About The RI Emergency Management Council

The Rhode Island Emergency Management Advisory Council (RI EMAC) was established under Rhode Island General Law 30-15-6. The purpose of RI EMAC is to review information and programs regarding emergency management and to make recommendations and advise the Governor in such issues. RI EMAC is chaired by Lieutenant Governor Elizabeth Roberts. The council consists of 32 members and 17 ex officio members - with an additional 15 members appointed by the Governor.

In order to ensure a mechanism was in place to coordinate the state's overall homeland security efforts, the council formed the Domestic Preparedness Subcommittee (DPS) in June, 2001. The mission of the Domestic Preparedness Subcommittee was to protect the safety of Rhode Island's citizens by improving the state's ability to prevent and respond to terrorist incidents involving Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) in partnership with federal, state, and local agencies and organizations. In addition, the committee managed the various working groups created after 9/11 that were tasked with establishing an assortment of teams and programs funded by the Department of Homeland Security.

By 2007, both the RI EMAC and DPS were meeting monthly and reviewing the same information. Many of the members of the working groups attended both meetings. The field of emergency management had changed in the country to an all-hazards approach and many of the programs that the state had created dealt with both terrorism and natural hazards, so there was redundancy in reporting and programs. Therefore the Domestic Preparedness Subcommittee was merged back into the Emergency Management Advisory Council in September 2007. Now RI EMAC members hear reports directly from working groups.

 

The Domestic Preparedness Subcommittee's functions included the following:

• Coordinate the use of terrorism preparedness grant funding, which is received from various state agencies for equipment, training, exercises, technical assistance, and planning.
• Use the limited funds for WMD response equipment to fill priority gaps in the inventories of state and local response agencies.
• Coordinate terrorism response training and exercises to ensure optimum cross-program usage of limited funds and resources.
• Develop exercise schedules to ensure all emergency response agencies and organizations in all regions of the state are practiced in terrorism response on a continuing basis.
• Serve as the advisory committee to the Rhode Island Department of Health for the Public Health Preparedness and Response to Bioterrorism cooperative agreement.

 

For more information email RIEMA or email the Lieutenant Governor's Office.