The Historical Context of Emergency Management
1 The Historical Context of Emergency Management What You Will Learn • The early roots of emergency management. • The modern history of emergency management in the United States. • How FEMA came to exist, and how it evolved during the 1980s, 1990s, and the early twenty-first century. • The sudden changes to modern emergency management that have resulted from the September 11 terrorist attacks and Hurricane Katrina. Introduction Emergency management has ancient roots. Early hieroglyphics depict cavemen trying to deal with disasters. The Bible speaks of the many disasters that befell civilizations. In fact, the account of Moses parting the Red Sea could be interpreted as the first attempt at flood control. As long as there have been disasters, individuals and communities have tried to do something about them; however, organized attempts at dealing with disasters did not occur until much later in modern history. The purpose of this chapter is to discuss the cultural, organizational, and leg- islative history of modern emergency management in the United States. Some of the significant events and people that shaped the emergency management discipline over the years are reviewed. Understanding the history and evolution of emergency man- agement is important because, at different times, the concepts of emergency manage- ment have been applied differently. The definition of emergency management can be extremely broad and all-encompassing. Unlike other more structured disciplines, it has expanded and contracted in response to events, congressional desires, and leadership styles. In the most recent history, events and leadership, more than anything else, have brought about dramatic changes to emergency management in the United States.
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