Do Feds Secretly Control The States' Emergency Management Assistance Compact (EMAC)? By Lynn Landes 9/28/05
Excerpts:
The federal government may secretly control state-to-state assistance requests through a little-known entity called, the Emergency Management Assistance Compact (EMAC). In the wake of the Hurricane Katrina disaster, which included communications and logistics failures across the board, and with similar problems after Hurricane Rita (voiced today in Congress by Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee (D-TX)), EMAC has largely escaped public scrutiny.
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What is EMAC and who controls it? Originally, it was founded in 1993 by the Southern Governors Association and funded by member states. Its mission was to improve the coordination of disaster relief in the wake of Hurricane Andrew. Today, it is a "congressionally ratified" organization based in Lexington, Kentucky. Every state except Hawaii has joined it.
FEMA now funds EMAC (a $2 million grant over a 3-year period), but it is administered by NEMA (National Emergency Management Association), a non-profit 501(c)(3) association for state emergency officials, businesses, and other organizations. NEMA only has a 7-member staff.
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It seems that both NEMA and FEMA want EMAC to appear indispensable to state governments. "If you're not using EMAC, you're pretty much on your own to make phone calls, to find resources from other states, and it creates a lot more chaos," said Angela Copple, NEMA's designated staffer for EMAC. It's hard to imagine anything more chaotic than the bureaucratic bungling of Katrina.
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With the help of FEMA it appears that EMAC has a chokehold on state-to-state disaster coordination. On August 29, 2005, as state and local officials in Louisiana and Mississippi began screaming for help, Michael D. Brown, Under Secretary of Homeland Security for Emergency Preparedness and Response and head of the FEMA, "...urged all fire and emergency services departments not to respond to counties and states affected by Hurricane Katrina without being requested and lawfully dispatched by state and local authorities under mutual aid agreements and the Emergency Management Assistance Compact."
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According to a September 26, 2005 article in the Ocala Star-Banner, "County officials have... complained that they still haven't received millions of dollars in reimbursements from FEMA for (last year's) hurricane (Jeanne) costs. U.S. Reps. Alcee Hastings, D- Miramar, and Mark Foley, R-Jupiter wrote acting FEMA director R. David Paulison last week to express their frustrations over the issue."
http://www.ecotalk.org/EMAC.htm