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On July 26, 2016,
FEMA celebrated the 26th anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities
Act (ADA). FEMA recognizes the importance of inclusive emergency management in preparedness
activities before a disaster strikes. The Agency works extensively with state, local, tribal and territorial
governments to facilitate ADA compliance, and to increase physical, program, and
effective communication access to the children and adults with disabilities in
their communities.
Working
Together to Assist Disaster Survivors is a video that depicts
the relationship and partnership between Disaster Survivor Assistance and
Disability Integration. The video provides open captioning and America Sign
Language interpretation for audiences with hearing difficulties. Visit the Ready.gov
resource page for more information about take charge of your own preparedness.
FEMA congratulates 36
participants in the Master Exercise Practitioner Program (MEPP) Series #36 that
graduated on May 5, 2016, from the Emergency Management Institute on the
National Emergency Training Center campus in Emmitsburg, Maryland.
MEPP is a series of
three courses focusing on advanced exercise design, conduct, and evaluation
practices in each phase of the Homeland Security Exercise and Evaluation
Program (HSEEP). Candidates apply best practices and lessons learned from their
organizations and experiences, as well as key learning concepts from the
curriculum to exercise planning team assignments. The MEPP is designed to
challenge candidates to demonstrate their expertise within all levels of
exercise design through both in-class and take-home proficiency demonstrations.
The program
targets experienced individuals with significant responsibilities for
progressive, all-hazard exercise programs consistent with the principles in the
HSEEP. Ideal candidates will have three to five years of experience
designing and conducting emergency management exercises consistent with the
HSEEP doctrine.
Congratulations
graduates! Interested professionals should visit http://www.training.fema.gov/mepp/
for more information.
Graduates of the Mater Exercise Practitioner Program
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A simulated earthquake
shook Camp Ethan Allen Training Site, Jericho, Vt, on July 29, 2016, as part of
the Vigilant Guard 2016 exercise. This resulted in several downed trees,
collapsed bridges and buildings, injured individuals, and other simulated
casualties located throughout the scenario. Massachusetts Task Force 1, Vermont
Task Force 1, and New York Task Force 1 collaborated with members of the
Canadian Air Force, Vermont National Guard and New York National Guard and
worked a variety of scenarios. The teams worked with their
interagency and international partners on several simulated life-saving
missions including: raising a collapsed building, completing a rescue in a
partially submerged home, and extracting a survivor underneath a vehicle.
FEMA’s Urban
Search and Rescue Task Forces look forward to additional exercises and
opportunities to collaborate with their partners to build relationships
invaluable in real world scenarios.
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The calm of a San
Francisco day was shattered by recent multiple fire alarms involving
five separate structures. Over nine hours, local public information officers
(PIOs), led by Emergency Management Institute (EMI) Advanced PIO Course
graduate Jonathan Baxter, successfully provided life-saving evacuation notices,
safety messages, and shelter-in-place orders. Baxter gives credit
to the EMI training he received for his new found knowledge and
tools.
Nine Advanced PIO
course trainings are scheduled over the next year on campus at the National
Emergency Training Center in Emmitsburg, Md.
The PIO training
program is enhanced by its partnerships with states teaching basic courses
that prepare new PIOs for handling daily challenges of safeguarding and
informing their communities during emergencies.
The Advanced PIO
course enhances skills of the participants through interactive
lectures from subject matter experts and functional exercises, including
strategic communications and incident action planning as it relates to Joint
Information Center operations.
The next
Advanced PIO course will be held on August 22-26, 2016 in Broward
County, Fla. Interested individuals should contact mike_jachles@sheriff.org to register. For
information on prerequisites and course schedules go to http://training.femac.gov/programs/pio/.
EMI Virtual Tabletop Exercise for Mass
Casualty Incident
FEMA’s Emergency
Management Institute (EMI) is offering a virtual tabletop exercise (VTTX)
focusing on Mass Casualty Incident (MCI) on August 23-25 from 12:00
p.m. to 4:00 p.m. EDT. This VTTX addresses MCI awareness and information
sharing during response efforts to assist affected communities.
