Mastering Core Capabilities for FEMA: A Guide to Effective Emergency Response

The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) is one of the most powerful agencies in the Federal Government, even though it is still an agency nestled within a cabinet-level department (Department of Homeland Security). FEMA is responsible for an annual budget that generally is somewhere between $25bn-$30bn, depending on the year, and is the federal agency tasked to respond to all manner of natural disasters nationwide, as well as terrorist attacks when necessary. 
FEMA is a huge agency, and its missions are broken down into a few distinct core capabilities by mission area. We’re going to walk through FEMA's Five Mission Areas and touch on some of the 32 Core Capabilities (check out the whole program with core capabilities here). 

Understanding Core Capabilities

The overarching drivers of FEMA's mission are rolled up into five main areas: the five mission areas. Then, they are broken out into 32 different core capabilities. The main driver of this, and of FEMA as a whole, is the National Preparedness Goal. The National Preparedness Goal is a FEMA directive that lays out the complete plan for responding to all disasters, whether natural, man-made, or terrorist action. 

First, you need to understand how the hierarchy works. The NPG defines what it means for community preparedness in general. For any given community in the U.S., the NPG lays out a succinct roadmap for its overall safety, risk mitigation, and threat recovery. 

Prevention

The #1 goal of our national security structure is to prevent incidents before they occur. Of course, you can’t really prevent a tornado or a hurricane, but you can harden the community to respond better and more effectively. 

Threats and Hazards Identification

The United States is vast and comprises dozens of different climates and sub-climates. Even within the confines of a single state, the landscape is radically different from one region to another. Take our home state of Oklahoma. Water is a high priority in the far western Panhandle, and annual rainfall totals are well under 20”. This area deals with massive wildfires, drought, and severe weather. The state's eastern border gets 2 ½ times the rainfall, which is a completely different climate. 

The response is a different animal in areas that are rivers and deep hardwood forests over dry prairie with no tree in sight. This is where input from the community leadership is so 

Identify the threats and hazards that occur in the geographic area, determine the frequency and magnitude, and incorporate this into analysis and planning processes to clearly understand the needs of a community or entity.

Prevention Strategies

Prevention strategies are developed for all sorts of problems and scenarios that are likely to happen in any given area. Some are universal, like preventing terrorist activities. Are these universally likely in all places across the U.S.? Of course not; Beaver, Oklahoma, is an order of magnitude less likely to experience a terrorist attack than Tulsa. But that doesn’t mean leadership shouldn’t still be cognizant of the threat. 

Prevention involves the necessary capabilities to avoid, prevent, or stop a potential or actual act of terrorism. Unlike other mission areas designed for all hazards, Prevention core capabilities are focused explicitly on imminent terrorist threats, including ongoing attacks or imminent follow-on attacks. 

Additionally, preventing an imminent terrorist threat initiates a strong counterterrorism response, utilizing all national power instruments to address threats and save lives. Prevention also encompasses activities such as intelligence, law enforcement, and homeland defense to tackle and deal with threats. The terrorist threat is dynamic and complex, and it demands a collaborative effort from multiple entities and communities to ensure homeland security. This involves extensive cooperation with government and nongovernmental entities, international partners, and the private sector. 

Protection

The next step is protection. Potential problems have been identified, and prevention strategies have been implemented. However, prevention strategies are occasionally breached. The next order, and arguably the most important order, is protection. 

Protection Strategies

There are myriad different angles that disasters can come from, man-made and natural. These broadly include:

  • Weapons of mass destruction (WMDs)
  • Agriculture and food defense
  • Infrastructure support
  • Protection of key leadership
  • Border security
  • Maritime security
  • Transportation security
  • And cybersecurity 

Mitigation

The next step is to mitigate disasters. As we have seen this past storm season, and now with major flooding all throughout the Plains, prevention, and protection do not always stop things from happening.

Mitigation involves the necessary actions to minimize the loss of life and property by reducing the impact of disasters. It is based on the idea that individuals, private and nonprofit sectors, communities, critical infrastructure, and the entire nation become more resilient when the effects, duration, and costs—both financial and human—of responding to and recovering from adverse events are diminished. 

