EMS Disaster Response

Excerpt

The disaster cycle involves four phases: preparation, response, recovery, and mitigation. The cycle illustrates the steps that emergency managers take when planning for and responding to a disaster. Preparation is the phase where response plans are constructed. The response is the phase where there is immediate action to limit the hazards created by the disaster. Recovery is the effort to return a community to pre-disaster levels of functioning. Mitigation is the phase where new measures are undertaken to prevent or minimize the effects of future disasters. Some sources refer to the mitigation phase as “prevention.”

To meaningfully discuss disaster response, it is essential also to discuss disaster and disaster management. Though there exists no consensus definition of disaster, the various definitions published by organizations and agencies at the forefront of disaster management have overlapping concepts.

A disaster is a state in which the usual, normal day-to-day human activities within a determined geographic area cease indefinitely. It is defined by a severe disruption in the basic structure and function of a society. This abnormal state is triggered by some extraordinary circumstance, either occurring naturally or as the result of human activity.

A disaster is the consequence of a sudden event or series of events of grand magnitude, which results in injury, disease, illness, loss of life, destruction of property, and/or damage to critical infrastructure and essential services. The precipitating event may be natural, i.e., natural disasters (e.g., tornado, hurricane, drought, famine, earthquake, landslides, infectious disease outbreaks, etc.) or man-made. Man-made events may be unintentional (fires, building collapses, nuclear reactor meltdowns) or intentional (terrorism, sabotage, cyber-attacks, conflict-based). In recent times, both man-made and natural disasters have occurred at an increasing frequency.

Due to its scale and dimension, a disaster exceeds the emergency management capacity of local organizations and agencies, thus necessitating external assistance. That assistance may come from the state, national, and/or international levels. The rapid, immediate, and short-term actions circumjacent to a disaster are known as disaster response.

Disaster response is one of the core activities of disaster management. It involves the execution of a disaster plan in the event of a disaster.