The management of disaster in the United States is conducted by the Department of Homeland Security; the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), the organization works by coordinating in the role of the federal government of preparation for, mitigation of the effects of the disaster, prevention, response to the disaster, and helping in the recovery from all disasters in America, whether they are man-made such as terrorist acts or from natural causes such as earthquakes. FEMA begun through a Congressional Act of 1803, the act, is the legislation on disasters; it first provided assistance to the town of New Hampshire after a fierce fire on the town. The legislation on disaster management has been passed for more than over 100 times while trying to respond to earthquakes, hurricanes, floods and other natural disasters in America. The agency is the lead agency in the management of all disasters in America.
The organization has employed HAZUS software package which is crucial to the assessment of risks in America. These volunteer teams are utilized to provide emergency support when disaster overwhelms the conventional emergency services. It was established by the United States Congress. It was made the main agency that works in the promotion, preparation for disasters, and in establishing resiliency in the society especially in the Asia-Pacific regon. Some of the mandate for Center for Excellence in Disaster Management and Humanitarian Assistance was to ensure that it facilitates in the training and in disaster preparedness, it is also charged in on the role of consequence management and ensuring that there is health security that is developed in America, it also has the mandate international capacity and capability.
Also of importance in disaster management in America is the Citizen Corps, which is an organization that is composed of volunteer, the organization is locally administered but it is coordinated by the Department of Homeland Security, it seeks to help in disaster mitigation and preparing the population to respond to the emergencies this is done by the use of outreach, training and public education. The Community Emergency Response Teams are the programs that are focused on preparation for disasters and helping on the teaching of what are the best basic skills on responses to disaster response by Citizen Corps (Moore and Lakha 2006).. Despite the best efforts being employed, disasters, emergencies and accidents situations can still occur. Therefore effective preparation and response for emergency will highly have an effect of reducing costs, mortality and injuries, minimize or prevent the disaster's environmental impacts, protect people, reduce loss of people property, and minnimize downtime.
Any legislation should provide for the development of an effective and efficient emergency response and preparedness program which should put into consideration: the assessing of all disasters, emergencies and accident that have the potential of occurring; the program should also work to prevent incidents such as disasters and accidents and the environmental impacts associated with them; the program should also be in a position to provide the mechanism for responding to the various incidents whether emergency plans and also incidents from procedure; also there should be test conducted to see if the emergency plans and procedures that have been set are effective, this should be conducted periodically; and the program should also ensure that it mitigates the impacts that are associated with accidents, disasters and emergencies (Haddow et al, 2008).It is important for consistency on focusing on the need for continued improvement of the programs, it is crucial that there is a constant review of the emergency response performance this should be conducted when an incidence has occurred. This help to identify any deficiencies that are present in the procedure or the set program. The review should determine several factors such as, if there is need for more staff and people training on the set emergency plans and procedures.
