Incident commander decision-making priorities in hurricane response operations

Hurricane Response Issues

The purpose of this essay is to highlight and describe the various details that are inherent within a disaster. This essay will focus on a recent hurricane event that demands the attention of the Emergency Operations Center (EOC) and includes the necessary actions by the Incident Commander (IC). The current status of the problem is post hurricane and extra medical supplies are needed. Along with this problem lies the issue of drinking water, food and temporary shelter. There is also continuous rain falling as floods are threatening the well being of both the residents of this area and the rescue effort itself.

Decisions

Prioritizing during emergency responses is a very necessary thing to do in order to survive these troubling situations. Leadership is necessary in these cases to provide guidance and a sense of faith and hope in times of peril and danger. In hurricane response situations, the Incident Commander must be able to identify the most harmful threats and decide to action against such threats to allow the rescue effort to prevail.

Bucci et al. (2012) echoed this call for preparedness as a means to counter balance the many problems that are sure to manifest during hurricane responses. Their research focused on Hurricane Sandy and described useful information that is very relevant to this situation faced by the IC. They suggested in their research that "one of the biggest issues arising after Hurricane Sandy was that many individuals who failed to evacuate did not have enough supplies on hand to survive. It did not help that, as was the case during Hurricane Katrina, the evacuation order for New York City came very late in the process. As a result, many of the 375,000 residents in the most flood-prone areas in New York City did not evacuate."

This suggests that the problems at hand are of a much larger scope than what is probably realized before the planning process has begun. Expecting the worse is a viable means in creating a useful decision matrix and setting priorities of work for protecting the rescue effort. Essentially, in times of great peril and immediate danger, the most precious resources must be conserved and useful and practical delegation is ultimately a welcomed help as well that can further mitigate the problems that will be exposed as the rescue effort continues and the situations worsens as the floods continue to rise.

Priority of Work

In this situation it is essential that shelter is found immediately. Without some source of shelter, none of the medical supplies, food or water can be protected and would serve as a distraction if there is not a safe place to conduct operations. The next emphasis should be treating any immediate medical injuries once shelter is found. Water and food are the next priority and then medical supplies. When this can be established, more formal evacuation and treatment plans can go into effect.

Planning Processes

The problem with synchronizing disaster response plans and actual events on the ground reveals the very dangerous and unpredictable nature of nature. While simply avoiding hurricanes is the best plan, those who live in areas histotically known for being exposed to hurricanes need to be individually prepared for such incidents. Governments and medical organizations in these areas are also more likely to benefit from more specific preparedness planning, but there is no real defense against major hurricanes that can prevent its disaster. Hurricane response efforts should focus on helping and doing what they can with reason, as their will always be more to do than what is humanly possible. Planning can help mitigate the overwhelming responsibilities that will be encountered in a hurricane rescue effort such as this, but experience itself is the only way to truly describe how these events may unfold and be useful for future endeavors and preparedness planning efforts.