New report highlights impact of critical emergency management grant program

The Emergency Management Performance Grant helps governments make key investments so that they can better respond to disasters

By Sarah Sinning

FALLS CHURCH, Va. — A new report from the International Association of Emergency Managers and the National Emergency Management Association is highlighting the indelible impact the Emergency Management Performance Grant is having in communities nationwide.

The Emergency Management Performance Grant (EMPG) "stands as the beacon of Congressional commitment to ensure communities and states are more ready to prepare, mitigate, respond, and recover from all hazards," the organizations explain in the report's introduction.

And as emergency managers are forced to contend with more frequent and intense disasters, this funding is proving more critical than ever before. In addition to supporting emergency operations centers directly, EMPG funds also provide public education and training, outreach, enhanced interoperable communications capabilities, support for mutual aid agreement development, and the ability to manage statewide alerts and warnings.

Among the report's highlights for fiscal year 2021:

123 state and approximately 350 local emergency operations centers helped officials coordinate efforts for 21,482 events using EMPG funds.
State and local emergency managers developed, maintained, or updated 4,409 plans addressing all types of emergency response, recovery, and mitigation needs, many of which were related to issues driven by the COVID-19 pandemic response.
More than 322,309 participants took part in 2,525 state and local workshops, drills, and functional full-scale exercises.
3,257 individual and community preparedness outreach campaigns impacted nearly 105 million residents across the nation.

Download the full report.