As numerous past disasters and government exercises have indicated, many people will take advantage
of overwhelmed police to loot and maraud. “Preppers” are well aware of this threat, but it may be
politically incorrect for government officials to honestly address lawlessness and risk offending
voters, so they lack preparation for the problem of gangs and armed marauders looting and killing in the
wake of a big disaster that overwhelms first responders.
As the discipline has evolved, data and quantitative analytics are becoming a bigger part of emergency management. This trend is likely to continue as technology and data become more available. Current and future emergency managers need to understand data and how it can be used to support all phases of emergency management.
Conditions of squalor, which may be found in a refugee settlement or on the streets of a third world country, appear to be rapidly increasing in certain places in the United States over the past several years. This phenomenon is evident not only in a growing number of cities in California – including San Francisco, Oakland, San Jose, Los Angeles, and San Diego – but in cities in Oregon, Washington State, Colorado, and elsewhere. During the past several years, similar signs of deteriorating conditions have also become increasingly evident in New York City and Washington, D.C.
In 1850 – nine years before the Carrington Event and 12 years before the Civil War – the population of the United States was 23 million people. At the end of 2018, the population of the U.S. had reached 328 million people. What enabled the population to increase by 305 million people is quite simple: technology. New technologies that promoted this growth include: advances in medicine, advances in agricultural methods, the ability to transport food across the country (and across the world), new sources and uses of energy, an industrial revolution, advances in many areas of technology, and so on. All of these technologies are tied to one significant event: the advent of the electric grid.
While the mission of the Strategic National Stockpile (SNS) has not changed since Congress established this national repository of emergency medicines and supplies, public health events in the United States during the past 20 years have led to a dramatic expansion of the scope of the stockpile’s capabilities. Originally focused on protecting Americans from bioterrorist threats surrounding the year 2000, or Y2K, the stockpile has grown and evolved to a greater than $8 billion enterprise that contains more than just medical countermeasures (MCMs) for biological and chemical threats. The mission authorized is broad enough to encompass virtually any threat to national health security, and the progress SNS has made operationally lends it to encompassing a continually evolving landscape of risks that might be mitigated.
Understanding history is a critical component of emergency preparedness, response, and resilience. History has a way of exposing preparedness and response gaps and providing a roadmap for best practices going […]
In any disaster, there is a cost beyond the immediate mortality figures following a disaster due to a lack of proper medical supplies and treatment in mass care shelters. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention publishes a weekly “Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report,” which serves as a clearinghouse for epidemiological reports submitted by state health departments. However, a public health method must go beyond the death tolls and rates and estimate the years of life lost for people who were without medications and treatments (like dialysis) for extended periods of time during and following disasters.
The healthcare industry presents many challenges for emergency preparedness professionals. The
planning process for a major crisis involves numerous stakeholders, each with their own plans and
procedures. Emergency medical services and hospitals, in particular, are tasked with managing dynamic,
ever-changing environments that are difficult to predict. A medical surge could easily lead to shortages
in critical resources if mutual aid agreements, healthcare coalitions, and other collaborative efforts
are not already in place before disaster strikes.
The role of the emergency management systems is to bring calm to chaos. The role of the public information officer (PIO) is to disseminate information that is credible, accurate, and reliable. It is a critical component of the initial response to meet the informational needs of residents – trusted, credible information aids in bringing calm.
Transitioning from public sector emergency management for a large city to emergency management for a private sector hospital is not easy. The fundamentals of emergency preparedness are the same, but the hospital setting has unique challenges. Each day, there are different numbers of people within the hospital. Some days, the occupants exceed hospital capacity during normal operating conditions. There is no set vulnerable population as the demographics of the population changes hourly. Having a large turnover of people in the hospital because of appointments, outpatient surgeries, visitors, and vendors makes preparedness efforts more challenging.
As numerous past disasters and government exercises have indicated, many people will take advantage
of overwhelmed police to loot and maraud. “Preppers” are well aware of this threat, but it may be
politically incorrect for government officials to honestly address lawlessness and risk offending
voters, so they lack preparation for the problem of gangs and armed marauders looting and killing in the
wake of a big disaster that overwhelms first responders. 
As the discipline has evolved, data and quantitative analytics are becoming a bigger part of emergency management. This trend is likely to continue as technology and data become more available. Current and future emergency managers need to understand data and how it can be used to support all phases of emergency management. 
Conditions of squalor, which may be found in a refugee settlement or on the streets of a third world country, appear to be rapidly increasing in certain places in the United States over the past several years. This phenomenon is evident not only in a growing number of cities in California – including San Francisco, Oakland, San Jose, Los Angeles, and San Diego – but in cities in Oregon, Washington State, Colorado, and elsewhere. During the past several years, similar signs of deteriorating conditions have also become increasingly evident in New York City and Washington, D.C. 
In 1850 – nine years before the Carrington Event and 12 years before the Civil War – the population of the United States was 23 million people. At the end of 2018, the population of the U.S. had reached 328 million people. What enabled the population to increase by 305 million people is quite simple: technology. New technologies that promoted this growth include: advances in medicine, advances in agricultural methods, the ability to transport food across the country (and across the world), new sources and uses of energy, an industrial revolution, advances in many areas of technology, and so on. All of these technologies are tied to one significant event: the advent of the electric grid. 
While the mission of the Strategic National Stockpile (SNS) has not changed since Congress established this national repository of emergency medicines and supplies, public health events in the United States during the past 20 years have led to a dramatic expansion of the scope of the stockpile’s capabilities. Originally focused on protecting Americans from bioterrorist threats surrounding the year 2000, or Y2K, the stockpile has grown and evolved to a greater than $8 billion enterprise that contains more than just medical countermeasures (MCMs) for biological and chemical threats. The mission authorized is broad enough to encompass virtually any threat to national health security, and the progress SNS has made operationally lends it to encompassing a continually evolving landscape of risks that might be mitigated. 
The role of the emergency management systems is to bring calm to chaos. The role of the public information officer (PIO) is to disseminate information that is credible, accurate, and reliable. It is a critical component of the initial response to meet the informational needs of residents – trusted, credible information aids in bringing calm. 