Shaping Effective Responses to Multiple Public Safety Emergencies

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 emergency medicine, food and water supplies as part of the first response. In this regard, Quigley et al. (2020) emphasize that, “The aggregation of evacuees into communal environments and increased demand on medical, economic, and infrastructural capacity associated with natural hazard impacts may increase Covid-19 exposure risks and vulnerabilities” (p. 200). As a result, conditions such as a highly contagious virus will invariably affect the type, scope and nature of the first response to concurrent disaster events (Quigley et al., 2020).

Clearly, formulating effective multi-pronged responses to concurrent public safety emergencies is not only a complex process, implementing and administering such responses may be difficult or even impossible under certain conditions. Consequently, when people’s lives and property are at stake, flexibility and innovation are key to effective responses to concurrent public safety emergencies. While emergency first responders can help save people’s lives and property, it is also essential to evacuate as many people from the disaster scene as possible prior to and subsequent to the onset of disaster events in order to prevent additional human casualties (McEntire, 2019). As the recent on-again, off-again evacuations of war victims from Ukraine have vividly demonstrated, however, this process can be challenged at every turn as discussed further below.

Evacuation of Endangered Citizens

Because evacuation of large numbers of people is a hazardous and enormously expensive enterprise, evacuation routes and possible sheltering plans should be evaluated during the emergency preparation process (McEntire, 2019). As noted above, however, optimal evacuation routes may be disrupted or destroyed as a result of concurrent disaster events, and viable alternatives must be identified, sometimes “on the fly.” Of paramount concern throughout the evacuation process is the need to ensure the safety of evacuees during and following their removal to another location (Boyd et al., 2009).

Treatment of Injured Victims

Besides the provision of urgent medical care for physically injured victims of public safety emergencies, many people may suffer from 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 scenarios is critically important, but so too is the need for flexibility in response to such concurrent public safety emergencies.