Emergency operation

Emergency operations, or Emergency preparedness is a set of doctrines to prepare civil society to cope with natural or man-made disasters.

Any disaster consists of four phases: mitigation, preparation, response, and recovery.

Mitigations attempt to prevent the disaster from ever occurring. For example, one can raise the level of a city so that a storm surge will not drown thousands. This was actually accomplished for Galveston Texas after a devastating storm surge drowned thousands. Mitigation is the most preferred method, when it can be achieved at an acceptable cost.

Preparations preposition training, supplies and equipment for use in the response and recovery stages. For example, storm shelters and evacuation routes are very helpful for extreme weather. In floods, prepositioned caches of food, fuel, boats and radio equipment can be very helpful. Cities should plan to repair essential power systems, water systems, sewage systems, roads and bridges.

Experience with coastal cities in California (some of which have disasters as often as every two years), has shown that one of the most powerful techniques for personal preparedness is to have a knapsack filled with gear and attached to one's bed.

The gear should include shoes, clothing, a flashlight, keys, money, medicines, food, water and rescue tools including gloves, a knife, a light saw and a prybar. Useful protective clothing includes a helmet, goggles, and dust mask.

Many disasters cause windows to break at night, and walking on glass causes immediate casualties who cannot self-evacuate. The first step is therefore always to get the knapsack and dress, then begin family rescues. Attaching the knapsack to the bed assures that it remains in a known place even if the disaster occurs at night and rearranges the furniture.

A plastic shopping bag with tennis shoes and a flashlight is immensely better than nothing. Do it now, and improve it later.

In general home preparations should plan for two basic scenarios: home confinement, and evacuation.

In a home confinement scenario, a family should be prepared to survive and treat moderate medical problems for a minimum of three days (two weeks is better) without deliveries of food, fuel utilities water or power, or pickups of trash and sewage. Likely scenarios include flood, loss of bridges or roads, extreme weather, earthquakes (which occur in all parts of the world), and civil disorder.

Homes in areas with extreme weather should have appropriate radios and storm shelters. Consider making these dual-use shelters for fallout. (See fallout shelter)

The most exteme home confinement scenarios have radiological disasters followed by famines of up to a year long. Planners for these usually buy bulk foods and appropriate storage and preparation equipment, and eat the food as part of normal life (bulk foods are substantially less expensive than grovery foods). A simple balanced diet can be constructed from vitamin pills, whole-kernel wheat, beans, dried milk, corn, and cooking oil (see www.fema.gov). However such a simple diet is apt to cause starvation by appetite exhaustion (extreme boredom with the food). One should add vegetables, fruits, spices and meats, both prepared and fresh-gardened, if possible. The lowest cost provider of bulk foods is usually a feed store.

In an evacuation scenario, a family should plan to evacuate by car with the maximum amount of supplies, including a tent for shelter. The planshould also include equipment for evacuation on foot with at least three days of supplies and rain-tight bedding (a tarp and a bedroll of blankets is the minimum). Likely scenarios include flooding, extreme weather, tsunami, chemical and radiological accidents, and war.

Civil preparations generally focus on providing infrastructure and specialized services for response and recovery. For example, while community emergency response team can perform the bullk of rescues, still about 5% of rescues require special skills. The community teams also require a central operations center to coordinate, and the government should provide that. The government also is the only group that can arrange the space for truly large mass shelters.