Emergency management planning for city organizations

Emergency Management Plan

City's Fire Department

Do you concur with the opinion that the city's Fire Department should be the lead organization for disaster management and a typical city in the United States?

Within nay city in the U.S.A. there are extensive needs for having a disaster response team that has the capacity to handle various kinds of disasters especially the disasters that can be of large magnitudes. The handling of such disasters will require large deployment of manpower and skills in order to effectively handle the situations and rescue the maximum possible number of victims

The fire brigade has the legal authority and even the professional authority to implement the rescue process. These are people who operate in a legally constituted body by law that is situated in every city. They are sufficiently trained and regularly drilled to ensure they have the capacity to do the disaster management activities throughout the city.

The fire brigade is also the most suitable organization for handling disasters since according to the training that the members receive, they are charged therefore with the sole responsibility of taking care of city dwellers in times of emergency. The organization, taking into consideration the supplies, infrastructure, provisions and staffing that it has is in the best position to handle the emergencies in he cities. The fire department must then give a guideline to the city dwellers what is to be done in case of a given emergency, they must then take the responsibility of handling any emergency to the best of their training and they must ensure as an organization they are in a position to efficiently take charge of emergencies that may befall a city at any time.

Question 2: Which of the above stated steps to develop an effective emergency plan do you believe would be well outside of the scope of duties assigned to the Fire Department?

The stated steps mentioned are well within the mandate and ability of the fire department as they should be able to execute all of them except the duty of establishing a method for utilizing resources and for obtaining additional resources during the emergency. The fire department will respond to the prevailing disaster or emergency with the resources they have. They may not be in a position to go on raising funds if the magnitude of the disaster is bigger than they can handle with the resources they have. This is a situation that will call for emergency funding like from Disaster Relief Emergency Funds from organizations like Red Cross, the intervention of Federal Emergency Management Authority (FEMA) and so on.

Question 3: Which of the above stated requirements should involve participation and approval well beyond the authority usually granted to a Department head such as the Fire Chief?

In as much as there are numerous decisions and measures that are within the mandate of .the fire department, there are those that are beyond them even during and emergency and can be a challenge for them to obtain even if they wanted to execute. Issues like identifying and mobilizing resources must be done by other supporting bodies of the government like FEMA and not the fire department. Equipping the crisis management center once they have identified the location of one is also well beyond their mandate. The remaining measures like selection of the team, training, testing the contingency measures are things that they can do very well.

Question 4: Which of the above stated requirements do you consider to be critical to the effective development and implementation of a disaster/emergency planning and coordination program/unit in the city? Which of the above stated requirements do consider to be rather unimportant or insignificant, if any, to the success and effectiveness of the city's emergency management plan?