July
26 marks the 25th Anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act
(ADA). This milestone law prohibits discrimination against people with
disabilities in state and local government, private entities and telecommunications. It was passed in 1990 and signed by President George H.W. Bush. Before the
ADA, people with disabilities experienced barriers to employment, participation
in state and local government programs and services, transportation, effective
communications, public accommodations and more. Although much progress has been
made over the past 25 years, there is still more work to do. Employment
opportunities and access to physical, programmatic, and effective communication
still remain inaccessible for many people with disabilities. And this is
usually exacerbated in disasters.
FEMA
works extensively with state and local officials, and many other stakeholders
who play an important role as force multipliers to achieve compliance and
increase access to more Americans. FEMA has a responsibility to plan for the
entire community – children, older adults and people with or without
disabilities with access and functional needs. FEMA must include the whole
community in preparedness efforts, exercises, and training so that communities
understand how best to accommodate everyone’s needs in a disaster. FEMA
recognizes the importance of inclusive emergency management in preparedness
activities before a disaster strikes, and throughout response, recovery and
mitigation.
Under
the mandates of the ADA, the Post Katrina Emergency Management Reform Act and the
Rehabilitation Act of 1973, FEMA joins a renewed effort across the country to
plan for emergencies and disasters with people who have disabilities and others
with access and functional needs rather than planning for them. Equal access
and reasonable accommodations are not just what the law requires, they are the
right thing to do. The 25th Anniversary of the ADA is a good time to
renew our commitment to this vital civil rights commitment, and FEMA is doing
so to support true whole community inclusion. More
information can be found at www.ready.gov/individuals-access-functional-needs.
FEMA
congratulates the 31 students who graduated from the National Emergency
Management Basic Academy on June 25, 2015. These students completed the full
Basic Academy curriculum, which provides the basic knowledge and skills to help
meet the unpredictable challenges in the field of emergency management.
Graduates represented emergency management professionals from state and local
governments, institutions of higher learning, Department of Defense elements,
and FEMA.
FEMA’s National Emergency Management
Basic Academy is the entry point for individuals pursuing a career in emergency
management, offering the tools to develop the needed comprehensive
foundational skills. For those who are new to
emergency management, the Basic Academy also provides a unique opportunity to
build camaraderie, to establish professional contacts, and to understand the
roles, responsibilities, and legal boundaries associated with emergency
management.
The
Basic Academy is the first of a three-level Academy series in the Emergency
Management Professional Program (EMPP). The EMPP
curriculum is designed to guide and educate emergency management professionals
as they progress through their careers, providing a lifetime of learning for
emergency management professionals. The EMPP includes three separate, but
closely threaded, training programs; building from the Basic Academy; to the
National Emergency Management Advanced Academy, and culminating in the National
Emergency Management Executive Academy. The Advanced Academy is a program to
develop the next generation of emergency management leaders who are trained in
advanced concepts and issues, advanced leadership and management, and critical
thinking and problem solving. The Executive
Academy is a program designed to challenge and enhance the talents of
the nation’s emergency management senior executives through critical thinking,
visionary strategic planning, challenging
conventional concepts, and negotiation and conflict resolution applied
to complex real-world problems. Emergency management professionals should visit www.training.fema.gov/empp
for more information
about which academy best suits their needs.
Congratulations, graduates!
More and more people are making
their homes in woodland settings -- in or near forests, rural areas, or
remote mountain sites. In these settings, homeowners enjoy the beauty of the
environment but face the very real danger of wildfire. Every year
across the nation, some homes survive -- while many others do not -- after
a major wildfire. Those that survive almost always do so because their
owners had prepared for the eventuality of fire, which is an inescapable
force of nature in fire-prone wildland areas.
There
are simple steps citizens can take today to reduce their risk to wildfires. The Ready Campaign's wildfire safety toolkit contains social media shareables to help promote wildfire safety awareness.
