Is Your City Prepared For Disaster?

"During the last 10 years, in the aftermath of numerous natural and manmade disasters throughout the United States, a variety of complex and special human services needs has surfaced that affects literally thousands of people. For example, following the Loma Prieta earthquake (October 1989) in the San Francisco area and the Northridge earthquake in the Los Angeles area (January 1994), emergency services professionals became painfully aware that traditional response and recovery systems were not able to successfully meet all of the human services needs. The typical "canned approach" to delivering emergency services used by many local governments does not always provide the essential services for that portion of the population with special needs - the vulnerable population."