THE HISTORY OF TEMA

The Tennessee Emergency Management Agency (TEMA) was created on March 5, 1951 as the Tennessee Civil Defense Agency (TCDA) after the passage of the Tennessee Civil Defense Act of 1951.  TCDA was organized to provide a statewide organization for nuclear civil protection during the Cold War.  Beginning in 1955, and on several occasions since, this law has been modified until it exists today as Chapter 2, Title 58, Tennessee Code Annotated (TCA 58-2-101).  The agency was been known throughout much of the 1960s and 1970s as the Tennessee Office of Civil Defense and Emergency Preparedness.

Over the years the mission of Civil Defense was gradually expanded to include natural and manmade disasters.  Major disasters occurred in Rockwood, Tennessee in 1977 with a bromine spill on Interstate 40, and in Waverly, Tennessee in 1978 with a rail accident and propane explosion that killed several emergency responders (including a TCDA employee, Mark Belyew), and injured a great many more. The agency's current director, John White, was seriously injured in that explosion.   These accidents emphasized the need for an expanded role in response to hazardous materials accidents and events, and led to the creation of the Tennessee Hazardous Materials Institute.  The TCDA-created training program developed an organized, delineated training program for hazardous materials responders, and was the first of its kind in the nation.  Several states used Tennessee's program as a model for the development of their own hazmat training programs.  Since the development of this program, there have been no deaths of emergency responders as a result of hazardous materials response in Tennessee.  [You can read more about the Waverly explosion in the HAZMAT section of this web site]

The opening of the Sequoyah Nuclear Plant after the accident at Three Mile Island also expanded the need for emergency planning to deal with the threat of a nuclear power accident in the Tennessee River Valley.  The need for training and management of all disasters caused the state to recognize the need for a statewide agency to manage emergencies and disasters in Tennessee.  The name of the agency was changed in 1984 to the Tennessee Emergency Management Agency to bring it in line with the newly-formed Federal Emergency Management Agency (1979).

A major turning point for TEMA occurred during the winter storms of 1993-94, which validated TEMA's multi-functional approach in dealing with large-scale disasters.  TEMA has successfully used this approach for management of tornadoes, floods, transportation accidents and a host of other disasters.  TEMA's planning and coordination expertise have led the agency to be called upon to coordinate several state activities not directly related to disasters, including the coordination of the planning for the state's Bicentennial Celebration in 1996, the activities surrounding the Governor's Inauguration every four years, and the coordination of the state's involvement in the funeral of Elvis Presley in Memphis in 1977.

You can learn more about the past 50 years of civil defense and emergency management in Tennessee by going here.  A complete list of all major disasters that have affected the State of Tennessee up through 1988 can be found here.

Since its creation in 1951, the agency has had seven directors:

Brig. Gen. Claude Adams 1951 - 1953	Col. Robert L. Fox 1953 - 1974	LTC. Nicholas J. Carimi 1974 - 1975
Col. Jerry McFarland 1975 - 1979	Col. Eugene P. Tanner 1979 - 1984	Mr. Lacy E. Suiter 1984 - 1994
Mr. John D. White, Jr. 1994 - 2003	. Maj. Gen. James Bassham 2003 - Present