British Organisations Involved in Disaster Management, Potential Conflict to Disaster Resolution - Case Study Example

Emergency response and preparedness in United Kingdom Table of Contents Emergency response and preparedness in United Kingdom 1 Running head: EMERGENCY RESPONSE AND PREPAREDNESS IN UNITED KINGDOM 13 1 Table of Contents 1 Introduction 2 a)The police 3 b)Fire services 3 c)Ambulance 4 d)Local authorities 4 e)The British Red Cross 4 f)HM coastguard 5 Elements of Potential Conflict to Disaster Resolution 5 Guidance documents, response procedures and inter-agency team working 8 References 12 Introduction United Kingdom like any other country can be affected by disasters. Over the last decade data shows that the frequency of disasters affecting the country and threat of huge disasters like natural, biological, and environmental incidents have increased. There is a high possibility of U.K facing a disaster that will result in devastating consequences after the 2005 bombing and 9/11 terror attack in U.S (Olsson, 2009). The aim of this paper is to identify key organizations that handle disaster in U.K appraise their roles, identify deficiencies in those organizations, and recommend improvements needed to improve this organizations. Key Organizations Involved In Disaster Management In U.K there are different organizations that handle disasters in case it occurs. Disaster incidences are handled depending on its scale or complexity; small incidents are handled at local level while large incidents that affect large number of people and wide area normally force the central government to intervene (Stainsby, 2012). Local agencies are normally the first one to respond and they carry large burden of emergence management. The key organizations involved in disaster management in UK include the following: a) The police, who include the British transport Police b) Fire services c) Local authorities d) Ambulance services e) HM Coastguard f) NHS England and Public Health England, NHS foundation trusts and NHS hospital trusts g) Port health authorities h) The Environment Agency, the Scottish Environment Protection Agency and Natural Resources Wales i) The British Red Cross a) The police The police play a major role in emergency situation as they coordinate the activities carried out by other responding agencies. They ensure that the scene of the incident is protected from interference and they take evidence for possible inquiries, unless it is natural disaster (Stainsby, 2012). They protect the public and help other emergency services in their role such as maintaining cordon around the work of other services and controlling the traffic around the scene. In addition, it is the responsibility of police to collect and process information about the casualties and organize for the identification and removal of the dead until the relatives comes to claim them. They also carry out search and rescue where necessary and assist others such health and safety services (Gray & Stockbridge, 2004). b) Fire services At the scene of a disaster, the role of fire services is to conduct and coordinate the rescue and recovery process. These include using specialist equipment like thermal imaging cameras or hydraulic cutting machines, or finding people who are trapped under debris or wreckage. Another role is to stop the spread of fire by putting out existing flames and doing preventive action by stopping the fire from starting. These include neutralization of fire accelerants like fuel and eliminating the objects that are flammable within the scene of fire whenever possible. They are also required to deal with hazardous waste or chemicals within the scene of fire to ensure that there is minimum injury or contamination to environment, the rescue workers and the citizens (Gray & Stockbridge, 2004). Fire services also assist the ambulance services with handling of the casualties, assist the policies with recovering of bodies and work on fire investigation when required (Cullingworth, 2004). c) Ambulance The main role of ambulances is to treat and transport the injured from the scene of the incident to the hospital. They determine the types and the seriousness of casualties for immediate treatment and prioritization. The paramedics may also decide the hospital in which to take the casualties. This is important especially if there are a large number of injuries and the local hospitals might be overwhelmed (Gray & Stockbridge, 2004). d) Local authorities Local authorities are one of the disaster responders that reach the site of emergency within a short time. The authorities plays a vital role in times of disaster by bringing together bodies that are not normally involved in handling disaster and coordinate their activities to provide several services (Stainsby, 2012). The role of local authorities with other bodies include providing shelter for the injured victims and protecting their welfare, they facilitate inspection of areas affecting by the disaster before the personnel that provides aid enters, managing the actions of voluntary teams, and providing emergency mortuary in situating in which the existing mortuaries are overwhelmed (Cullingworth, 2004). e) The British Red Cross This is a voluntary organization that plays an important role during a disaster. Their role is to improve the health of the people by assisting in diseases prevention and treatment and assist in alleviating people from suffering. It helps category one responders in dealing with emergency during disaster; they do this by providing a wide range of services to responding agencies and other category one respondents. They are involved in high level planning through its members in Voluntary Sector Civil Protection Forum (VSCPF). The objective of the forum is to find out and utilize volunteers’ contribution to United Kingdom civil protection arrangements (Great Britain, Boswell & Hannay, 2014). f) HM coastguard The role of this agency is to organize and carry out a maritime search and rescue. The objective is to rescue the people who are in danger at the sea. They also limit or prevent