Help Us to Get It Right

Abstract

Several years after Marcie Roth’s testimony to the US House of Representatives, which appears earlier in this volume, Ms. Roth addressed emergency management professionals, disability advocates, and academics at a conference on promising practices in inclusive disaster preparedness. The conference was organized by the Office of Disability Integration and Coordination, of which Ms. Roth is the Director. In her remarks, Ms. Roth returns to the story of Benilda Caixeta and reflects on the status of inclusive emergency management practices eight years after Benilda’s death. Ms. Roth’s questions, while recognizing the evolution of disaster-related preparedness in the field, highlight specific areas in which inclusive emergency management practices need to be improved upon in the United States—further giving lessons to the rest of the world.