The Federal Emergency Management Agency

The Federal Emergency Management Agency

[Name of the Writer]

[Name of the Institution]

The Federal Emergency Management Agency

The Federal Emergency Management Agency is a governmental organization which works for stability and security of the citizens in case of disasters. It is also accountable for the preparation against any types of hazards and it is a helping hand to recover the people from all the risks (Bullock, Haddow, & Coppola, 2011). It adopts various approaches to strengthen the ability of citizens to address catastrophes, crises, and terrorist attacks. In addition, it also delivers reliable information at the accurate time to all and assists them through easily accessible programs. Similarly, the issued document FEMA 426, is a manual to alleviate Potential Terrorist attacks against buildings.

The objective of this document is to classify the critical assets and purposes within buildings identifying the threats to those properties. It also assesses the vulnerabilities related to those threats ("FEMA-426", 2011). Moreover, it also aims to reduce the chances of physical damages to the structure of those buildings. In the manual, different techniques are mentioned which are implemented to increase resiliency same as to decrease the vulnerability of building to risks and terrorist attacks.

In history, it is observed that bombing attack on the building was the prevalent practice among the terrorists. They used those tactics to transfer their political message. These techniques are continued till today, and there are chances that they will remain in the future. Therefore, FEMA designs some preventive measures to minimize those risks. One of the common techniques is hitting a building with a car bomb. However, the design approach in the manual aims to protect from such explosions. One of the significant factors to minimize the damages from car attacks is to prevent the downfall of the building and to facilitate the release of people. Secondly, to continue the emergency services until clearance is complete.

Therefore, in order to minimize the building destruction can be achieved by the professional design of the buildings. This design provides access controls to the security forces of the building to keep the threats away from the construction and also bound charge loads carried into the building("FEMA-426", 2011). At the same time, preventing the building from destruction is also an important objective. It is also achieved through proper designs by the experts. Therefore, engineers and architects either design directly to protect from air-blast loading or through the alternate-path method. They insert structural design for emergency departures and mechanical/electrical systems. Likewise, the practical design helps to reduce overall damages by providing ways to move out and enter the safer zone. For example, structural retrofit resists the particular threat. The localized resistances keep the building secure from direct hitting of a vehicle with a bomb.

The second factor to minimize the damages is through security principles. The fundamental security principles include deception, cleverness, functioning protection, and structural hardening. There are two types of securities of the building; operational security and physical security. Operational security includes the guards and security forces of the building. On the other side, physical security includes physical measures like creating layers of protection within the structure. The outer layer is known as the perimeter ("FEMA-426", 2011). Then, on the inner side of it, is the approach zone. After it comes the exterior of the building and at last reaches the inner side of the building. The interior is further divided into several parts. Likewise, the perimeter line is designed d in such a way to prevent from the carrier of explosives into the building. It is protected by both operational and physical security.

Further, in the controlled zone it checks and has inspection points for the cars and has physical barriers for the defense from attacks. At the same time, the interior of the building is designed in such a way that damages are minimized from the explosives.

References

Bullock, J., Haddow, G., & Coppola, D. P. (2011). Introduction to homeland security: Principles of all-hazards risk management. Butterworth-Heinemann.

"FEMA-426". (2011). Dhs.Gov, 2019, https://www.dhs.gov/xlibrary/assets/st/st-bips-06.pdf.