| Disaster Rally

Emergency Pediatric Care or How to Help Children in a Crisis

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Children require special emergency pediatric care, as they are more vulnerable to the effects of a disaster. Any parent, family member, or guardian, wants to make sure that their loved ones are safe. Planning for a disaster can be a bit overwhelming. However, you must be prepared for any emergency. Depending on the area where you live, you might be at risk for forest fires, floods, earthquakes, tornadoes, hurricanes, and severe weather. Let’s talk about why the little ones need more care and how you can help them during a crisis.

Why Are Children More Vulnerable?

Children are very different from adults because:

They are more prone to injuries and diseases.
Kids breathe in more air than adults do.
They have thinner, more delicate skin.
Children have fewer fluids in their bodies, thus fluid loss can have a larger effect on them.
They lose body heat faster.
Kids don’t fully understand the concept of safety.
They depend on adults.
Children may not know how to explain what hurts.
Kids do not fully understand the situation they are in.

It only takes three seconds for an earthquake to crush a home and the family inside it.

In just five hours, a flood can as much as drown a whole town. As a result, thousands of kids can be left vulnerable to deadly diseases such as malaria or cholera.

Seven days is all it takes for the lives of children to be threatened. Many countries run out of food and water and the outcome of such as disaster is malnutrition and salvation.

Are You and Your Family at Risk?

The Alert Systems Group’s disaster risk map provides us with information about the possible risks you may be facing depending on where you live. Natural disasters can affect anyone. The same goes for man-made ones. Different types of emergencies require different skills and different knowledge on how to handle them.

How to Prepare for Emergencies

The American Academy of Pediatrics’ Family Readiness Kit can help you be prepared for almost every natural disaster. It was developed by specialists after discussing with thousands of families. The feedback they received helped make a set of unique, vital materials. The kit can be used at home by any member of the family.

It is important for adults to be prepared to meet the emotional needs of their children. Kids often say that their parents avoid discussing disaster. However, talking about these natural events may make the young ones feel safer.

Although it may be difficult to start preparing for an emergency, once you dive into the process, it becomes a lot easier. All family members can come together to make a disaster plan. Even the child’s doctor can help. Consequently, during your next visit to the doctor’s office, ask them how should you prepare for an emergency.

How to Communicate with Your Children

Tell them about the disasters that could happen in the area where you live. Teach them what are the different warning signs (fire alarm, tornado siren, and more).
Show them where the list of contact is. It’s important they know where to find the doctor’s or the pharmacy’s phone numbers.
Teach them what 911 is and how to dial the number.
Consider using the Child ID Card. Place a copy in their backpack.
Arrange a meeting place in case you ever become separated from the rest of the family.
Install the Red Cross Emergency App. If your kid is old enough for a phone, download the app to their smartphone. It will alert them of any watch or warning.
Show children where the smoke alarms are.
Teach the young ones how to use the fire extinguisher.

Who Provides Emergency Pediatric Care?

Children requiring emergency pediatric care have unique needs, especially when their lives are threatened. The majority of kids, either ill or injured, are brought to community hospital emergency departments. Furthermore, emergency medical services agencies can provide out-of-hospital care.

To meet the requirements of pediatric care, the Emergency Nurses Association developed the ENPC certification course. The Emergency Nursing Pediatric Course is intended to improve the care of the children by increasing the level of knowledge, the skills, and the confidence among the nursing staff.

Your neighbors may become lifesavers as well. Learn who has special qualifications such as doctors, nurses, or other emergency care practitioners.

Post-Disaster Psychological Needs

Emergency pediatric care does not end with the process of preparing for a disaster or the medical care given to treat injuries or illnesses. Parents must be aware that the psychological effects do not just disappear. Once the event has passed, you must take care of your child’s needs for a long period of time. Experts say that children can show signs of trauma for up to two years. These signs are often in the form of nightmares, but there may be other problems as well.

Children need support regardless of the fact that they may seem fine. Sometimes, kids do no exhibit signs of trauma for months after the event. Furthermore, some children may never show signs of distress, but there will be long-lasting psychological effects nonetheless. Therefore, observe your child’s behavioral changes carefully. After a trauma, children need extra counseling and attention.

