EMERGENCY PLANNING AND METHODOLOGY

Emergency Planning and Methodology: An Introduction

Emergency Planning and Methodology: An Introduction

Assignment 1c

Most disasters are natural events (floods, earthquakes, hurricanes). However, other disasters are 'human-initiated', man-made or brought about by human activity (e.g. air crashes, war, bombings, mass murder, ethnic cleansing and even famine). Increasingly, disasters are attributed to human activity especially if we consider disasters as a result of global warming, use of nuclear weapons or chemicals, or creation of synthetic viruses. Whilst a famine is normally due to crop failure, the contributory factors are human-initiated such as failure of a country to provide proper resources, to prevent famine, or as in southern Sudan, an attempt by one ethnic group to force another on to land that cannot support adequate crops (Dynes & Drabek, 1994).

Acute disasters are the most widely reported (floods, bombings, terrorist attacks, wars, pandemics). 'Big events' that result in massive loss of life make headline news. Slower disasters receive less coverage but are equally devastating (famine, AIDS epidemics, malaria epidemics, or the increase in lifestyle diseases) (Mileti, 1999).

During the last decade of the twentieth century, about 75,250 people per annum across the world died as a result of natural or human-initiated disasters. During the same period, 210 million people per annum were affected by disasters (IFRC, 2001). Ryan et al. (2002) list 38 natural disasters of the twentieth century to emphasize the scale of human loss. Approximately 18 million lives were lost in these events (not including any wars that occurred).

About 300,000 people worldwide died as result of disasters in 2004. Statistics are influenced by the Indian Ocean tsunami (26 December 2004) when over 280,000 people died/went missing and 2 million people were affected. 'Global warming' and its impact on vulnerable communities/regions with endemic health problems, global terrorism, nuclear armaments and pandemics suggest that natural or human-initiated disasters remain the foremost threat to humans.

Disaster preparedness consists of those actions taken by individuals, organizations, or communities to ready themselves to respond to and recover from emergency situations. As the word preparedness may indicate, these are actions taken prior to an impact, when disaster preparedness is in reality getting ready for a hazard, which is a potential threat to society. Disasters are events that cause a significant disruption to society or the environment. Risk, vulnerability, and resilience are related concepts in that they refer to a community's susceptibility to or capacity to withstand or bounce back from future hazardous events. Disaster preparedness is important because the better prepared an individual, organization, or community is for such an event, the smaller the disruption ought to be. Disaster preparedness is one phase of emergency management (National Research Council, 2006).

However, emergency readiness is a state of having made advance plans for coping with an unexpected natural disaster, civil disturbance, or military attack that may threaten death and injury to a local population. The planning includes educating the population about location of shutoff valves for utilities and about first aid, including cardiopulmonary resuscitation; ensuring that adequate sources of food, ...