NESEC: The Northeast States Emergency Consortium
The All-Hazards Regional Approach to Emergency Management
Historically, states across the country have kept their emergency management activities within their borders. However, catastrophic events do not respect state boundaries, especially in the Northeast where many states are relatively small and densely populated. Large-scale disasters, such as hurricanes, floods, blizzards, earthquakes or pandemics can quickly consume a state's resources or spill over into neighboring states. The March 2007 Nor'easter, for example, resulted in simultaneous Presidential Disaster Declarations in the six New England states as well as New York and New Jersey.
To address these issues, the New England states, with the cooperation and support of FEMA Region I, formed what is now the Northeast States Emergency Consortium (NESEC) in 1991. NESEC is a small 501 (c) (3) not for profit mitigation and emergency management organization whose mission is to help coordinate a regional approach to preparing for disasters and to identify and address state issues of mutual concern. Later, NESEC expanded to include the states of New York and New Jersey and developed a closer working relationship with FEMA Region II. Together the Northeast states and FEMA Regions I and II share one of the most positive and effective emergency management partnerships in the country.
"NESEC is such a successful organizational model that the state public health community identified it as the most appropriate [organization] with whom to become an adjunct for continued progress in planning, preparing, responding and mitigating public health crises," said Chris Pope, New Hampshire's Director of Homeland Security and Emergency Management in recent testimony before the Senate Homeland Security Committee. He also added that finding and procuring needed resources, communicating with each other and totally integrating with emergency management prompted their request to be affiliated with NESEC.
Today, NESEC is the only "all-hazards" state emergency management consortium of its kind in the country, and helps coordinate emergency management activities throughout the Northeast. NESEC hosts quarterly regional meetings of the state directors, provides free HAZUS-MH and GIS support to state and local communities, produces real-time HAZUS-MH disaster assessments for earthquakes and hurricanes, and engages in many other emergency management activities.
NESEC is governed by a Board of Directors, which is comprised of the State Directors of Emergency Management in New England, New York, and New Jersey. The current Chair of NESEC is Robert J. Warren, Executive Director of the Rhode Island Emergency Management Agency (RIEMA). NESEC has a full-time executive director, Edward S. Fratto, and assistant, Jonathan Salomon.
For more information, or to find resources to assist your state or community, visit the NESEC website at www.nesec.org.
Last Modified: Tuesday, 13-Nov-2007 16:34:20 EST