Try asking around for yourself with your peers and see what answers you get on the phases of emergency management.
Is it Four or Five Phases of Emergency Management?
I often say that the emergency management profession is still in its tweens. One fact that I’ll submit as Exhibit A is that we do not have consensus on how many phases there are in emergency management. Most still say four, yet others list five.
The "standard" four phases of emergency management are "Mitigation, Preparedness, Response and Recovery." Ask any emergency manager and I’ll predict that 9 out 10 will say there are four phases, as I list them above. Although the placement of mitigation in the sequence can be different at times.
Who then would say there are five phases—you ask. Well, let me tell you—that would be the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). Quoting, “The National Preparedness Goal describes five mission areas — prevention, protection, mitigation, response and recovery.”
How can this be? Where did “prevention” come from let alone protection, and when did it arrive? To know that you have to go back 20 years to 2001 and the immediate aftermath of the terrorist attacks of 9/11.
It didn’t happen immediately with the formation of the White House Office Homeland Security and then the congressional reorganization of departments and the official establishment of the Department of Homeland Security. However, soon there were new people writing new doctrine for the department and for FEMA.
For those of you who were not around to experience the whiplash, the feds took a hard right turn towards counter-terrorism. All-hazards went out the window and funding for anti-terrorism efforts flowed like milk and honey. With this new orientation the “four phases” of emergency management was changed to be “Prevention, Preparedness, Response and Recovery.” Out with mitigation and in with prevention.
This led to a mini-revolt by state and local emergency managers grabbing their pitch forks and hoes and storming Washington D.C. to protest this change in language. The change did not come immediately. Likely, it took Hurricane Katrina and the decimation of New Orleans and the black eye that FEMA got from the response that changed things up.
The disaster pendulum swung back toward all-hazards. In reality the acquiescence by the doctrine people at DHS allowed funding to be used secondarily for all-hazard purposes as long as the primary function and the justification for funding was based on a counter-terrorism purpose. For those keeping track of how the funding pendulum is swinging these days, it is headed back to terrorism only for DHS funds administered by FEMA.
At some point following these events the word “mitigation” crept back into the now “Five Phases” of emergency management. This where doctrinally the pendulum still stands by my reckoning. I often enjoy asking FEMA personnel to define the phases of emergency management and they give the old basic four. To sum it up—they don’t know their own doctrine.
I’ve read different definitions for what prevention means. A common one is this, “Disaster prevention is the outright avoidance of adverse impacts of hazards and related disasters prevention (i.e. disaster prevention) expresses the concept and intention to completely avoid potential adverse impacts through action taken in advance.” I’ve also heard it explained as prevention deals with human caused disasters, e.g. terrorism, and mitigation deals with natural hazards.”
I’m not going to address the issue of someone having the bright idea to replace preparedness with protection. Really! Did that make sense? Did it help move our profession forward? Or, has it only confused people?
Use what you like, but if you stick to the common four phases of emergency management, Mitigation, Preparedness, Response and Recover” you will be in good company.
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by Eric E. Holdeman, Senior Fellow, Emergency Management Magazine. He blogs at www.disaster-zone.com His Podcast is at Disaster Zone
