From GovTech: After Camp Fire, Paradise, CA, Works on Long-Term Recovery.
Paradise, Calif., was almost completely destroyed by the Camp Fire in November 2018, but is now following the guidelines of a long-term recovery plan to rebuild a more resilient and fire-safe town.

Dear Recovery Partners,

I am happy to share the FEMA Region 3 Interagency Recovery Coordination Task Force COVID-19’s Impact on the Human and Social Services Sector. The human and social services sector has been hard hit by the COVID-19 pandemic. The demand for services has grown dramatically, at the same time as revenue losses and staff layoffs threaten the safety net so vital to those hardest hit by the economic downturn.

The authors of this report are Laura Olson, Ph.D. – COVID-19 Recovery Advisor for Mental Health and Social Services / FEMA Region 3 Interagency Recovery Coordination Task ForceAlessandra Jerolleman, Ph.D, CFM, MPA – COVID-19 Recovery Advisor for Economic Stabilization/ Both work with the FEMA Region 3 Interagency Recovery Coordination Task Force.

This report raises awareness about the challenges facing this sector that are critical to the safety and wellbeing of our citizens and the survival of the organizations that serve them. Summarizing existing and available research and analysis, the report highlights the situation in Region 3, but also provides data on the situation for the nation. The nonprofit sector has lost 8% of all employees nationwide since February 2020, while in critical fields the losses have been more severe – with 11% unemployment in educational services and 12% in social assistance.

FEMA now has a National Risk Index.

From HSToday: OIG On the Six Biggest Challenges Facing DHS, This report from the Department’s Office of the Inspector General identifies the six primary challenges facing DHS currently.

The Community Resilience Handbook. Editors: George B. Huff, Jr.; Edward A. Thomas; and Nancy McNabb, Publisher: American Bar Association (ABA) Publishing, Chicago, Illinois, USA. August 2020. ISBN-10 : 1641057386; ISBN-13 : 978-1641057387; Pages: 470; paperback price $79.95 & Amazon paperback price $79.30 USD.

Contributors: Anthony H. Barash, Doug Bellomo, Donna A. E. Boyce, John C. Eidleman, Jessica Grannis, Jerry Graves, Ed Hecker, George B. Huff, Jr., Alessandra Jerolleman, Elle Klein, Eric B. Kretz, John Travis Marshall, Nancy McNabb, Rachel Minnery, Lynnda M. Nelson, Keith Porter, Maureen K. Roskovski, Joe Rossi, Gretchen F. Sassenrath, Philip Schneider, Duncan Shaw, Edward A. Thomas, Andrew Vansingel, David Vaughn, Charles Wallace, John D. Wiener, and Charlie Wildman.

Keywords: community resilience, whole community preparedness, litigation, disaster legal services, international standards on resilience, business continuity, continuity management, disaster risk insurance, safe design, disaster mitigation, professionalism in design

Reviewer: Irmak Renda-Tanali, D.Sc. is a disaster risk management specialist, and Editor-in-Chief, Journal of Homeland Security and Emergency Management (DeGruyter).

This new book is a guidebook that shares perspectives of legal experts and other professionals on the need to accelerate recovery and improve resilience over the long term, after any natural or human-induced disaster. It is written by leading thinkers in disaster preparedness and recovery planning. The authors come from the disciplines of law, architecture, engineering, insurance, and social sciences. Each chapter is written by (a) different author(s). The discussions are based on many years of practical experience and or research conducted by the authors.

The book is organized according to five parts, each covering a different feature of community resilience.

The first part is about understanding the structure of community resilience. It covers the different definitions of resilience as well as leadership, and governance in community resilience with planning and preparedness. The authors describe the concepts, perspectives, and frameworks of, and goal-setting for community resilience, based on impacts on the built environment recognized by licensed design professionals. They discuss the role of the whole community, especially the role of the attorneys using official planning documents such as the Natural Hazard Mitigation Association’s Disaster Risk Reduction Curriculum, and the National Institutes of Standards and Technology Community Resilience Project. Hence they guide community decision-makers to ask the right questions in hazard identification, vulnerability and disaster risk assessment, and develop risk-informed solutions for ensuring community resilience.

