Some incidents require the establishment of temporary response and recovery facilities within or closer to the impacted area. These facilities include the Joint Field Office, Incident Support Bases, Disaster Recovery Centers, and Responder Base Camps.

In this lesson, you will learn about the disaster facilities supported by FEMA Logistics.

[Still image of workers setting up a technology center at a Joint Field Office]

Narrator: FEMA Regional Logistics sends teams out to identify and assess locations for facilities including Incident Support Bases, Joint Field Offices (JFOs), and Disaster Recovery Centers (DRCs). While these are often pre-identified in disaster planning, it is not known until after a physical assessment of the area and the facilities if they are still functioning following an incident. Before occupying any building, a joint site assessment team, including logistics personnel, assesses the soundness of a structure, data and telephone capability within, and the availability of utilities, parking, and state and local code compliance.

On this page, examine the Joint Field Office (JFO), Disaster Recovery Centers (DRC), and Responder Support Camps.

Joint Field Office

Disaster Recovery Centers

Responder Support Camps

An Incident Support Base (ISB) is a temporary location for receiving and staging resources (supplies, equipment, and teams) that may be provided to state and local governments. During incidents involving large numbers of commodities or response teams, the regional Logistics Section will stand up and staff an ISB. ISBs are normally pre-identified during response planning, and may be stood up prior to a known event such as an approaching storm. Logistics personnel maintain oversight over the ordering of all resources. Whether received from FEMA distribution centers, other federal agencies (OFAs), private partners, or nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), Logistics personnel are responsible for tracking, receiving, accounting for, staging and organizing, and dispatching resources from the ISB.

Gary Martin, FEMA Site Manager: We are in Seguin, Texas at Randolph Auxiliary Air Force Base. We are pre-positioning some of the commodities. We have water, tarps, meals, generators. What our plan is in being here is when we set this location up it’s a pre-positioned site to keep away from wherever the hurricane may be coming into. The other people that are here, not only FEMA, we have Corps of Engineers that help support us, we have contract shuttle drivers here to support this mission.

Steve Minnick, FEMA Site Deputy: I’m gonna go get with our folks, our T A V folks, I’m gonna give them the heads up warning order so we can get the first five meals that came in and get those guys ready, let the drivers know they are moving out tonight.

Gary Martin: Right. That’s 5 trucks of meals. Each truck holds right around 21,312 meals per truck. The other thing now since the state has started making some requests for some of the commodities that we have, I’m sure we may start looking at, hey, we need to move this whole staging area forward. Everything on this site, if it looks like the state may be needing our assets, we’re going to start moving forward. That could happen tonight. Safety comes first. We run into rain, high winds you are gonna have to stop. Don’t take a chance. Safety always comes first.

FEMA has been preparing all along for all hazards across the country and in our protectorate territories abroad. When the president declares a disaster, it is FEMA Logistics at the forefront of the response effort. As quickly as possible and in coordination with FEMA Operations and other response personnel, FEMA Logistics is assessing sites for functional and safe occupancy, setting up facilities from which to launch support to the affected area and population, and receiving and dispatching teams and supplies.

In this lesson, you learned about the disaster facilities supported by FEMA Logistics.

Let’s now take a look at the organizational structure of the FEMA Logistics Section and how the branches take charge of these activities and execute the operation.