The most recent draft of the nation’s blueprint for disaster response is slimmer, easier to read and includes the word “hurricane” nearly three times more than the original version. It’s also been renamed the National Response Framework.

The draft obtained by Congressional Quarterly is dated July 27. The document was previously called the National Response Plan and has been undergoing revisions for the past year. According to the draft, “The Framework is written especially for government executives, private-sector business and nongovernmental leaders and emergency management practitioners  . . .  If the nation is to be prepared for terrorist attacks and natural disasters, its leaders must have a baseline familiarity with the concepts and mechanics of the Framework.”

The Department of Homeland Security released the “pre-decisional” draft to about 100 administration officials involved in the rewriting process. In a few weeks, the document will be released to state, local and private sector partners for a 30-day review and comment period, according to a department official.

The size of the document decreased by 83 percent, meeting the department’s goal of being less than 100 pages. The original 426-page version mentioned the word “hurricane” five times and a variant of the word “terror” 377 times. The latest version is 71 pages, mentions hurricanes 14 times and a variant of the word “terror” 46 times.

The first National Response Plan was published in 2005, but has been going through revisions since Hurricane Katrina. Among the many criticisms of the plan after Katrina was that there was little mention of hurricanes, even though the likelihood of those or other natural disasters is higher than that of a terrorist attack. The original version uses the phrase “natural disaster” 22 times.

The original version was also criticized for being too long and difficult to read.

Describing the original version, DHS Deputy Secretary Michael P. Jackson told the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee in May, “It’s highly impenetrable and difficult to understand by people who speak regular English.”

Jackson has led the rewriting effort for the past several months. “Now we’re trying to get it just a little bit more sensible, and written in a way that people can use it and train to it, and understand it at a governor’s level, at a mayor’s level, at the level of a congressman that needs to understand their role in the process, and at all the points and processes of emergency management around the government,” he said in May.

Since the inception of the National Response Plan, state and local officials have said they are not included enough in the writing process. This latest draft is no different.

The recent rewrite was done in a “vacuum,” one emergency management official who requested anonymity said last month. “There has been no input sought from the state and local stakeholders during this rewrite period.”

The department disagrees and has said state and local officials have provided and continue to provide input.

The president called for the creation of a National Response Plan in February 2003, as the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks shed light on the need for a coordinated response plan for the entire nation, not just the federal government. The NRP essentially consolidated the existing federal plans, such as the Federal Response Plan, the Interagency Domestic Terrorism Concept of Operations Plan, the Federal Radiological Emergency Response Plan and the National Contingency Plan. Initially, the department outsourced the draft of the plan to the Rand Corp. But the first product was met with such opposition by state and local officials that the department rewrote it. The first final version was published in January 2005. Katrina, which struck nearly nine months later, was the first time it was used in a real-life disaster. In May 2006, the department published another version that included revisions made right after Katrina.

One of the goals of the revised plan is to publish a framework that provides a playbook for all levels of government.

“One of the challenges in delivering effective incident management is the relatively high turnover and short tenure among elected and appointed officials responsible for incident management at all levels. Effective incident response hinges upon having leaders and on-scene operators trained well — and on the degree to which both have invested in response preparedness, developed engaged partnerships and are able to achieve shared objectives,” according to the draft. “The players’ bench is constantly changing, but a concise, common playbook is needed by all.”

Eileen Sullivan can be reached at esullivan@cq.com