National Dialogue on Preparedness Browse Popular ideas

As a member of the emergency management arena for over 25 years, I have just one suggestion. Get rid of the Homeland Security Exercise Evaluation Program. It is the epitome of bureaucracy. It may work well for very large urban areas with large staff, but it certainly does not work well in the smaller communities where staff is limited. It does nothing to help a community prepare for disasters, but it does create a huge... more »

I would suggest a tax cut to citizens that have a personal preparedness plan. Too many citizens rely on their government at all levels to provide for their resiliency. Citizens need to build their own resiliency capabilities. The savings to the tax payer should be studied based on how much of a response is necessary if citizens have their own resiliency/preparedness plans thus reducing the capability needed by government.... more »

We need to consider these mandates for any large building;these buildings are like large cities, with many of the same security concerns. DHS-FEMA need to mandate by laws or codes mandatory training for a large building's chief engineer and maintenance staff; and make these chief engineer's requests mandatory policy for the building's General Manager and owner(s) regardless of the bottom line. The 9/11 Commission saw... more »

Evacuation of walking and non walking wounded from all types of disasters. In our state and most other states the EMS services are under funded and struggling to take care of thier existing daily emergencies. In disaster situations these resources are stretched even further. Assistance from out of state agencies has been addressed, drilled and organized. The problem as I see it is we need additional resources (vehicles-evacuation... more »

Whatever work is being done, whether at the local, state, or federal level, it must include educational institutions as an participant. Often, educational institutions have tremendous resource pools that will assist with all areas of preparing for, responding too, and recovering from incidents and will posses some of greatest risk potentials. Nation-wide, there is a push to incorporate private sector assistance... more »

Provide funding, oversight and guidance for all levels of incident management teams. Develop a national system of training and certification for Types I, II, and III teams. Smaller Type III incidents may cross state boundaries, but because certifications are set up by each state, other states don't have to honor them, complicating the response. It could also make the transition from Type III to Type II more efficient.... more »

Making the grant application process easier. It takes several departments in the government to get the information you need.

Add “Weapons for Personal Protection” to Emergency Preparedness lists. In regards to active shooter/terrorist actions, It has been demonstrated (repeatedly) that the best-case scenario is intervention by an armed citizen on the scene. The Police cannot prevent mass killings. That is the un-debatable fact of history. Even a 2 minute response is considered fast, yet over 30 people died at Virginia Tech. plus many other... more »

Armed citizens have been, and continue to be the best defense against invasion by a foreign entity, and or crime since our countries beginnings. Perhaps one of the most famous quotes attributed to this concept was by Isoroku Yamamoto "You cannot invade the mainland United States. There would be a rifle behind every blade of grass."

Perhaps this along with vigilance will help us prevail.

One of the most critical gaps we have in our overall preparedness, especially in small local governments, is the lack of training for elected officials and other policy group members. Too often we just expect them to make appropraite policy decisions in times of emergency, but we do not train them what those appropriate decisions are. As my project for the Master Trainer Program at EMI I am attempting to address this... more »

I am an Emergency Management Student and during a discussion between classmates and myself, we discussed the lack of security to railways in America. The discussion led to conversation about railways within cities, for example, a railway running underneath a conference center and the fact that you could hear and feel vibrations from its passing. Unforuntely, this is a dangerous situation due to the great potential of... more »

In reference to the National Threat Levels, I personally asked people within my community about what the current threat level was and what it meant. Most people stated that they didn't know much about it and others stated that they didn't care. When inquiring this information from the local fire department, they could tell me what the forestry department threat level was for brush/ forest fires but told me that they would... more »

Create a matrix of natural hazards and human-caused risk assessment databases and tools. We have HAZUS, ACAMS, DMA2K, Infrastructure Silos. We have new ideas coming from FEMA and DHS all the time, but I have not seen a building on what we have.

If we look at the way our Founding Fathers originally set up our country's levels of government, we will see that many of the questions and/or concerns were addressed a couple centuries ago. I refer to the County Sheriff's authority and responsibilities. Instead of creating multiple new agencies, offices, and departments, we need to back up and look at what we already have. Though there is some stability in redundancy,... more »

CERT teams should conduct SEVERAL family preparedness meetings in the community at schools, churches (maybe link with ministerial alliance folks) and fire houses. These meetings would present family and individual preparedness topics to include fire safety and having a fire plan for the family, but also being prepared for disasters, communication plans, etc. Partner with local hardware stores to publish lists of materials... more »