What demands do emergency managers face after a disaster?
SUMMARY
As an emergency manager, you should be aware of important concepts such as hazards, vulnerability, disasters, emergency management, response, recovery and resilience. You must understand what types of hazards may occur including their natural, technological, and civil/conflict variants. It is also imperative that you comprehend how hazards interact with each other and vulnerability as well as how a myriad of variables may determine the impact of disasters. Successful emergency managers should know what changes to expect when a disaster occurs. They must effectively meet the demands that confront them and deal with the aftermath of a disaster in a proactive but adaptable manner.
KEY TERMS
| Agent‐generated demands | The needs made evident by the hazard (e.g., problems resulting from the disaster agent itself). |
| Atmospheric hazards | A hazard agent that is produced in or by the earth’s atmosphere. |
| Biological hazards | Agents that spread disease or are otherwise harmful to life. |
| Civil/conflict hazards | Hazards resulting from panic flight, riots, mass shootings, terrorism and war. |
| Compound hazards | Multiple hazards that react to each other in chaotic fashion. |
| Disasters | Deadly, destructive, and disruptive events that occur when a hazard (or multiple hazards) interacts with human vulnerability. |
| Emergency management | From an academic standpoint, “the study of how humans and their institutions deal with hazards, vulnerabilities and the events that result from their interaction.” From a practical perspective, “the managerial function charged with creating the framework within which communities reduce vulnerability to hazards and cope with disasters.” |
| Emergency managers | Public servants that help jurisdictions reduce the liabilities that lead to disasters. They also help built community disaster capabilities. |
| Enhanced Fujita Scale | A scale used to categorize the size of a tornado, including the affiliated wind speed. |
| Environmental hazards | Agents that involve the degradation of the environment, such as pollution, that pose a risk to people’s health and well‐being. |
| First responders | Public safety personnel such as police officers, fire‐fighters and emergency medical technicians. |
| Geologic hazards | Hazard agents associated with the earth’s soil and rock. |
| Hazard | A physical, technological, or intentional agent such as an earthquake, industrial explosion, or terrorist bombing. |
| Heat index | Incorporates both temperature and humidity into a scale to help warn people to stay inside and drink lots of water. |
| Homeland security | “A concerted national effort to prevent terrorist attacks within the United States, reduce America’s vulnerability to terrorism, and recover from and minimize the damage of attacks that do occur.” |
| Hydrologic hazards | Hazard agents that occur with the earth’s water systems. |
| Industrial hazards | Hazards produced by the extraction, creation, distribution, storage, use, and disposal of chemicals. |
| Mercalli scale | A scale used to describe the physical observation of damages that result from the movement of the earth’s crust (e.g., broken windows, cracked walls, falling pictures, etc.) |
| Mitigation | Risk reduction, loss minimization, or the alleviation of potential negative impacts associated with disasters. |
| Mitigation‐generated demands | The desire to learn from the disaster and avoid making similar mistakes in the future. |
| Na‐tech hazards | A combination of natural–technological hazards. |
| Natural hazards | Those events originating from the physical environment, typically because of radiation from the sun, heat flow within the earth, or the force of gravity. |
| Normalcy‐generated demands | The pressures to get things back to pre‐disaster conditions. |
| Nuclear hazards | A hazard resulting from the presence of radioactive material. |
| Pathogens | Organisms that spread disease which may include anthrax, smallpox, plague, hemorrhagic fever, and rickettsia. |
| Preparedness | Efforts to increase readiness for disaster response and recovery operations. |
| Preparedness‐generateddemands | Expectations that the mistakes made evident in response and recovery will not be repeated in the future. Improvements in planning and the allocation of additional resources fall into this category. |
| Prevention | Refers to actions to stop the occurrence of terrorist attacks and includes the gathering of intelligence, counterterrorism operations, and border control functions. |
| Protection | Refers to actions that discourage attacks through increased security measures or effor to minimize damage if such attacks cannot be prevented in the first place. The reliance on guards, fences, video surveillance, and access control falls into this category. |
| Recovery | Activity to return the affected community to pre‐disaster or, preferably, improved conditions. |