Having been stationed in several locations with the Army, I have faced many natural and technological threats, but ones I face in my daily life and job today are hurricanes and terrorist threats. When I am home, I am stationed at Fort Bragg, North Carolina where hurricanes threaten the coast and inland areas each year. While I am deployed here to Afghanistan, I face terrorist threats every day. Hurricanes can become very strong when the conditions are right, especially in the warm Atlantic and Gulf Coast areas. When a hurricane builds strong enough and the weather conditions point it right at the coast of North Carolina, it can pack enough punch to blow damaging winds and dump a lot of rain on the inland portions of the state and along the East Coast. For example, back in 1996, Hurricane Fran came ashore as a Category 3 hurricane that spun tornadoes and caused severe damage in the central portion of North Carolina and into Virginia. It blew down trees, knocked out power, caused major flooding, and kept us out of school for a week. Here in Afghanistan, the technological threat of terrorism is a much closer and immediate threat in my daily life. Not only are my fellow soldiers and I here as part of the “Global War on Terrorism,” but we encounter terrorists and possible threats each day that we put on our body armor and walk off the base into the villages of Afghanistan. While most of the people we encounter on a daily basis are regular citizens, many of them are planting Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs), developing suicide vests or Vehicle-Borne IEDs (VBIEDs) to attack Coalition Force bases, and threatening the lives of regular civilians with torture and death if they do not adhere to the rule of the Taliban. They terrorize the local population to achieve strength and power over Coalition Forces to try and force all foreign governments, militaries and organizations to leave the country of Afghanistan.

As an emergency planner, I see my role in both preparing and assessing the threat of a hurricane and the threat of a terrorist plot as very similar. Although the specifics of each threat will be different, the concepts of identifying the hazards, assessing their likelihood and devastating effects, mitigating them through proper measures, and then assessing the effectiveness of those mitigation techniques are the same for each.
Looking specifically at the threat of a hurricane to the inland portion of North Carolina, I would identify possible hazards as: potential for flooding in low-lying areas, potential for downed trees and power outages, and potential damage from high winds. As for the likelihood and devastating effects these could cause, I would assess them to be fairly high for the example I gave of a strong Category 3 hurricane headed directly into the heart of North Carolina. The mitigation steps I would most likely take would be to warn and evacuate citizens living in low-lying areas, cut down potential hazardous trees and limbs that could bring down power lines and have power crews on stand-by for immediate recovery efforts, and have citizens in the path of the storm board windows, tie-down outdoor equipment, and prepare the government and outside organizations to help in the recovery efforts once the storm had passed.
As for the example of terrorist threats in Afghanistan, I would identify potential hazards as: allowing local national citizens onto Coalition Force bases for work (this allows access to military personnel and insider information that could be passed to terrorist groups), presenting visible patterns to off-base personnel which could allow weaknesses to be shown for potential terrorist attacks, and pushing convoys and patrols outside the bases where they are vulnerable to attacks. As for the likeliness and devastating effects that could occur, I would assess the likeliness to depend on the factors of background checks on personnel, how often patterns of guard forces are changed, and the frequency of convoys and patrols along with frequency of attacks on those convoys and patrols (just to name a few). However, the devastating effects would be fairly high based on the damage to property, Coalition Forces, and civilians that would most likely occur. The mitigation steps I would most likely take would be to conduct thorough background checks on local nationals working on base and keep armed guards watching them at all times, change guard force patterns on a rotating basis, and push convoys and patrols out only after route clearances have been conducted.
My role after each of these events occurred would be to assess if and how the mitigation techniques I put in place actually minimized or prevented damages from these threats. If, for instance, a terrorist attack was never initiated or storm damages were significantly lowered from estimates, the mitigation techniques were most likely effective. However, even if damages were minimal, better techniques can always be developed and the assessment of the aftermath of the storm or terrorist event can lead to better mitigation techniques for the future.