DISASTER/CRISIS MANAGEMENT

Introduction

Disaster and crisis management also known as emergency management is generally the act of avoiding or dealing with either fabricated or natural disasters. Generally, crisis and disaster management entails disaster preparedness; recovery plans and disaster response in order reduce the disaster impact. Alternatively, disaster management aspects entail dealing with processes that are used to protect organizations or populations from disaster consequences, acts of terrorism and wars. In most cases, these aspects are seen through government publications like the National Strategy for Homeland Securities that indicate how people and government’s varying levels respond in case of a disaster. Crisis or emergency management can also be defined as the profession or discipline of applying planning and management to combat extreme events, which can destroy large numbers of people, disrupt the community life or extensive damage property

Generally, an emergency is unplanned event, which can cause injuries or cause deaths to employees or the public. Alternatively, an emergency means any unplanned situation that causes physical or environmental damage or generally disrupt operations or threaten the facility’s operation. In most cases, emergency events include natural disasters such as severe weather, tornados and earthquakes, fire, public disorder, fire, industrial accidents, corruption of critical information, communication failure among other catastrophic events (Awasthy, 2009, 39). On the other hand, emergency planning or management is generally the discipline of science application, planning, and management to handle extreme events that hurt large numbers of individuals and property. Disaster management does not really eliminate a crisis. However, the threats study and prediction remains an important part of disaster management field. Emergency management basic levels may also include different kinds of rescue and search activities (Landesman, 2014, 79).

Emergency planning and management should at least aim at preventing the occurrence of emergencies. Good management or planning should at least reduce, mitigate or even control the effects of a crisis or an emergency (Kapucu, 2013, 56). Emergency planning is a systematic on going activity that should develop the lessons and in most cases, they change any given circumstance. Alternatively, emergency planning or management is part of an activity cycle that begins with the establishment of a risk for determining the priorities for developing plans while ending with revision that restarts the cycle again. Many crisis management disciplines including security risk management and businesses continuity have the cyclical process that include; risks identification or recognition, risk evaluation or ranking, resource controlling, reaction planning and monitoring and reporting of risk performance. In this case, risk evaluation or ranking entails a response to risks that seem to be significant, tolerance and termination of such risks (Kapucu, 2013, 85).

After the identification of a risk, it is always necessary to implement an emergency plan. In fact, it is not just the preparation. Instead, the plan must be maintained regularly and in a methodical manner in order to ensure that, it remains fit for its purpose in case an emergency occurs. Crisis managers must follow at least the common crisis management processes in order to anticipate, observe, prevent, respond and act upon it. The first stage during a crisis or disaster management is the pre-incident training (Schneider, 2011, 97). During this stage, the emergency management team plans on what it would do during the disaster management process. Here, the disaster management team is identified and trained.

Conclusion

Disaster or crisis management remains a crucial activity when it comes to an issue. Alternatively, emergency planning and management should at least aim at preventing the occurrence of emergencies and crisis. However, before the occurrence of such events, there should always be a plan in place to handle such cases.

Reference Page

Clements, Bruce. 2009. Disasters and public health: Planning and response. Burlington, MA: Butterworth-Heinemann. Fink, Sheri. 2013. Five days at Memorial. New York: Crown Publishers.

Kapucu, Naim and Ozerdem, Alpasian. 2013. Managing emergencies and crises. Burlington, MA: Jones & Bartlett Learning.

Landesman, Linda Young and Isaac B. Weisfuse. 2014. Case studies in public health preparedness and response to disasters. Burliington, MA: Jones and Barlett Learning.

Schneider, Saundra K. 2011. Dealing with disaster: Public management in crisis situations. 2nd ed. Armonk: New York: M.E. Sharpe.

Schmidt, Diane E. 2010. Writing in political science: A practical guide. 4ded. N.Y.: Pearson Longman.

Other Sources

Awasthy, Amit. 2009. Disaster management: warning response and community relocation. New Delhi: Global India Publications.

Gupta, Harsh K. 2003. Disaster management. Hyderabad: Universities Press.