Introduction to Emergency Operations; Types of Emergencies and Disasters



Introduction to Emergency Operations; Types of Emergencies and Disasters 

Introduction

An emergency operation planning is very crucial task for any city planner. Every large city like New York has its own emergency operations and systems to manage emergency. The complexity of emergency management system increased with the number of peoples lived in this city and with the size of the city.

Emergency Operations

By considering the panic and importance of health and safety departments in an emergency, every large city always establish a department that plays an active role in an emergency or define proper sequence of operations to its departments related to health and safety in case of emergency. According to Guinness, the world largest emergency operation to rehabilitate the most expensive recorded in history is the Kobe earthquake which occurred in 1995 in Japan and gives heavy 131.5 billion dollars damage (Guinness, 2005, n.d.).

Disasters

Disaster is an incident that differs according to economical, geographical and political situations of the countries or areas. It can be human generated or natural. It is the event that affects industry, life of human and property negatively. According to Quarantelli, disasters generally provide key results and provide irreversible changes to ecosystem, human societies and their environment (Quarantelli, 1998, P 23-28). Disasters are relatively highly disruptive, sudden and time limited in most cases (however its effects may be very long).

Case # 1

Introduction of case

As a city manager my task is to develop an effective plan for emergency management for the city. This can be achieved by developing a department that is responsible to define, manage and describe emergency situations in the city if it occurs. According to the requirement of an effective emergency management department plan, this task can be achieved if following steps followed and if department perform the following task effectively:

Defining an emergency

When there is a situation of emergency in the city, it is the responsibility of that department to define the category of that emergency in terms of the scales of that emergency type. For example, if earth quake arrives, then it is the responsibility of this department to define intensity of earth quake in terms of rector scale.

Establishing an organization

After setting a department that defines the urgency and intensity of emergency it is important to setup another department that can take action effectively on the urgent basis and takes steps to provide help to the peoples of the city in emergency.

Establishing a method for utilizing resources

In this step the department defines a method or process to decide and arrange resources that required tackling that emergency. It is also include in this step that if any resource, which required is not currently available then how they can arrange it.

Right to declare emergency

It is the responsibility of that department to Turn On and Turn Off the declaration of emergency in the city after examining the current condition and situation of peoples in the city after a disaster or emergency occurs.

Question #1

Fire Department as Leading Department

Fire department plays a ...