How to become an Emergency Management Director

Emergency Management Director’s coordinates the plans for responding to emergency situation like natural disasters. They lead during emergencies and work with the government, the fire department, law enforcement and non-profit organizations to run emergency situation smoothly. Emergency Management deals with research of past natural disasters and develop the best emergency plan. Emergency management team must be ready with emergency preparedness and must know the equipment, staff, agencies and resources which are available to them to develop a plan. Emergency training and preparedness drills are very significant to become an emergency management director. They visit to hospitals, schools, to make sure everyone is updated with emergency plans. Emergency Management Director’s work with non-profit organizations and the government to clean up the community and take care of the residents after an emergency or disaster occur. Private businesses firm might employ Emergency Management Directors. They lead the response during and after emergencies and coordinate with fire and law enforcement officials, government agencies, elected officials, nonprofit organizations.

The roles and responsibilities includes:

• To Prepare plans that helps to deal with disasters or emergencies situation like terrorist attacks, hurricanes, nuclear accidents, in recovery from these events.
• Maintaining and updating all resource materials associated with emergency preparedness plans.
• To coordinate disaster response such as opening public shelters, ordering evacuations and implementing plans and programs.
• To develop and maintain liaisons with municipalities.
• To prepare emergency situation reports which explain response and preliminary damage assessments, recovery efforts and needs.
• To inspect facilities and equipment which are used at emergency management centers and to determine their functional and operational capabilities in emergency situations.
• To develop and perform tests, evaluations of emergency management plans, meet with private companies, law enforcement officials and the general public for recommendation of emergency response plans
• To train staff, volunteers, and other first responders, coordinate the use and sharing of resources and equipment.
• To prepare and analyze damage assessments during disasters or emergencies
• To review emergency plans such as medical facilities, to ensure their adequacy, revise and review emergency operations plans.

To become a emergency management director one must develop skills and abilities like service orientation, complex problem solving, speaking, critical thinking, coordination, reading comprehension, active listening, writing, judgment and decision making, instructing, learning strategies,  monitoring ,social perceptiveness , systems analysis, time management ,persuasion , negotiation , active learning , systems evaluation , management of personnel resources ,written comprehension , speech recognition , oral expression , written expression , speech clarity , oral comprehension , problem sensitivity ,deductive reasoning , inductive reasoning, information ordering , fluency of ideas, originality, near vision ,category flexibility and visualization.