Emergency managers juggle unexpected duties

Local emergency‑management offices increasingly shoulder a wide mix of responsibilities beyond classic disaster response—IT operations, animal control, social services and grant navigation—because staffing and funding are thin. That diffusion of duties makes it harder to maintain core preparedness (alerts, supply caches, mutual aid) and creates single‑person or small‑team single points of failure. — If emergency offices are functionally multi‑service hubs, policy fixes (FEMA funding, staffing norms, interoperable IT/backups) need to target institutional capacity, not just disaster equipment.