Emergency Managers Earn Their Keep
The cost benefit has been estimated to be $4-$11 for every dollar spent, but what price can you put on saving human lives?
After a little time spent researching, here is the link to two studies:
The National Institute of Building Sciences (NIBS) Study (An Independent Study to Assess the Future Savings from Mitigation Activities) looked at how much FEMA’s investments in mitigation saved on recovery payments. According to the NIBS study, FEMA saved $4 in recovery for every dollar spent on mitigation.
The Harvard School of Public Health Study (Human Initiative) found that in dealing with humanitarian responses was “…every dollar spent in disaster preparedness yields a savings of $4-$11 in disaster response, relief and recovery.”
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One of the problems with doing benefit-cost and work justification studies is the personal agendas and politics of the people conducting the studies. Are they looking to justify (champion) an emergency management position or working to eliminate it? That is the real world impact of the politics we face in our jobs.
I am not sure if anyone has ever assessed how much money was saved because we hired emergency managers who trained the community in emergency readiness skills (the community knew what to do when danger strikes). Cost feasibility and justifications can be tricky. Human life has no real value, but property, research, and other “products” do. That is how insurance actuaries determine or assess risk and cost.
It’s odd because I don’t believe we take the time to truly measure the cost savings when people actually survive an emergency; we only really measure loss and recovery costs. When we read an article about the disaster, we only see the reporters showing the costs (“x” millions or billions are estimated in the recovery figure).
If people avoid getting injured, there are true cost savings in the community that equal hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars (per person) in surgical, intensive care, rehabilitation and long-term disability costs that were not incurred because an emergency management program took measures to warn and educate the community. This resulted in people surviving or walking away from danger.
I would venture to say that if an emergency manager trains a community to take a proper course of action and hundreds of people are able to walk away from danger during an emergency (tornado, hurricanes, earthquake, fire, flood, hazardous materials exposure or other major incident) because they evacuated, sheltered in place, etc., the costs savings are really immeasurable (in the millions of dollars).
I think we can safely assume that having a full-time emergency manager on a college or university campus saves lives.
Not having a full-time emergency manager on a college or university campus increases risk. Who wants to champion increased risk as cost saving measure?
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