Emergency Management

Emergency management is the process of mitigating, preparing for, responding to, and recovering from an emergency. 

Emergency management is a dynamic process. Planning, though critical, is not the only component. Training, conducting drills, testing equipment and coordinating activities with the community are other important functions.

This circular, four phase process is a standard which is universal in the emergency management field.

The first phase, mitigation is a process to identify policies, activities, and tools that can be used to implement mitigation actions. Mitigation is any sustained action taken to reduce or eliminate long-term risk to life and property from a hazard event.

This process has four steps:

Organizing resources,

Assessing our risks,

Developing a mitigation plan, and,

Implementing the plan and monitoring progress.

While mitigation can make us safer, it does not eliminate risk and vulnerability for all hazards.  Therefore, we must be ready to face emergency threats that have not been mitigated away.

Our second phase, preparedness, involves establishing authorities and responsibilities for emergency actions and garnering the resources to support them.

Responsibility for responding to emergencies and disasters begins at the nearest level; the next level of response is activated when resources and capabilities are exhausted.

For the third phase, response, there are five stages:

Alerting and notification,

Warning,

Protecting the people and property,

Providing for the welfare of the people, and,

Restoration.

The last phase, recovery, includes activities to restore our operations to normal. Recovery activities are classified as short-term and long-term.

Typically, when the recovery phase has started or completed, you will return to the mitigation phase.