Emergency Management

Claire B. Rubin is president of Claire B. Rubin & Associates, LLC (clairerubin.com), a small business specializing in disaster research and consulting located in Arlington, Virginia. She is a social scientist with more than forty years of experience in emergency management and homeland security. Her experience includes independent researcher, consultant, practitioner, and educator. She was affiliated with The George Washington University’s Institute for Crisis, Disaster, and Risk Management from 1998 through 2014. In recent years, her firm has produced a variety of educational products and services. She maintains the blog on disaster recovery called Recovery Diva. Ms. Rubin is the author or editor of three books, has written almost 100 additional articles, and has presented numerous lectures on emergency management and homeland security topics. She was the co-founder and Managing Editor of the Journal of Homeland Security and Emergency Management. She holds a BS degree from Simmons College and an MA from Boston University.

"Claire Rubin’s third edition is essential reading for students and scholars in emergency management and an excellent introduction to the history of American emergency management for other interested readers. The earlier editions have served as core texts in introductory and advanced classes and the new edition brings the history of the field up to date with new chapters by leading scholars." —William L. Waugh, Jr., Professor Emeritus, Georgia State University"Emergency Management: The American Experience is an essential book in the field. The updated third edition adds important analyses of recent disasters and policy trends. This book continues to be essential reading for scholars of disaster policy as well as for anyone who wishes to understand the historical and political contexts of emergency management and disaster policy in the United States." —Thomas Birkland, Department of Public Administration, North Carolina State University"The third edition of Emergency Management: The American Experience provides a rich account of disaster policy, to include important historical, social, and administrative issues that underpin our largely reactionary approach to emergency management. Claire Rubin and her colleagues adroitly describe the multitude of lessons learned and not learned following seminal disasters over time across the United States. This book provides crucial insights for both seasoned emergency managers seeking to develop more informed, proactive policy as well as educators who strive to teach the next generation of emergency managers how to more effectively plan for a more resilient future. Given the continued rise in disaster losses, including those exacerbated by a changing climate, the lessons derived from this text are more prescient than ever before and I look forward to further lessons drawn from the compendium book The U.S. Emergency Management System in the Twenty-first Century: From Disaster to Catastrophe." —Gavin Smith, PhD, AICP, Professor, North Carolina State University

• Preface 1. Introduction: 110 Years of Disaster Response and Emergency Management in the United States 2. Focusing Events in the Early Twentieth Century: A Hurricane, Two Earthquakes, and a Pandemic 3. The Expanding Role of the Federal Government: 1927–1950 4. The Formative Years: 1950–1978 5. Federal Emergency Management Comes of Age: 1979–2001 6. Emergency Management Restructured: Intended and Unintended Outcomes of Actions taken since 9/11 7. 2005 Events and Outcomes: Hurricane Katrina and Beyond 8. The System Is Tested: Response to the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill 9. From a Painful Past to an Uncertain Future 10. The Evolving Federal Role in Emergency Management: Policies and Processes