With the increasing impacts of extreme events and catastrophic incidents, hazard mitigation is essential for reducing or eliminating long-term risks to life, property, and overall well-being. This encompasses areas such as community planning, housing, information systems, critical infrastructure, public health, healthcare, and future land use. Mitigation requires understanding threats and hazards to assess risk and disaster resilience now and in the future. 

The entire community reduces risk by recognizing, understanding, communicating, and planning for future resilience. Mitigation connects long-term community activities to reduce or eliminate risks from threats and hazards and the impacts of disasters that do occur. Although mitigation is a community-wide responsibility, much of it happens locally. Individual and community preparedness is crucial, as these activities enhance resilience and mitigate disaster impacts through adaptability and rapid recovery. 

Risk and resilience assessments should start at the community level and inform state, regional, and national planning. For risk information to lead to specific reduction actions, leaders—whether elected officials, department heads, nongovernmental directors, sector officials, or business and community leaders—need to recognize, understand, communicate, and plan for future resilience. 

Building trusted relationships among community leaders before a disaster will most likely reduce risks to life, property, the environment, and well-being. When leaders are prepared, the entire community becomes more capable of reducing long-term risks.

Mitigation Strategies

Broadly speaking, these are the strategies that must be followed:

  • Reduce the loss of life and property by lessening the impact of future disasters. We have seen this along major rivers like the Missouri after every major flooding event. 
  • Build and sustain resilient systems, communities, and critical infrastructure. 

Response

If mitigation is important for reducing the overall impact of disastrous events, then response is even more important. Response is the boots on the ground tasked and equipped to save lives. These first responders tackle the toughest day anyone has ever had. 

Also, the response portion exists to restore basic services and technologies, restore the community's functionality, and establish overall safety. These duties generally fall on local law enforcement, emergency management, and fire/EMS.

Response Core Capabilities

  • Planning — systematic processes to engage the whole community for critical response objectives. 
  • Public warning and information

Recovery and Resilience

The final stages of the process are recovery and resilience. 

When a river floods far beyond its boundaries, or a tornado cuts through the heart of a city, or a large hurricane makes landfall in densely populated areas, all of which are unavoidable, FEMA is tasked to assist in the recovery process. 

The metrics for a successful recovery are that our communities emerge from events stronger and better prepared for the next event. Wildfires will not stop happening when it is dry, and the wind blows at 50 mph. The Mississippi River will continue to flow as it has forever, and when it gets too full, it will proceed to go basically wherever it pleases. 

We can’t help these things, but we can do our best to protect lives and property along the way. With every event, we learn a little bit more about the recovery process and become more resilient. 

Recovery Strategies

These are the basic strategies that FEMA anticipates using:

  • Recover through a focus on the timely restoration, strengthening, and revitalization of infrastructure, housing, and a sustainable economy, as well as the health, social, cultural, historic, al and environmental fabric of communities affected by a catastrophic incident.
  • Provide fatality management services, including decedent remains recovery and victim identification. Work with local, state, tribal, territorial, federal, and other authorities to provide temporary storage or permanent internment solutions for mortuary processes. Terrible, but completely necessary. 
  • Sharing information with mass care services to reunite family members and caregivers with missing persons/remains and providing counseling to the bereaved. This is a terrible duty, but it is necessary because it does happen. 

Building Resilience

Over the decades, we have made significant progress in disaster response and preparedness, and one of the most important aspects is the resilience we have built along the way. Natural disasters will always stress our response systems and be hard to recover from. They are also completely unavoidable, so we had better work hard to become the most resilient versions of ourselves. 

FEMA relies on local agencies to handle the lion’s share of response and also depends on private procurement channels to support its recovery mission. Greenwood Aerospace is an expert in supporting the federal mission through asset procurement, and FEMA procures a lot of assets when disaster strikes. 

If you are in the contracting business, call us at (580) 762-2580. We have over forty years of experience in procurement, warehousing, MIL-SPEC shipping, and more.