LITMIR.BIZ

      Foreword

      The year 2020 broke many historical precedents and hearts. We saw a record breaking 22 billion dollar natural and weather disasters, a global pandemic and civil unrest in the U.S. and around the world. These disasters took a toll on lives and communities, while unveiling the impact of politics and the role of science in a disaster. This situation heightens the need to educate and prepare the current and future generation of emergency managers by learning response and recovery functions for all hazards and the whole community. The increase in the frequency and severity of disasters has challenged many communities and those individuals assigned to lead during them. As we work to respond and recover from these cascading disasters, we pull lessons learned from the past. Therefore, McEntire’s third edition of Disaster Response and Recovery remains an essential text for students in the emergency management discipline.

      Bridging theory with practice remains an educational challenge in this discipline. Coming from the perspective of a pracademic, McEntire’s book has one foot in the academic realm and the other in the practice of emergency management. This connection is evident in the book as he integrates emergency management, public administration, policy, and sociology theories with practice by including real‐world examples and lessons learned. This edition not only relies upon prior disasters that led to substantial policy and institutional changes at all levels of government and every sector of society, such as Hurricane Katrina in 2005, but it also includes recent examples from national and international disasters.

      Most notably, is the COVID‐19 pandemic, in which McEntire includes human attitudes, political issues, communication challenges, medical surges, mass fatality management, volunteer management, and the initial lessons learned. In this regard, 2020 was the first time in recent history that every emergency manager was working on the same crisis – the pandemic – and nearly every emergency operations center was activated either in‐person or virtually. At the time of this writing, the COVID‐19 pandemic alone has taken 2.7 million lives globally. Although many local, state and federal governments had a pandemic annex in their larger comprehensive emergency management plans – primary based on H1N1 pandemic in 2009 – COVID‐19 tested these plans and nearly all will be rewritten.

      Communication – within and across organizations – became critical during the pandemic as information and recommendations from officials at all levels of government changed on a daily, if not hourly, basis. Video conferencing replaced in‐person meetings. Moreover, the increased use of social media by individuals, media, businesses, nonprofits, and governments dramatically changed how emergency managers communicate, manage rumors and misinformation, and obtain situational awareness information. Some local jurisdictions do not have the staffing capacity to use social media outside of pushing information or resharing posts from state or federal agencies. For this reason, McEntire expands previous social media information with recent research, examples, remaining challenges and lessons learned.

In addition to a record‐breaking year of disasters, 2020 unveiled centuries old systemic issues in the U.S. civil protests throughout the nation collided with multiple weather‐related disasters and a pandemic. For example, in southern Louisiana, local leaders faced three simultaneous crises – civil unrest and protests due to an officer involved shooting, the COVID‐19 pandemic, and five hurricanes – which resulted in receiving communities not opening shelters. This decision required individuals evacuating to drive farther to find shelter, which was not always a viable option for portions of the populations. The Federal Emergency Management Agency’s (FEMA) goal of a whole community approach remains elusive as disasters continue to uncover social injustices in our communities. An underlying theme throughout many chapters in this edition is ethical leadership. McEntire highlights the pressing needs of socially vulnerable populations by focusing on the essential role of nonprofit and faith‐based organizations to fill the gaps in resources and services, recovery and mitigation considerations, and the role of the emergency manager as an advocate.

      As the discipline moves closer to accreditation, there remains a need to implement FEMA’s Next Generation Emergency Core Competencies within individual courses and throughout an academic program. This edition expands on previous efforts by providing substantial information to achieve many of the outlined competencies, including the emergency management framework, principles, and body of knowledge; ethical leadership; critical thinking; sociocultural and systems literacy; and governance and civics.

      As an emergency management student, I used the first version of McEntire’s book in my studies. I was like many other emergency management students ‐ a practitioner returning to the university for a graduate degree. This book allowed me the opportunity to apply my practical knowledge to the theories that were foreign to me. As a faculty member, I selected McEntire’s second edition of Disaster Response and Recovery for many of the same reasons. However, as a current teacher, I value the additional resources provided in the revised chapters and online through the publisher’s website. Each chapter includes learning outcomes, goals, and objectives; self‐check, summary, and review questions; and scenario‐based questions which allow students to step into a management role and critically think through the concepts from that chapter.

      I have known Dave for nearly a decade as we served in the American Society for Public Administration’s Section on Emergency and Crisis Management and FEMA’s Higher Education Program. Prior to becoming Dean at Utah Valley University, he was a professor in the Emergency Administration and Planning Program and Associate Dean in the College of Public Affairs and Community Service at the University of North Texas. Most importantly, he was recognized by his peers twice. First in 2010 with the Dr. B. Wayne Blanchard Award for Academic Excellence in Emergency Management Higher Education.

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