Firstly, the fire service would be used to go into buildings and rescue survivors and if there are flooded areas that need to be accessed then the fire service would drain the concerned areas. Other roles the fire service may need to carry out may be dealing with hazardous materials left by the devastation of the tsunami and damage control.
Secondly, the police have a major role in disasters; they maintain control and protection of the involved scene and help saving of life in conjunction with the other emergency services. Additionally the police identify victims of the disaster on behalf of the coroner; the police also like to be involved with the co-ordination of the emergency services and other support organizations.
Lastly, the third blue light organization is the ambulance service, they have a huge role in disasters because there are normally a large amount of casualties, therefore they need treating and taken away from the disaster area.
There roles are:
- To save life in conjunction with the other emergency services
- To provide treatment and care of the injured
- To alert local hospitals when a disaster takes place, so they are aware of a large number of casualties coming into hospital.
- To provide sufficient ambulances, medical staff, equipment and resources at a disaster.
Three Organizations which help in disasters
The First organisation I will be looking at is the Red Cross; basically they raise money and train people about first aid in case a disaster occurs, there a world wide organization which appeals to members of the public for help and to support them. If a disaster occurs there quick to react, first they would appeal for money from the public then they would give as much money as they could to the place which is affected and try and get the situation back to normal as fast as they can. With the money they have raised they buy clothing and shelter and send it to the place concerned as quick as possible. They try and raise money in anyway they can, they use adverts, you can donate online or over the phone, they have hundreds of people working everyday to help disaster struck countries.
Also there is Oxfam, there a similar organisation to the Red Cross. They raise money in many different ways like the Red Cross, either by a phone call or donating online. If a disaster strikes a country they do there best to raise as much money as they can, then they can buy food and clothing and send it over to the place concerned as quick as possible to try and save the vulnerable survivors. Also another way of raising money for disasters they use is sell 2nd hand clothes and toys. These are given by the public and are donated for free and Oxfam get all the money for sales which go towards places in need of it.
Lastly, another charity is called Direct Relief, which is an international charity, this particular charity able’s you to donate online and even donate products to help there relief efforts. It was founded in 1948 and since they have grown dramatically. In 2005, Direct Relief provided over $119 million worth of medicines, equipment, and medical supplies to deserving partner organizations in 53 countries – enough material to serve 22.1 million people.
These 3 charities would have representatives delivering stocks to the place concerned, a tsunami is a very big disaster and there aren’t any disasters which could be more devastating, most workers in these charities work in their home country and don’t necessarily go to the disaster sites and work there, their stocks get delivered to the disaster and may be distributed by another service like the marines, this is showing that the services work together to get the best possible outcome and a faster more effective rescue operation saving many more life’s.
Possible communication problems
When a disaster occurs there are many services which are needed and called to the scene, therefore all the services need to work together and communicate in order to control a disaster, there maybe many communication problems between the services and there are a few ways these could be prevented.
So in a tsunami there needs to be many services ready and getting information about possible dangers and what they have to do, if there isn’t an overall leader of all the services then each service would do what they wanted and it would be chaos and many more lives will be at risk. A solution to this would be to get a leader to be in charge of all the services and this would keep all the services updated about the situation and they will be given orders by the leader, so everything would stay organized and done correctly without everyone doing their own thing.
In major incidents in the United Kingdom there is a gold, silver and bronze structure, this is a major incident plan which puts the police in overall charge of a major incident, with a gold commander, this person doesn’t actually go on the disaster site they sit back in a control room where they make a strategy for dealing with the incident. Then there is a silver commander at the scene, this is a senior member of the organization, this person will work closely to the other silver commanders from each of the services. Lastly there is a bronze commander, they control the organisations resources at the incident and will be found with their staff working on the disaster site.
This is how the services commmunicate with each other.
Disaster Training Simulation
I’ am going to design a flood disaster plan and show how it will be relevant to the public services for planning for such an incident. It’s a major flood which has put most of the city under water, there will be many services attending this disaster. Firstly there would be sand bags laid down in areas which are vulnerable to the flood, this would be done by the army. There would be the fire service at the scene pumping water away from the flooded areas, and the police would be securing the area, and would evacuate the local houses and buildings. This would be good practice because the services would have to communicate to each other and at the end of the training they would know what was required by them and each of the other services.
