The American government believes in being prepared for the unknown and thus all the public and private entities are required to have a plan of how they will respond to the unknown when it occurs. The DHS lays out plans of how both man-made and natural disasters will be dealt with when they occur on American soil. According to DHS preparedness entails continuous planning, organizing, training, equipping, exercising, evaluation and taking corrective action to ensure the coordination of activities in case of an incident are effective and efficient (DHS, 2021).
Terrorists aim is to destabilize a nation like the United States via disrupting it and compromising its key systems. The electrical grid system is among the critical infrastructure that the terrorist’s targets. This is because disrupting it can result to loss of life and economic sabotage. For example, if the grid system is attacked by cyber attackers, it will directly affect the security system, the transport system, the communication system and other critical systems that rely on it (U.S. Energy Information Administration, 2021). Think of patients in a hospital Intensive Care Unit that is run by power lines. A small interruption of the grid system would mean their end of life. That act would be against the Department of Homeland Security mandate of ensuring Americans and their properties are safe.
The electric power planners in collaboration with regulators and other stakeholders has a big role of developing a reliable and efficient electric power system resource plan. The plan will not only guide electricity generation, cost, reliability and its effect on the environment, but, also will address security issues on the grid lines. These plans will need to tackle on security measures in the whole electric power ecosystem and how security compromise will be handled. This include response mechanisms in case of physical or cyber-attack (Electric Power Research Institute, 2018).
Since the Department of Energy cannot work alone to address the issues in grid systems, it works closely with other Federal agencies and its partners that provide advanced capabilities. To address the security issues the department works hand in hand with the Department of Homeland Security. The DHS helps in assessing the impact of power outages in cases associated with criminal attacks. The DHS also evaluates how prepared the nation is in the case of electric power system disruption, without forgetting determining the gaps in managing and mitigating terror attacks on the electricity sector (DHS, 2017).
Within the DHS there is the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) which is the Federal entity that leads federal government response to disasters. FEMA is always prepared to respond to disasters like storms that have hit the Eastern Seaboard. If FEMA is not able to contain the situation alone, the Secretary of DHS is allowed to activate Surge Capacity Force (SCF) that brings employees from other federal agencies on board. The effects of the Eastern Seaboard storm seem to have overwhelmed FEMA and thus SCF need to be activated in order to restore the situation to normalcy (DHS, 2021).
The DHS need also to engage the state and local governments, citizens and private entities that are already trained as first responders. The DHS offers training and assistance with an aim of equipping first responders with skills required to respond to a disaster. For example, the ‘stop a bleed’ is DHS awareness campaign that aims to call to action bystanders, instead of watching the victims suffer the bystanders are encouraged to acquire the training needed to respond to a disaster (DHS, 2021). The first responders are the source of help before specialized help arrives.
