Essay on "Emergency Response Part and Parcel of Human"

Essay 4 pages (1314 words) Sources: 4

[EXCERPT] . . . .

Emergency Response

Part and parcel of human life today is the necessity to sometimes cope with wide scale disasters. These have an effect not only on the physical infrastructure of an area, but also on the health and well-being of those involved. For this reason, disaster response agencies are a necessary component of coping with either man-made or natural disasters. According to Qureshi, Gebbie & Gebbie (2005, p. 4) it is also necessary to manage and ensure sound public health during such emergencies. Public health agencies therefore have the responsibility to collaborate and cooperate with other agencies responding during emergencies, since many different kinds of agencies will be involved. The system for such interagency emergency management is known as the National Incident Management System (NIMS). The first responsibility of public health agencies is therefore to be familiar with NIMS and its frameworks for responding to public disasters. To facilitate this coordination and cooperation effort, several officers are at the head of the various aspects of public health management, including officials such as the finance/administration chief, logistics chief, liaison officer, public health nurse, and so on.

The finance/administration chief is responsible for several key management actions. This official must, for example ensure that there is a contractual and financial process in place to secure supplies, equipment, space and personnel for those struck by the disaster (Qureshi, Gebbie & Gebbie, 2005, p. 14). This officer must also be able to interpret human resource policies, track resources used during the disaster response so that costs can be recovered. In some cases, these officers also need to take responsibility for the physiological and psychological well-being of volunteers engaged in responding to the disaster. In general, the finance/administration officer is responsible for preventing financial disaster on the heels of mitigating a natural or man-made disaster.

The planning chief has a general responsibility to develop an Incident Action Plan (Qureshi, Gebbie & Gebbie, 2005, p. 10). This includes allocating resources and making sure that the appropriate sections are activated or deactivated. The key goals of the incident mission should also be managed by the planning chief. In other words, the planning and implementation of the response effort is the responsibility of the planning chief.

The public information officer is responsible to make sure that the public, government officials and collaborating agencies receive the necessary information to effectively mitigate the disaster (Qureshi, Gebbie & Gebbie, 2005, p. 11). The public information officer also provides information to the public health agency staff, ensuring consistency and synchronicity with other agencies. In addition, this officer will need to serve as official spokesperson for the public health agency during press conferences or other information sessions. All information must be cleared by the public information officer before being offered to the public.

The operations chief is responsible for actually ensuring that specific tasks and objectives are carried out by the public health agency, and also ensuring that the Incident Action Plan in general is carried out (Qureshi, Gebbie & Gebbie, 2005, p. 13). This may include distributing vaccines, sampling water or soil, delivering risk messages, or case investigation, among others. This person also ensures that the public health agency carries out its day-to-day operations, depending on which of these is essential, which should be reduced, and which should be temporarily suspended.

The logistics chief ensures that support is provided to all sections activated during the disaster mitigation effort Qureshi, Gebbie & Gebbie (2005, p. 13). These duties may be to acquire space, supplies, and equipment to ensure that the public health agency can carry out its duties to the public. Bottled water and blankets are included in the physical resources acquired by the logistics chief to ensure that responders are securely supplied and able to carry out their duties in mitigating the disaster. Other duties may include providing drivers for case investigators or setting up materials for the Operations section.

The liaison officer, as implied by the term, is… READ MORE

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