Parents must seek professional help, but they must also help their children cope with what has happened. Talk to them about their fears. Ask them what they are concerned about. Listen to their feelings without judging. Try to understand their fears regardless of the fact that they may seem irrational.

Offer them reassurance that they will always be taken care of. It is also important they know they know that their family will stick together. Let them cry if they need to, and remind them that it is ok to be afraid from time to time. They do not always have to be brave. They may feel that everything is out of their control. Therefore, show them that there are many things that they are still in control of.

It’s important you remember that a disaster can occur at any given time. Luckily, there are ways to keep your children safe. The key thing to do is be prepared and teach your children everything you know. Have them learn early on about the possible danger in your area, how to avoid it, and where to find emergency pediatric care.

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What Do Emergency Medical Services Consist Of?

Emergency medical services, also known as EMS, are responsible for providing out-of-hospital medical care and transportation to definitive care. There are different types of emergency medical services, as they vary from state to state. It is an intricate system that is integrated with other services to keep and to enhance the health and safety of the community. Let’s take a closer look at the components and the types of EMS there are.

What Is EMS?

Emergency medical services are one of the multiple types of emergency services that are dedicated to providing transport to patients that have illnesses and injuries which don’t allow for self-transportation. Furthermore, EMS provides out-of-hospital acute medical care. They are also known as ambulance services, ambulance squad, ambulance corps, first aid squad, FAST squad, rescue squad, emergency squat, life squad, or paramedic services.

An EMS system encompasses the following sub-systems, services, and professionals:

Agencies.
Organizations.
Communication networks.
Transportation networks.
Rehabilitation facilities.
Trauma centers and systems.
Hospitals.
Specialty care centers.
Physicians, nurses, volunteers, therapists.
Administrators, government officials.

Types of Emergency Medical Services

There are five EMS systems that communities are providing to their citizens:

Ambulance organizations.
Fire department.
Voluntary EMS.
Combined emergency service agencies.
Hospital-based services.

The U.S. emergency medical services network copies the Anglo-American model. This means that they provide means to bring the patient to the hospital. This is different from the Franco-German one, where medical care is being brought to the patient. It is extremely uncommon to have a physician respond to the emergency scene.

The delivery of emergency medical services in the United States is based on multiple models. Some are publicly funded while others are offered by a third-party such as a private company. The standard emergency medical services are operated by the municipality. It can either be provided by the local government or the state government. In most cases, the EMS is part of another municipal department. More often, it is integrated into the Public Health department.

In a different operating mode, the EMS is organized as a separate department within the municipality. It is viewed as a third emergency service, separate from the fire or police departments.

The emergency medical services system can also be integrated into fire or the police department, either partially or fully integrated. When it is partially integrated into another municipal EMS, the staff may share several services and quarters. When it is fully integrated, the staff can be cross-trained to perform other emergency services, either firefighting or policing.

As for the private ambulance service, there are currently only a few remaining private companies. Thousands of private ambulance companies have been merged into regional companies over the year. There are only two multinational companies that dominate the private ambulance industry at the moment.

Air ambulances are operated by various sources in the United States. Some are hospital-operators, others are operated by the federal, local, or state government, and others can be operated through multiple departments such as the United States Park Service, state police, or fire departments. They are either offered by these EMS systems or contracted to an aircraft charter company or a similar third-party company. Air ambulances include a mix of personnel, such as nurses, paramedics, physicians.

There’s also voluntary EMS, where charities and non-profit companies can operate ambulances and provide patient transport services. These are either run by the community or privately owned. It is not uncommon for them to be linked to voluntary fire services. The Red Cross is usually the main provider of this type of EMS in most countries across the globe. In some countries, these ambulances work alongside the full-time ambulances during emergency times.

Some hospital can also provide their own ambulance service. However, the use of this service is dependent on using the providing hospital’s services.

