief”. There is a reason the office holder is called “the president”. It is because it is their job to preside. The person who presides is responsible for keeping the group on task, for keeping their eyes on the objectives, for ensuring communication is open and unfettered. The person who presides is responsible for speaking for the group.America needed one voice to tell the people what was happening, what the plan was to deal with it, and what the people needed to do to support that objective.Possibly the most ridiculous thing in the history of the world is that the wearing of masks to reduce infection became a political thing. Wearing masks to reduce infection is basic medical science. We have known about it for more than a century. It has been successfully used in previous pandemics. It is used by medical professionals every single day. And yet the President managed to fuck up something so simple.PreparationIt is a leader’s responsibility to be watching the horizon, to foresee approaching challenges and to prepare the group to meet those challenges. On March 25th, 2020, President Trump said:“Nobody would ever believe a thing like that’s possible. Nobody could have ever seen something like this coming, but now we know, and we know it can happen and happen again. - Donald J. Trump”It’s the leader’s job to see “something like this coming” and former Presidents did indeed see something like this as someday coming.In 2005, President Bush said:“If we wait for a pandemic to appear, it will be too late to prepare. And one day many lives could be needlessly lost because we failed to act today."President Bush had just read a book about the 1918 influenza pandemic and recognizing the seriousness of such an event he unveiled a plan at the National Institute of Health that called for early detection, international cooperation, stockpiling of vaccines and medical equipment, and public education about pandemic prevention.In 2014, President Obama gave a speech in which he said:“There may, and likely will, come a time in which we have both an airborne disease that is deadly. And, in order for us to deal with that effectively, we have to put in place an infrastructure, not just here at home but globally, that allows us to see it quickly, isolate it quickly, respond to it quickly. So that if and when a new strain of flue like the Spanish flu crops up, five years from now, or a decade from now, we’ve made the investment, and we’re further along to be able to catch it."The Obama administration put together a 40 page plan for dealing with pandemics. You can read the document, here, it was titled Playbook for Early Response to High-Consequence Emerging Infectious Disease Threats and Biological Incidents. The Trump administration ignored that document. The purpose of the document, as it said in its introduction, was:“to assist US Government experts and leaders in coordinating a complex US Government response to a high-consequence emerging disease threat anywhere in the world with the potential to cause an epidemic, pandemic, or other significant public health event, by providing a decision-making tool that identifies 1) questions to ask; 2) agency counterparts to consult for answers to each; and 3) key decisions which may require deliberation through the Presidential Policy Directive (PPD)-1 process or its successor NSC process.”Wow. We sure could have used such a tool in 2020.The idea that “nobody could have ever seen something like this coming” is stunningly ignorant. Hell, in 1994, I knew that something like this was coming, after I read Pulitzer Prize winning investigative journalist Laurie Garrett’s book The Coming Plague.