Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA)

| nativename     = FEMA | seal           = FEMA logo.svg | seal_width     = 180px | seal_caption   = New FEMA seal | formed         = April 1, 1979 | employees      = 6,651 (2008 Budget) | budget         = $8.02 billion (2008) | chief1_name    = R. David Paulison | chief1_position = Administrator | parent_agency  = Department of Homeland Security | child1_agency  = | child2_agency  = | website        = www.fema.gov | footnotes      =
 * agency_name    = Federal Emergency Management Agency

The Federal Emergency Management Agency, or FEMA, is an agency of the United States United States Department of Homeland Security. The purpose of FEMA (begun by Presidential Order on April 1, 1979)is to coordinate the response to a disaster which has occurred in the United States and which overwhelms the resources of local and state authorities. The governor of the state in which the disaster occurred must declare a state of emergency and formally request from the President that FEMA and the federal government respond to the disaster. The only exception is when an emergency or disaster occurs on federal property or to a federal asset, for example, the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, in the 1995 bombing, or the Space Shuttle Columbia in the 2003 return-flight disaster.

While on-the-ground support of disaster recovery efforts is a major part of FEMA's charter, the agency provides state and local governments with experts in specialized fields and funding for rebuilding efforts and relief funds for infrastructure, in conjunction with the Small Business Administration. FEMA also assists individuals and businesses with low interest loans. In addition to this, FEMA provides funds for training of response personnel throughout the United States and its territories as part of the agency's preparedness effort.

History
Federal emergency management in the United States has existed in one form or another for over 200 years. The history of FEMA can be divided into the following parts.

Prior to 1930s
A series of devastating fires struck the port city of Portsmouth, New Hampshire, early in the 19th century. The 7th U.S. Congress passed a number of measures in the Congressional Act of 1803 that provided relief for Portsmouth merchants by waiving duties and tariffs on imported goods. This is widely considered the first piece of legislation passed by the federal government that provided relief after a disaster.

Between 1803 and 1930, ad hoc legislation was passed more than 100 times for relief or compensation after a disaster. Examples of these include the waiving of duties and tariffs to the merchants of New York City after a fire in the mid 1830s. After President Abraham Lincoln's assassination at John T. Ford's Theater, the 54th Congress passed legislation compensating those who were injured in the theatre.

Piecemeal approach (1930s–1960s)
After the start of the Great Depression in 1929, President Herbert Hoover had commissioned the Reconstruction Finance Corporation in 1932. The purpose of the RFC was to lend money to banks and institutions to stimulate economic activity. RFC was also responsible for dispensing federal dollars in the wake of a disaster. RFC can be considered the first organized federal disaster response agency.

The Bureau of Public Roads in 1934 was given authority to finance the reconstruction of highways and roads after a disaster. The Flood Control Act of 1944 also gave the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers authority over flood control and irrigation projects and thus played a major role in disaster recovery from flooding.

This "piecemeal approach" to disaster recovery was troubled by poor inter agency cooperation and bureaucratic red tape.

Department of Housing and Urban Development (1960–1979)
By the start of the 1960s, federal disaster relief and recovery was brought under the umbrella of the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), which created the Federal Disaster Assistance Administration. This agency would oversee disasters such as Hurricane Carla in 1961, Hurricane Betsy in 1965, Hurricane Camille in 1969 and Hurricane Agnes in 1972, the Alaskan (Good Friday) Earthquake of 1964 and the San Fernando Earthquake of 1971.

Many government agencies were still involved in disaster relief; in some cases, more than 100 separate agencies might be jockeying for control and jurisdiction of a disaster.

Congress met the nation’s needs for disaster preparedness and assistance somewhat reactively, by enacting various forms of legislation in response to recognized needs.

Over the years, Congress increasingly extended the range of covered categories for assistance, and several presidential executive orders did the same. By enacting these various forms of legislative direction, Congress established a category for annual budgetary amounts of assistance to victims of various types of hazards or disasters, it specified the qualifications, and then it established or delegated the responsibilities to various federal and non-federal agencies.

In time, this expanded array of agencies themselves required reorganization, as the evidence of their history reflects. One of the first such federal agencies was the Federal Civil Defense Administration, which operated within the Executive Office of the President. Then, functions to administer disaster relief were given to the President himself, who delegated to the Housing and Home Finance Administration; subsequently, a new office of the Office of Defense Mobilization was created; then, the new Office of Defense and Civilian Mobilization, managed by the EOP; after that, the Office of Civil and Defense Mobilization, which renamed the former agency; then, the Office of Civil Defense, under the Department of Defense (DoD); the Department of Health, Education and Welfare (HEW); the Department of Agriculture; the Office of Emergency Planning (OEmP); the Defense Civil Preparedness Agency (replacing the OCD in the DoD); the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and the General Services Administration (GSA) (upon termination of the OEmP).

