Literature Review On Disaster Management

According to Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), there are many factors that will affect the direction of emergency management in the coming years. These can be classified as global challenges, global opportunities, national challenges, national opportunities, professional challenges, and professional opportunities. Global Challenges include some issues like global climate change, increasing population and population density, increasing resource scarcities, rising income inequality, and increasing risk aversion. Global Opportunities has to do with increased scientific understanding of the hazards and societal responses, as well as revolutionary technologies. National Challenges involves increasing urbanization and hazard exposure, interdependencies in infrastructure, continued emphasis on growth, rising costs of disaster recovery, increasing population diversity, terrorist threats, low priority of emergency management, legal liability, and intergovernmental tensions. Due to these factors that will affect the direction of emergency management in the coming years, there is need for us at emergency management division to adjust operational plans to meet these challenges and especially changes emanating from constant changes expected in technology and other threats we face.

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.

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.

According to Jack Herrmann is Asst. Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Rochester School of Medicine “Disaster management is the preparation for, response to, and recovery from disaster. While there are different understandings of Disaster Management, it is generally viewed as a cycle with the following five key phases:

When disasters occur suddenly, the following days makes it difficult for people to get to work due to fallen trees or destroyed cars and home or roads flooded. By evaluating a given area or even country, can reduce these negative impacts by using risk identification, risk reduction and risk transfer. This is the important job of risk manager to do these risk assessments in order to better prepare for unfortunate events that will occur sometime in the future. There are public assistance programs set in place in the event of a disaster destroying a town or city for example.

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.

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 emergency is a severe, sudden and sometimes risky circumstances requiring urgent action (Salman Sawalha, 2014). Escalation of an emergency situation can lead to disaster; which is an unusual event that can cause lost of life and property (Salman Sawalha, 2014). International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRRCS) define disaster as “unexpected devastating events that disrupts the operations of a population or public which leads to huge losses and overwhelmed the affected community 's ability to respond to the situation with the resources they have at hand”. There are two main types of disaster that can lead to emergency situations; these include natural and man-made disasters.

Disasters rip through communities, states, and regions daily. At some point the effects of a natural disaster will directly or indirectly affect every living person. The positive or negative outcomes of a disaster reflects strongly on the ability of the local people responding to the disastrous even. The purpose of this paper is to explore the natural disaster of Hurricane Matthew including information about the type of disaster, characteristics of the disaster, and an in-depth look into disaster management stages.

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.

Data obtained by assessing social vulnerability must be implemented within each phase of the emergency management process; mitigation, response, and recovery. First, to effectively respond and recover from incidents emergency management agencies must concentrate on the mitigation phase to prevent incidents from happening in the first place. This is achieved through a thorough hazard/vulnerability analysis (HVA). This type of analysis assesses the risk of physical, economic, and social vulnerability within all communities of a given jurisdiction (Lindell et al., 2006, p. 165). Additionally, the basis of the HVA allows emergency managers to effectively plan for disaster by creating pre-planned responses to disasters (rather than improvised response) and staging resources to locations with the highest probability of risk; ultimately contributing to the mitigation and response phases.

Specific measures taken before disasters strike, to ensure effective response constitute preparation. This phase may include specific contingency planning, emergency exercises, training, installation and use of warning systems.

Risk for disasters is a part of life; emergency situations occur more frequently than many people believe. A wise person plans for the worse, and hopes for the best. After a disaster, how well a community can recover will depend largely on how well they prepared in advance. Risk management includes identifying any potential risks to a community and proactively planning to minimize the threat. Proactive organization of resources and people to respond to emergencies can mean the difference between a community’s ability to regroup and recover, and the loss of life. To better

This subject aims to teach students the main elements of emergency management for natural disasters and to a lesser degree terrorist attack. Students will understand the principles involved in emergency

On August 29, 2009, Hurricane Katrina struck the United States Gulf Coast. It was a Category 3 Hurricane, according to the Saffir Simpson Scale. Winds gusted to up to 140 miles per hour, and the hurricane was almost 400 miles wide . The storm itself did a tremendous amount of damage, but the storm’s aftermath was cataclysmic. Many claimed that the federal government was slow to meet the needs of the hundreds of thousands of people affected by the storm. This paper will examine the four elements of disaster management – preparedness, response, recovery, and mitigation – as well as an analysis on the data presented.