States Can Be Better Prepared To Respond to Disasters

After a major disaster occurred in Massachusetts, GAO was asked to evaluate how well that State was prepared to respond to the disaster. It was also asked to review the preparedness in six other states with regard to the development of implementing procedures for use by state agencies in carrying out tasks assigned under the state emergency plans.

Massachusetts agencies incurred problems in implementing tasks assigned under the State emergency plan because procedures had not been developed to show how the tasks were to be performed. The review of the plans for six other states revealed that the plans assigned various functions to state agencies and also assigned specific tasks to be performed by each state agency. A majority of state agencies had not developed standard operating procedures for their assigned tasks or had developed documents which did not provide detailed procedures to allow agencies to fulfill their responsibilities adequately. The only individual assistance program which had detailed procedures in each State was the individual and family grant program which provides federal and state shared grants to individuals or families with disaster-related expenses or serious needs. Emergency preparedness agencies in these states were unable to require other state agencies to develop operating procedures for their disaster tasks. In four states, emergency preparedness agencies provided little encouragement to state agencies to develop such procedures. In five states, officials believed that local emergency plans needed to be revised to conform with the state emergency plan. In the sixth state, local plans were reviewed and found to be in conformance with the state plan. No state established disaster training programs with standards for liaisons or for other state agency personnel.

Recommendations

Our recommendations from this work are listed below with a Contact for more information. Status will change from "In process" to "Open," "Closed - implemented," or "Closed - not implemented" based on our follow up work.

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