Coping with Disaster
This paper will discuss Emergency Preparedness and Disaster Management that are city wide or larger in scope. It will first define disaster, then examine the typical stages in preparing for and coping with a disaster. Selected types of disasters will be considered, and examples reviewed, namely biological, chemical, and radiation related disasters.
What is a disaster?
A disaster is an unexpected calamity that is of sufficient magnitude that the normal societal coping mechanisms are insufficient, and extraordinary measures must be taken to remedy the situation (Kroll-Smith and Couch, 1991). It involves a significant amount of physical and/or economic suffering to the extent that a break down in the socioeconomic system occurs and the community is unable to go about their daily routines of life (National Science and Technology Council, 2005).
Disasters are difficult to define in purely quantitative terms, and there isn't one commonly used measure. One measure used by the United States Federal Emergency Management Administration's (FEMA) Emergency Management Institute training program defines a disaster as all events that cause at least 100 human deaths, or at least 100 human injuries, or at least $1 million in economic damages (Blanchard, 1999).
Disaster Management: Preparation
Disaster Management starts with preparation, without which the effectiveness of the response will be unnecessarily slow and chaotic. Planning and preparation starts by analyzing risks, which vary due to a number of factors. Different geographical areas will have different risks, for example those located in a coastal area need to consider the potential for hurricanes, but they would not be concerned about an oil refinery fire if th...
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National Science and Technology Council, Subcommittee on Disaster Reduction. (2005). Grand Challenges for Disaster Reduction. Washington, DC: Executive Office of the President. Retrieved from http://www.sdr.gov/GrandChallengesSecondPrinting.pdf
Watson, J. T., Gayer, M., Connolly, M.A. (2007). Epidemics after natural disasters. Emerging Infection Diseases, (13)2. doi: 10.3201/eid1301.060779
City of Seattle, Seattle Police Department Emergency Preparedness Bureau. (2003). Seattle Disaster Readiness and Response plan. Retrieved from http://www.seattle.gov/emergency/library/Seattle_Disaster_Readiness_And_Response_Plan.pdf
Asaeda, G. (2002). The day that the START triage system came to a stop: observations from the world trade center disaster. Journal of Academic Emergency Medicine, 9(3), 255-256. doi: 10.1197/aemj.9.3.255
Bissell, R. (2010). Catastrophic Readiness and Response Course, Session 6 – Social and Economic Issues. Accessed at http://training.fema.gov/EMIWeb/edu/crr.asp
Emergency management is a career about managing risk that are both technological and naturally occurring. Though these two terms are synonymous with each other in-terms of modern conceptualization of disasters; this has not always been the case. In the developmental history of emergency management these two sources of disaster; were often seen as two completely independent sources of danger, and as a result the emergency management community encountered steep and costly learning curve in managing the hazards associated with these sources risk.
Perry, R. W., & Lindell, M. K. (2007). Disaster Response. In W. L. Waugh, & K. Tiernery, Emergency Management: Principles and Practice for Local Government (pp. 162-163). Washington D.C.: International City/County Management Association.
Pre impact conditions mixed with event specific conditions combined with one another during a disaster produce physical and social impacts to a community. The impact from each disaster can be reduced by interventions through emergency management. By assessing these pre impact conditions, an emergency manager can produce social risks and vulnerabilities within their community. Integrating these social risks and vulnerabilities emergency mangers can use the four most important phases in emergency management: preparedness, planning, response, and recovery to benefit their community as a whole.
Both man-made and natural disasters are often devastating, resource draining and disruptive. Having a basic plan ready for these types of disaster events is key to the success of executing and implementing, as well as assessing the aftermath. There are many different ways to create an emergency operations plan (EOP) to encompass a natural and/or man-made disaster, including following the six stage planning process, collection of information, and identification of threats and hazards. The most important aspect of the US emergency management system in preparing for, mitigating, and responding to man-made and natural disasters is the creation, implementation and assessment of a community’s EOP.
Haddow, G. D., Bullock, J. A., & Coppola, D. P. (2010).Introduction to emergency management. (4th ed., pp. 1-26). Burlington, MA: Butterworth-Heinemann.
