Prevention Of A Disaster Emergency

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.

This chapter provides an overview that describes the basic types of hazards threatening the United States and provides definitions for some basic terms such as hazards, emergencies, and disasters. The chapter also provides a brief history of emergency management in the federal government and a general description of the current emergency management system—including the basic functions performed by local emergency managers. The chapter concludes with a discussion of the all-hazards approach and its implications for local emergency management.

Editor’s Note: This Chapter is the continuation of an adaptation of a state plan for disaster preparation and response. In total, the original chapter comprises Chapters 1, 14, 16-18.

As the Disaster Coordinator for the city I am responsible for ensuring the public safety and welfare of the citizens within the city's jurisdiction. This requires me to have a full understanding on my role and responsibilities for managing disaster response and employing resources in order to save lives, protect property, the environment. Additionally I’m tasked to preserve the less tangible but equally important social, economic and political structures. My first reaction was to alert the regional Joint Terrorism Task Force to prepare them for possible activation. Next it is vital to gain situational awareness and develop a Common Operating Picture (COP). This COP is the who, what, where, when and how as it relates to the incident. Situational awareness starts at the incident site and includes continuous monitoring of reporting channels to gain

Communications have been prioritized in this assessment model as compared to previous FEMA publications. Communications are absolutely paramount to the success of any disaster relief or terrorist attack situation. The difficulties experienced by the first responders to the World Trade Center bombing in 2001 are well known, and we must enter any disaster situation with the understanding that solid communication is a top priority. Public Affairs must keep the population in affected and unaffected areas informed every step of the

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.

Communication is widely regarded as one of the most essential elements in successfully managing an emergency situation. The dissemination of information, which is both timely as well as accurate, to the parties concerned goes a long way to lend a hand in ensuring that the recovery activities in an emergency situation, together with its management takes place effectively. For that reason, five critical assumptions are used to provide the basis of disaster management strategy.

Emergency responders face the difficult task of ensuring the safety and wellbeing of the citizens they serve. Natural and man-made disasters augment the daily threats that responders face. The threat of disaster poses an especially large risk due to their massive sizes and therefore, additional susceptibility to hazards. The Kansas City government created an Emergency Operations Plan (EOP) to combat the most likely dangers they are likely to face based off of their Threats, Hazards Identification Risk Assessment (THIRA).

The U.S. is no stranger when it comes to natural disasters and knowing what to do after one occurs. After Hurricane Katrina, the federal, state, local, tribal, and territorial governments have learned and improved their disaster planning as well with nongovernmental organizations and private sectors to preposition a greater number of resources in responding and strengthen to disasters quickly and in a robust fashion (dhs 2014 p. 8). It has been seven years after Katrina, the return on these investments showed in the strong, coordinated response to Hurricane Sandy with this response the progress must continue. The response includes capabilities necessary to save lives, protect properties, and

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

The environmental and emergency preparedness is one of the main core duties of the department of public health (WHO, 2015). Emergency preparedness refers to people’s preparation for emerging health threats that will protect people from infectious, occupational, environmental, and terrorist threats (CDC, 2015). Another definition of emergency preparedness and response which is: the steps that should be taken to be safe when a disaster is happening. The kinds of disasters can natural, human-made or disease outbreak; natural disasters like hurricane, storms, and earthquakes, Human-made disasters like fires, explosions, chemicals and disease outbreaks such as Ebola. In this paper, four events will be discussed (WHO, 2015).

This report outlines the current crisis situation and provides a range of crisis communication strategies and methodologies that are suggested for use immediately.

Reporting to the Japanese Cabinet, a panel researching on potential disasters reported the potential of 30-35 meters high disaster hitting Tokyo and other regions in future. The over-reliance on nuclear energy in some of these regions also poses a major threat whenever such disasters strike. The Southwestern Ohi Nuclear power plant was restarted amidst protests from the public. This shows some degree of awareness on the public’s side. Indeed, previous disasters have played a vital role in educating the public on ways of preventing and mitigating further losses in future. On one hand, educating alone may not yield the expected results in terms of disaster prevention. On the other hand, educating the public has been vital in disaster mitigation (Earthquake Engineering Research Group, 2008).