What Is Response?
The response function of emergency management includes actions aimed at limiting injuries, loss of life, and damage to property and the environment that are taken before, during, and immediately after a hazard event. Response processes begin as soon as it becomes apparent that a hazard event is imminent and lasts until the emergency is declared to be over.
Response is by far the most complex of the four functions of emergency management, as it is conducted during periods of very high stress, in a highly time-constrained environment, and with limited information. During response, wavering confidence and unnecessary delay directly translate to tragedy and destruction.
The task of limiting injuries, loss of life, and further damage to property and the environment is diverse. Response includes not only those activities that directly address these immediate needs—such as first aid, search and rescue, and shelter—but also includes systems developed to coordinate and support such efforts. Response involves the rapid resumption of critical infrastructure (such as opening transportation routes, restoring communications and electricity, and ensuring food and clean water distribution) to allow recovery to take place, reduce further injury and loss of life, and speed the return to a normally functioning society.
Exercises and training may improve responders' skills, but many unknown variables unique to each hazard confound even the most well-planned response. Further, especially during response to disasters that are international in scope, many groups and individuals from all over the world suddenly converge upon the affected area, each with their own expectations, equipment, and mission.
Disaster response is centered upon information and coordination. Unique to each event are the participants, needs of the victims and the community, the timing and order of events, and the actions and processes employed. This section approaches the various functions and processes associated with response in a general sense, as they would apply to all hazards and all nations.
Hazard events, regardless of whether they turn into disasters, are emergencies. They are situations in which the split-second thinking of both trained and untrained individuals must address conditions outside normal life. The emergencies continue until these extraordinary needs have ceased and the danger to life and property no longer persists.
Emergencies occur in three phases, with different response activities applying to each:
1. Prehazard. During this period of the emergency, the hazard event is impending and may even be inevitable. Recognition of the impending hazard event may or may not exist.
2. The emergency: Hazard effects ongoing. This period begins when the first damaging effects begin and extends until all damaging effects related to the hazard and all secondary hazards cease to exist. It may be measured in seconds for some hazards, such as lightning strikes or earthquakes. However, for others, such as floods, hurricanes, wildfires, or droughts, this phase can extend for hours, days, weeks, or even years. During this time, responders address the needs of people and property as well as the hazard effects.
3. The emergency: Hazard effects have ceased. During this final phase of the emergency, the hazard has exerted all of its influence, and negligible further damage is expected. Responders are no longer addressing hazard effects, so their efforts are dedicated to addressing victims' needs, managing the dead, and ensuring the safety of structures and the environment. The emergency still exists and the situation still has the potential to worsen, but the hazard or hazards that instigated the emergency are no longer present
Search and Rescue
Many disasters result in victims being trapped under collapsed buildings, debris, or by moving water. Earthquakes, hurricanes, typhoons, storms, tornadoes, floods, dam failures, technological accidents, terrorist attacks, and hazardous materials releases, for example, all may result in the need for organized search and rescue. Search and rescue involves three distinct but interrelated actions: locating victims; extracting (rescuing) victims from whatever condition has trapped them; and providing initial medical first aid treatment to stabilize victims so that they may be transported to regular emergency medical practitioners.
Average citizens, victims' friends, family, and neighbors, perform the majority of search and rescue in the initial minutes and hours of a disaster. These people locate victims by listening for calls for help, watching for other signs of life, or using information to estimate where the trapped person may be (such as knowing that someone would have been at home at a certain time of day). It has been estimated that half of those rescued are rescued in the first 6 hours after a disaster happens (with only 50% of those who remain trapped beyond 6 hours surviving; so the contribution of ordinary citizens is significant. These untrained responders, operating without adequate equipment or expertise, often place themselves at great risk. But despite the incidence of rescuers being injured or killed, many more lives are saved than lost.
For more organized and technical search-and-rescue effort needs—where average, unequipped citizens are unable or unwilling to go—there are formal search-and-rescue teams. These teams train regularly and operate with a full cache of equipment, supplies, and animals. The teams may focus on general search and rescue or have specialty areas such as wilderness rescue, urban search and rescue, or swift water rescue. Their equipment, which includes medical equipment, rescue equipment (ropes, saws, drills, hammers, lumber), communications equipment (phones, radios, computers), technical support (cameras, heat and movement detectors), and logistics equipment (food, water, special clothing), greatly increases their ability to locate and save victims.
Many nations train, equip, and maintain search-and-rescue teams that are deployable anywhere in the world, with all of their equipment, at a moment's notice. These teams are able to perform several or all of the following tasks:
- Search collapsed buildings for victims and rescue them
- Locate and rescue victims buried in earth, snow, and other debris
- Rescue victims from swiftly moving or high water
- Locate and rescue victims from damaged or collapsed mines
- Locate and rescue victims lost in wilderness areas
- Provide emergency medical care to trapped victims
- Provide dogs trained to locate victims by sound or smell
- Assess and control gas, electric service, and hazardous materials
- Evaluate and stabilize damaged structures
