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Profiles New York State Emergency Management Office director Edward Jacoby. Role of director which includes coordinating relief efforts and recovery plans; Impact of childhood incident which shaped his career; Ministry of Public Safety and Security; Disaster contingency plans; Ontario's lack of emergency preparation and recovery organization; Effect of the recent blackout on Canadian businesses.

The article discusses federal relief. Provinces are lining up for money from Jean Chrétien to cope with SARS, forest fires, mad cow disease and more. News that Finance Minister John Manley is seeking cuts in defence, foreign aid and other normal spending signalled that the need to come up with emergency aid is causing a mad scramble in Ottawa. Just how generous the Liberals will be remains unclear. But there are rules when it comes to tapping the core emergency plan called Disaster Financial Assistance Arrangements -- though lately its guidelines have been a source of confusion. Finally, a key program limit is that it applies to the direct cost of grappling with a disaster, not the wider economic fallout. That means no DFAA payments to cover Chinese restaurants in Toronto abandoned during the SARS scare, or fishing lodges in the B.C. Interior left empty as the forests burned. But the biggest payouts all came in short succession in the late nineties--Quebec's Saguenay River flood of 1996, Manitoba's Red River flood of 1997, and the ice storm that hit Quebec, eastern Ontario and New Brunswick in 1998.