These actions demonstrated that during those years, the nation’s domestic preparedness was addressed by several disparate legislative actions, motivated by policy and budgetary earmarking, and not by a single, unifying, comprehensive strategy to meet the nation’s needs over time. Then, in 1978 an effort was made to consolidate the several singular functions; FEMA was created to house civil defense and disaster preparedness under one roof. This was a very controversial decision. Many felt the coordination of federal preparedness functions would be too challenging, and the needs of developing civil defense preparedness might lose its priority if it was included within the same organization handling natural disaster response. In the end, FEMA was created as the primary federal source for both financial and technical support assistance to victims in need of emergency aid. The controversy was not resolved by the decision, though. Those who managed the mandates of the agency still held their particular points of view concerning which function of FEMA was more important, civil defense or natural disaster preparedness, and the issue failed to resolve itself due to Congress’ prior history of placing value on policy and the budgetary concerns of the times. Eventually, these points of view developed their separate cultures within FEMA, causing a “stovepiping” within the agency, thus creating insularity and preventing a mutuality and collegial sharing of interests and resources. Many feel that the hybrid that FEMA became never was able to meld the two separate and distinct functions, those of counter terrorism and natural disaster management. They feel that this essentially unyielding dichotomy has created the several problems for which FEMA has been criticized over the years.

Until April 1, 1979, there was no single federal agency to carry out the various functions of disaster assistance and civil defense.

FEMA as an independent agency (1979–2003)


FEMA was established under the 1978 Reorganization Plan No. 3, and activated April 1, 1979 by Jimmy Carter in his Executive Order 12127. In July, Carter signed Executive Order 12148 putting the new agency in charge of coordinating all disaster relief efforts at the federal level. FEMA absorbed the Federal Insurance Administration, the National Fire Prevention and Control Administration, the National Weather Service Community Preparedness Program, the Federal Preparedness Agency of the General Services Administration and the Federal Disaster Assistance Administration activities from Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). FEMA was also given the responsibility for overseeing the nation's Civil Defense, a function which had previously been performed by the Department of Defense's Defense Civil Preparedness Agency.

One of the first disasters FEMA responded to was the dumping of toxic waste into Love Canal in Niagara Falls, New York in the late 1970s. FEMA also responded to the Three Mile Island nuclear accident where the nuclear generating station suffered a partial core meltdown. These disasters, while showing the agency could function properly, also uncovered some inefficiencies.

In 1993, President Bill Clinton elevated FEMA to a cabinet level position and appointed James Lee Witt as FEMA Director. Witt initiated reforms that would help to streamline the disaster recovery and mitigation process. The end of the Cold War also allowed the agency’s resources to be turned away from civil defense to natural disaster preparedness.

After FEMA’s creation through reorganization and executive orders, Congress continued to expand FEMA’s authority by assigning responsibilities to it. Those responsibilities include dam safety under the National Dam Safety Program Act; disaster assistance under the Robert T. Stafford Disaster Relief and Emergency Assistance Act; earthquake hazards reduction under the Earthquake Hazards Reduction Act of 1977 and further expanded by Executive Order 12699, regarding safety requirements for federal buildings and Executive Order 12941, concerning the need for cost estimates to seismically retrofit federal buildings; emergency food and shelter under the Stewart B. McKinney Homeless Assistance Act of 1987; fire control, under the Federal Fire Prevention and Control Act of 1974; hazardous materials, under the Emergency Planning and Community Right-to-Know Act of 1986; insurance, under the National Flood Insurance Act of 1968; national security, under the National Security Act of 1947, the Defense Production Act of 1950;  and various executive orders under presidents Eisenhower,  Reagan, H. W. Bush, Clinton, and G.W. Bush. In addition, FEMA received authority for counter terrorism through the Nunn-Lugar-Domenici amendment under the Weapons of Mass Destruction Act of 1996, which was a response to the recognized vulnerabilities of the U.S. after the sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway in 1995.

These actions reveal that no real effort was made to seriously unify the nation’s continuing and evolving needs for homeland security, beyond the act of creating a single agency to manage these different functions. Again, there was no overarching strategy to streamline and consolidate the functions and focus of FEMA. The actions of Congress continued to show a pattern of short-term responses to long-term needs. FEMA had to manage its expanding responsibilities while sources of funding would vary year-after-year, as Congress would react and respond to various natural disasters and national security threats. Various mandates would have their own budgets, and even those were not dedicated from year to year. They were subject to revisions and reallocations as various other needs superseded them, requiring financial adjustments to budgetary limitations.

FEMA under Department of Homeland Security (2003-present)


Following the September 11, 2001 attacks, Congress passed the Homeland Security Act of 2002, which created the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to better coordinate among the different federal agencies that deal with law enforcement, disaster preparedness and recovery, border protection and civil defense. FEMA was absorbed into DHS as of 2003. As a result, FEMA became part of the Emergency Preparedness and Response Directorate of Department of Homeland Security, and employs more than 2,600 full time employees. In September 2003, Michael D. Brown, FEMA’s director and Department Of Homeland Security Undersecretary, warned that the shift would make a mockery of FEMA’s new motto, "A Nation Prepared", and would "fundamentally sever FEMA from its core functions", "shatter agency morale" and "break longstanding, effective and tested relationships with states and first responder stakeholders". The inevitable result of the reorganization of 2003, warned Brown, would be "an ineffective and uncoordinated response" to a terrorist attack or a natural disaster.

Hurricane Katrina in 2005 demonstrated that the vision of further unification of functions and another reorganization could not address the p[[
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Contact Information
500 C Street SW Washington D.C. 20472 Phone: (800) 621-FEMA