Civic Issues | Lucy Spicher

Prevention, protection, mitigation, response, and recovery: five areas of need, five missions, one goal. When disasters strike, we tend to look toward an authority figure: someone who makes us feel safe. Upon impact, we may look to first responders, firemen, policemen, and neighbors willing to lend a helping hand. We think about friends and family and pray that they made it out okay. We feel a range of emotions: grief, anger, guilt. But who's left standing by your side when the disaster has died down and you're standing in the wreckage? Who's left to pay for the damages? Who's left to pick up the pieces? Hurricane Sandy survivors - photo by the Canadian Red Cross As discussed in my post about Hurricane Harvey, more than three months after Harvey's initial downfall more than half of the state's residents were not receiving the assistance they required. FEMA, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, only has so much money allocated to disaster cleanup, and ...

It's obvious that our country has experienced a multitude of natural disasters in our history, and it seems that the multitude and intensity of these disasters has just continued to increase in recent years. We have already looked at the impact of the drought in California and the devastating effects of Hurricane Harvey. We have examined what kind of assistance, or lack thereof, that the victims of these disasters have been receiving, but after close examination, it becomes very disturbing to learn that this assistance is limited to post-destruction disasters. The assistance only comes after the storm. The government swoops in to clean up the mess, but have they considered preventing it? House damaged by Hurricane Harvey - CNN.com Let's consider the government's take on homeland security. It is reported that " analysts generally talk about five missions areas: prevention, protection, mitigation, response, and recovery ," where prevention is the main focus....

Last time, we visited the drought out West, one of the many natural disasters that has raged through the United States recently. These disasters don't discriminate; they hit the north, the south, the east, and the west. We've seen sinkholes, droughts, floods, tornadoes, tsunamis, the list just goes on and on. One of our main concerns, though, is the people that these disasters are affecting. It's the people that are left to relive, recover, and rebuild from these disasters. My question is, who is helping them? Whose responsibility is it to lift these people up and restore them to their pre-disaster days? For many of us disasters are becoming old news. The more disasters we hear about, the more we expect... until they hit us personally. What kind of help do you think you would deserve if you were hit by a drought? A sinkhole? A hurricane? If you have as much faith in humanity as I do, you'd expect people to give everything the have to help those that are struggling, ...

A drought out West. Flooding down South. Tornadoes raging through the Midwest, and sinkholes. Everywhere. ITS. A. DISASTER. or more accurately a series of disasters. As storms and other natural disasters ravage their way across the United States, many families are left in the wake of destruction. Many of us can turn a blind eye, considering we are not the ones being affected here in central Pennsylvania. However, what if it was you? What if it was your family, left with nothing, rebuilding your life from the debris of a town you once knew? Hearing news of destruction, many questions may arise: Was my family affected? How bad was it? What can we do to help? Initially, many of these communities may face an abundance of assistance. We can expect the American Red Cross to rush in and take care of business. The American Red Cross claims that they respond to an emergency  every eight minutes . American Red Cross Disaster Relief However, who is there to help long after initi...