Main Priorities
According to FEMA (2017), Emergency Support Function or ESF-8 requires that seriously injured or ill casualties or victims of an occurrence that requires emergency attention be given immediate medical attention to prevent further health emergencies. The Federal Emergency Management Agency stipulates that ESF-8 “Provides planning and coordination of Federal public health, healthcare delivery, and emergency response systems to minimize and/or prevent health emergencies from occurring.” Therefore, as per the case scenario, my priority would be gathering the necessary and needed resources to transport the victims to the nearest local or state healthcare facilities to get medical treatment. The case presents a situation where there are several victims requiring immediate medical attention, and failure to provide that may lead to grave health issues. The priority, therefore, is to provide immediate medical attention to these victims to prevent the escalation of their current health situation.
Public Health Communication
According to FEMA (2017), Emergency Support Function 8 gives supplementary health assistance to state and local governments in the following functional areas; health surveillance, blood transfusion, medical care personnel, patient care, food safety, medical needs, and health equipment. The case study presents a scenario where urgent medical attention is needed. Public Health should communicate to the region’s medical practitioners to offer immediate medical attention to the victims. Public health can also communicate with the members of the community to get volunteers to provide blood for blood transfusion, get volunteers to provide care to the victims, and get donors to provide donations needed for food and other forms of medical assistance. In the cases where the available healthcare facilities cannot provide urgently needed assistance due to the feeling of being overwhelmed, then FEMA (2017) requires the state government to seek assistance from other states through Emergency Management assistance. Public Health, through the governor, can also communicate to other states for assistance. Public Health should also communicate with Emergency Management Group and the National Operation Center.
Information to be Gathered
Immediate and effective response activities depend on the information provided; to fully satisfy the requirements of ESF-8. Therefore, information to be gathered pertains to information related to such; the number of victims from the disaster, the number of healthcare facilities within the region, the availability of the response team, the immediate medical response provided to the victims, the availability of an emergency shelter within the region where the disaster has occurred, the availability of financial resources needed to sort out the emergency, and the response approach sent by the federal and local government. The information from the listed issues is vital in organizing medical responses to the victims, s well as mitigating the impacts of the disaster. According to the case, there is different demography of people needing immediate medical attention; and as it appears, the above information may be important in ensuring that this goal is achieved.
Initial Response Activities to Undertake
My initial response to the disaster provided in the case is ensuring that there are proper and well-established logistics to transport the victims of the disaster to their respective medical facilities; respective medical facilities, in this case, depending on the extent of injuries. Some victims may require the services of a Level-1 facility, while some may need the services of a Level-5 facility. According to Young (2020), “Logistics is an area in emergency response that still poses a challenge to disaster management teams such as LEPCs. Many jurisdictions ignore the role of SC in disaster management because they assume that SC and Logistics only deal with issues of purchasing.” It’s, however, important to have an effectively working Supply Chain input in disaster management in support of magnificent disaster operations; because having one lead to a quicker response to an emergency (Young, 2020). My aim is to get a quicker response; hence, an effective logistic plan may be the best way to achieve this.
Notifications
As an emergency response body, our organization will have to come up with a COOP. According to USEPA (2019), “COOP is an acronym that stands for Continuity of Operations Plans. It is a document showing how the emergency response team will execute vital operations in terms of an emergency. The document outlines the mission of the emergency function, communication methods, and, most of all, ways of ensuring that the affected receive emotional support” (USEPA, 2019). COOP, over the past years, has been well received by response teams; that’s why it keeps growing; they use it as a strategic way to approach disasters despite the intensity of the disaster. It has even proven to be effective in grave disasters. By using a COOP, it will be easier to notify various bodies and the public of our disaster management progress.
Requests to be Communicated
Our organization may request funding from federal and various local and state bodies to help mitigate the disaster. The governments have funding for disasters. The Hazard Mitigation Grant Program, abbreviated as HMGP, aims are reducing the loss of life and damage to property from current or future individual natural disasters (PEW, 2018). This program provides funding to local and state governments after the declaration of a major disaster. The Pre-Disaster Management Grant Program, abbreviated as PDM, is a disaster mitigation program that gives local and state governments grants to reduce the overall risk of future disasters (PEW, 2018). Our organization may request for the HMGP to help mitigate the disaster stated in the case scenario. We may also request for the PDM to help us arrange measures that may help to mitigate future disasters of such magnitude or intensity.
