Crisis Recovery Summary

Tragic events that cause damage to property and life may destroy the social, cultural and economic life of a community. Communities must be engaged in the various phases from prevention to recovery to build disaster resilient communities. In order to do this, there must be a disaster preparedness plan in place that involves multiple people in various roles.

Communities, according to Kapucu and Özerdem (2011) have a drastic effect on the recovery process. In the end, by having a recovery place in plan within the community, it will ensure economic and resident resiliency for when a crisis is to occur. In order to ensure such a plan is in place, it is up to the American Red Cross to partner with and focus on the citizen involvement in decision making, from the beginning stages of planning all through mitigation; increase the buy in within the community; and provide for the community in an effective manner after a disaster has occurred Kapucu and Özerdem

In day to day operations, uncertainties do occur. Henceforth it would be important to have a contingent and well detailed disaster preparedness plan and procedures. Healthcare systems, on a day to day basis, are faced with emergencies in form of disasters. As a result, majority of medical centers have well-structured exit plans in the event of a disaster occurring("Hospital Disaster Preparedness: Your Guide to Getting Started - Emergency Preparedness", 2011). However, this essay will aim at interviewing one of the top disaster preparedness staffat the Houston Methodist Hospital. In the interview, I will seek to identify the top three disasters that the Houston Methodist Hospital is prepared for. Similarly, in the interview, I would seek to identify the top lessons learnt from disaster preparedness at the hospitals.As it concludes it would summarize the findings with regards to the interview stated below. Below is an excerpt from the interview to answer the two aforementioned questions.

Effective disaster management is highly important when it comes to assisting in rescue and relief to affected. This does not only include post disaster rescue efforts but these disaster management activities should be proactive. They start right from taking preventive measures before the disaster actually occurs and goes on till the effected people are resettled back in their lives. This disaster management pertaining to human life is not only associated with physical well being but also focuses on psychological, emotional, and spiritual rehabilitation.

Planning ties with one of the National Preparedness Goal’s mission area, that is prevention. The 9/11 events made DHS to aggressively change its focus to an “all hazards” approach. Prevention is a core component to accomplish this objective. However, for an effective prevention requires thorough planning. The private sector provides this type of service and DHS may hire a private sector entity to develop a prevention plan for them. In planning, all levels of government and private sector entities must coordinate with one another in developing and executing courses of action to prevent or reduce the impact of natural disasters or terrorist attack (Homeland Security, 2011). According to the National Preparedness Goal, planning is one of the mission are capabilities and preliminary targets of prevention (Homeland Security, 2011, p. 5). The private sector’s impact in planning with the DHS is essential for an effective prevention in support of the National Preparedness

The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) would become the central point-of-contact within the national government in responding to incidents. Since formation in 1979, FEMA’s core missions were to enhance the government’s ability to survive a foreign attack, and to assist state and local authorities in disaster response (Carafano, 2005). And while the two core missions seem heterogenous in scope at times from an outside perspective, the biggest difference between the two tasks is duration. A man-made disaster may be over in a matter of minutes as compared to a hurricane lasting several days, but in both instances the road to recovery is long. In order to streamline response and recovery in either scenario, FEMA was reorganized with new directives to support comprehensive emergency management practices (CRS, 2006). Today, FEMA provides the standard approach and guidance that many local communities may not have due to funding, training, and

Disaster relief operations are complex systems having more to them than just a response mechanism. They require a significant amount of pre-planning.

National Response Plan Howard L. Hayes Saint Leo University Abstract Why is it necessary for our country to have an effective emergency plan in place? Why does it matter how the country responds to emergencies when every part of our country, including cities and states, face emergency situations on a daily basis all over? Some are bad to worse, and some horrific to deadly. Well, this paper explains the importance of the National Response Plan and why it is necessary for our country to have it in place. It explores several articles that have been published to show the results on the effectiveness and response of the National Response Plan. The National Response Framework, previously called The National Response Plan, is a plan that the United States put in effect to organize the way the country and the community handles attacks, disasters, as well as all events looked at as an emergency. The Response Plan relays and describes all the information in order to avoid catastrophic damages and to protect and save lives. The plan focuses on how the country as a whole can work together to prepare for damaging events. Morover, the plan doesn 't always seem to be effective as it is expected to be. Issues arose at the time it is most needed, which causes necessary changes to take effect immediately. Sometimes the damage is already done and that could be due to economic collapse, being unprepared, and failure to respond appropriately. The National Response Framework replaced the National

