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....