Diversity
In disaster management, the element of diversity incorporates acceptance and respect, as well as understanding that individuals are unique and different in their varied ways. In the case scenario provided, there are people of different ages, genders, cultures, racial backgrounds, nationalities, ethnicity, and religion. Attending to these people requires respect for diversity. Some of the factors to consider in this case are diversity and multicultural competencies, especially for every individual involved in the disaster management process. Factoring in the element of diversity while dealing with victims eliminates the possible occurrence of disproportionality and discrimination; this may slow down the victims’ recovery progress.
Initial Actions
In the case where fatalities are expected, having mitigation and preparedness actions is the initial action for medical examiners. The emergency management cycle is a four-phase cycle. The first phase is the mitigation phase, followed by the preparedness phase. The other two phases are the response and recovery phases. Therefore, mitigation and preparedness can be said to be one-half constituents of the disaster management cycle. Mitigation can be defined as a sustained activity that is conducted to obliterate risk to individuals and property from impending disaster and its effects (Bullock, 2012). Mitigating activities are taken on speculation that a disaster may occur, and the possible consequences of this disaster bear a huge impact on people and property. Therefore, mitigation is held to reduce the threat of the risk from the impending disaster. The ability of emergency response to execute mitigation steps depends on the type of disaster. For example, mitigation of natural disasters like floods, hurricanes, and wildfires is possible. Mitigation of man-made disasters, like terrorism, may be hard to limit the risk or consequences. Therefore, mitigating such exclusively focus on limiting human action. Preparedness, on the other hand, may be defined as the state of readiness to respond to an emergency and its impacts. Preparedness constitutes human-established pre-disaster management approaches (Bullock, 2012). Unlike mitigation which can limit the occurrence of a disaster, preparedness cannot stop the disaster from occurring. However, it alerts people on what to do in case a disaster occurs. The relationship between mitigation and preparedness is that they are pre-disaster procedures; they are taken before a disastrous event. Disaster preparedness cannot occur unless mitigation steps are put in place. Similarly, mitigation approaches cannot be executed without having preparedness actions in place. In other words, mitigation and preparedness are dependent procedures for disaster management/emergency response. Having a mitigation and preparedness approach in place may help medical examiners handle cases without panic or fear of being overwhelmed.
Family Assistance Care
Family Assistance Centers are hubs established for information collection, sharing, and human services for missing or deceased individuals in public health emergencies. FACs are part of entities established by LEPC. According to USEPA (2019), “LEPC is an acronym that stands for Local Emergency Planning Committees. They are community-funded and funded organizations, which help to provide emergency assistance, especially in circumstances where the emergency is caused by a hazardous material(s)” (USEPA, 2019. They are established under EPCR Act, making them federal bodies. The Act requires that LEPCs consist; of elected community representatives, residents of the health and environmental officials from the community, healthcare practitioners, and a law enforcement officer. LEPCs are mandated by the federal government to enter into a partnership with local and state governments to improve the mitigation of disasters (USEPA, 2019). Apart from establishing FACS, other responsibilities include “analyzing local hazards to determine their impact, while devising ways to manage them, integrating planning for occurrences of hazardous occurrences into a local disaster management plan, developing hazard response mechanisms and training the hazard management team,” (USEPA, 2019).
References
Bullock, J. (2012). Mitigation, Prevention and Preparedness, 2012. Retrieved from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7158272/
PEW. (2018). Natural Disaster Mitigation Spending Not Comprehensively Tracked; Most federal funding to help states manage cost growth is available only after an incident, 2018. Retrieved from https://www.pewtrusts.org/en/research-and-analysis/issue-briefs/2018/09/natural-disaster-mitigation-spending–not-comprehensively-tracked
United States Environmental Protection Agency. (2019). Local Emergency Planning Committees. Retrieved from https://www.epa.gov/epcra/local-emergency-planning-committees
Young, R. (2020). Emergency Management Logistics Must Become Emergency Supply Chain Management. Retrieved from https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24828913/
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