Hazards pose risk to everyone. Our acceptance of the risks associated with hazards dictates where and how we live. As humans, we accept a certain amount of risk when choosing to live our daily lives. From time to time, a hazard becomes an emergent situation. Tornadoes in the Midwest, hurricanes along the Gulf Coast or earthquakes in California are all hazards that residents in those regions accept and live with. This paper will examine one hazard that caused a disaster requiring a response from emergency management personnel. Specifically, the hazard more closely examined here is an earthquake. With the recent twenty year anniversary covered by many media outlets, the January 17, 1994, Northridge, California earthquake to date is the most expensive earthquake in American history.
Within the Emergency Management sector there is a constant evolution of the strategies, operations, and tactics used to address the hazards a community could be exposed to. This constant evolution can be achieved through training and exercise plans. The purpose and role of exercises in Emergency Management is to test and review emergency disaster plans prior its use in a emergency situation. The benefits managing an exercise program with in the community is it: (1) tests and validates policies, plans, procedures, training, and resources of stakeholders involved in emergency management operations; (2) identifies the capabilities of the community to address response and recovery phases of Emergency Management; (3) improves inter-agency coordination and communications.
When we think of disasters, we think of something that we have little or no control over it, some may be minor and some major. A disaster refer to sudden and shocking event that causes serious destruction, loss of lives, properties, loss of support and disruption of the function of the community to respond to the incident with available resources. There are two types of disaster, man-made (terrorism, riot, fire, wars bombing, flood, pollution etc) and natural disaster (earthquakes, fire, drought, hurricanes, tornados, volcanic eruption etc). These disasters occurred daily around the world and communities and health care personnel should be trained and ready at all time (Nies & McEwen, 2015). The most recent disaster that occurred three weeks ago was Hurricane Hermine in Florida that lead to, destruction of properties, injuries and a loss of life. The purpose of writing this paper is to identify a natural disaster (Hurricane Hermine) and discuss the type, characteristics and how the disaster was being managed.
Wherever a disaster occurs and whenever humans are involved, a disaster management is put into place using a...
A disaster is not a simple emergency. A disaster is that point when a human is suffering and has a devastating situation which they themselves need help from others to survive. Regardless if natural or human caused, a disaster causes a vast amount of issues in the community. In the simulation of “Disaster in Franklin County reveals that preparation is key and even with that more can be addressed. A community nurse remains an essential part of the team involved in a disaster including before, during, and after the event.
Disaster can be defined as a sudden or recurring event or incident that disrupts the normal activities or livelihood of people. It is an event that posed a dangerous threat to the safety of people, assets, buildings, infrastructure, and the environment when it occurs. In parallel, Shaluf and Ahmadun (2006) believed that “disaster is an emergency situation that leads to the loss of life; it will damage properties and environment and hinder the social and economic activities of people”. In addition, DFID (2004) defines disaster as “a severe interruption to the community daily life due from people vulnerability towards the disaster impacts and involves loss of life as well as the assets which affect their ability to
Natural Disasters can occur anywhere at anytime. Some are more predictable than others, but they all bring hardship to everyone’s life. Examples of natural disasters are Earthquakes (Haiti 2010), Tornadoes, Tsunami, Hurricanes, Wild Fires, Winter Storms, Heat waves, Mudslides and Floods. Regardless of what kind of disaster occurs, bottom line, everyone needs to be prepared mentally and physically to deal with the aftermath. Education is the first step to prepare you to deal with any major disaster. Three of the major disasters that can potentially disrupt normal day to day operations in our lives, are Hurricanes, Tsunamis and Tornadoes.
The United Nation defines a disaster as a genuine disturbance of the working of a group or a general public. Disasters include broad human, material, monetary or natural effects, which exceed the capacity of the influenced group or society to adapt utilizing its own resources. There is no nation that is safe from disaster, however weakness to disaster shifts.
Of the four phases of emergency management, mitigation, preparedness, response and recovery, perhaps the place that individuals can make the biggest difference in their own state of resiliency and survival of a disaster is in the preparedness phase. Being prepared before a disaster strikes makes sense yet many people fail to take even simple, precautionary steps to reduce the consequences of destruction and mayhem produced by natural events such as earthquakes, volcanos and tornados (see Paton et al, 2001, Mileti and Peek, 2002; Tierney, 1993, Tierney et al, 2001).