FEMA memo narrows emergency management to coordinating emergency services

The first difference between the two definitions is their subject. The definition on FEMA's website before the memo called emergency management "the managerial function charged with creating the framework within which communities reduce vulnerability to hazards and cope with hazards" ^[3]. Hamilton's version, announced in a video, reads "the strategic coordination of emergency services to protect life, property, and continuity of operations" ^[2]. The old one is about communities and hazards. The new one is about services, and only the old one mentions reducing vulnerability [c2, c3].

Hamilton's memo is titled in part "We Must Return to Basics" [c1, c12]. It gives a reason for the change: the field has grown beyond its original scope, "which has diluted our credibility, capability, and professional development" ^[12]. That is a claim about cause and effect, and Eos does not report any evidence offered for it ^[12]. Montano, an associate professor at the Massachusetts Maritime Academy who researches emergency management, has worked on clarifying the field's terms herself and agreed that such work has value ^[13]. She called this redefinition "bizarre" ^[13]. She said Hamilton has no background in emergency management and the new text does not engage with decades of expert work on defining the field ^[14].

According to Eos, parts of the memo also contradict its own definition. The memo lists 12 core areas. Among them are risk analysis and hazard vulnerability assessments, planning and plan development, and cross-functional coordination, which Eos says seem to contradict the narrower wording ^[16]. Hazard vulnerability assessment fits the old definition's language about reducing vulnerability ^[3]. It is hard to fit inside the coordination of fire, police and emergency medical services, which is what Montano says "emergency services" means in the field ^[7].

Montano's objection rests on that term. She said it is "a total, total recalibration of what emergency management is, does, and who we work with" ^[6]. Eos reports that the definition seems to preclude funding for disaster mitigation or recovery ^[9]. I think that is a fair reading of the text.

The thing this doesn't tell you is whether any grant line actually changes. Eos says the definition's exact implications are unclear ^[18], and the core-area list keeps hazard work in scope ^[16]. Whether mitigation loses money depends on which half of the memo the promised rewrite of FEMA's doctrine and training follows ^[15].

Montano said the stakes depend on whether FEMA acts on the text. She said that if Hamilton expects FEMA to start operating under this definition, as the memo implies, everything at FEMA would change. "There's a real potential here for a complete overturning of what we think of as being emergency management," she said. ^[17]