environmental damage by maritime disaster like oil or chemical spills (Gray & Stockbridge, 2004). Elements of Potential Conflict to Disaster Resolution In U.K disasters are dealt by both government and non-governmental organizations. One department of the government or devolved administration may take charge in handling the disaster. CCS has a list showing the roles each department is suppose to play in time of disaster. But in some situation it has to be changed depending on the nature of the event and the consequences arising from it. A list showing responsibilities of each department is available at Annex III. When the nature of the disaster change a conflict will arise because it will no longer be clear which department should take which responsibilities (Achour, Pascale, Soetanto, and Price, A.D.F, 2015). The main elements of potential conflict to disaster resolution arising from the various agency management structures include the following: The officials especially at high levels tend to work for long hours. This will lead to the tired personnel becoming inefficient. But when they are replaced, those who will replace them will lack information due to critical unrecorded data that will have accumulated in the brains of some individuals. There may be confusion about which organization have the authority to take the unusual disaster tasks like large scale search and rescue work or mass burial. These issues should be anticipated when planning for emergency response. The problem can be resolved by assigning particular responsibilities to various organizations in the municipal emergency plan (Cabinet Office, 2006). Another potential area of conflict in disaster response occurs between established agencies and other organizations over the usual tasks. For instance the security is usually carried out by the local police force. A problem may arise if the military or federal or provincial police try to provide security within the area of the incident. Such problems should be expected when developing an emergency plan. Sometimes disasters occur which cut across the jurisdiction boundary of local organization, which is likely to cause conflicts between the organizations involved. In normal circumstances, there are overlapping or unclear responsibilities in the operations by the organization which may be ignored (Cabinet Office, 2006). These conflicts need to be resolved during a disaster. The jurisdictional issues that have not been resolved often come out during an emergency. The areas that may result to a potential conflict must be identified and resolved in the planning process. Cooperation – emergency response require various agencies to work together. In many cases, the growth in urbanization has resulted to overlapping administrative or physical responsibilities (Cabinet Office, 2006). Various agencies have difficulty in coordinating and cooperating in a state of emergency. In order for the responding agencies to maximum combined effort, there must be a desire to co-operate and good will by the responding agencies at all levels. This is due to increase in interdependence of agencies and organizations. Coordination – the responding agencies basically agree in principle to coordinate in an emergency situation. However, the way to achieve coordination is neither a issue of consensus or self explanatory. On one side, coordination is seen as informing others of what their agency will do, while on the other side, it is seen as the centralization of decision making process into the key officials or one agency. In addition, some emergency tasks like handling a large number of dead may create strain relationship among the established agencies. As the number of agencies which responds to an emergency increase, the coordination problem increase (Achour, Pascale, Soetanto, and Price, A.D.F, 2015). The problem may increase even more if some agencies from outside the area may come, who have different mode and structure of operation that the emergency manger may not understand. Other the other hand the outside groups may not understand the local structures and technique of operation. In order to overcome this problem, pre-agreed management plan at emergency site is created. This will assist the groups to work together and share the resources for the mutual benefit. An Emergency Site Management plan will assist in sharing of emergency resources, and provide a way of obtaining assistance fast within and outside the agencies. Emergency site management utilizes the capabilities and the special skills of emergency response resources and groups. For example, a flood may need the coordination of the police to provide security, search and rescue forces to locate the victims and survivors, ground and air ambulances to transport the injured, fire services to provide rescue and fire suppression and other services like public works, transport and social services (Achour, Pascale, Soetanto, and Price, A.D.F, 2015). Guidance documents, response procedures and inter-agency team working The emergency management guidance documents aims at establishing good practices depending on the lessons learnt from the past emergency response, in UK and other countries. The documents complement the emergency preparedness that establishes out how the duties set out in Civil Contingencies Act and other regulations are implemented (Achour, Pascale, Soetanto, and Price, A.D.F, 2015). They provide a shared understanding of the agencies procedure for responding to an emergency. The guidance documents guides the responders before and during a disaster. The documents that are useful in emergency response plans by different agencies in UK include the following: i. Emergency preparedness document chapter 6 deals with co-operation and collaboration by local resilience groups. ii. Central Government Concept of Operations document set out how the central government will respond to and recovery a disaster notwithstanding the magnitude and location of the disaster. It lays down how the government response will be organized and how the central, regional, and local authorities