The Goals Of The City Emergency Management Operations

Disaster is anything that can occur causing damages, an ecological disruption and deterioration of health and the health services. Disaster can be manmade or natural disasters such as floods. When disasters like flooding or tornadoes that may be accompanied by floods occur, the public health personnel and public health nurses are normally the first people who respond to the emergency, given that they are the people who understand and know the available resources used in providing first aids to the affected victims.

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.

And it involves interaction with familiar faces, tasks, procedures, and organizations. (Auf der Heide, Erik. 1989) An emergency is generally personal in nature. A disaster is “an event associated with the impact of a natural hazard, which leads to increased mortality, illness and/or injury, and destroys or disrupts livelihoods, affecting the people or an area such that they (and/or outsiders) perceive it as being exceptional and requiring external assistance for recovery” (Cannon 1994, 29, fn.2). Finally, a catastrophe can be viewed as “…any disaster that overwhelms the ability of state, local, and volunteer agencies to adequately provide victims with such life-sustaining mass care services as food, shelter, and medical assistance within the first 12 to 24 hours.” (GAO, Disaster Management, 1993, p. 3).

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:

Disasters are bound to strike at a given time and they more often find us unaware, this is the sole reason why the majority of the disasters that happen are usually fatal and destructive. This then calls for the need to try as much as possible to prevent these disasters and in particular in our cities. This is due to the fact that in the cities there are large populations that live close to each other or work in offices crammed together hence the likelihood of a disaster turning absolutely fatal if and when it strikes. However, due to the inevitable nature of these disasters, it is upon us to make adequate preparations that can enable us to minimize the effects of the natural disasters as much as possible when and if they happen.

FEMA is, however, a ‘response’ group rather than a prevention group. What we are advocating here is that a committee is formed to specifically target the poor and provide them with preventive knowledge against disasters. Thus, this committee might be formed under the funding of the local government or even under FEMA, but must be a separate and independent entity that can focus on its own function. The committee is to be composed of both educators and experts in the field of disaster preparedness and it will create a program by which people living under the poverty line can participate with very minimal cost (or ideally free of charge). The goal is not to ‘provide’ the preparedness equipment, the goal is that after engaging in the program, participants will now know what to do and what to have in order to become more resilient. In order to reach as many people as possible, the same task force shall work effectively advertising the program around the town or city they are working in. Finally, the relationship between the committee and their ‘graduated’ participants must not end with the program. Continuous updating of information and useful practices must occur in order to ensure that people had the best information at

Disasters are totalizing events, impacting and influencing every aspect of a community when they occur. As the anthropology of disaster grows, both in the number of publications and the number of researchers, the scope of topics related to disasters will also grow. Economic implications, vulnerable populations, and human ecology already contribute heavily to the

Government at all levels plays an important role during disaster management. Actions and roles of each government agencies are spelled out in the National Incident Management System (NIMS) and the National Response Framework (NRF). But before we go into details on the roles of governments, let me first of all explain what constitute emergency and emergency management, just to give clearer understanding some of these terms. Then I will examine the roles of governments at all level including first responder actions, mutual support, lead and support roles.

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.

According to UNISDR (2009), disaster can be defined as “a serious disruption of the functioning of a community or a society involving widespread human, material, economic or environmental losses and impacts, which exceeds the ability of the affected community or society to cope using its own resources.” Disaster risk is the combination of likelihood of a catastrophic event occurring; the exposure to the affected areas; and vulnerability of the affected communities or country (Global Reinsurance Forum, 2014). The impacts of disaster risk include not only loss of life and physical damages but also increase the potential outbreak of secondary hazards such as diseases and negative effect on physical, mental and social wellbeing of human being, services, social, economic and environment sectors. Disaster risk management include avoiding or mitigating the potential of hazard occurrence and exposure and reducing the vulnerability level by strengthening the tangible and intangible capacities.

First off disasters affect thousands of people every year. This means that thousands of others come together to support these countries that have been hit. This means that these people will donate money, they will fly over to that country to help clear wreckage or

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.

Every emergency or disaster, from a small house fire to a hurricane that devastates entire communities, have a distinct cycle. This is

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

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 .