Two specific areas of concern are noted in the majority of studies conducted. The first area of concern was that there was not a clear delineation of roles and responsibilities or organizational leaders (Haddow et al., 2014, p. 322). Since this event this has been an area that has shown considerable improvement. This has been accomplished through the use of NIMS and collaborative efforts of first responder leaders to craft an all hazards model of response. By doing both of these things, partner agencies are better able to fold into the rescue

The disaster which hit the Maricopa County in the State of Arizona in September 2014 was a major disaster that necessitated the community preparedness for leading successful response and a prompt recovery. Besides emergency managers, many officials and the private are involved in the processes. Some of these stakeholders are public health, public safety, and municipal officials. Collaboration is needed for getting all those involved in the processes to interact accordingly. This paper addresses the major collaboration strengths between emergency responders, public health, public safety, and municipal officials to deliver accurate response and recovery during the event, the main weaknesses of the collaboration among all those that were involved in the efforts, and recommendations for improving the collaboration between the stakeholders.

This research paper looks at the National Disaster Medical System (NDMS). The National Disaster Medical System is a federally coordinated system that helps build the nations medical response capability during major medical or public health incidents that states and local communities cannot handle by themselves (USDHHS, 2015). The research in this article draws upon the history of the establishment of NDMS, and how other hospital teams were first created. The focus of this paper is to explain the goals, mission statement, objectives, and funding of the NDMS. The final section of this paper will explain how the NDMS fits into Emergency Management at the state and local levels, and explain all the different teams in NDMS medical and health professionals can sign up for.

The Assessment Crisis Intervention Trauma Treatment (ACT) model was developed by Albert Roberts after the September 11th terrorist attacks. The way it works is mental health professionals, will follow a series of seven steps when responding to a crisis. The most notable include: assess the danger, establish psychological conduct, identify major problems, encourage the exploration of feelings, examine alternative strategies, implementing the plan and following up. The combination of these factors is designed to provide everyone with tools to effectively address the crisis. (Roberts, 2005)

Additionally, the preparation phase covers all fundamentals of an incident response plan, reports interaction among basics, and increases to emergency response planning at some point in the life of an incident in order to develop the necessary trust relationships that will be fully exercised during the stress of a real crisis. According to Whitman (2012) “The Disaster Recovery Plan Similar in structure to the IR plan, the DR plan provides detailed guidance in the event of a disaster. It is organized by the type or nature of the disaster, and specifies recovery procedures during and after each type of disaster. It also provides details on the roles and responsibilities of the people involved in the disaster recovery effort, and identifies the personnel and agencies that must be notified. Just as the IR plan must be tested, so must the DR plan, using the same testing mechanisms.” (P. 231). Many of the same principles of incident response apply to disaster recovery such as fundamentals must be clearly established, roles and responsibilities must be visibly outlined, someone must initiate the alert schedule and notify key personnel, someone must have the responsibility of the documentation of the disaster and only if it is possible, attempts must be made to moderate the impact of the disaster on the operations of the organization.

The connection between the trigger and the problems – Emotion from the media detailing the after effects of Hurricane Katrina has led to assumptions/presumptions at all levels (attendees, event coordinator, and senior management), without relevant data/information which may be the deciding factor to proceed. The event coordinator is thus faced with a risk environment that requires a crisis response within a timely manner.

The burden of emergency management has grown great deal in the last few decades. We have seen an increase in natural disasters, a new threat of terrorism on our front door and an increase in manmade disasters. All of these have tested emergency management in a number of cities and towns across the nation. It is not always disasters that present problems for emergency managers. We have to look beyond our traditional view of emergency management of helping us during times of disasters and view what issues they consider may affect their emergency response. Issues that emergency management see that are moving into the critical area are issues of urbanization and hazard exposure, the rising costs of disaster recovery, and low priority of emergency management.