Part two focuses on community resilience leadership, planning, and support, particularly the critical role that legal service attorneys play in representing disaster survivors and serving as key partners with the private bar, bar associations, and the ABA’s Young Lawyer Division (YLD) Disaster Legal Services. They also discuss the liability of design service providers, litigation for faulty design, and the political process in answering questions like “who gets what, when, and how”.

Part three covers the topic of community resilience operations and performance. The discussion focuses on how businesses are making communities more resilient through corporate social responsibility and how public sector preparedness planning can integrate business continuity into community resilience. The discussion focuses on public-private-partnerships including insurance mechanisms, cost-benefit analysis of incentivization approaches, climate-change considerations, and the legal, economic, and moral imperatives provisioned by the U.S. Constitution for safe design.

Part four covers maintaining resilience in the whole community, with advice for civil engineers, and decision and policymakers in cost-effective but safe design and construction practices under the evolving natural hazard spectrum. A discussion on Practical Community Resilience (PRC) approach that aims to achieve life cycle disaster risk reduction and community resilience is presented from real-life/practical perspectives. A discussion on agricultural resilience through a legal perspective is also presented in this chapter.

Part five, the final part of the book, covers the validation and improvement of community resilience through training and education, building cohesive teams, and adaptation of best practices and tested frameworks.  A practical eight-step process is introduced for developing a culture of continuity for the whole community. Another discussion is on the International standards of ISO 2231-Guidelines for Planning the Involvement of Spontaneous Volunteers and ISO-22392 Conducting Peer Reviews for Disaster Risk Reduction and their applications for community resilience building in Chile with a special call on sharing best practices across the globe.

The book’s contribution is its call to action to lawyers, law firms, bar associations, as well as engineers, architects, and other design professionals as key partners in community resilience building. The main theme is keeping businesses as profitable and active partners in disaster resilience while adhering to legal and ethical standards and commonly accepted frameworks. This book, with the top-notch experts providing action-based insight into the key areas of community resilience, provides a refreshing account of better ways of understanding and building community resilience.

From HSNW: The Strategic Stockpile Failed; Experts Propose New Approach to Emergency Preparednes. A new analysis of the United States government’s response to COVID-19 highlights myriad problems with an approach that relied, in large part, on international supply chains and the Strategic National Stockpile (SNS). A panel of academic and military experts is instead calling for a more dynamic, flexible approach to emergency preparedness at the national level.

New report (40 pages) from the Congressional Research Service: The Disaster Relief Fund: Overview and Issues.

The Disaster Relief Fund (DRF) is one of the most-tracked single accounts funded by Congress each year.Managed by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), it is the primary source of funding for the federal government’s domestic general disaster relief programs. These programs, authorized under the Robert T. Stafford Disaster Relief and Emergency Assistance Act, as amended (42 U.S.C. 5121 et seq.), outline the federal role in supporting state, local, tribal,and territorial governments as they respond to and recover from a variety of incidents.They take effect in the event that nonfederallevels of government find their own capacity to deal with anincident is overwhelmed.

From Politico: Biden confronts staffing crisis at federal agencies.Trump’s war on the “deep state” has decimated government. Without a fix, it could hinder the next president’s agenda.

Another take on the topic from the NYTimes: Joe Biden Will Face This Overlooked Crisis on Day 1, Members of the new administration may have to reassemble a broken government before they can begin to use it for good.

New report: Measuring the State of Disaster Philanthropy, seventh edition. The report draws from 13 data sources and documents $76 billion in private, public, corporate and individual disaster-related giving to address major disasters and humanitarian crises that affected millions globally in 2018. That year, we saw Hurricanes Michael and Florence, not one but three volcanic eruptions, a 7.5 magnitude earthquake in Indonesia, California’s most devastating wildfire season in terms of loss of life, and continued civil unrest in Syria and Yemen – just to name a few.

The report draws from 13 data sources and documents $76 billion in private, public, corporate and individual disaster-related giving to address major disasters and humanitarian crises that affected millions globally in 2018. That year, we saw Hurricanes Michael and Florence, not one but three volcanic eruptions, a 7.5 magnitude earthquake in Indonesia, California’s most devastating wildfire season in terms of loss of life, and continued civil unrest in Syria and Yemen – just to name a few. 

