Volume 13, Issue 4

While today’s young adults are often vilified as hypersensitive and narcissistic, it is important to understand how the life experiences of the current generation of 18- to 25-year-olds has shaped their worldviews. This research indicates that growing up in the post-9/11 world has exposed them to a reduction in liberty, increased prejudice and mistrust, and a general sense of fear and insecurity. However, it has also helped them understand that disasters can impact anyone, and instilled a strong belief that people should help each other in times of need. These are characteristics that emergency managers and response professionals should view as strengths to be capitalized on among entry-level hires are who drawn to the field.

The responder community must be ready to respond quickly and effectively in the event of a disaster. In order to maintain readiness, many disaster response communities exercise their response capabilities on a regular basis. The critical challenge is to design, conduct, and evaluate exercises in a manner that effectively tests responders’ readiness and generates lessons that can improve readiness. This paper describes a framework to enable assessment of response readiness through evaluation of critical capabilities in exercises. It was developed for oil spill response based on the observation and analysis of four response exercises. The framework (1) identifies critical capabilities that lead to readiness for spill response, and maps them to (2) exercise design components that test each capability and (3) evaluation measures to evaluate each capability within an exercise. The framework enables continuous improvement by linking the evaluation of exercises to the critical capabilities required of an oil spill response organization; by evaluating the performance of specific capabilities, areas for improvement are clearly identified and can be re-tested in a future exercise. While the findings are necessarily specific to oil spill response, the principles apply to any disaster response context.

Pet ownership may continue to be an impediment to evacuation and sheltering for disasters, despite the passage of the 2006 PETS Act. Many Americans consider pets to be a part of the family, and are hesitant to follow evacuate orders if they cannot bring household pets along. We present findings of qualitative data collected from residents in eastern North Carolina, an area that is susceptible to hurricane storm surge flooding, and other severe weather events. Additionally, analysis of hazard mitigation plans for the state of North Carolina and the four areas in which the data were collected reveal that the state level plan includes significant planning for pets, while the local hazard plans do not dedicate plans to address evacuation and sheltering of companion animals. Implications for future research include clear communication about pet friendly shelters, broader inclusion and protection of vulnerable animals that are tied to the human and environmental well-being, and updating local mitigation plans to include specific plans for including animals in evacuation.

This paper’s purpose is to explore the Civil Air Patrol’s (CAP) historical function of emergency management and compare it to modern-day positioning. CAP’s identity is evaluated to determine how it aligns with the current mission and public perception. The mission’s relevance is examined considering modern technology that now provides simpler alternatives. A proposed action plan describing repositioning of the CAP mission, areas of opportunity, and the resulting financial implications are included.