The Scene Of A Major Emergency Or Disaster

Imagine being a soldier during the revolutionary war. There is no one to help you, and there is no doctors to save your life. Since the American Red Cross was founded, the organization has helped millions of people ranging from war to natural disasters.. The American Red Cross provides a range of services in the United States by giving emergency assistance, blood, disaster relief, and education. Also, the Red Cross feeds the volunteers, helps families contact each other, provides blood to disaster victims, and helps those affected by disaster to access other available resources. Their mission is empowering ordinary people to perform extraordinary

Whether it is a local flood or a national disaster, there is always one organization there to help, the American Red Cross. Each year the organization turns down no one in need, benefits 70,000 people in disaster relief, along with saving three lives every time a person donates blood. The American Red Cross has evolved through the years and is still known as one of the most important nonprofit organizations in the world.

evacuation, making emergency repairs to the levees, and providing food and law and order in an unprepared shelter). These measures, born of necessity, may be quite different from or exceed in scale anything responders have done before. They must be creative and extremely adaptable to execute improvised tactics. Equipping organizations to recognize the novelty in a crisis and improvise skillfully is thus a far different (and far more difficult) matter from preparing mainly to implement preset emergency plans. Scalability and Surge Capacity In many disasters, as Katrina well illustrated, responders must cope with far greater numbers of endangered people or more extensive damage than usual. To scale up operations to handle this surge of demand, emergency agencies require access to resources in larger quantities than normal and frequently to specialized equipment or

The most important aspect in managing a disaster situation is preparedness. The simulation Disaster in Franklin County highlights the role of public health personnel, with emphasis on the public health nurse because the nurse is often a first responder to such a disaster. This helps to examine the roles, actions, coping methods, and techniques used by a nurse in a disaster scenario.

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.

“Due to numerous regulations from FEMA and the Department of Homeland Security, training is now required for all disaster relief volunteers before they are allowed into a disaster area.” (How to become a Salvation Army volunteer) There are two ways to register as a disaster volunteer. The first way is to call a local Salvation Army, or register online at www.disaster.salvationarmyusa.org. At this website there is a complete list of the training classes offered by the Salvation Army and a calendar of upcoming

In the event of a disaster, the community relies upon the public health personnel to evaluate the needs of the community, assess the available resources, provide reliable information, and coordinate health activities. It is essential that local health workers are trained professionals who are reassuring and organized to address health, social, cultural and material concerns of the community. Local health personnel coordinate social services, transportation, available health services, volunteers, outside assistance, public utilities and rescue work (HELP, 1989).

Every year, there are approximately 150,000 deaths and 200 million people affected by natural disasters and humanitarian crises (Thomas, 2003). Natural disasters alone, which include various occurrences, cause substantial disruptions such as the temporary displacement of more than five million people. According to the Fritz institute, statistics show that uprooted people from humanitarian crises such as civil conflict and war is greater, with an average of 13 million refugees and 20 million internally displaced people each year. As the biggest worldwide participants in the relief effort in the global community, disaster relief organizations are the forerunners of the help supplied to people affected by catastrophic events.

People respond to a natural disaster by gathering materials. The Red Cross had provided many of the most needed items such as blankets, mosquito nets, and water containers (Doc A). People were in great need of these organizations at this time in their lives because people in families had died, and they were not ready to take on the change of overcoming this tragic time. Some of the most needed items were water and health care services (Doc A). The people were in need of food, but they had struggled to find it. “Just 10 hours later, food was there” (Doc B). Although food was there, it was not enough for some people to eat.

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:

Emergency services face vast difficulties in the operations field when handling emergency situations, whether it comes from handling a minor accident to a catastrophic catastrophy. Many of the difficulties do not come from the actual incident, but instead they arise from forming a rescue team containing different agencies and people. For the benefit off all individuals participating, it is imperative that there be a unified command structure in place to effectively coordinate and oversee the tasks that need to be accomplished. The need of a unified command was seen from the hardships faced in incidents, bringing forth the development of the Incident Command System that was designed to be used in an array of conditions, to bring all

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

Emergency management faces many challenges in today’s modern society. In the years prior to 9/11 emergency management was primarily focused on natural disasters. That has since changed; we now face a diverse variety of risks and hazards on a constant basis. As we continue to grow in population current and newer have compounded into more problems that emergency planner must face and find solutions for.

Situational awareness is a crucial cog in the wheel of an efficient disaster response. Information on casualties, extent of damage, infrastructure and the present response efforts give emergency planners the way forward in the allocation of resources available. It helps in promoting preparedness, which requires the emergency response team to have detailed information about the risk that they are getting into (Haddow & Haddow, 2013).

* In The missing piece of NIMS: Teaching incident commanders how to function in the edge of Chaos, the author notes that first responders have to deal with a disaster situation already unfolding, and not “all the pieces fit together nicely.” The author writes about the Five Tenets of Working in Chaos.