Eager to see the details

Congressional Quarterly Homeland Security
By Daniel Fowler, CQ Staff

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WASHINGTON — Emergency managers, former FEMA officials and academics agree that President-elect Barack Obama's priorities for preparing for terrorist attacks and natural disasters are in order. But?

"I think the devil's going to be in the details," said John Copenhaver, who headed the Federal Emergency Management Agency's Atlanta-based Region IV from 1997 to 2001. "How do you do those things?"

Although sparse on details, Obama's plan calls for supporting first-responders, preparing effective emergency response plans, improving interoperable communications systems, working with state and local governments and the private sector, and allocating funds based on risk.

"Those areas of focus will work for a natural disaster as well as a terrorism attack," said Larry J. Gispert, president of the International Association of Emergency Managers and director of Hillsborough County, Fla., Emergency Management. "What my objection would be is if they just [singularly] focused on terrorism and only terrorism because we at the local level who, by the way, have to respond to this [stuff], the biggest chance of something occurring is Mother Nature."

Copenhaver said he wouldn't add anything to Obama's list, but noted it's very broad.

"I think that those five priorities are incredibly important to the next FEMA administrator," Copenhaver said. "And I would support those priorities being established as priorities for the Department of Homeland Security and for FEMA."

While Obama's outline is a good start, the details will be key, said Irwin Redlener, director of Columbia University's Center for Disaster Preparedness, who served as senior health adviser to the Obama campaign.

"I'm totally comfortable with the way it's broken down and ... going beyond that in terms of assessing are those enough, are there more issues, will the details of those particular topics as they get worked out be sufficient -- all that is what remains to be seen," he said. "But in terms of a starting point ... it was the right place to start from."

Working Together

Copenhaver suggested there needs to be a new emphasis on training first-responders, and there has been a tendency "to go overboard on spending money for equipment."

"I think that the money that we spend on first-responders needs to be spent a little differently than it has been and needs to focus more on the first-responders themselves and their training and their skill sets," he said.

Obama is "committed not only to rolling back the funding cuts that have affected first-responders, but also increasing federal resources and logistic support to local emergency planning efforts," his plan says.

The plan also calls for getting the locals more involved in preparing effective emergency response plans by creating better coordination between the layers of government.

That is the priority most in need of attention, Redlener said.

"The planning process for disaster response needs to be broadened and deepened so they're able to cope with the return to normalcy of individuals and families who have been so badly affected by a major disaster," he said.

Obama's plan also calls for making the improvement of interoperable communications a national priority and he intends to "appoint a national Chief Technology Officer who will have the responsibility to ensure that the current non-interoperable plans at the federal, state and local levels are combined, funded, implemented and effective."

But interoperable communications is not just a technology issue. It "is as much a cultural issue as it is an equipment issue -- trying to get people to actually ... organizationally talk to each other as opposed to just giving them the radios that have the same frequency," said George Haddow, deputy chief of staff under former FEMA Director James Lee Witt.

In relation to working with state and local government and the private sector, Obama believes the federal government needs to start by listening to local concerns and acknowledging their priorities, and plans to reach out to the private sector "to leverage its expertise and assets to protect our homeland."

"I think that there needs to be a much more dynamic program for incorporating the private sector as a full partner in homeland security in this country," said Copenhaver, president and chief executive officer of the Disaster Recovery Institute. "And that's coming from somebody that's happily in the private sector right now."

As far as allocating funds based on risk, Obama says he will look to the Quadrennial Homeland Security Review "to help inform and shape re-prioritization at the federal level" and supports "taking politics out of funding for homeland security and investing in city and state preparedness and resiliency in a way that will effectively and efficiently keep Americans safe."

Resiliency is a theme that should run through all five priorities, said Robert W. Kelly, a senior adviser for homeland and national security at The Reform Institute, who worked informally with the McCain campaign.

"Basically what resilience is all about is building a nation that can take a punch, that can absorb the blow of a catastrophic event, irrespective of what the genesis of the catastrophic event is and can return to a state of near normalcy as rapidly as possible," said Kelly, who said Obama's priorities are on point.

Haddow said what's encouraging to him and what the five goals have in common is that they promote "working together" and "everybody being involved."

"I think one of the problems that's happened in the last few years is that DHS and its wholly owned subsidiary FEMA have been trying to centralize more and more of these activities in FEMA, in the federal government and what you get is confusion and you get interminable time to get things approved and you lose flexibility," Haddow said.

So what would Haddow like to see added to the list?

"I think they need to focus on ... how are they going to rebuild the federal response capability," he said. "In other words, do they go back to what the federal response plan was in the '90s -- where FEMA was the coordinating body among all federal agencies that ensured that all the resources of the federal government were made available to help state and local to meet the disaster response in a major event?"

Whatever path the Obama team chooses, accomplishing the stated goals won't be easy.

"They're going to have their hands full," said the Reform Institute's Kelly. "If they can accomplish a fifth of these, they'll be doing great."

Daniel Fowler can be reached at dfowler@cq.com.

Source: CQ Homeland Security
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