Federal Emergency Management Agency

FEMA is an independent federal agency with more than 2,600 full time employees. They work at FEMA headquarters in Washington D.C., at regional and area offices across the country,at the Mount Weather Emergency Operations Center, and at the FEMA training center in Emmitsburg, Maryland. FEMA also has nearly 4,000 standby disaster assistance employees who are available to help out after disasters. Often FEMA works in partnership with other organizations that are part of the nation's emergency management system. These partners include state and local emergency management agencies, 27 federal agencies and American Red Cross.

What We Do

Advising on building codes and flood plain management...teaching people how to get through a disaster...helping equip local and state emergency preparedness...coordinating the federal response to a disaster...making disaster assistance available to states, communities, businesses and individuals...training emergency managers...supporting the nation's fire service...administering the national flood and crime insurance programs...the range of FEMA's activities is broad indeed.

One way to look at what FEMA does is to think about the life cycle of disasters. Some of the functions involved are shown below.

The disaster life cycle describes the process through which emergency managers prepare for emergencies and disasters, respond to them when they occur, help people and institutions recover from them, mitigate their effects, reduce the risk of loss, and prevent disasters such as fires from occurring.

And at every stage of this cycle you see FEMA -- the federal agency charged with building and supporting the nation's emergency management system.