The Cold War created many new challenges for the emergency management professionals in the 1950’s through the 1990’s. These challenges would promote the expectations on how to prepare for a nuclear strike and nuclear fallout. Additionally, these challenges would forever change the progression of the field for all future events to come. Complied with several large scale natural disasters in the 1960’s and 1970’s the government saw the need to restructure its policy’s and departments within the government.
The early years brought a heightened attention to how the United States would deal with a nuclear war and the fallout within our country. Federal Civil Defense Administration programs popped up across the country providing leadership and guidance which were controlled by the Department of Defense. Communities were asked to
…show more content…
The new union was named the Office of Civil and Defense Mobilization. However, in 1961 President Kennedy created the Office of Emergency Preparedness to handle national disasters from within the White House (Haddow, Bullock, Coppola 2014).
Several new federal offices were created or combined in the government to manage the influx of natural disasters in the 1960’s and 1970’s. These catastrophes caused numerous deaths and damages to property and cost the administration hundreds of millions of dollars in reparations. Each newly formed department did not communicate with each other and making up their policy as they handled an event.
President Carter created the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) in 1978 to consolidate the multiple agencies within the government to handle disasters (Haddow, Bullock, Coppola 2014). This consolidation contributed to the expertise of each unique specialty to communicate more efficiently in a time of a