Emergency Management Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1750 words

Emergency Management - Essay Example In order to avoid these sorts of risks, there was a necessity to effectively manage these issues. Emergency Management is a resultant of such necessity. Hence, Emergency management can be thought of as the effort to avoid risks within as well as outside the country and help in cases of disasters whether natural or not (Jane, 2004). The Emergency management is very important sector which needs to be given a high priority for the kind of work they do. Emergency Management's work is to deal with risks and to avoid them. This is of great help at times of natural calamities. Emergency management can be done at various levels like country-wide, state-wide or it can also be done at group or individual level. The Emergency management process is considered as a continuous process which has four phases namely mitigation, preparedness, response and recovery (IJEM, 2006). Each phase has concentration on one part of the emergency management. Mitigation is the long term phase which tries to avoid risks or minimize the risks and stop them from turning into disasters. Hence, mitigation has the lead role in reduction of risks or threats to maximum extent possible. The mitigative measures are either structural or non-structural. Structural mitigation measures are taken from technology based measures to ensure safety from disasters where as the non-structural measures are the measures like the usage of shutters at hurricane prone areas or attachi ng water heaters to the building walls at regions where probability of earth quakes is high. Some of the structural mitigative measures are the building of dams, flood levees etc. The mitigation phase is economic and unwasteful. The risks are identified through an assessment calculation. The equation says that the hazard specific risk is the product of hazard and the vulnerability of the people to that hazard (IJEM, 2006). The higher hazard specific risk indicates the need for immediate action to solve it. The next phase in the emergency management is the preparedness phase. In the preparedness phase the concentration is on the planning of actions to be taken after a disaster occurs. This phase of planning is carried out by the Emergency managers. The preparedness phase has a few measures that are common to any kind of rescue. These include better communication plans between the team, division of the rescue team into multiple sub-divisions, training the team and emergency services, gathering required infrastructure and building temporary shelters etc. It is always advisable that individuals have their own preparedness but this may also cause confusion among the people and the team. The preparedness phase can be aptly done only with the help of trained team of committed and hard working people. The next phase is the response phase. This phase has the first to react team like ambulance or police etc. who are later followed by a rescue team. Response as the name suggests is the immediate reaction to the disaster occurred. This is done not only by the emergency management team but also by some local organizations like the Red Cross and other public safety agencies (Jane, 2004). The efforts