In the past, the federal government had no role in responding to emergencies at the time of disasters. When People were caught in disasters, they use to seek families and nonprofit organizations, like the Red Cross, churches, and private charities for support, while state and local governments engaged in rescue operations and substantiating and enforcing the civil order when necessary. Not until the early 20th century, after the San Francisco earthquake in 1960, the federal government has began to take a role in disaster response, after the Congress had given the President the power to designate disaster areas in 1950. This designation had triggered the availability of federal funds for rebuilding infrastructure and public properties …show more content…
In 1969, the Disaster Relief Act passed to provide federal fund for relief and recovery operations to aid citizens and businesses who are victimized by disasters. In 1979 President Carter issued the executive order that created FEMA, the Federal Emergency Management Administration. Since then, responding to disaster has been defined as a national process that include all levels of government, Federal, State, and local, private and nonprofit sectors, foreign countries, and even individual citizens.
The process of disaster response in the United States has been based on a very complex system, due to the fact that responding to disasters must be first addressed at local governments, and if the problem is too big or difficult for local governments to control, state governments are called in, then federal …show more content…
In addition, will examine the collaboration among government’s local and federal agencies and nonprofit organizations that allow them to effectively respond to disasters, deliver services and resources needed during disasters. Examining the effectiveness of services and resources delivered by nonprofits, the relief and recovery response, activities and procedures followed during the relief, will provide evidence and patterns that will help in analyzing the effectiveness of nonprofits’ role in filling the government’s gaps in responding to disasters. The research question is: are nonprofits prepared to perform the role of gaps-filler during disasters? There are two hypotheses used to develop the questions of this