EMS Vehicles

There are multiple categories of ambulances in the United States. They are defined by Federal Specification for the Star-of-Life Ambulance, and they are classified as type:

I – based on the chassis-cabs of light duty pickup trucks.
II – also known as Vanbulances, based on modern passenger vans.
III – based on chassis-cabs of light duty vans.
III – AD – a cutaway van with an inbuilt modular body and increased gross vehicle weight rating, payload, and storage.

Large cities in the United States have multiple ambulance services that use all of the types listed above. Most ambulances that are certified for emergency response are marked with the symbol designed and controlled by the U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration – the Star of Life.

EMS Staff

In the United States, the ambulances must provide a minimum of two personnel – an EMT and an EMR. This is a called a Basic Life Support Unit because it cannot provide Advanced Life Support interventions. If the patient’s condition justifies the need of an ALS provider, it can be summoned to aid the ambulance staff during transport to the hospital.

There are several certifications in EMS. The emergency medical responder, or first responder, is the member of the staff that can perform immediate care until a higher trained provider reaches the scene. Some of the life-saving skills they must provide include CPR, hemorrhage control, and spinal stabilization.

The emergency medical technician (EMT) is usually in charge of performing a broad range of skills, such as oxygen therapy, spinal care, and defibrillation. The emergency medical technician – intermediate (EMT-I) is a certification that allows the technician to perform IVs and IO cannulation, more advanced airway procedures, limited cardiac monitoring, manual defibrillation, and to administer a limited number of medications and analgesic. A new certification level also includes the advanced emergency medical technician (AEMT). An AEMT possesses the skills to perform advanced airway procedures, start IVs, and administer certain medications.

The paramedic is highly trained, and their skills usually involve those that are not performed by technicians. This includes cannulation, the administration of a broader range of drugs (morphine, for example), intubation, cardiac monitoring, and more. Paramedics constitute the highest level of pre-hospital care in most parts of the United States. There are several certifications for paramedics: Critical Care EMT-Paramedic, Flight Paramedic Certification, and Wilderness ALS Care.

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How to Organize a Community Emergency Response Team for Disasters

In this post we will detail the basics of how an emergency response team (ERT) functions, the components of such a team and how you can organize one in your community as a prevention and preparedness technique. In case of emergencies of any kind, putting together a response team as fast as possible is crucial to the community’s ability of moving past the crisis. There are, on one hand, professional disaster management services which specialize in providing urgent intervention and relief to the affected communities. Such services are usually summoned in case of large scale accidents, earthquakes, tornados, floods and other natural disasters, or in case of artificial or man-made disasters such as bombings, attacks and other disruptive events.

On the other hand, there are the less official intervention agents coming from one of the multiple non-governmental organizations specializing in humanitarian relief actions, charity work and so on. Disaster management and emergency management are one of the most important areas of work for such NGOs, and therefore many of these organizations have an emergency response team on standby and ready to be sent on the field. The active focus of each may differ according to the organization’s main field of activity, of course, and many times the services of several emergency response teams are necessary for a crisis to be successfully handled.

For example, there can be an emergency response team responsible with psychiatric intervention, or a correctional emergency response team (in league with the police or local sheriff department) when the threat currently handled is coming from a human attack, or a team comprised of computer security experts when dealing with a cyber-attack or cyber-threat, etc. Most emergency response teams must involve (at least partially) members which work within official state infrastructure services (police staff, hospital staff, a corrections officer). In case of a major national threat, the dispatched emergency response team even involves some members of the secret service, in coordination with the civilian teams.

To keep a long story short, the exact duties and responsibilities (and, hence, the exact componence) of an emergency response team depends on the type of threat or disaster being handled. The only thing which remains the same is the unwritten rule that no matter what the threat handled is, the official intervention teams stand a much better chance of averting further threat if they benefit from the help and involvement of local citizens. Therefore, one of the best things you can do for the safety and well-being of your town or neighbourhood is to be ready of putting together a local citizen emergency response team.

How a Community Emergency Response Team (CERT) Should Look Like

First of all, check with your local office for emergency response and see what forms of emergency response are already put in place and how you can get involved. As far as we know, local emergency management, even of coordinated by official infrastructure services (police and hospital staff and so on), could always use more volunteers. You can inquire about what roles are currently most needed and see if you already have the required skills, or, if not, if you can obtain those skills through a training session. Most local authorities organize such seminars and workshops for training citizens to fulfil a particular role in order to be able to assist within an emergency response team. If you check out the available seminars, you may end up with an extra skill set or two in the end.

