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 Prior
to the creation of FEMA established in the late 1980’s,
it was called Civil Defense.
 From
the establishment of the Office of Civilian Defense in
1941 and during the cold war era, each state had to have
a Civil Defense Agency. The
Civil defense
unit is a non-military effort to defend civilian society
from military attack. Like NEMA today, it too had four
basic tasks: mitigation, preparation, response, and
recovery of local municipalities.
NEMA Today
NEMA is an agency responsible for the development and
implementation of a comprehensive emergency program for
Newburyport Massachusetts. This Plan addresses disaster
mitigation, planning and preparedness, response to, and
recovery from large-scale emergencies and disasters that
may affect our local area. The agency is also
responsible for the coordination of the municipality's
efforts to respond to, severe emergency and disaster
situations affecting the community, whether natural or
man-made. The agency is made up mostly of volunteers
that receive professional training in order to carry out
their roles and responsibilities. This Agency takes
direction from MEMA (Massachusetts
Emergency Management Agency) and by FEMA (Federal
Emergency Management Agency).
Our NEMA
Division
Are
we City, State or Federal?
EOC’s
in the State of
Massachusetts
are in a way, all three. FEMA is the Federal Division of
Emergency Management. Required by Federal Government,
each state is to hold an office. MEMA (located in
Framingham) is this states division of Emergency
Management (S.E.O.C. –State Emergency Operating Center)
and each city and town in Massachusetts is required to
hold it’s own office for response to local events or
disasters. Massachusetts under the control of
headquarters In Framingham had broken out the state to
sub regions. We are in Region 1 reporting to Tewksbury.
Our
EOC is for the city of Newburyport and Plum Island. The
city of Newburyport provides this EOC with some building
utilities (electricity, water and sewer), basic
equipment/items (telephones, Official vehicle
registration, etc.) and a simple yearly budget. A
director is hired by the city to oversee operations.
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