review for the post 2

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Arizona State University *

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300

Subject

Political Science

Date

Apr 3, 2024

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docx

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3

Uploaded by dpowers42090 on coursehero.com

The local government has a huge responsibility in the protection and safety of its citizens. Considering that most citizens generally do not have the resources on a day to day basis to protect themselves if a terrorist attack or natural disaster occur, it is the local governments job to financially protect, provide medical care and provide means of safe shelter if an incident or disaster happen. Local governments may not have all the resources readily available right from the start but they have other agencies that they can contact who can allocate these assets. It is difficult to predict when or if a natural disaster will occur and different parts of the United States are subjected to different types of natural disaster at different rates. For example, Louisiana is more likely to experience a hurricane more often than Maine. With terrorist attacks, they can rarely be predicted but we can assume that they will generally occur in more populated areas with semi-important to crucial assets. That being said, the government obviously cannot focus all of their funds and time on FEMA and DHS. As stated in the text, Introduction to Homeland Security, authors George Haddow, Jane Bullock and Damon Coppola state, "Hurricane Katrina, which struck on August 29, 2005, and resulted in the death of over 1800 people (and the destruction of billions of dollars in housing stock and other infrastructure), exposed significant problems with the US emergency management framework.". This demonstrates that after 9/11 happened, FEMA allocated most of its funding and training to terrorism response. The poor response to Hurricane Katrina is an example of how the duty of protection needs to be balanced with other duties such as repairing buildings and streets so that when natural disasters like this do happen, the city has a better chance of not experiencing as much damage. Going back to my previous point, there are certain parts of the country which have a higher chance of experiencing natural disasters over others meaning they require more funding and training in that area. In my opinion, the way government should balance these duties is by looking at historical patterns and taking into account population. If a city has a lower population but higher risk for natural disasters, they may require more funding for things like hurricanes, earthquakes or tornados. But, if a city has a higher population as well as a history of experiencing deadly tornados every year, the government may want to allocate more funds and training for both causes. When resources are scarce and in demand it can be difficult or even impossible to give the public even less than what they need. This is when citizens need to be empowered by their local government and emergency management system; many things can be fixed by funding but when there is no funding, matters need to be taken into the hands of the public. For
example, the local emergency management could offer more in-depth classes on how to respond in a disaster or terrorism incident. This means that the public could become more knowledgable in how to deal with a crisis for longer while waiting for help to come. This would help suppress widespread panic as the citizens would feel like they are more in control of their situation due to the confidence they gained from these classes. Hello Karlie, I enjoyed reading your post and you made some very valid points. The local government has a huge responsibility in the protection and safety of their citizens. I think most people forget that it first falls to the local government before the federal government gets involved. But as you stated it is very hard to predict if something bad is going to happen or not. Big issues I have seen throughout school and learning about FEMA and how it operates day in and out is it doesn’t no were to place funds at certain times and then something out and left field happens and the local and federal government struggle to get the help to them local citizens that need it. Fixing the problem is infinitely more difficult because of politics. So, like a household juggling more bills than it can afford — and suddenly facing an emergency car repair — FEMA is juggling its obligations, paying some and postponing others. (Tns, 2023) But as you bought up 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina that goes to show the major issues that we had to use to learn from to better our response to human-made disasters and natural disasters. My favorite part of your whole post is your idea of how the funding should work. I couldn’t agree more with anything I read through on this week’s discussion than that. Very well placed together though. I think they should really try something to do that sort. Also, you are not on giving a idea of a way to incase all levels of the issues then just one way .
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