But in order to organize your own emergency response team for your local area (a suburban neighborhood, or for your campus, etc.), you need to consider these particular steps. Such a team, comprised from citizens who usually hold unrelated jobs and take on their emergency roles only when the need arises, is usually called an incident response team. Here are the requirements (laid out as steps) for it:

Write down the layout of a basic emergency response team. You will need your team to contain the following: at least 3 certified medical volunteers (able to perform emergency help until the actual medical teams arrive), 1 or 2 organizing members (the unified command system), 1 person specialized in recruiting (for enlisting more ad hoc volunteers), and 1 person in charge of the supplies and their distribution.
After you put together a chart with these required roles and make sure there are people to fill them out, you can start thinking further. You will need some emergency supplies (blankets, non-perishable food enough to feed a few dozen people, 10-20 first aid kits etc.) and a main storage space, which will also serve as your organizing center.
If you have new volunteers joining your emergency response team in addition to the basic members (outlined above), you should ask them to obtain a certification in an extra area of intervention (volunteer firefighting, nursing, management of hazardous substances, hostage situation management and so on). The more different roles are fulfilled by your team, the better prepared you will be to tackle on whatever may come your way.
Last, but not least, you should also create a protocol for each major type of emergency situation, so that your team members know exactly what to do and how to proceed with their tasks, even when central organization may not be available (due to phone lines being off and so on).

Emergency Response Team Training and Jobs

Since we mentioned above the necessity for your team to obtain certifications in various intervention areas, let’s take a brief look at what these main intervention areas are and how you can obtain some further training (and maybe even a job in the field).

First of all, you need to know that while you may find a company which offers emergency management training, the best such trainings are still offered by state infrastructure services. In order to make sure a certain certificate is indeed officially recognized by national or local authorities, you need to make sure the workshop or course offered bears the official logo of a state service. Of course, one of the best sources of training for members of a CERT (community emergency response team) is the government’s own special programs. You can find more about each branch of governmental training for CERTs by visiting their main portal here.

Second of all, don’t forget that once you become certified in the field and gain some experience in organizing a community emergency response team, you can start considering an actual job in emergency management. There’s no reason why you shouldn’t get paid for your expertise, especially if your activity becomes a full-time involvement. You can look up opportunities for an emergency response team coordinator here, or for more general members of such a team here. Of course, these are just starting points: there are plenty of other portals which host employment opportunities for emergency response team specialists. To look for more, simply browse regular job engines, in a similar way as you would start your searches if this was any other job. Local teams who are just starting their activity could benefit from your experience, so maybe the greater good would be to spread your knowledge.

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Emergency Management and How It Works

To understand emergency management, you need to be aware that a disaster can take place at any given moment, no matter where you live on the globe. Just think about it; a misplaced match can lead to a terrible house fire or an earthquake can leave your community devastated. Even though we can’t avoid them at all times, emergencies can and should be prepared for. This is where emergency management kicks in. You’ll find an emergency management department, county authority or some sort of division in most states, all for a very good reason. Without proper planning, an emergency can result in irreparable damage, with no possible forms of recovery. What you can do to avoid this is learn about emergency management and how it works.

Our guide will walk you through everything you need to know about being prepared for any emergency. You’ll understand why your emergency management plan is crucial, what institute you need to contact for help and even how you can undergo training, programs and online courses to become an emergency manager or get a masters degree in this field. Without further ado, learn what the deal with emergency management is and start rethinking your safety priorities.

Emergency Preparedness

When speaking of emergency management, we have to include emergency preparedness in the equation. It focuses specifically on getting ready for disaster and, frankly, being prepared for the worst. The Homeland Security Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and the National Incident Management System (NIMS) define the idea of preparedness as a permanent cycle to ensure a fast and safe response in cases of emergencies, with the following key points:

Plan
Organize
Train
Equip
Exercise
Evaluate
Action

To put it simply, you have to be ready at all times, from all points of view, for a tragic emergency that might take place. When planning for an emergency, you must consider the fact that disasters can be manmade or natural. In the former situation, prevention measures tend to guarantee safety more than the latter, where man is not in control. For example, you can avoid the disastrous results of an accidental fire by having an extinguisher and an evacuation plan all set up beforehand.

