What is an emergency?
II. Stages in planning for disasters
A. First Step ion Planning
- It can be unforeseen combination of circumstances or the resulting state that calls for an immediate action (Webster's Dictionary).
- It is a sudden juncture demanding immediate action (Reader's Digest)
- It is any situation that diverts an organization from its normal operations which waste time and/or financial resources.
- It is a sudden calamitous event that produces great material damage, loss, and distress.
- Human-caused disasters
- Technical emergencies
- Medical emergencies
II. Stages in planning for disasters
A. First Step ion Planning
- Develop a sound plan which will define disaster or emergency in terms relevant to the organization doing the planning.
- Establish an organization with specific tasks to function immediately before, during and following a disaster/emergency.
- Establish a method for utilizing resources on hand for obtaining additional resources at the time of disaster or emergency.
- Provide a recognizable means for moving from normal operations into and back-out of the disaster or emergency mode operations.
- Determine priorities in making a plan. The relative importance of different types of activities must be organized.
- There must be an advanced determination of priorities, or else resources will be wasted.
- Define the purpose of the emergency plan in order to (1) highlight the type of problems the executives involved with the plan will encounter; (2) to require the executives to consider in advance how they will react when an emergency begins to develop; (3) minimize effects of any incident of disaster proportions upon plant and community personnel; (4) to keep property and equipment loss at a minimum; (5) to ensure cooperation of all employees or office personnel charged with specific activities in time of an emergency; and (6) to ensure appropriate cooperative action by and with outside civic and government agencies;
- Early in the planning stage, present the program to your employees and enlist the active support;
- Call an organization meeting the heads of services, employee representative and key personnel; and
- The core team/stakeholders should organize or appoint a set of persons who will create the disaster control manual. This manual should be (1) authoritative; (2) clear; (3) precise; (4) specific; and (5) comprehensive.