From Civil Defense to Homeland Security: An analysis of Emergency Management in an age of terror

Abstract

Emergency Management as a field has evolved out of the old civil defense programs from the early twentieth century. However, the Twenty-First Century brings with it a vast number of new problems beyond the scope of traditional emergency management. Fortunately, emergency managers can draw from the civil defense foundations to meet growing threats such as those terrorism poses to the population. This paper attempts to address many of the issues that arise as emergency management is tasked with addressing terrorist threats. In order to better understand the dichotomy between Civil Defense and Emergency Management this paper attempts to compare the two in order to see which practices are most useful in the new models of emergency management and which should be adopted from the old model of civil defense. Some of the issues that are addressed in this paper include governmental funding of emergency management, public education in times of disasters, overall preparedness efforts, general civilian preparedness, and why emergency management is even considered capable of addressing legitimate concerns about terrorist activities in the United States. While this paper focuses primarily on historical aspects of emergency management and civil defense it also offers multiple solutions for addressing many of the policy shortfalls inherent in the current methodology held by FEMA and the Department of Homeland Security.