Disaster Management Communications Plan - Case Study, Nevis

Hazards are activities or events that cause loss of life, injury, property damage, social and economic disruption, or environmental degradation. These hazards can be natural or manmade, such as earthquakes, hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, wildfires, and terrorist attacks. Vulnerabilities can be described as the potential for hazards. Vulnerabilities can be such things as geographical locations, a community up north has a lower vulnerability for hurricanes, as compared to Florida communities. Risk is described as the level of protection a community or area will have if they are involved in a hazard, and the certain groups

A disaster is an unforeseen fatal event that causes massive disruption to the working of a community

Definition of ‘crisis’ from the on-line dictionary defines the word as “a condition of instability or danger, as in social, economic, political, or international affairs, leading to a decisive change”. (Dictionary, n.d.). The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) has created a chart in which there are several criteria for determining when a situation is qualified as a disaster, only then, may federal aid be available to the communities. According to authors Timothy Sellnow and Matthew Seeger, the criteria allow “the FEMA to assess the relative magnitude of disruption and harm created by any event” (Sellnow & Seeger 2013, 4), so that it can be determined how much and what form of assistance the community may require. Some of the

Disasters are human made or natural and occur sudden and unexpected. As disasters cannot be prevented, government has to be prepared for any emergency situation. According to Stanhope and Lancaster (2014), there are four stages in the disaster management: Prevention, Preparedness, Response and Recovery. According to Stanhope and Lancaster (2014, p 250), public health professionals study disaster effects on populations while American Red Cross work with local and other communities in preparedness, response and recovery phase of disaster.

To "act" means to do something positive to save one's life or the life of any other person within the immediate area. To "alert" is to notify law enforcement and security personnel in the first instance, and co-workers and patients of the present danger. The exposition in this reference focuses on good response modes.

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.

An event is only correctly identified as a disaster when the damage is too great for an affected region or city to handle or respond to the event with their own resources. To be more direct, a disaster is an actual event that results in more disruption and losses than a community is capable of handling on their own and they must therefore rely on assistance from other communities, the state or federal government (Smith 2012). A disaster, regardless of the nature of the event, in one region or city, may not qualify as a disaster in another region or city. It is all based on the impacted area’s capability to cope with the event on their own.

According to FEMA in Professor Rion’s PowerPoint slides, a disaster is “An occurrence that has resulted in property damage, deaths, and/or injuries to the community” (FEMA, 1990). I personally believe this definition is the best because not every disaster has to have a certain amount of deaths to occur or a specific number of injuries. I also like this definition because it fits to the disaster that happened in my hometown over a year ago.

Our textbook taught me that a hazard is an event or incident that has the ability to bring danger or harm to that area (Haddow, G., Bullock, J, & Coppola, D. 2014). This hazard usually requires a response by emergency services such as police and fire departments or Emergency Medical Services. A good example would be a power outage in a particular area. The most typical need during this time would be the Police Department. The Police can protect property from looters which would be one identified risk from that hazard. Another need from the police would be traffic control for automated traffic lights that were out from the power outage.

Response involves a number of protocols whereby, intelligence is applied as well as information that is useful in lessening the impacts or the results of the accident. Secondly, investigations have continued to get to know the nature and the core sources of the threats. This also increases the security operations. The next thing is continuing the assessment of the public health and testing and immunizations processes. Finally, the response involves restoring the infrastructure that which is critical for example, utilities. The Smart Emergency Response System abbreviated as SERS is the agency involved in responding to disasters (Warfield, 2010).

Vulnerability represents the susceptibility of an individual or population to injury or “the degree of possible/potential loss to a given element at risk resulting from a given hazard at a given intensity”. For this discussion, vulnerability means the susceptibility of the population and environment to the type (nature) of the event. The degree of vulnerability depends upon the resilience of the society for the event. The resilience of the population/environment against the event is its pliability, flexibility, or elasticity to absorb the event. Resilience as is a counteracting component of vulnerability. Vulnerability = 1 - Resilience

This comprises all forms of activities, including structural and non-structural measures to avoid (prevention) or to limit (mitigation and preparedness) adverse effects of hazards[4].

Mallory: “okay, those are some natural disasters. I want to do this group because recently hurricanes have occurred. And it’s important to know how to be prepare in case of emergency. What is the definition of natural disaster? Well, natural disaster is any catastrophic event that is caused by or the natural process of the earth. Can anyone tell me why natural disasters occurs?

One thing this definition does not say is that a disaster can also be man-made not just natural catastrophes. The oxford dictionary(Oxforddictionaries, online2014) also defines an emergency as;

It's basically defined as an event of nature, which overwhelms local resources and threatens the function of process and security of the community. Generally, disasters are the ultimate test of a community’s emergency response capacity .