CIS 359 Week 10 Week 10 Discussion 2 Red Cross and Federal Agencies

Week 10 Discussion 2

COLLAPSE

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“Red Cross and Federal Agencies”  Please respond to the following:

From the e-Activity, give your opinion on the most beneficial assistance service the Red Cross can provide in times of crisis. Determine the most important preparedness pointer that is provided in the position paper and support your answer.

Consider a potential crisis on a regional or national level in which you believe a federal agency(ies) and / or an organization(s) such as the Red Cross might be involved. Identify the crisis and the federal agency(ies) and / or organization(s) that might be involved in helping to mitigate this crisis. Explain the role(s) of each agency that would be involved in the mitigation.

David – From the e-Activity, give your opinion on the most beneficial assistance service the Red Cross can provide in times of crisis. Determine the most important preparedness pointer that is provided in the position paper and support your answer.

The Red Cross can provide food, shelter, clean clothing, and sanitary conditions in a crisis. The Red Cross is composed of volunteers from local communities that they reside in. If a tornado takes out a row of homes, the Red Cross works to provide the necessities for residents in need. They have preplanned locations for this and also can find shelter if the plan does not work. The Red Cross also works together to send volunteers around the world to provide more aid to local communities in the time of a crisis or disaster. The Red Cross does a lot of pre planning and the weather response is one of their primary functions. They plan their need of aid based on the weather in certain occasions. They plan ahead to know how many people can be affected, what will be needed, and how the items as well as volunteers will get there. The most important preparedness pointer that I saw is that they have strategic locations set up near disaster prone areas. This provides a quick response to the people that are in need of help.

Consider a potential crisis on a regional or national level in which you believe a federal agency(ies) and / or an organization(s) such as the Red Cross might be involved. Identify the crisis and the federal agency(ies) and / or organization(s) that might be involved in helping to mitigate this crisis. Explain the role(s) of each agency that would be involved in the mitigation.

A crisis that is going on now is the wild fires in California. The state has a designated group called the California Department of Forestry and Fire protection. They provide the apparatuses that are needed to fight the fires. The Red Cross also responded to the California wild fires and are providing the residents that lost their homes with shelter and the necessities. Also once the residents are able to go back to their homes, the Red Cross provides assistance with accessing the damage that the residents have sustained. FEMA assists California by providing them grants to pay for over seventy five percent of the equipment that is needed to fight fire. The Department of Justice has provided the fire departments with additional equipment as well as food, water, and generators. The Department of Defense has provided the California fires with a command structure and is able to decide what needs to be done. The National Guard is providing firefighters as well as helicopters that are being used to try to dowse the fire. The Department of Agriculture has sent more than 2000 firefighters as well as provided the efforts with additional apparatus. The Coast Guard is providing the victims with response gear as well as flying them to different locations. The Department of Health and Human Services is educating the public of the health and safety hazards from the smoke from the fires. There are a lot of different agencies working together to try to mitigate the fires. The fires continue to burn even with all of the efforts. Without each agency, the fight against the fires would be much more difficult and exhausting. 

Professor: David good insight here and great example with the recent wildfires in California. There were many organizations that were not well prepared for this one. One of the things that the Red Cross excels at is identifying a spokesperson for the crisis. This is very important on many levels. Your textbook mentions that the spokesperson should be someone that is actually trained in communications methods during a disaster.

Everyone,

How do you feel about appointing a spokesperson and training them? How do you feel about the CEO being the spokesperson as opposed to someone else in the organization?

David – A spokesperson is extremely important. In the chain of command the spokes person is the Liaison between the public and the situation that is occurring. This will ensure that the information provided to the public is correct and necessary. Not everyone needs to know every detail of the situation, but the importance of informing the public of significant situations could allow them to plan ahead. I believe the reason that the CEO should be part of the spokesperson role is that the CEO should have knowledge of every aspect of the company. They know each department and know what its purpose serves. The problem with the CEO being a spokesperson is that everything might not be honest. The CEO is looking out for the company and not always the public. This might not be true for every company, but the CEO most likely will not expose everything.

Karl – Red Cross and Federal Agencies” Please respond to the following:

From the e-Activity, give your opinion on the most beneficial assistance service the Red Cross can provide in times of crisis. Determine the most important preparedness pointer that is provided in the position paper and support your answer.

Consider a potential crisis on a regional or national level in which you believe a federal agency(ies) and / or an organization(s) such as the Red Cross might be involved. Identify the crisis and the federal agency(ies) and / or organization(s) that might be involved in helping to mitigate this crisis. Explain the role(s) of each agency that would be involved in the mitigation.

In my opinion, the most beneficial assistance service the Red Cross can provide is the delivery of humanistic aid to theassailable individuals during disasters and crisis. For me, this is so vital since thousands of lives are saved with this kind ofassistance provided by the Red Cross. The significant point of preparedness that is offered clearly within the positionpaper is disaster identification. Disaster management starts long before the catastrophe strikes. Red Cross staff andvolunteers in communities help to identify common hazards as well as vulnerabilities and survival mechanisms. Based onthis analysis, risks can be addressed, and local preparedness, as well as response plans, created.

An earthquake is a potential crisis that I believe that federal agencies, as well as organizations such as the Red Cross, arelikely to be involved in on a national or regional level. The federal agency that would be involved first is the Federal Emergency Management Agency, FEMA. After the earthquake is declared a disaster, FEMA can provide disasterhousing to displaced and affected persons as well as disaster grants and other aid programs. Besides, public assistancecan also be offered by both FEMA and Red Cross. Good examples of public assistance that can be offered by theagencies include debris removal, services to the public and fixing of public utilities that are damaged.

References:

FEMA. (2015). The Disaster Process & Disaster Aid Programs. Retrieved August 18, 2015, from FEMA: http://www.fema.gov/disaster-process-disaster-aid-programs

IFRC. (2011). The Red Cross Red Crescent approach to disaster and crisis management. Position Paper .Retrieved August 18, 2015, from IFRC: http://www.ifrc.org/PageFiles/91314/1209600-DM-Position-Paper-EN.pdf

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