AMU Emergency Management Public Safety

Preplanning Our Daily Disasters

While it is great to plan for the [link url=”https://amuedge.com/cascadia-rising-to-test-pnw-megaquake-response/” title=”‘Big One'”], there are many incidents that occur in our daily response lives. This applies no matter if we work for the fire department, police department, or the local emergency management agency. Day-to-day disasters involve fire, active shooters, hazardous materials releases, or technical rescues.

Buildings: Know Thy Enemy

The built environment of our communities and their interaction with humans are the basis for much of the daily disasters. Through the previous decades, cost reductions within buildings produced construction methods that utilized lighter materials and, ultimately, less sustainable buildings. 

In the early 1900’s through the 1950’s brick structures were prevalent and could easily withstand most fire, wind events, and other typical events. However, today’s building construction allow four stories of wood frame buildings with the typical dimensional lumber being 1.5 inches by 3.5 inches. Lately, we are seeing more laminated I-beams and other smaller dimensional lumber. 

This equates to buildings that are not able to handle a very big fire or even a significant wind event.

Layout and Utilities

Two of the biggest factors at daily disasters involve the layout of the building and the utilities within the building. The fire department wants to know the layout for hose line deployment and search and rescue, while the police department wants to know how to move through the building in the event of an active shooter or when chasing a criminal.

Other issues are often related to the utilities, such as electricity, water, and natural gas. And, in tall buildings, the elevator system becomes a factor.

Preplanning

Based on knowing the issues with a built environment, the police, fire, and emergency management can work together to conduct a pre-incident analysis, which involves not only the layout of the building, but contains some preliminary planning for known or common events in and around the building.

Preparation equals success.

Dr. Randall Hanifen serves as a shift commander at a medium-sized suburban fire department in the northern part of the Cincinnati area. Randall is the CEO/principal consultant of an emergency services consulting firm, providing analysis and solutions related to organizational structuring of fire and EMS organizations. He is the chairperson and operations manager for a county technical rescue team. From a state and national perspective, he serves as a taskforce leader for one of FEMA's urban search and rescue teams, which responds to presidential declared disasters. From an academic standpoint, Randall has a bachelor’s degree in fire administration, a master’s degree in executive fire service leadership, and a doctoral degree in business administration with a specialization in homeland security. He is the associate author of “Disaster Planning and Control” (Penwell, 2009), which provides first responders with guidance through all types of disasters.

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