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Responding to Concurrent Public Safety Emergencies
Murphy's Fourth Law postulates that, If there is a possibility of several things going wrong, the one that will cause the most damage will be the one to go wrong. The corresponding corollary to this law is that, If there is a worse time for something to go wrong, it will happen then, and the historical record confirms that is certainly the case with numerous public safety emergencies. The purpose of this paper is to identify and discuss three unique challenges with respect to 1) initial responses: 2) the evacuation of endangered people and 3) the treatment of injured victims that may occur in a public safety emergency situation that involves the simultaneous occurrence of multiple manmade and natural disasters. Following this review, the paper provides a summary of the research and important findings concerning responding to concurrent public safety emergencies in the conclusion.
Initial Responses
There is growing recognition among emergency management authorities that responses to even a single disaster situation requires a multi-institutional and multidisciplinary response. For instance, according to Coaffee (2021), Institutional responses have evolved from a focus upon small specialist networks to much larger multi-institutional, multi-scalar and multi-hazard responses to, and preparations for, complex emergencies that cut across numerous administrative jurisdictions (2021, p. 37). Therefore, it is vitally important for municipalities to have up-to-date response plans in place that are based on a risk assessment of their community-based resources and partner organizations in order to formulate timely and effective initial responses (McEntire, 2019).
One of the unfortunate realities of disaster planning, though, is the very real potential for the unexpected to disrupt and even prevent first responders to reaching the sites where people are in need of assistance. Likewise, multiple threats may occur simultaneously such as in the case of the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic where people must be socially distanced and provided with face masks as well as...…emotional and mental disorders as a direct result of their life-threatening ordeal. Indeed, left untreated, the devastating effects of concurrent public safety emergencies can have life-altering or even life-threating implications (Li et al., 2020). It is therefore also essential to ensure that these individuals, especially younger people, receive the appropriate health care support they need at the earliest opportunity. In addition, planning for follow-up care in their communities is also an important part of this process (Li et al., 2020).
Conclusion
Complex problems typically demand complex solutions and the research was consistent in showing that responding to a cascading series of natural and/or manmade disasters is certainly no exception. As the number of existential threats that are arrayed against humankind continue to increase, including climate change, it is not too far-fetched to envision a scenario where wildfires, tornadoes and floods all combine simultaneously to threaten American lives and communities. In the final analysis, it is reasonable to conclude that careful planning for such…
References
Boyd, E., Wolshon, B., & Van Heerden, I. (2009). Risk communication and public response during evacuations: The New Orleans Experience of Hurricane Katrina. Public Performance & Management Review, 32(3), 437–462.
Coaffee, J. (2021). Futureproofing against shock: Institutional responses to terrorist risk in London, 1990–2020. Applied Geography, 133, 37-42.
Li, G., Wang, L., Cao, C., Fang, R., Chen, C., Qiao, X., Yang, H., Hall, B. J., & Elhai, J. D. (2020). An Item-Based Analysis of PTSD Emotional Numbing Symptoms in Disaster-Exposed Children and Adolescents. Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology, 48(10), 1303–1311.
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