Emergency Management Cycle

The description of emergency management also goes hand in hand with a specific cycle. Known as the ‘phases’ of emergency management, these four stages can narrow down damages to a minimum. Even more importantly, they can effectively save lives.

Phase 1 – Mitigation

The first step in emergency management is mitigation. To put it in a nutshell, mitigation involves the identification of risks and doing what you can to minimize them from the beginning. This could mean building dams to avoid floods, rebuilding certain structures that are made of weak materials or identifying all the weak points in a building.

Phase 2 – Preparedness

The second phase focuses upon getting prepared for a disaster. What makes it different from mitigation is that it stresses on getting ready for the third phase, response. This phase involves outlining a plan, getting supplies together and running through drills to see if preparedness is adequate.

Phase 3 – Response

Response, the third phase of emergency management, refers to the instant actions that need to be performed when an emergency takes place. The response should unfold according to the preparedness plan, with evacuation and essential operations.

Phase 4 – Recovery

The final phase of emergency management is recovering from the disaster or emergency that took place. It usually involves reconstruction and caring for those affected by the incident. This is the phase where state authorities, international organizations and other certified sources can play a vital role in speeding up recovery.

Emergency Management Director

In addition to learning the basics about emergency management, you can also look into job opportunities or forms of certification in the field. There are various degrees or new certificate programs that can help you reach this goal and become an emergency management director or specialist. The salary for a professional in this area can range anywhere from $33,370 to $116,900, as the BLS informs us.

If you decide to pursue a career in emergency management, you’ll most likely be working for local or state governments, hospitals, universities / schools or in the electric power generation, transmission and distribution industry. The states with the highest employment level are Texas, California, New York (NYC), Virginia and New Jersey (NJ). Even though states like Colorado, Florina, North Carolina, Washington or Indiana don’t have such a high level, you can still find emergency management jobs in these areas.

Emergency Management Organization, Office and Association Examples

Thankfully, there are an abundance of organizations that can help out with emergency management in times of need. These organizations can be national or international and are willing to provide disaster victims with supplies, support and shelter.

One of the most significant organizations for emergency management is FEMA, but also NIMS. All Red Cross branches can be consulted in times of emergency, as well the United Nations for large scales. A few other organizations are the International Association for Disaster Preparedness and Response (DERA), the Center for Excellence in Disaster Management and Humanitarian Assistance (COE) or the Citizen Corps.

It is best to search for emergency management organizations in the city or state that you live in for immediate help.

How to Prepare for Emergencies at Home or Work

Now that we know the fundamental aspects of emergency management, it’s time to conclude with a few ways in which you can prepare from emergencies at home or at the office.

Kits & Supplies – make sure you have plenty of nonperishable food and water stored, as well as basic supplies like batteries and flashlights.
Plan – create a plan that is clear and easy to follow. Make sure that you take all aspects of any emergency into consideration. As an alternative, you can create several plans with specific instructions for different emergencies.
Training – go through the plan several times to see if any aspects need to be upgraded.

Stay safe and always prepare.

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All You Need to Know about Disaster Response Services

When disasters and, generally speaking, disruptive events occur, people respond to the threat and contain it the best they can. The official terms surrounding disaster management (like disaster relief and disaster response) often vary and people confuse them or use them interchangeably, but there is actually a pretty strict delimitation when it comes to all sides of this support process.

