What is emergency management?

An emergency is a sudden occurrence or accident which causes significant injuries to people and sometimes can even result in a loss of life. An emergency is any situation that can cause physical or environmental damage, disturb daily operations, affect the financial stability of a company or an individual, or something alarming for human health. Several events can be classified as an emergency such as earthquakes, wildfires, hurricanes, winter storms, explosions, floods and flash floods, road accidents, tornados, terrorism or war, hazardous material incidents, and many other unexpected events. An emergency event can cause great financial, property, human, and resource damage. The emergency risk can be minimised through emergency management, which helps to reduce loss and damage.  

Emergency management is a vigorous and hearty practice for the preparation to mitigate, respond, and recover from an emergency. Preparation is a crucial part of emergency management, but not a total factor that is responsible for emergency management. Other major components like training, equipment analysis, and spreading emergency awareness in the community are the essentials of emergency management. Successful emergency management depends on the emergency policies at all government and private sector levels and can include individual and community organisation to work together at the time of an emergency. 

What does emergency management include?

Emergency management includes essential factors such as making a possible emergency plan, having access to the resources required to execute the plan, continuously practising the plan to make it better, providing training to employees, informing the local authorities and common people about emergencies, connecting with stakeholders, and reporting the emergency when it occurs. This process can be lengthy and complex. A certified performance consultant may help to refine the plan. Emergency management follows four important stages that are mentioned below:

Mitigation 

Mitigation is a pre-planned action that is taken out before the emergency to decrease human and financial damage in the future. This step includes analysis of expected risks and planning on reducing risks, which requires people to understand local risks and report them and promotes long-term security of the community. Mitigation can be accomplished through confined ordinance, law practices, and regulations. 

Preparation

Preparation is an ongoing process of forecasting, organising and handling preparation exercises, developing new exercises, checking, and enlightening activities. This step is essential to confirm the operative dexterity and enchantment of an organisation to prevent, protect, and recover resources and lessen the risk of emergencies. An example would include mine rescue training.

Response

It includes the utilisation of obligatory services required in an emergency. The response is driven by the intensity of the emergency and includes the basic and initial services needed in an emergency, which includes firefighters, ambulance, constabularies, and rescue. Services are supported by several other emergency services. The rescue team rehearses the emergency plan to make sure to rescue and respond efficiently in an emergency. Fire fighting training is a response to a particular emergency, for example.

Recovery 

This aspect of emergency management aims to recover an affected area and restore it to its previous state. The recovery helps with after-effects of an emergency and provides an immediate solution and aid to the people who are affected by it. The recovery is concerned with action that includes rehabilitation of people and rebuilding of destroyed property and essential infrastructure. It also involves debriefing of the people involved, to protect everyone’s mental health. To ensure the debriefing takes place effectively, professional facilitation may be required. It takes effort to create better infrastructure after the disaster to reduce future emergency risks. They give effective emergency response training and a highly experienced workforce. The individuals who work as emergency and rescue professionals should be very active and responsive. They know when, where, and how recovery has to be carried out.

The consequences of any incident or natural disaster can be reduced significantly with effective emergency management, planning, and response. Poor emergency management can cause severe damage to property, people, and resources. Therefore, every state needs to have strong emergency management that reduces the risk of damage and prevents people from injuries and financial loss. The adequate risk management of a state is the guarantee for a strong economy.