Hospital emergency response plan for tornado and fire disasters

Public Health

Incident Command Structure

Action Plan

Command staff and General staff Positions

Three Major Problems

Resources Needed

Public Health Confusion and chaos are something that is something commonly experienced by the hospital whenever there is medical disaster going on in the city such as the case in this scenario. Nevertheless, these negative effects can be diminished if management steps up and responds quickly with a focused direction of activities and structure. The Hospital Emergency Incident Command System (HEICS) is an emergency management system which services a logical management structure, clear reporting channels, defined everyday jobs, and a mutual nomenclature to aid in unify hospitals with other emergency responders. There are clear advantages to all hospitals using this particular emergency management system

Incident Command Structure

ICS is looked at as being the model tool for command, control, and also organization of a response and delivers a means to organize the efforts of individual interventions as they work in the direction of the common objective of stabilizing the occurrence and protecting life, property, and the environment. ICS utilizes ideologies that have been proven to improve effectiveness and efficiency in a business setting and put on the values to emergency response. With that being said, the overall structure in this situation will cover quite a few incidents that were talked about in scenario. In this situation, they would need a response from a number of different agencies. Irrespective of the size of the tornado and fire that took place the number of agencies that are going to need to be involved in the response is going to be a lot. Every one of all incidents involved in this natural disaster will need a coordinated effort in order to make sure an effective response and the efficient, safe use of resources. It is very clear that because there has been a lot of looting going on that the law enforcement will be called in order to keep things under control. This happened during Hurricane Katrina back in 2004 where everything got on hand and the police were brought in on the scene to try and bring some order (FEMA Urban Search and Rescue (U.S.&R), 2000). It will be their difficult job to try and bring some peace to the streets despite all of the chaos going on in the city. They will need a lot of resources to do this task. For example, they will the right type of need Police officers that will not just flee the scene when things get out of hand. This happen in Katrina when citizens of the city started shooting at the police officers. Afterward, there were quite a few that decided to quite the force. Other things that the police are going to need are the communications equipment flares, and also bringing in some blockades.

The EMS Paramedics will also be needed because of the injuries that have taken place because of the fire and tornado. They will also need to bring things such as the Emergency medical equipment and other communications equipment. The Public Works/Highway Department is something that will needed in this natural disaster as well. Their job will be to monitor the roads because there will be a lot of traffic jams because of people running from fire and trying to flee from the tornado. There will need to be some structural engineers and they would be responsible for, the HazMat cleanup equipment, road signs, and also the blockades. It is obvious that the fire department would have to be called in due to the fire that is engulfing the city. They will need firefighters throughout the whole day just to make sure that the fire is put out. Also, The American Red Cross would need to be called in especially if this was on a very large scale of disaster. Their job would be to set up shelter facilities, which would be able to house those who homes were destroyed by the fire and tornado. Another important function of the Red Cross would be putting together the feeding stations.

Action Plan

It appears as though this incident could possibly be large enough to require some kind of activation of the EOC. However, it is obvious that other agencies (Department of Transportation (DOT), schools, and National Guard) would need to respond to this situation.

As anyone is able to see from reviewing the scenario, there is no single agency or department that is able to handle an emergency condition of any scale by themselves. Everyone must be work together to manage the emergency. In order to be able to coordinate the effective use of all of the obtainable resources, agencies will need some kind of a formalized management structure that loans steadiness, fosters competence, and delivers direction during a response. This plan of action would be built around five major constituents which are the following: Finance/Administration (Incident Command for Highrise Incidents, 2010)

Command

Planning

Operations

Logistics

Finance/Administration

These five major components would be the foundation upon which this plan would developed. These would apply with this tornado and fire that is going on in this situation. It would be very vital to manage an effective response to a major disaster. In this incident, all of the components will need to be managed by one person which would be the Incident Commander (Frank, 2013). These type of large-scale incidents is going to require that each section or component, is set up individually. This plan would involve that the ICS organization have the capability to be able to expand or contract in order to be able to meet the needs of the incident in this scenario, but all incidents, irrespective of size or difficulty, will have some kind an Incident Commander. This will be very helpful in keeping things in order. For this plan, a basic ICS operating guideline is that the Incident Commander would be the one that is responsible for on-scene management until command authority is relocated to another individual, who then turn out to be the Incident Commander.

With this natural disaster, an effective Incident Commander will need to a person that is assertive, influential, objective, peaceful, and a quick thinker. In order for them to take care of all this chaotic situation in the city, the Incident Commander will also need to be a person that is adaptable, bendable, and realistic in regards to their limitations. The Incident Commander for this city will have the skill to delegate positions properly as needed to make sure that all the needs of the citizens are met. At first, the Incident Commander is going to be the senior first-responder to arrive at the scene where there is the most disaster caused by fire and tornado. As additional responders arrive, command will transfer on the basis of who has primary authority for overall control of the incident. As incidents grow in size or become more complex, the responsible jurisdiction or agency may assign a more highly qualified Incident Commander. At transfer of command, the outgoing Incident Commander must give the incoming Incident Commander a complete briefing and inform all workforce of the change in command.

