Emergency Services in a Disaster
How the prepared citizen assist emergency management
Doing the most good for the most amount of people.
In a disaster, there is a specific role for emergency service personnel. EMS, Fire, Police, Sheriffs, and hospital personnel are expected to be flooded with tasks almost instantly, in an ever-evolving set of scenarios. Community Emergency Response Teams (CERT), in coordination with Search & Rescue and Rapid Assessment Teams (RAT), add to the capability of municipal and religiously organized response. Contributing much-needed people to help with lower critical tasks. Sometimes the best thing that can be done is to have extra bodies for anything that might come up.
The scope of the disaster will instantly determine the level of response that is required by emergency services and emergency management as they work through the specific and unique problems that the disaster presents. This means that when you dial 911, they might not be able to respond at all. You might be on your own. The most important people during a disaster are the people around you when it is happening.
Wouldn’t you want everyone to be as capable as possible to have the best possible outcome?
This problem is well known in the emergency management community. Thankfully, emergencies are very rare, but this begs a different problem. Municipalities usually only dedicate resources to things that can be directly affected by funding; they don’t like to spend money on what-ifs and possibilities. What is far more effective is when ordinary citizens of the community build their own preps to support the efforts of emergency responders before a disaster occurs.
In most disasters, you become your own first responder. Your skills, equipment, and resilience will make the difference between life and death for yourself and the people around you. In many cases, even if first responders are available to respond to your 911 call, the critical moments between life and death happen before they ever get the chance to arrive.
By being able to respond to your own needs and the needs of the others around, you play a critical part in relieving pressure off of first responders during a disaster.
Self-reliance is the most important skill to have.
Mike Black
Skills are the foundation of preparedness.