Here is a brief overview of how the various sides of disaster management work and intertwine:

Disaster Management – this is the widest aspect, referring to the entire cycle of emergency management;
1. Emergency Planning – this phase refers to identifying risks before the disastrous event even occurs
2. Disaster Response – the second phase of the cycle, comprising immediate assistance services, such as search and rescue, distributing supplies, providing emergency medical care and so on. Also called disaster relief by some.
3. Disaster Recovery – the last phase of disaster management, taking place after the immediate emergencies of the second phase have been dealt with. This phase focuses on making sure the affected lives return to normal as fast as possible.
Business Continuity – this part focuses on disaster recovery for businesses, ensuring that companies affected by disasters can pick up their normal activity as fast as possible and that the temporary disruption doesn’t prove to be the end of the company as well.
1. Disaster Recovery Services – a sub-set of business continuity, this part of a BCP (Business Continuity Plan) focuses mostly on IT system and the protection of virtual protocols and data.
2. Business Contingency Management – a post-disaster set of plans and activities, destined to make businesses more resilient and able to cope with future disruptive events (preparedness training).

Disaster response, therefore, is an emergency stage of activities destined to bring some relief to those affected by a disaster, and is one of the main focuses of humanitarian actions and organizations everywhere.

Disaster Response Jobs and How to Get Involved

If you’re tempted of getting involved more into disaster response activities, first of all we need to congratulate you for your noble intentions, and second of all, to provide you with an overview of how to start. Before looking for opportunities on how to get involved, you need to decide how much time you can dedicate to this: do you want to be involved on and off, as a volunteer, or do you want to make an actual profession out of it?

If you want to get involved as a volunteer, you can do this on a low-key mode, with your local emergency response team (every area has one, so do a quick search and you should be able to get in touch with your local emergency management force in no time). There are also the major international organizations who are always looking for more volunteers to join their operational forces. We will give you more details about what the best humanitarian action organizations are and how to get in touch with them and see what you can contribute with, in the section below.

As for disaster response jobs and careers, this side of the intervention field is also full of opportunities. Since people working in disaster response are basically super-heroes, trained to not only do their job flawlessly, but also do it under considerable time pressure and without all the usual tools and props, serious certification is required. Usually, the certification one needs in order to be a licensed emergency management team member comes from FEMA. This government agency also provides the training required for the major specializations needed. Here are just a few examples:

Medical emergency response staff (nurses and field doctors);
Bomb alert engineers;
Data backup scientists;
Communications officers;
Search and rescue team members (including firefighters);

You can find out more about the training offered by FEMA’s Emergency Management Institute (EMI) here.

A Few Disaster Response Organizations

Humanitarian and disaster relief organizations are active all over the world, and the international ones usually focus more on the countries where the government lacks the resources to provide proper disaster response on its own. Since most acts of disaster response are aimed first and foremost at meeting people’s most basic needs, and therefore a central government that isn’t able to help the people affected by disaster really needs all the help it can get. The most important thing about disaster response, though, is that it’s always an organized and systematic activity, no matter who is the central authority behind the organization (either a national government or an NGO). There can be spontaneous interventions for disaster response, but they are usually on a local neighborhood scale and will either fizz out or become part of a larger scheme.

Without further ado, here are the major disaster response organizations you should know about:

The Red Cross – The Red Cross is an international organization with a strong presence in its U.S. branch, so basically whenever natural disasters have struck us in the past few years (tornados, hurricanes and floods), the Red Cross has provided a huge relief for those affected. Find out more about how you can get involved here.
The United Nations (UN) – Another great international organization that handles very varied types of disaster response and humanitarian work, besides various other responsibilities in diplomacy and so on. The UN also has some pretty high-end emergency management jobs for those of you who already have experience with humanitarian work and emergency relief coordination.
The Catholic Relief Services – One of the most important Christian organizations present in the U.S., the CRS welcomes all kinds of volunteers for their wide array of humanitarian actions, beyond disaster response (donations, doing some hunger relief actions from the charity fund and so on).
The Lutheran Disaster Response (LDS) – The other major Christian organization that provides disaster response nationally and internationally, the LDS welcomes plenty of volunteers and professionals altogether.
World Renew (WD) – One of the most active organizations in the field of disaster response and humanitarian work, WD has a very complex layering of projects and activities in which you can get involved with.

Last, but not least, if you’re willing to try going abroad for a disaster relief work experience, the first step you should make is to read this guide on what skills you need and where to start. Good luck!

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