The report also has an interactive data dashboard and map. 

Book: Beyond 9/11:  Homeland Security for the Twenty-first Century. Lawson, C, Bersin, A, and Kayyem, J. eds. The MIT Press, 2020. $35.

Reviewed by: Dr. Jeffrey Glick Professor of Practice, School of Public and International Affairs, Virginia Tech.  Affiliated Faculty at the McCourt School of Public Policy, Georgetown

What does it take to secure the homeland in the twenty-first century?  This is the central question tackled by the book, Beyond 9/11: Homeland Security for the Twenty-First Century, edited by Chapppell Lawson, Associate Professor at MIT; Alan Bersen, Former Commissioner of the U.S Customs and Border Protection and DHS Assistant Secretary; and Juliette Kayyem, Faculty Director of the Homeland Security Project, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs.  The editors assembled a distinguished group of writers for whom they note, “have held senior positions in DHS, its components, or other organizations with key roles in the homeland security enterprise.”  Together, they focus on the key components of the homeland security challenge nineteen years after the establishment of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and twenty years since 9/11.

The first chapter provides an overview as to the diversity and evolving nature of the homeland security enterprise and how responsibilities and actions for homeland security span beyond DHS, to other federal agencies, state and local governments, across the private sector, to individuals and even beyond to the international community.  As the authors note, and what proves to be a theme for the book, partnerships are essential for securing the homeland.

The second and third chapters build on the first chapter’s foundation by discussing the evolving structure of DHS, what is inside and outside its mission space, its need to establish and nurture partnerships to foster accomplishment of broader homeland security goals, and what it has yet to accomplish internally both structurally and operationally.  This provides the background for Chapters 4-9, which each focus on and critically analyze a particular aspect of the homeland security enterprise, providing suggestions for operational improvement.  Such topics as the terrorist threat and the domestic counter-terrorism response, transportation security, border control and immigration are all discussed with recommendations for each, while noting there are paradigm shifts underway which necessitate evolving responses and approaches going forward.

The tenth through twelfth chapters shift focus to emergency management and the importance of critical infrastructure in response to the growing landscape in number, severity and diversity of disasters and security challenges.  Beginning with Chapter 10’s focus on the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and its unique role and function within DHS and need to partner with other government entities at all levels to accomplish its disaster mission.  Chapter 11 turns to the importance of critical infrastructures, which the author points out were once subject to relatively low-cost, isolated events, but now due to the increasing interconnectedness of systems to each other and to the internet, are subject to, and can subject society to high-cost events with cascading effects.  Chapter 12 then turns the analytic lens on cybersecurity, the growing and evolving threat, the role of particularly government in responding to this threat and providing recommendations to the cyber threat challenges that remain at all levels and functions of society.

Chapters thirteen and fourteen take a hard look at law enforcement.  First in Chapter 13 from the perspective of DHS’s role in crime prevention, primarily in border and aviation security and the requisite information sharing needs verses need for personal informational privacy.  Then Chapter 14 looks specifically at combating transnational crime and the need for a new approach.  The authors suggest adding the “Disruption Model” to active law enforcement, making it difficult for criminals to perpetuate their nefarious activities, in addition to the ongoing prosecutorial approach which attempts to punish criminals, who are often beyond reach of U.S. courtrooms.

In a concluding chapter, the editors pose eight central questions confronting homeland security.  They draw on all the previous chapters in answering what they believe are the best courses of action, necessary tradeoffs and inherent difficulties in this high stake venture of protecting the homeland.

The combined historical and analytical focus of Beyond 9/11, does an excellent job of articulating the present issues and limitations, but also provides concrete suggestions to enhance the U.S. approach to ensuring homeland security, with one caveat.  This book was written too soon – before 2020 and the COVID-19 pandemic.  The book briefly discusses pandemics and particularly the roles of DHS and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention within the Department of Health and Human Services.  However, given this nation’s experience in the pandemic’s and its widespread impact on all as aspects of societal functioning, a valuable addition would have been a separate chapter exclusively devoted to discussing pandemic preparedness and the requisite need for communication, cooperation and mitigative planning and actions at all levels of government, throughout all of society and internationally.  This necessary chapter awaits the possible second edition of this very useful and insightful addition to the emergency management library.