FEMA's Emergency Management Institute (EMI) conducts a monthly series of
Virtual Tabletop Exercises (VTTX) using a video teleconference platform to
reach community-based training audiences around the country and provide a
virtual forum for disaster training. The VTTX programs are designed for a
community-based group of at least ten or more personnel from local or state
emergency management organizations with representatives from other disciplines such
as public safety, public works, public health, health care, government,
administrative, communications, military, private sector, non-governmental, and
other whole community partners. Participants
must have an appropriate site equipped with video teleconference capability
that can access FEMA.
EMI will conduct VTTX programs between July and
September 2015 on a variety of subjects:
- July 28-30, 2015: Psychology
of Disaster: Long-term Mental Health Recovery
- August 25-27, 2015: Building
Collapse Focused
- September 1-3, 2015: Public
Health Infectious Disease (written and hosted by the CDC)
To
apply for a VTTX event, submit an email request to participate in the exercise
to Doug Kahn at douglas.kahn@fema.dhs.gov or call
301-447-7645. The deadline for applying to participate in a VTTX is four weeks
prior to the start date.
FEMA announced the release of the Notice of Funding Opportunity (NOFO), for the Fiscal Year (FY) 2015 Homeland Security National Training
Program (HSNTP) Continuing Training Grants (CTG) program with a total
$11,521,000 available for awards in four focus areas.
This highly competitive program attracts on average 80 applicants from
state, local, tribal, and territorial governments, along with eligible
non-profit organizations to include colleges and universities. In 2014,
88 eligible organizations competed and six HSNTP/CTG awards were made.
Information on the 2014 awards can be found online.
FY 2015 HSNTP/CTG applications are due no later than August 10,
2015. Submissions must be made through www.grants.gov.
FEMA announced $180 million
in funding available through two Hazard Mitigation Assistance (HMA) grant
programs: Flood Mitigation Assistance (FMA) and Pre-Disaster Mitigation (PDM).
These two grant programs assist state, local, tribal, and territorial
governments in strengthening our nation’s ability to reduce the potential cost of natural disasters to communities
and their citizens.
Both HMA FY 2015 Funding Opportunity Announcements can be
found at www.grants.gov. Eligible applicants must apply for funding through
the Mitigation eGrants system on the FEMA Grants Portal accessible at https://portal.fema.gov. All applications must be submitted no
later than 3 p.m. EDT on August 28,
2015.
FEMA's HMA grant programs
provide states, local governments, tribes, and territories funding for eligible
mitigation activities to strengthen our nation’s ability to reduce disaster
losses and protect life and property from future disaster damages. Further
information on these grant programs is available at www.fema.gov/hazard-mitigation-assistance.
On
May 18, FEMA began mailing letters to approximately 142,000 NFIP policyholders
who filed claims resulting from Hurricane Sandy, offering them an opportunity
to have their files reviewed. While extensions may be granted on a case by case
basis, FEMA set a September 15, 2015 deadline for
policyholders to begin the intake process by either phoning the call center and
speaking to a claims review specialist or downloading the claims review request
form from the website and submitting it via email or by fax. In the
coming weeks, FEMA will use a number of communications channels to remind the
all 142,000 policyholders of the Fall deadline.
To be eligible
for the review, policyholders must have experienced flood damage between October
27, 2012 and November 6, 2012, as a result of Hurricane Sandy. Policyholders
can call the NFIP’s Hurricane Sandy claims center at 1-866-337-4262 or
go online to www.fema.gov/sandyclaims to download a form requesting a review. The
downloaded form may be filled out and emailed to FEMA-sandyclaimsreview@fema.dhs.gov
to start the review process.
For individuals
who are deaf, hard of hearing or have a speech disability using 711 or VRS,
please call 866-337-4262. For individuals using a TTY, please call
800-462-7585 to begin the review process. Before contacting the claim
center, policyholders are asked to have their flood insurance carrier name and
policy number at hand.
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