Introduction To Emergency Management

Introduction to Emergency Management

Nicholas S. Fessler

American Military University

Introduction to Emergency Management This is a review of Emergency Management: The American Expertise 1900-2010 by Claire B. Rubin (2012), chapters 1 and 2. This review analyzes the history behind what has evolved into emergency management, while taking a look into past disasters that streamlined emergency management very existences. Disasters can date back to as far as ancient literature can transcribe. However, it was a series of disaster that dates back from the early to mid-1900’s that paved the way for how federal, state, and local communities manage disasters. As Rubin (2012) identified them, “focusing events” occurred through

Here, Butler expands upon the history of emergency management and who exactly was present to assist in the evolution. Butler goes as early as the nineteenth-century to identify the Chicago Fire of October 1871, the Great Peshtigo Fire of October 1871, and the Johnstown (Pennsylvania) Flood of 1889. Remarking that each disaster demonstrates, implicitly or explicitly, areas in which disaster management could be improved—in preparedness, warning, response, recovery, and/or long-term mitigation (Butler, 2012, pp. 17). With each disaster, a degree of responsibility was identified on both the local and state parties. Disaster preparedness was not of the highest concern. Surveys were not taken serious, thus, resulting in a higher casualty percentage. What could have been prevented by continued assessments and innovation, was later referred back to as a failure on their

San Francisco suffered the major extent of the damages from the fires that occurred from the busted gas lines that ensued after the earthquake. Over a span of three days, 4.7 square miles burned destroying more than 28,000 buildings (Butler, 2012, pp. 23). In Long Beach, the death toll remained much less than that of San Francisco, but solely in part to the time the earthquake hit. Butler cites the Southern California Earthquake Center which reported “Brick building with unreinforced masonry walls, including many of the school buildings in Long Beach and surrounding areas, failed catastrophically (Fatemi & James, 2003, pp. 43). Long Beach is merely lucky that the fatality rate was not higher given nothing was done on their part to minimize the risk associated with seismic