As the situation gets worse because of the fire and tornado, the Incident Commander in this plan will need to order a limited evacuation of 150 individuals in the direct area, which is inside the Incident Commander's constitutional authority. Identifying the threat of a detonation, the Incident Commander in this plan will want a much larger area cleared as a protective measure and transmits this distress to the Fire Chief at the key location in the city. In this plan, the Fire Chief requests the Mayor to argument an elimination order that will involve for over half the city (Cantor, 2014). In this plan, the Mayor does so under the State decrees and makes the point that the EOC be stimulated.

The EOC manages the community-wide resources essential to complete the evacuation. The EOC requests resources through mutual aid and establishes traffic control points at key evacuation junctions. The EOC establishes shelters with the cooperation of the city's social services agency and the American Red Cross. The EOC transmits regular public service messages with evacuation directions over the Emergency Alert System (EAS). Meanwhile, the ICS Information Officer briefs reporters at the scene of the emergency on the current events surrounding the incident. After a period of time, the Incident Commander sends a request to the EOC for personnel to relieve incident scene teams. The EOC locates the resources, directs them to staging areas established by the ICS operation, and releases them to the Incident Commander's control. Meanwhile, the EOC requires status updates from the Incident Commander to determine how long the shelters must remain open. The EOC determines resource distribution of food and sanitation facilities among the shelters operating under the ICS network.

A written plan will be much preferable to an oral plan for the reason that it clearly establishes responsibility, aids in bringing protection to the community from obligation suits, and delivers documentation when demanding State and Federal help. IAPs that consist of the measurable objectives and purposes to be achieved will always be prepared around a timeframe for this scenario called an operational period (FEMA Urban Search and Rescue (U.S.&R), 2000). In this plan the operational periods will obviously be of various lengths, but does not need to be longer than 24 hours. For this scenario, twelve-hour operational periods will be used only because it is such a large-scale incident. For this plan, whoever is the Incident Commander will figure out the length of the operational period founded on the difficulty and size of the occurrence.

Three Major Problems

The key to having the right success is to have a coordinated incident command structure where all of the players integrate their resources in order to make the issue go away in a manner that is safe and effective. However, there are still some problems that will happen in handling theses type of situations. For example, in certain situations where ICS was not able has not resulted in the operational improvements projected. When it comes to operational improvements being expected, the issues are usually connected with planning. If the planning is off then everything else can be off as well. If there is not proper planning then people may not be in their right spots and it can actually cause more havoc than anything else. The lack of planning can turn out to be a complete disaster. For instance, failure to secure opportune and suitable towing and recovery services could guide to vehicles, cargo, and other obstacles being left on the highway longer than necessary. Lacking attention to traffic disruptions may contribute to congestion interruption and poor communication with motorists impending on the scene.

Having the proper training is also necessary because without it, other people lives would be at stake. Other factors, such as resource constraints or poor coordination across jurisdictional boundaries, can hinder event response effectiveness. As a result, the nature of the response itself can influence the outcome of the highway incident, touching the safety of victims, responders, and the public (Incident Command for Highrise Incidents, 2010).

Also, incident responders could possibly encounter a lot of potential challenges to attaining effective on-scene response processes, sometimes in the face of fluctuating needs of the emergency. Restricted initial information in regards to an incident can hinder the capability of responders to involve agencies with needed authority and expertise.

Resources Needed

For this scenario, a single tactical resource would something like be a personnel crew or piece of equipment that would need to be assigned to achieve a detailed strategic operation at an incident. For this disaster, equipment resources will include the personnel required for equipment maintenance and operation. One service patrol unit is an example of a particular tactical resource. These resources are important because they achieve operations activities by steadying and eliminating a highway incident and justifying its effects.

As the amount of on-scene resources starts to go up, management of single resource elements turn out to be critically vital to the achievement of the overall operations effort. Also, in this case there will be two types of organizational elements for managing single resources which will be the Strike Teams and Task Forces. These organizational elements will be present on the same level, below groups and divisions in an ICS organization chain of command. There will be other assisting agencies that will supply individual resources inside a specific strike teams or strike force.

Both of these strike teams and task forces must have: (1) a chosen Leader, (2) ability to converse with other leaders and knowing how to get the right resources, (3) its own transportation, and (4) an operation inside the restrictions of the span of control. However, the two elements in this incident will more than likely differ in their durability and the type of resources that comprise them.