Should Emergency Management Staff Consider an Advance Degree!

Emergency Management has been expanding since President Jimmy Carter signed an Executive Order to create the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) on April 1, 1979. I became involved in the disaster field as a volunteer for the American Red Cross, and it was difficult in those days before FEMA, and it was called Civil Defense instead of emergency management. 

In the old days of disaster management, services were duplicated in one part of a town where a hurricane hit on the Texas coast city and some areas had no response relief. Communications were even more difficult because every law enforcement agency and the fire department had different radio codes, no one was on the same page, except for that whole department.

When FEMA became a federal agency, it was the beginning of central coordination effort by the federal government and how to manage an emergency or disaster. There were still issues in managing all agencies and volunteer organizations involved, plus understanding communication between organization was not understandable. 

Communications were uniform, because of different ten codes, methods of response, how to manage and terminology and definitions differ among all who responded to an incident. Plus, everyone wanted to be in charge. FEMA officials realize there must be a better way to react and manage an emergency or disaster. Slowly FEMA was creating response regions, reserve staff, and regular workforce to help coordinate, but leading all organization from local to national levels of governments and volunteer organization was a big task.

FEMA officials needed their staff to be educated at the region six office and University of North Texas (UNT) was down the road. FEMA officials met with UNT so that UNT can develop the first emergency management degree for a newly emerging field. UNT launched the first four-year degree in 1987 for FEMA staff to participate in the new degree program at UNT and is located in Denton, Texas. FEMA was able to get more proficient at coordinating among federal agencies with the support of the White House. The FEMA director would have access to the President of the United States to keep him informed. If an agency did not want to cooperate with FEMA officials, the President would make phones calls, send letters to make things happen.

When 9-11 happen on September 11, 2001, when commercial aircraft were taken over by the terrorist as used as missiles to take out the Twin Towers of the World Tarde Center in New York City and another attack by another commercial airline to hit the Pentagon building, which is the command center for all military forces. The United States created the Department of Homeland Security to be the coordinating and managing agency umbrella for over forty federal agencies to combat the threat of terrorism. Many of the employees who worked for FEMA were given a new responsibility to help the department of homeland security to keep track of terrorist threats.

When Hurricane Katrina hit all the Gulf Coast states, FEMA was not able to adequately respond because most of the FEMA personnel were assigned to handle counterterrorism duties and the United States had never experienced a super hurricane that affects such a vast region. The process of FEMA’s was slow because personnel had to be transferred back to the original FEMA duties of handling disasters, plus FEMA had never responded to such a colossal failure that seems like the Biblical end of days disaster; it was catastrophic proportions. The United States Coast Guard had been handling extensive area disasters in the past and came like the U.S. Calvary just in time to save the day by leading the response efforts so that the partner agency FEMA can come fully back online. 

Walmart Corporation was a big help in the disaster response and recovery efforts by volunteering their vast warehouses and truck delivery fleet to help move the much-needed water and food for victims of the hurricane victims. Then another hurricane hit Louisiana and Texas that complicated response and recovery efforts in the region. The nation faced another enormous problem, and that was what to do with dogs, cats, other animals that were forgotten due to the hurricanes. 

Many citizens die because they refused to abandon their pets because they could not bring their pets with them. Emergency shelters would not accept persons into the shelters with their pets; this was a new learning problem for emergency management. Volunteer animal organizations were able to pitch in and help rescue animals that were lost, displaced or abandoned due to people running away from the path of the hurricane.

FEMA was still facing command and control issues since that time of the hurricanes of 2005. In 2008 FEMA came up with the National Incident Management System (NIMS) to help control and manage any incident of natural, humanmade or technological disaster, an all-hazard approach, a new way of handling situations. The Incident Command System (ICS) was a form of the command that could be used with single action resource to multiple resources. Emergencies and disasters start at the local level and can expand regionally, statewide or nationally. ICS can extend locally up to the nationwide level, and as response efforts are reduced, resources can be released, and the size of the incident is decreased, then eventually goes back to the local level.

NIMS and ICS have been a tremendous help in command and control in the field of emergency management and managing disasters because the language is simple plain English, everyone involved is trained the same in the use of NIMS and ICS. The issues of who is going to be in charge and working in partnership with stakeholders is no longer an issue since we now have NIMS and ICS. Like in the Republic of Panama they have brought into using FEMA training and that of Texas A&M/TEEX’s International Fire Academy and have trained firefighters from all over the world. 

FEMA officials realize that more work must be done, but I can tell you that coordination, response, and management of disasters in the United States is a considerable improvement compare to before 1979. Some training is available online through Emergency Management Institute (EMI), National Fire Academy (NFA) and Texas A&M University in the area of emergency management.

So, why would personnel consider obtaining a graduate degree from a university? Many in the field of emergency management do not have a master’s degree in emergency management. Having an organizational certification in emergency management is going but having an advanced degree that has academic study in this field will allow that person even more knowledge towards becoming a subject matter expert. A graduate degree in emergency management will open the doors to the world of academia as a professor.

Your credentials as a professional or volunteer personnel having a graduate degree in emergency management and a certified emergency manager (CEM) will look good on your resume, and when you network in branding, you’re your name. Some excellent schools offer an advanced degree in emergency management, Arizona State University, and American Military University. I have the years of experience, the mass training from FEMA and a degree in emergency management; now it is time to earn a master’s degree in emergency management so that I can be at the next academic level of learning. 

FEMA works with many universities to develop a degree program that will fit the needs in the field of emergency management. You just must research and find which program will best suit your needs. Consider earning an advanced degree from a university in the area of emergency management.