will relate (Achour, Pascale, Soetanto, and Price, A.D.F, 2015). The document focuses mainly on the response to no notice or short one that needs central government engagement. iii. Indicators and expectations of good practice set out for category 1 and 2 responders which has an elaborate check-list for the two types of responders iv. Civil Contingencies Act of 2004 provide agreed working framework for corporation among different agencies and United Kingdom government (Achour, Pascale, Soetanto, and Price, A.D.F, 2015). Furthermore it establishes a coherent framework for disaster planning and response from central government to the local authorities. v. Data protection and sharing is a document with guidance that is used together with non-statutory emergence response and recovery. It is designed to inform Category 1 & 2 responders on the rules concerning sharing of information and protection in a disaster. Identifying people who are vulnerable in crisis is another guidance document. vi. Another document deals with identification of the people who are vulnerable in crisis. It is intended for development of action plans for identifying people who are vulnerable to disaster (Achour, Pascale, Soetanto, and Price, A.D.F, 2015). It is mainly used by responders that carry out local emergency. It provides ways in which survivors are evacuated and how shelters are provided. It targets people who cannot manage themselves emergency. vii. Lastly is the guidance on operations in the U.K: defense contribution to resilience. In U.K there is difference between defending the country against external aggression and U.K civilian protection as established in CCA and enable through Inter-Agency Integrated Emergency Management (IEM). Military operations within U.K fall under United Kingdom Operations. The military can help during disaster by rescuing the people and providing things such as food. In an emergency in U.K there are certain procedures to be followed to ensure that life’s and properties are saved and responders work together effectively. To start with the decisions makers should strongly commit themselves to what they are supposed to do. Government leaders and other agencies leaders should ensure that agencies are committed to contingency planning process and enough required resources are provided on time and follow up actions are taken (Inter-Agency Standing Committee & Inter-Agency Standing Committee, 2007). A group of steering senior decision makers is established. This will ensure a balance between participation and effective management especially in huge disasters where a lot of personnel are involved. They will provide overall strategic direction and guidance to planning and ensuring resources are available. Next is setting up technical level, this group will manage practical planning process. They ensure that organization and sector response plans are in line with overall planning framework. Better collaboration and unification between the military and other responders should be enhanced because the military have better physical and human resources as compared to others, this will improve the performance of the response, but there involvement is expensive and requires political decisions (Inter-Agency Standing Committee & Inter-Agency Standing Committee, 2007). To resolve this, national structure that involves the military permanent should be put in place. Furthermore because there is no one solution that will fit all and since emergencies changes, organization policies that provide flexibility whereby personnel in the field can take a decision when need arises. Conclusion The history of both manmade and natural disasters and increasing hazards as a result of climate change demonstrates the need for United Kingdom to have an effective disaster management system. There are many types of disasters facing U.K and it requires collective action from several bodies task with dealing with dealing with the issue. There are several organizations tasked with dealing with emergencies it include the police, CCS, local authorities, and many others. Each organization is expected to play its role effectively. Since many organizations are involved there are certain elements that will likely cause conflict during operations, this include when the nature of the disaster change a conflict might arise because it will be no longer clear who should deal with what, change of personnel during working hours, poor coordination between the responders because every organization have different way of communication. The guiding documents during disaster include Emergency preparedness document chapter 6, Central Government Concept of Operations document set, Civil Contingencies Act of 2004, Data protection and sharing is a document, and U.K: defense contribution to resilience. In an emergency in U.K there are certain procedures to be followed to ensure that life’s and properties are saved and responders work together effectively. To start with the decisions makers should strongly commit themselves to what they are supposed to do. Government leaders and other agencies leaders should ensure that agencies are committed to contingency planning process and enough required resources are provided on time and follow up actions are taken. References Gray, D., & Stockbridge, D. (2004). BTEC national public services (uniformed). Oxford: Heinemann Educational. Cullingworth, N. (2004). Edexcel Btec National Public Services (Uniformed). Cheltenham: N. Thornes Olsson, S. (2009). Crisis management in the European Union: Cooperation in the face of emergencies. Berlin: Springer. Great Britain, Boswell A. T., & Hannay, D. (2014). Strategic guidelines for the EU's next Justice and Home Affairs programme: steady as she goes: 13th report of session 2013-14. London: Stationery Office. Cabinet Office. (2006). Guidance: Emergency preparedness. Available at https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/emergency-preparedness Stainsby, A. (2012). Briefing: Emergency planning and the UK civil contingencies act 2004. 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