Session content is the same each day and participants
only need to attend one session.
This VTTX allows
participating communities to share details and best practices regarding mass
casualty awareness, integration into all-hazard preparedness, information
sharing, incident management, and resource management processes. The goals of
the VTTX are to enhance the participants’ knowledge, skills, and abilities to
effectively conduct all-hazards emergency response and recovery. The VTTX also
enables coordination of response operations with counterparts from federal
agencies, state, local and tribal governments, private sector organizations,
non-governmental agencies, and other whole community partners.
Interested individuals
should email Doug Kahn at douglas.kahn@fema.dhs.gov
or call 301-447-7645. Additionally, it is requested that
individuals send a courtesy copy email to the Integrated Emergency
Management Branch at FEMA-EMI-IEMB@fema.dhs.gov or
call 301-447-1381. The deadline for VTTX applications is August 5. Additional information can be found by visiting https://training.fema.gov/programs/emivttx.aspx.
Apply for the 2017
National Emergency Management Executive Academy
The objective of the
Executive Academy is to engage, challenge and enhance the talents of emergency
management executives through critical thinking, visionary strategic planning,
and negotiation and conflict resolution when applied to complex real-world
problems. The Executive Academy consists of four resident sessions, webinars,
distance learning, and literature reviews. Executives will explore how they can
leverage science, technology, engineering, and data analysis to impact critical
decisions and guide informed policy development. Executives will have the
opportunity to work collaboratively on projects, share smart practices, and
participate in exercises on cascading and catastrophic events.
Applications will be
accepted through August 5, 2016. There are a limited number of seats and
enrollment is competitive. For more information on the Executive Academy and
the application and selection process, visit www.training.fema.gov/EMPP/executive.asp.
The Executive Academy
is the pinnacle of a three-level Academy series in the Emergency Management
Professional Program (EMPP) which includes Basic, Advanced, and Executive
Academies. Emergency management professionals should visit the EMPP page for more information about which
academy best suits their needs.
Draft Disaster Resilience
Indicators Concept Released By Mitigation Federal Leadership Group Subcommittee
FEMA, National Oceanic
and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and their federal partners in
the Mitigation Federal Leadership Group (MitFLG) Disaster Resilience Indicators
Subcommittee released a “Draft
Interagency Concept for Community Resilience Indicators and National-Level
Progress Measures."
This concept is the
result of a year-long effort to identify potential indicators of community
resilience capacity building that align with the Mitigation and Recovery Core
Capabilities under the National Preparedness Goal. Learn more details about
this joint FEMA/NOAA initiative here www.fema.gov/community-resilience-indicators.
The document, compiled
in response to broad public interest in identifying key factors of community
resilience nationwide in order to promote better-informed capacity building
strategies, is intended to start a broad conversation among public- and
private-sector stakeholders on how best to define and track improvements in
community resilience capacity across 28 key indicator categories.
Interested
stakeholders seeking to add their input can submit comments and feedback to the
Disaster Resilience Indicators Subcommittee of the MitFLG at FEMA-CommunityResilience@fema.dhs.gov
by August 15, 2016.
The MitFLG
subcommittee was led by representatives of FEMA and the National Oceanic and
Atmospheric Administration and includes significant contributions from federal
partners such as the National Institute of Standards and Technology, the U.S.
Army Corps of Engineers, and the U.S. Geological Survey.
FEMA National Training
Program Continuing Grants
FEMA announced funding
opportunities for the Fiscal Year 2016 Continuing Training Grants program. The
Homeland Security National Training Program’s Continuing Training Grants will
provide $11.5 million to qualified applicants to help improve the nation’s
ability to respond to and recover from all-hazard events.
This highly
competitive program attracts applicants from state, local, tribal, and
territorial governments, eligible non-profit organizations, and higher
education institutions. Funding is provided as cooperative agreements and
awarded directly to the selected applicants.
For more
information and to download the application package, visit www.grants.gov and submit applications no later
than August 22.
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