Chapter Chapter 2
Section What Triggers the NRP
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What Triggers the NRP
The NRP "covers the full range of complex and constantly changing requirements in anticipation of or in response to threats or acts of terrorism, major disasters, and other emergencies.”40 It applies to “all Federal departments and agencies that may be requested to provide assistance or conduct operations in the context of actual or potential Incidents of National Significance.”41 The NRP is also designed to be flexible and scalable: “Consistent with the model provided in the NIMS, the NRP can be partially or fully implemented in the context of a threat, anticipation of a significant event, or the response to a significant event.”42 The NRP can be used to selectively implement specific components in unique situations or can be fully implemented to bring to bear the full efforts and resources of the Federal government.
However, the specific triggers for the National Response Plan and its various components are unclear. In HSPD-5, the President instructed the Secretary of Homeland Security to coordinate the Federal government's resources utilized in response to or recovery from terrorist attacks, major disasters, or other emergencies if and when any one of the following four conditions applies:
1. A Federal department or agency acting under its own authority has requested the assistance of the Secretary;
2. The resources of State and local authorities are overwhelmed and Federal assistance has been requested by the appropriate State and local authorities;
3. More than one Federal department or agency has become substantially involved in responding to the incident; or
4. The Secretary has been directed to assume responsibility for managing the domestic incident by the President.43
The NRP bases the definition of Incidents of National Significance (INS) “on situations related to” these HSPD-5 criteria.44 However, the NRP lacks sufficient clarity regarding when and how an event becomes an INS. There are two dimensions to this issue. First, it is unclear whether satisfaction of one or more of the stated criteria is sufficient for an INS to exist, or whether additional considerations must apply. Second, the NRP is unclear as to whether the Secretary must formally declare an INS or, alternatively, whether an INS is triggered automatically when one or more of these criteria are satisfied, including when the President declares a disaster or emergency under the Stafford Act. With respect to Hurricane Katrina, when the Secretary of Homeland Security formally declared the event to be an INS on Tuesday, August 30, 2005, arguably an INS already existed, because two of the four HSPD-5 criteria noted above had already been satisfied.45
The lack of clarity on the second issue is illustrated by two seemingly inconsistent NRP provisions; the Scope and Applicability section states that the Secretary is responsible for declaring an INS,46 which supports an interpretation that an INS cannot be in effect without a declaration by the Secretary, while the Planning Assumptions section states that “all Presidentially declared disasters and emergencies under the Stafford Act are considered Incidents of National Significance,”47 which supports a conclusion that the President’s issuance of an emergency declaration for Louisiana on August 27, 2005, put an INS into effect.
Most importantly, however, regardless of how an INS is defined or whether an INS must be formally declared by the Secretary or not, the NRP fails to articulate clearly which specific actions should be taken and what components should be utilized under the NRP as a result of an INS coming into effect. As a practical matter, many of the NRP’s functions and structures were already being utilized at the time that the Secretary declared an INS.48
Since the NRP was adopted in December 2004, many parts of the Plan had been used to various degrees and magnitudes for thirty declared Stafford Act events to coordinate Federal assistance.49 Yet, an INS had never formally been declared prior to Tuesday, August 30, 2005—during the Hurricane Katrina response. The lack of clarity discussed above caused confusion. The process and the operational consequences of declaring an INS should be further defined and clarified.50
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