When Richard Serino, the Deputy Administrator of FEMA visited Joplin, MO, after the tornadoes there, he was interviewed by the media and asked: Can FEMA handle this disaster? His response: “If we were doing this alone – no, we couldn’t.”
Serino delivered the keynote address at the 59th Annual IAEM Conference and EMEX 2011 and his message is that responding to a disaster is a team effort and FEMA is only a small part of that team. FEMA can provide a lot of ‘stuff’ to a disaster response, as can other Federal agencies (like DOD), local, state and tribal governments, faith-based communities and the private sector. But the most important part of the team is the citizen and the community, and he went on to elaborate on the “Whole Community” message FEMA has been pushing.
“We managed to get through disasters before FEMA was established in 1993," Serino said because survivors are basically resilient and do help each other during disasters.
During the tornadoes in the Southeast U.S. earlier this year, there were 84 different volunteer groups, that served 134,000 meals, giving 275,000 hours of service with 41,000 volunteers. Who organized them? “Not FEMA,” Serino said. “Other volunteers organized the volunteers.”
He used an example from Joplin where the faith-based community stepped up. Southern Baptists brought tractor-trailers with kitchens that could feed 50,000 people. Those meals were taken by the Red Cross to a shelter set up by the Lutheran Community and another shelter down the street set up by the Muslim Community.
Serino was in Boston before he was appointed to this position by President Obama, and had always worked closely with the private sector. “The private sector is what gets the community back up and running, they put people back to work so they stay in the community,” he said. Then can do big things, of course, but they can also do small things, like bringing in equipment so people can charge their cell phones.
During the first federal disaster after he was appointed – the earthquake in Haiti – he was in the NRC (National Responses Center – the federal version of an EOC) and he asked where the private sector representatives were. They weren't there. Serino set up a system that brought representatives from large private sector companies, like Verizon and Big Lots, into the NRC for 3-month rotations.
Since 9-11, FEMA has given out $32.9 billion in grants. “Are we better prepared than we were 10 years ago?” he asked. “The short answer is ‘yes’, but when you go to Congress, you can’t just say ‘yes’, you have to prove it.”
For example, the primary problem identified after most events or exercises is … communication. During the floods and tornadoes in Missouri and along the Missouri River earlier this year, most of those jurisdictions didn’t have major communication problems. Why? “Because FEMA and the local communities had invested a lot of money into their infrastructure to make sure it wasn’t a problem,” he said.
Another example - FEMA didn’t deploy any USAR’s or MRC’s to those disasters. “We didn’t need to,” Serino said. FEMA and the local communities spent money to build local capacity for search and rescue and medical triage sites.
Serino said FEMA expected there would be twelve $1 billion disasters this year. Right now, there are 21 Joint Field Offices open supporting 36 major declarations right now. There are only three states that haven’t asked for a disaster declaration this year. (W Virginia, Michigan, S Carolina).
Moving forward, FEMA wants to be more survivor centric, not government centric. To help that goal, Serino set up a virtual thinktank at http://www.fema.gov/thinktank where anyone can submit ideas and concepts that would help push the “Whole Community” initiative forward. Serrino will hold conference calls once a month to discuss the top 4-5 issues submitted through that forum.
He encouraged all emergency managers and responders take advantage of this opportunity to submit their ideas directly to FEMA.
