Emergency response plan development 4

An emergency procedure is a plan of actions to be conducted in a certain order or manner, in response to a specific class of reasonably foreseeable emergency, a situation that poses an immediate risk to health, life, property, or the environment. Where a range of emergencies are reasonably foreseeable, an emergency plan may be drawn up to manage each threat. Most emergencies require urgent intervention to prevent a worsening of the situation, although in some situations, mitigation may not be possible and agencies may only be able to offer palliative care for the aftermath. The emergency plan should allow for these possibilities

Organizations are frequently required to have written emergency procedures in place to comply with statutory requirements; demands from their insurers, their regulatory agency, shareholders, stakeholders and unions; to protect staff, the public, the environment, the business, their property and their reputation.

Even with a well documented and well practised procedure using trained staff, there is still the potential for events to spiral out of control, often due to unpredicted scenarios or a coincidence of events. There are many well documented examples of this such as: Three Mile Island accident, the Chernobyl disaster and the Deepwater Horizon drilling platform explosion in April 2010. In a press release by BP on the 8 September 2010, BP’s outgoing chief executive Tony Hayward said of this: The investigation report provides critical new information on the causes of this terrible accident. It is evident that a series of complex events, rather than a single mistake or failure, led to the tragedy.

Implementation

The DHS administered the plan when in came into effect in December 2004. Within the United States, the responsibility for natural disaster planning and response follows a progression in which responsibility first falls on local governments. When a local government has exhausted its resources, it then requests specific additional resources from the county level. The request process then proceeds similarly from the county to the state to the federal government as additional resource needs are identified. In the event of a large-scale emergency, DHS assumes primary responsibility for ensuring that response professionals are prepared. This is intended to prevent the negative consequences of uncoordinated responses by local, state, and federal agencies during emergencies.

The plan was updated on May 25, 2006. The notice of change stated the update “emerged from organizational changes within DHS, as well as the experience of responding to Hurricanes Katrina, Wilma, and Rita in 2005.”

On September 10, 2007, DHS released a draft copy of the National Response Framework as a replacement for the National Response Plan. The plan was replaced by the National Response Framework on March 22, 2008.

22, 2008.

Disaster response is the second phase of the disaster management cycle. It consists of a number of elements, for example; warning/evacuation, search and rescue, providing immediate assistance, assessing damage, continuing assistance and the immediate restoration or construction of infrastructure (i.e. provisional storm drains or diversion dams). The aim of emergency response is to provide immediate assistance to maintain life, improve health and support the morale of the affected population. Such assistance may range from providing specific but limited aid, such as assisting refugees with transport, temporary shelter, and food to establishing semi-permanent settlements in camps and other locations. It also may involve initial repairs to damaged or diversion to infrastructure.

The focus in the response phase is on keeping people safe, preventing the next disasters and meeting the basic needs of the people until more permanent and sustainable solutions can be found. The main responsibility to address these needs and respond to a disaster lies with the government or governments in whose territory the disaster has occurred. In addition, humanitarian organisations are often strongly present in this phase of the disaster management cycle, particularly in countries where the government lacks the resources to respond adequately to the needs.