The International Association of Emergency Managers (IAEM) and the National Emergency Management Association (NEMA) released the joint annual report entitled Emergency Management Performance Grant: An Evaluation of the Nation’s Return on Investment Amid Coronavirus.
About EMPG
The Emergency Management Performance Grant (EMPG) allows state, local, territorial, and tribal governments to make key investments to build capacity and enhance the capability of states and localities to respond to disasters.
Even resource constraints faced amidst the COVID-19 pandemic response, emergency managers continued to demonstrate a commitment to building all-hazards emergency management capacity.
For EMPG in the fiscal year 2020, there is much to highlight.
- 247 state and approximately 500 local emergency operations centers helped officials coordinate efforts for 19,752 events using EMPG funds
- State and local emergency managers developed, maintained, or updated 5,408 plans addressing all manner of emergency response, recovery, and mitigation needs, many of which were related to issues driven by the COVID 19 pandemic response
- More than 138,000 participants took part in 4,020 state and local workshops, drills, and functional
full-scale exercises - 16,978 individual and community preparedness outreach campaigns impacted nearly 115 million
residents across the nation
Grants put to use
Capabilities afforded through EMPG allow many of these events to be managed without additional federal expenditures When the response to the COVID-19 pandemic began, jurisdictions were prepared to initiate cross government planning and coordination; begin procuring, distributing, and managing PPE and medical supplies; manage vaccine distribution and site logistics, and conduct public information and messaging due to sustained investments made through EMPG.
Without a robust emergency management ecosystem at the state, local, territorial, and tribal levels, the responses to many disasters would falter or require unplanned federal support. Capabilities afforded through EMPG allow many of these events to be managed without additional federal expenditures.
While disaster events remain unpredictable and no investment can fully eliminate risk, supporting the development of state, local, territorial, and tribal capabilities through EMPG is proven to minimize disaster effects on vulnerable populations and limit federal expenditures in the response and recovery phase.
Supporting emergency operations centers
Few federal programs boast EMPG’s 50-50 matching commitment from the state and local level. EMPG stands as the beacon of congressional commitment to ensuring communities and states have the ability to prepare, mitigate, respond, and recover from any number of emergencies and disasters.
EMPG funds are often used to support emergency operations centers which are the coordination hubs for disaster response. The program also provides public education and outreach, enhanced interoperable communications capabilities, support for mutual aid agreement development, and the ability to manage statewide alerts and warnings.
